Documentary (20 page)

“Sorry, Ash,” Kai said, flashing one of his charming smiles that quickly died when
Ash
glared. She didn’t seem the least bit impressed by him or care about how cute he was, and Dylan wished she could trade feelings with her.

“Oh, this is Dylan Carroll, and she’s the one working on the web series. Dylan, this is my tour manager, Ashley Hart. She’ll be on the road with u
s, and technically, she’s supposed to be
relaxing
right now before the tour…”

“
Relaxing? Ha!” Ashley rolled her eyes as she stood up. “How can I, when you insist on being late?” She shook Dylan’s hand. “I’ll be making sure things run smoothly, shooing the groupies out of tour buses and hotel rooms but, most importantly, being Nina’s eyes and ears.”

Dylan laughed awkwardly. This was her new babysitter, and the person reporting back to Nina about any misdeeds. Dylan fought the impulse to inform her that Nina had nothing to worry about, but she knew that any sort of statement like that would sound like it was coming from a guilty place, which it was.

Dylan turned on her camcorder as Kai pulled his electric guitar out of the case. It was a bright candy apple red, except for the pickguard, which was black, and the light shade of wood on the neck. “1996 Eric Clapton Signature Fender Stratocaster, but it goes by Sable.”

             
“And your acoustic’s name is Sage,” Dylan remarked. “While there is some acoustic on your album, it seems like you prefer the electric, why?”

             
“Sage is great but Sable and I get along much better, you’ll see,” Kai said with a wink at her before he walked into the recording room. She trailed him in and filmed from the inside for a while. The song turned out to be a bluesy tune, slow and romantic, built mostly on the strength of the drums and the electric guitar. At some points, each musician played alone to isolate the sound of his particular instrument. Kai and Sable
did
get along well; it looked oddly symbiotic. He was in a trance when he played, sometimes with his eyes closed and other times just staring at the Stratocaster. The producer explained that Kai would record his vocals later and that they would be dubbed over the music. She filmed the producer as he discussed Kai’s chemistry with the local musicians and his willingness to include them in his new music.

“So, this is a cool gig. You don’t even look like you’re out of college,” Ashley said when Dylan took a break. She patted the cushion next to her where she meant for Dylan to sit.

Her heart hammered when she eased down to the couch. Dylan hoped Ashley wasn’t the perceptive type, hoped she wouldn’t be able to sniff out any attraction between her and Kai. “I’m not. I’m a junior, but this is a great way to start my career.”

“Oh, so this is like some sort of low stepping stone for you?” Ashley squinted, studying her with a tilt of her head. Dylan blushed.

“Oh...no…I’m….” she faltered, wilting under the harsh stare. “I’m incredibly grateful to be here. This is the experience of a lifetime.”

Ashley broke out into a smile before she laughed, rather evilly, Dylan thought. “I was just teasing. I
am
the hard ass around here when it comes to making sure people stick to their duties, but I joke around, too. Occasionally. Rarely.” Ashley turned her eyes to her laptop and tapped briskly on the keyboard.

Dylan smiled lightly but she just knew in the future she would tire of this woman breathing down her neck and watching her every move.
Nina’s eyes and ears.
To be in that role, Ashley would have to be everywhere and aware of everything. She was probably sending off status reports to Nina now.
Dylan is too young, ungrateful and she’s staring at Kai like she wants to bite him.
Glancing at Ashley from the corner of her eye, Dylan tried to see a bright side. Perhaps, Ashley’s presence would end up being a beneficial addition to Dylan’s self-control around Kai.

When the musicians took a break, Kai signaled for Dylan to follow him, and she started filming again when they walked into a lounge on the upper-level of the recording studio.
There were two navy-colored L shaped couches, a television and a kitchenette. Kai fell onto one of the couches and she sat a few cushions away. Who knew when Ashley would pop in?

“I’m really nervous about that song. Gonna be playing it on the road.” Kai threw a smile at the camera before he dug into his pockets and retrieved a pen and a slip of paper no bigger than a receipt. He wrote something on it before pulling out several more pieces of paper that were already written on.

“You like to try out new songs that aren’t on your album on the crowds in smaller venues before the arenas, like how comedians do at comedy clubs before going on tour,” she said. Even though she was filming, she kept moving her eyes frequently to look directly at him. The tousled dark hair, the square jaw with the just-coming-in facial hair and the way he licked his lips every few seconds, all of it was so incredibly sexy.

“Yeah…someone’s bound to record it on their phone if they like it
, and it’ll end up online.” Kai arranged the slips of paper like he was putting a shredded document back together. “It’s my own way of spreading my music to the people who can’t ordinarily afford tickets to the shows. Pisses my label off.” Instead of being concerned, Kai laughed pleasantly.

“Why are you worried about this song so much?” she asked, lifting her eyes from the viewer on the camcorder door to watch what he was doing.

“New muse…new direction,” he said absently, and he looked up so that their eyes met. “People aren’t always good with change, and I want to keep the fans I still have.” Dylan stiffened, remembering Nina’s revelation that he had started writing again since meeting her. She secretly thought it was sweet and it kind of made her weak in the knees.

“So the feeling on stage is different when you sing a new song? How do you feel in general when you’re up there and all those eyes are on you
, waiting and expecting you to let them escape everything for a few hours?”

Kai rested his elbows on the top of the couch and nibbled on his bottom lip before he drew his forefinger across it. She tried not to zoom in on those lips
, so she treated herself to the memory of kissing him. She still wanted to kiss him and was probably willing to make out right there on the couch.

