Rio beat him there. "My life is a haven of tight cunts and tighter drumbeats. You cannot and will not change the way we live just because your little Huntress can't handle it. Look at me." Rio rarely showed anger, but when he did, it boomed. "Nor can you change your past." He lowered his voice. "Does she know what you gave up after you met her? No sex. No drugs or alcohol. You lived like a fucking monk."

"I'm drug-free now."

One brown brow climbed toward Rio's bald head. "Good for you." His tone was dry, disbelieving.

"Fuck you."

"Straighten out your fucking head, Jay. Feel me?"

Rio's voice rattled louder than the door slamming between them. Jay followed the path around the estate and through the manicured front lawn. Palm trees fringed the property, but they were aesthetically placed. The true barrier was the eight-foot privacy fence behind them.

Straighten out his head? Fuck if he could. Charlee had it spinning around so damned fast, he didn't know which way was straight.

Yeah, he did. It was whichever way she was headed.

Shouts hurtled from the edge of the garden. Following the voices, he found her shoving Nathan in the chest. The man's stiff posture didn't ripple beneath her hands.

"I'm going."

"No. You're not." Nathan propped his fists on his hips and stared down at her.

She circled him, hands balled at her sides, and shoved his back. "I am. You can't stop me."

Jay froze. She wanted to go? She'd only just arrived. Seeing her so fired up to leave roiled his stomach, keeping his feet rooted and his presence silent.

Nathan sighed. "Charlee, beating on me won't change my mind."

She punched him low in his back, and he chuckled. "Now you're just behaving like a bratty teenager."

"Arrgh." She flopped down on one of the stone benches. "Maybe because I never got to be a teenager."

Nathan rubbed his eyes. "I'm not falling for that one again."

She pressed her forehead to her knees and held up her middle finger. Nathan stepped toward her toe-to-toe and twined his finger with the one she held up. Jay swallowed back his jealousy and forced himself to watch.

"Why do you have to go so badly?" Nathan squatted before her.

"Because, all the-" She stomped a foot, her head bobbing on her knee. "You wouldn't understand. Just go away." Despite her slumped posture, her tone was fierce.

Nathan released her hand and shoved her head up with the press of his fingertips on her brow. Much the way a guy might handle a bothersome little sister. Jay's shoulders relaxed.

"What wouldn't I understand?"

She looked up, blinked those huge blue eyes. "There will be women everywhere tonight. Women he's fucked." She glanced away, blinked again. "They'll be pawing him, and he doesn't do well in those situations. I want to be there to protect him, to support him...and I want to hear him sing."

Oh, Christ. She didn't want to leave. She wanted to go to the concert. Jay's heart raced, as did his feet. Around the hedges and along the path to the corner where they huddled. He skidded to a stop behind Nathan. "Let me talk to her."

Nathan stood, dug in his pocket. "Be my guest." He pulled out a phone and handed it to Jay. "This is hers. Tony had a spare. I've programmed the numbers of the protective team and the household staff. Will you look over them, make sure I'm not missing anything?"

Jay nodded and pocketed the phone.

With a tap on Charlee's head, Nathan said, "When you're done here, I need to talk to you. I'll be up at the house."

When Jay could no longer see Nathan beyond the privacy of the garden, he joined her on the bench. She cast a worried look at him then focused on her fingers twisting on her lap.

He settled a hand over hers and stilled the movement. "For a minute there, I thought you were begging Nathan to take you away from here. Away from me."

She jerked her head up, the depths of her eyes gleaming an unfathomable turquoise hue in the sunlight. "Oh no, that's...No, I don't want to leave."

The skin between her fingers was as soft and soothing as a classical guitar riff. He wanted her velvet touch gliding effortlessly over his body. Probably not an appropriate time to want such a thing, but it didn't stop him from imagining it. "Going to the concert is a bad idea, Charlee."

Her face crumpled, but she still managed to clench that stubborn jaw. "When do you leave for your next tour?"

Motherfucker. He hadn't even thought about that. "In two weeks."

"Two weeks." She stared across the garden. "And what? I stay here and wait for your return? For how long?"

No fucking way. "It's a sixteen-week tour."

She nodded, swallowed, and maintained her faraway stare. "That's a long time."

Too long. "You're going with me."

