Caught in the Glow (The Glower Chronicles Book 1) (10 page)

“That’s all I’ve got for you tonight, Austin,” Colin shouted into his mic, and hurled that away too. The other instruments petered out as he stalked off stage without so much as a glance at his bandmates. Or at me.

I hurried around the scaffolding as Kevin retrieved the mic. “I guess that’s a wrap, folks,” he said. “Thanks for listening to the great Colin Ryder!” An edge of sarcasm colored his voice.

It’d be just great if Colin alienated the rest of the people he needed to make his album along with his producers and the label.

Some of the crowd had spilled around the sides of the stage. I wove through the clustered figures, silently cursing every person who just stood there in my way, oblivious until I said, “Excuse me?” Finally I reached the back, where a set of stairs allowed access on and off stage.

Colin was already gone. Of course he wouldn’t have waited for me. I turned on my feet, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t spot-checked the Glowers before I’d taken off after him. I wasn’t sure they’d stuck around for that last minute while he was throwing his tantrum. One of them could have come around back here to intercept him...

No. If someone had confronted him, he’d still be here. He’d probably headed to the trailer he’d been given as a dressing room, one of the many in their rows beyond the chain link fence.

I loped over to the gate, flashed my ID to the security guards, and counted rows as I hustled past trailer after trailer. Colin’s had been near the back. Seven rows down, two over. Right—

My legs stalled as I came up on the seventh row.

Colin was there, standing outside the trailer door. And with him was the Glower girl from the crowd. She was leaning into him, peering at him coyly through her lashes as she walked her fingers up his arm. Her lips were moving too, with words too soft for me to make them out. They glittered in the air like shards of glass caught in the sunlight. Colin’s head tipped closer to hers, and I knew.

She was asking the question to mark him—in the Glowers’ twisted way, obscuring exactly what sort of deal she was proposing. And by every appearance, Colin was about to accept.

9.

I
wasn’t prepared for the rush of emotion that hit me, seeing the Glower so close to Colin—both his body and his soul. The usual surge of protective instinct, the fear even as I bolted toward them that I wouldn’t move fast enough to save him, that was familiar. But something stronger, deeper, wrenched through me alongside them.

He hadn’t even flirted with another girl in front of me since that night we’d kissed. I couldn’t have known how much it would ache to watch his hand drift toward her waist, the distance close between their mouths. As if she’d ripped him away from me and stolen my place.

So I might have used a little more force than I’d have otherwise brought to bear when I grabbed the Glower by the shoulders and yanked her away from Colin. She stumbled into the side of the trailer opposite. Sparks flickered in the air at the impact. I stepped in front of Colin, my lungs heaving to catch my breath after my mad dash. She straightened up and faced me with a gleam dancing like fire within her glare.

“Avery,” Colin said, so low and pained I couldn’t help jerking my gaze away from the Glower. Had she marked him after all? No glimmer of a mark shone in his chest, or his face as I searched that too, but the tension in his jaw and the raw wildness in his eyes made my chest clench up. What had she said to him? What had she promised?

I could find that out later. I turned back to the Glower, shifting into a defensive stance when she eased a step closer. “It’s time for you to leave,” I said. “You’re not welcome here.”

“Don’t you want me to stay, Colin?” she purred, looking past me to him, his name silvery sweet from her lips. In that moment I was sure she was the same Glower who’d been watching him before. I swallowed hard.

Colin drew in a breath, and hesitated. Worse than a no, but better than a yes.

“Colin needs to get ready for the gala dinner,” I said. “He doesn’t have time to entertain visitors right now.”

She kept her gaze on him. “You should go,” he said quietly, and my muscles sagged in relief.

The Glower’s lips pursed. For a second I thought she was going to fight. Then she shrugged and flipped back her shimmering hair.

“Some other time then,” she said with an edge of challenge meant just for me, and sauntered off.

Colin pushed open the trailer door. As I followed him in, nerves still jangling, he spun on me. The apparent anguish I’d seen in him before had vanished. His eyes were hard in the dim light.