“It’s a lot of pressure. I feel
that
,” he said in an exhale. “It’s like the first time I was ever on stage in front of my fans, every time. It never gets old enough to where it feels routine. Being up there, a lot of people describe as a high, maybe even orgasmic.”

Okay, please don’t take my mind farther into the depths,
she thought, trying not to smile. Her gaze drifted to his lips again. Now those were orgasmic.

“It’s not like that for me though. What I’m about to say will sound really cliché, but it’s the only way I can think to describe it. How often do you think about breathing?”

Dylan furrowed her brow and bit her lip. “Not at all.”

“Right. No one does because your body just does it. You don’t think about it until you’re in a situation where you can’t anymore, and then it becomes the only thing you want to do. It becomes the
only
thing you can think about. You become very aware in those moments that you literally can’t live without it.” Kai smiled and looked away from the camera. “That’s what being on stage is for me every time. It’s realizing that I need music in that way to survive.”

“Wow. So in a way, you’re in thrall to it, ” she said.

Kai nodded and kept smiling. “It’s my master, but it saved me in so many different ways, so I can deal with it.” Then he trained his gaze on the camcorder until she finally looked up at him. Kai scooted toward her until his face was out of frame but he didn’t stop looking at her.

“Kai…
you’re…” A shiver fired through her when his hand landed on her knee. Dylan instinctively turned her head toward the door, which she knew was still open. All she needed now was for Ashley to walk in, misinterpret the situation and report it back to Nina.

“My turn,” he sai
d, stroking her skin a little. Kai put his hand on top of hers on the camcorder, and pulled it out of her grip before turning it on her, leaning back to capture her face in the frame.

“What are you doing?” she asked as her skin flushed, and she looked away from the camera.

“When you look at this later, I guess I want you to see what I see.”

“And what’s that?” she said, glancing quickly at him with a
shy smile. Kai stood and swiveled the camera around to capture the front of her. He got under her skin so easily, she realized. Her body was already tingling, and there was a soft pulsing sensation between her thighs.

“When me and Sable are going at it, no one else matters. But all I could think about was you standing out there,” he said. He was filming her, but his stare
was nailed to her actual face. “And how amazing you are. Couldn’t wait to get back out there to you.”

“Kai, give it back.” She made a halfhearted effort to
regain control of the camcorder when she walked up to him.

Kai closed the camcorder door and set the camera down
on a countertop. Dylan jumped when he put his hand on her waist, and she whipped her head around to check out the doorway. She liked him touching her, she couldn’t pretend otherwise, but Ashley was a short trot away. Kai didn’t touch her lip but ran his thumb just below it. She squeezed her thighs together to smother the pulsing, which seemed to intensify with every second he was touching her.

Dylan exhaled quietly when
he pulled her closer. She put her hands on his shoulders, knowing that she shouldn’t, and knowing that it would be impossible to deny herself what she wanted in a few minutes if they kept this up.

“Kai, the door,” she said when his lips first tapped hers, but her hands were already threading into his hair. So much for depending on Ashley’s sheer presence
to make things easier. Dylan pushed her mouth against his, and she moaned loudly as he gripped her sides beneath her top. His hands were warm and soft.

“I got it,” he whispered against her
lips. But he definitely didn’t have it. He was pulling them back to the couch, and soon she was straddling his lap instead. Kai’s hand eased up the back of her tank top and grazed her skin lightly.

“In what way do you
have it
? ‘Cause we’re still on the couch. Are you one of the telekinetic X-Men?” Dylan said, smirking when she pulled away. She slid off his lap and started to walk toward the door, but Kai stood, too. He spun into her path, grabbed her face and they kissed again. Her heart was pounding, and her ears were perked to any sounds of footsteps, but she liked being kissed dangerously.

             
“We should’ve done this last night…” he said when they took a break.

Last night.
Just two words, but they splintered her heart like a lightning bolt on black sky. She was afraid that he would bring that up, and images of Tiffany in that t-shirt, which probably smelled just like him, snaked into her thoughts. A burst of anger accompanied the memory, but it was everything else, too, that seemed to bubble up with it, like a trickle turning into a tsunami. He had left her in L.A. without explanation and then didn’t call her. He had slept with another girl and she couldn’t be with him in that way. She was trying not to hold that against him, especially because there would be more girls during the tour, but she needed to break free of his spell. She would never be able to date him with the kind of life she had now.
This stupid crush.
If she couldn’t keep her physical distance, she would have to create the emotional kind.

“You mean the
last night
when you went home with another girl?” She crossed her arms over her chest. Kai furrowed his brow in surprise and stepped back.

“Don’t do that. You threw her at me after you told me to fuck off, basically. Remember that part?”

“Whatever,” she said. “And I’m being stupid right now. God. So stupid. You and I both know we can’t do this, and on top of that, there are no consequences for you. You get to have your fun without the sacrifice. Maybe that’s why this is so easy for you.” She wasn’t even sure if she was talking about work.

Kai growled in frustration but there was a veil of hurt on his face. Before he could speak, someone knocked on the open door behind him. “Hey, man, we
get that you’d rather spend time with her, but we need to wrap this up,” one of the musicians said when he poked his head in.

“Are we done
?” Kai asked and she knew the question was loaded beyond just filming. She sighed. They had to be done because she actually had something to lose along with lots to gain. With Nina Sanchez and Professor Jordan in her corner, she would be better off professionally. With Kai? Secrets, secret hookups, ignoring each other in public, and a very embarrassing firing in the end. How could it be worth it?
Except for the way he looks at me sometimes, that smile and when we talk. He’s also sexy as hell, but what choice do I have?

“Yeah, we’re done. We’re definitely done,” she said. She didn’t bother to watch him as he walked out the door.