A little noise squeaked in her throat. She looked at him with so much longing, her eyes burned with it. So did his. She didn't ask him to repeat what he said. Hell, he wasn't sure he could. Taking her on tour with him was dangerous and selfish, and Nathan would stab him before he allowed it. And the groupies...Christ, the groupies would eat her alive. How the fuck could he protect her on the road?

With an army of highly-trained bodyguards, that was how. He sure as hell couldn't guard her with sixteen weeks and hundreds of miles between them. "I'll deal with Nathan."

That earned him a smile that made him want to make more rash promises.

"I'd like to make an amendment to the Charlee Constitution."

He arched his eyebrow, waited.

"The amendment states that I go with you tonight. You know, as a practice run, see how the team guards both of us."

Anything. Anything at all to keep her smiling like that. "I'm finding it very hard to say no to you." He dropped to his knees and wedged his body between her legs, gripping her hips. "Amendment approved."

She searched his face, her eyes a soft stroke everywhere they rested. "Let me touch you." Two fingers hovered over his mouth, waiting.

The need for her touch was as a strong as his fear of the things it might rouse. Fuck it. He nodded.

Keeping her fingers at a teasing distance, she leaned in and kissed his cheek. "If the bad stuff creeps in, sing to me, okay? I'll hear you."

Chapter Fifty-Seven.

The flutter of fingers tickled Jay's mouth. Charlee's lips joined the sensation. Then her breath. The flutter moved over his cheeks and down his throat. His pulse picked up and the edges of his mind curled away, taking the sunlit garden with it.

He focused on the heat of her lips, the fragrance of her skin, but there was a flame at his back and it burned. Oh God, it burned.

"Sing to me."

A lulling voice in the dark. Where was he? Not the shed. Not with the fingers trailing all too gently down his arm. Not with the sweet voice humming from the mouth pressed against his.

He blinked, tried to displace the darkness, couldn't. So he sang. He could smell charred skin. He sang louder, let it pour out from deep within him.

Lay still. Stop sniveling, boy. He wanted to put his clothes back on. Aunt El wouldn't leave if he fought her. He pressed his face in the musty mattress, tried to suppress the tears she hated, tensing as the bed springs shook beneath her weight.

A light, graceful peal shattered the dark. Someone laughing. He reached for it, sang along with the blissful sound. More laughter. He followed it out of the shed and into the blinding sun. She was there, inches away. Oceanic eyes, pale smooth skin of a pearl, cheeks rosy with the glow of amusement.

He held himself still, wishing he'd never have to leave the center of her dancing gaze. "Something funny?"

Her hands slid up his chest and rested on either side of his throat. She shook her head at him, smiling, still laughing. "I'm your oyster?"

The remnants of his nightmares rippled off him as he pulled her from the bench to straddle his lap. Her hands went to his back, circling over his scars.

"Tell me I wasn't singing the oyster song." He tucked her head under his chin.

"You're mine oyster, which I...with tongue will open...and suck out your juices." She half-giggled, half-sang the lyrics he'd drunkenly written one night while fantasizing about her. "Who did you write that for?"

"You're my muse, Charlee. All of my songs are inspired by you." His bandmates might've been annoyed with his three-year infatuation, but The Burn didn't hit the charts until he started embedding her into their music.

Her fingers moved up his spine, flirting with the hair at his neck. "I don't know what to say to that except...how exactly do I inspire oysters?"

"You're shaped like one." Bottling the laugh blooming in his chest, he couldn't see her face tucked below his chin and forced himself to wait for her reaction. When she didn't say anything, didn't even pull his hair where her fingers toyed, he said, "You're smelly, too. And you definitely don't have any feelings."

She yanked his head back by the hairs on his nape and shoved his chest until his back hit the grass. As she followed him down, his horizon filled with her beautiful smile, his body tightening beneath her.

"And here I thought it had something to do with my hidden pearl." Her voice was smoky, pure seduction. She licked her lips.

Eyes locked on the glide of her tongue, he swallowed. "That, too. I also like Shakespeare's analogy. The world's mine oyster, Which I with sword will open. The oyster is wealth. Opportunity. Possibility. You're my oyster."

With her bent over him, her face so close, he could make out the pale dust of freckles on the arches of her cheekbones.