“What the hell was that?” he demanded as the door thumped shut behind us. “I’m not allowed to have any fun now? She was just offering a good time.”

“Believe me, it would have been anything but good if I hadn’t gotten here when I did,” I said. “You have no idea who she is. That’s why you’re
supposed
to wait for me to check things out before you start making new ‘friends.’ And while we’re asking questions, maybe you can tell me what the hell you were doing on stage just now? It didn’t look like bold macho bravado, if that’s what you were going for. It looked like you were having a psychotic episode.”

Colin’s mouth flattened. “So?” he said. “It’ll get people talking. If the label complains about it, they’re idiots. All publicity is good publicity, isn’t that what they say?”

The defiance in those words would have fed my anger if I hadn’t caught a hint of that earlier rawness in his voice. I paused, taking in the set of his shoulders, his hands balled into fists at his sides. The erratic rise and fall of his chest, as if he’d been the one racing over here. Under my scrutiny, his mask wavered, something like panic flashing through his expression.

“What’s going on, Colin?” I asked, my own voice softening. “Please. I want to help, but I can’t when you’re stonewalling me like this.” Like every time I thought we’d come to a basic understanding and then he did a U-turn on me.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “Stressful day. Blowing off some steam.”

“It looked like more than that.”

“Well, I can’t help that,” he said. “There’s nothing else to tell.”

I didn’t believe him, but by now I knew if I pushed harder he’d just double down on his denial. “Okay,” I said. “It’s probably not that big a deal.” As long as it didn’t keep happening. “Can you at least promise you won’t take off on me like that anymore? If you decide you don’t want to talk to me, or even look at me, whatever, that’s up to you, but you’ve got to let me keep up.”

“So you can protect me from the groupies?” he said with a crooked smile.

“You know I haven’t stopped you from hooking up with other people,” I said. “You have to trust me that I know which ones to avoid.”

“She didn’t look all that dangerous to me.”

“Because she wouldn’t want you to see that. That’s how predators work—by convincing everyone else they’re part of the herd.”

I expected Colin to ask what sort of predator this one was, readying myself with one of the pre-approved stories I had memorized, but he just sighed. The dejection in his posture sent a pang through me. Was he really
that
disappointed to have lost out on what he’d thought was a quick roll in the hay?

“Anyway,” I added before I could think better of it, “I thought you didn’t really like those girls.”

He gave me a look then, so serious and intent that you’d have thought my response could determine the fate of nations. It took me back to our conversation in the penthouse right before he’d kissed me. When he’d seemed so concerned about whether I cared and why.

“I’m not getting offers from anyone else,” he said. “If those are the only girls who want me, then those are the girls I have.”

In that moment, with his gaze fixed on me, every inch of my skin tingled with my awareness of him, even though he was standing five feet away. My lungs contracted.

It wasn’t true. He had to know that wasn’t true.

Or maybe he didn’t. All he knew was that I’d broken off our kiss and barely exchanged more than small talk with him since. He didn’t know how often the memory of the kiss had played through my head. How my heart had flipped at the sight of him with the Glower girl.

Which was exactly why I shouldn’t even be thinking about this. Falling for him wasn’t going to do either of us any good. And just the thought of those lips on mine again was enough to make the wall inside me tremble.

So I was going to tell him that? That I wanted him too much to give in to it?
The job,
I thought, but that excuse no longer felt the slightest bit solid.
The only rule anyone really cares about is whether you keep the client safe
, Fee had said, and I knew she was right. She spent hours with her client drunk or high and no one at the Society had complained. All I wanted to do was make out with mine, and that wasn’t going to prevent me from being able to protect him.

In fact, it might
help
me protect him. Glowers had a knack for picking up on their target’s emotions, sensing their weaknesses. This Glower had clearly decided the best way to get to him was not through drugs or insecurity or pride, but desire. If he focused that desire on me, even for a little while, maybe she’d find him not so easy a catch after all. Maybe she’d give up. Maybe it’d give me the time I needed to find a more permanent solution he’d agree to.

Wasn’t a little heartbreak worth it if I saved his soul along the way?

