Crash Into My by Tracy Wolff
She’s totally off limits, but this rocker wants a taste…
Jamison Matthews has lusted after Ryder Montgomery since she was a preteen. But now that Ryder and her brother’s band, Shaken Dirty, has made it huge, she’s just one of many pining for the brooding lead singer. Too bad Ryder still sees her as a little sister. Not that it matters. Her brother would never allow it, and the last thing Jamison wants is to be another notch on a rock star’s bed post. Even if it’s Ryder’s.
Ryder doesn’t deserve happiness. After his fame destroyed his last girlfriend, he swore he’d never fall in love again. So when Jamison, the girl he’s been in danger of loving for years, joins the band on the road, he’ll do anything to deny the sparks between them—even after one hot night together. But Jamison is determined to show Ryder that he’s worthy of love—her love—and that she’s all grown up…and ready to play.
Excerpt
Onstage, the band launched into
“Awake,” one of the power ballads that had made them famous. The crowd screamed
their approval and so did she. Totally not her typical modus operandi, but she
couldn’t help it. Something about listening to Ryder croon the darkly haunting
lyrics had her knees trembling and her heart beating much too quickly. If she closed
her eyes, she could do what all the other women in the audience were doing and
pretend that he was singing straight to her.
So much better than remembering he’d
written these heartfelt words for another woman. For Carrie, who had killed
herself and broken his heart so many years before. Her own heart ached at the
thought. For him. Always for him. At twenty-nine, Ryder had already been
through more darkness and despair than any one person should have to handle.
“Awake” finally came to a close, the last note hanging in the air for
long, tension-fueled seconds. Then the band fell silent and the audience did
the same, as if they were all holding their breaths. Ryder lowered his guitar,
shuffled, and stamped his feet once, twice. It was a familiar gesture, one
years of experience had taught her was his way of shaking off excess emotion.
Again her heart twisted. It devastated her that more than ten years after the
fact he was still eaten up by what had happened. Still determined to bury it
under a bunch of layers that not only insulated him from his pain but also hid
the real Ryder so deep inside the public Ryder that she wondered sometimes if
he even existed anymore. Or if the boy who had held her while she cried, who
had let her whisper her pre-adolescent fears without ever making fun of her,
had disappeared forever.
She searched for him in that one
endless moment.
Looked for him in the obsidian eyes
that arrowed to the heart of the crowd even as they barricaded his own
emotions.
Combed through her own memories and
expectations in an effort to see Ryder as he really was instead of how he
portrayed himself.
And when his eyes—his crazy,
beautiful eyes—met hers, she found him. Seconds passed, long, intense seconds
where she lost the ability to hear or breathe or even think. All she could do
was look into Ryder’s eyes, at the feral heat boiling up and out of them, and want.
She smiled at him, waved. He snarled
back. But it wasn’t a leave-me-alone snarl. No, definitely not. It was his
I-want-to-fuck-you-up-against-a-wall snarl—she knew it well, had seen it
directed at a lot of women through the years—and her knees gave way when she
realized that this time, finally, it was directed at her. It didn’t matter that
there was no sign of recognition in his eyes, no knowledge that the woman he
was looking at like that was actually her.
Jamison. For one moment, he wanted her the way she’d always wanted him.
It was more than enough.
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