She traced his eyebrows, the curve of his nose, his lips. "And your tongue is the weapon in which you acquire the opportunity. Not just in the obvious sense. Your tongue, through music, acquires the oyster, doesn't it?" Her lashes fluttered downward. "It had this oyster three years ago when Huntress replayed over and over in Roy's penthouse."

He lifted his head, used that weapon to part her mouth and delve inside. She welcomed every lick and nip with matching intensity. Their legs twined together and their thighs rubbed, her toes sliding down his jean-clad calf and digging into the leg opening. She clung to his shoulders and his fingers bit into her hips.

He cracked his eyes and hers were squeezed tight in concentration. She could kiss him with a passion that arched his back and wrenched him from his memories with the mere sound of her laughter.

It was a known fact that every great song slipped in a riff where the chords went to a unique, unexpected place. She was that song, those non-scale chords. Fuck, did he love this girl.

Too soon, she broke the kiss and pushed up on her elbows where they perched on his chest. "I triggered your memories, huh?"

He tucked a fiery lock of hair behind her ear, the soft ends slipping over his fingers. "I triggered them. You shut them off."

She stroked the stubble on his chin, studied his face. Then her gaze turned inward and her nose scrunched.

"What are you thinking?"

She shook her head, eyes flicking away.

He curled up to a sitting position, adjusting her legs around him, groin to groin, chest to chest. "If you don't tell me, I'll just throw you over my knees and spank it out of you."

She straightened her back, eyes wide. "I think I just creamed those pretty white panties you picked out for me."

It was his turn to squeeze his eyes shut. "Jesus, Charlee." Could he take her right there? Lay her out between the hedges and slide between her legs? Who was manning the cameras? Could he block their view? He glared at her. "You're distracting me. Tell me what had your face all scrunched up."

An irritated hum vibrated in her throat and her little bounce in his lap didn't help his swelling erection.

"Oh fine. I was wondering how many women it takes to get you off on a normal night. Maybe I just lucked out last night. Maybe you were thinking about orgies with big-boobied blondes while you fucked me." She blew out a breath. "There it is. I said it."

An onslaught of vertigo slammed into him. His cologne suddenly smelled pungent rather than exotic. His jeans cut into his groin, vulgar in their tightness. She wasn't suggesting he was shallow and repulsive, but the feeling hit him with dizzying regret.

He searched for the right thing to say and couldn't grasp it. An apology was just words. His anger with Felica would distress her. Action would prove his devotion, but that took time.

Gathering her against him, he nuzzled his face into her neck, breathed her in, memorized the soft curvy feel of her. There was one thing he could clear up. "You were blonde when I met you." He let that sink in, felt her lift her hand and move it over her scalp, probably imagining the shorn blonde hair she wore that night in her tattoo shop.

"Oh."

Not enough. He raised his head. When her eyes idled on his, he said, "I didn't want intimacy with them. More than one..." Just say it, fuckhead. "More than one woman at one time guaranteed no intimacy. It's a disgusting reason, but it's the truth."

As if in slow motion, a swallow bobbed in her throat, weighting the delay in her response. "I want intimacy."

A surge of relief washed away some of his unsteadiness. "Me too. Only with you."

She nodded and it seemed to be more for her sake than his. "Okay." She jumped up, offered him a hand. "Nathan has something to tell me about Roy. It won't be good. Will you join me?"

His head was still spinning around her last declaration. He reached for her hand, but stayed where he was. "Those women are vicious. Almost as bad as the tabloids. Stay away from all of it, Charlee, and I'll protect you from it as much as I can."

Her eyes turned to frozen lakes. "I assure you, I've endured worse. I'll deal with those women. You don't need to protect me from everything."

He rose and used his height to punctuate his stance on this. "I do and I will."

A muffled titter floated up. He angled his head and glimpsed a twitch in her lips. The little brat was chuckling. He reared his hand back to swat her ass, and she darted. In a flash of red hair, she disappeared around the wall of bushes. Fuck, she was fast. He chased her, his own lips pulling away from his teeth.

Up the path and through the front yard, he couldn't tear his eyes from the sway of her ass through her strides. He tripped over the curb of the sidewalk. Righting himself through a forward lurch, he picked up his pace and caught her at the front door.

She was frozen, muscles tense beneath his grip. He followed her gaze to the entertainment room, where Roy Oxford's face stretched across the sixty-inch widescreen.