I sucked in a breath, abruptly lightheaded. Then I reached inside me and kicked over that wall. “They’re not,” I said, holding Colin’s gaze as the truth of my words coursed through me. “They’re not the only girls who want you.”

He stepped toward me, still studying my face. I had to raise my chin to keep my eyes on his. My heart was thudding so hard I could feel it right through to my fingertips.

“No?” he said.

“No.”

His voice dropped. “You said, before— ”

“I thought I couldn’t let myself. I changed my mind.”

“Really.” Colin smiled again, with an echo of both that cocky grin of challenge and the boyish enthusiasm that came over him while performing. It was an intoxicating combination. His head dipped and his breath tickled over my cheek. His hand rose to the collar of my shirt, his thumb brushing my collarbone as he fingered the button there. The contact sent a tremor of anticipation through me. “I’m just that irresistible?” he said.

My laugh came out breathless. “If that’s how you want to see it.”

“Hmmm.” He slid the button from its hole and traced his fingers down to the next, just above the center of my bra. His body was so close to mine that the scent of him filled my nose with each breath, the faded pine and mint of his aftershave under the musky sweetness of the sweat he’d worked up on stage, and yet that was the only point where we were touching. “I don’t know how much I really care, as long as I can keep doing this.”

Second button undone. Down to the third. I exhaled shakily, but somehow managed to keep my voice even. “You want
me
that much?”

Colin chuckled low in his throat. “Avery, I’ve wanted you since I watched you toss that jackass on his back in the Catacomber.” Then, as the third button came loose in his grasp, he ducked his head and pressed his mouth to the crook of my neck.

Heat swelled in my chest and below as he kissed his way across my left shoulder and then down over the modest swell of my breasts toward the right, tugging my shirt further open to clear the path. A sound like a whimper crept from my throat, more needy than I’d ever heard myself. Had I really considered denying myself this?

My fingers curled into his shirt, my breath stuttering as he grazed my skin with a hint of teeth, a flick of tongue. My lips had parted, neglected in the still air.

“Colin,” I whispered, pleading. He nipped the corner of my jaw. Then my hands were clutching the sides of his head, drawing his mouth to mine.

We kissed slow, deep, lingering, not the headlong rush of the other night. His arm tucked around me, pulling my body against his until I was drowning in him. I still wanted more. My hand trailed down his side and slipped under his shirt. I reveled in his pleased hum as I traced the taut muscles along his torso, the fine curls of hair down the middle of his chest, faintly damp from his recent performance.

Colin reached for my shoulder without breaking the kiss, coaxing my bra strap to the side until it trailed down my arm. Then his hand slid under the loosened cup to cradle my breast. His tongue glided out to caress mine as his thumb teased around my nipple. I moaned, my hips flexing against his of their own accord, the deepest hottest ache gathering between them.

I’d never slept with a guy on a first date—and I hadn’t been on
anything
you could exactly call a date with Colin. But I’d never been with a guy whose touch lit me up like his did. We’d been circling around each other for weeks. Maybe this wasn’t moving fast but the urgency of having waited so long.

His mouth left mine, trailing a slow hot line down my throat as he pushed aside the other bra strap. His fingers stroked the side of my breast as his thumb had its way with the nipple, edging back and forth around the hardened nub, each movement sending an electric pulse of pleasure through me. A cry lodged in my throat as his lips caught its partner. His tongue mimicked the rhythm of his thumb, slick and fleeting, and all I could do was hold on to him, my legs starting to tremor.

“Good?” he murmured against my sensitized skin, and I let out a giggle that hardly sounded like me at all.

“I think,” I started, my hands closing around the hem of his shirt with every intention of yanking it off and pulling his bare chest against mine through another kiss, and someone knocked on the trailer door. Barely two steps away.

I flinched, my body going rigid. Colin raised his head without moving away from me and glanced toward the door. I registered the closed shutters on the windows with relief. I’d been so caught up in him I hadn’t thought of privacy.

The knock came again. “Col,” Joel said, “we’re due in fifteen minutes. You coming?”