He stands in the doorway, door propped open with his foot, his arm stretching across the entrance so that I can’t simply ease by. Cool air drifts out from the interior of the building, sending my straight hair waving in the breeze.
“Hello, Little Monster,” Dex says, his voice low and gravelly enough to make me squirm with want.
Instantly, my insides turn to molten fire.
“Dexter,” I say in response, and his face lights up with a smile. He’s wearing his signature baggy black tee today, paired with forest-green skinny jeans and black-and-white Converse. The cross he wears in one earlobe catches the sun and sends a prism of light reflecting across his stubbled jaw.
I want to bite that jaw, to drag my teeth across his skin.
Fuck.
He still doesn’t move, so I stoop to slip under his arm, and his proximity makes my skin prickle with goose bumps.
I’ve had him in my bed, have felt his tongue inside of me, yet it’s done nothing to satiate my need for him. If anything, it’s only made me more ravenous.
The door closes with a whisper, and then he’s behind me, his arms wrapping around my waist. When he nuzzles his face into my neck, I have to bite my lip to keep from sighing aloud.
I’ve missed this. So, so much. How is it that one week away from him feels like a year?
“What are these?” he whispers into my ear. His fingertips play with the frayed edge of my shorts, sending electricity sparking across my skin. “Are you trying to punish me for something?”
“You deserve to be punished,” I whisper back, feeling sexy and fearless, heart racing with recklessness.
“For what?” His fingers slip under the frayed edge and climb higher, toward the crease at the top of my thigh. My pulse gallops in response, heat building in my stomach.
“For making me touch myself every night since you’ve been gone.”
As soon as the words leave my lips, he growls, and his fingers dig into my skin. Then he’s spinning me around, bending over me, his lips coming down on mine. Just like the first time, when he kissed me beneath the neon lights in Velvet, his mouth takes my breath away.
I’ve kissed boys, but Dex isn’t a boy, and he’s the only one whose kisses feel like this. This is his fingers slipping under my waistband, his lip ring under my tongue, a need to let him crawl inside of me.
I ball his T-shirt in my fists and pull him against my body. His length hardens against my thigh through his jeans, and I smile against his mouth, victorious.
For the first time, I realize how perfect his little nickname for me is.
He makes me vicious. I really am his little monster.
A breath of surprise sounds from behind me. Pulling away from Dex, I turn to find Morgan standing in the hallway, her eyes wide and her red lips parted in shock. Dex is standing so close to me that I can feel his subtle effort to readjust himself in his tight jeans, his heavy breath rustling the hair at my nape.
Though I’ve come to like Morgan and her no-nonsense approach to LGC, the jealousy in her eyes tastes sweet. I know that look, have given that look too many times to count. But I’ve never been on the receiving end of it. And it feels better than it should.
Am I wrong for feeling this way?
“They’re waiting for you,” she says, her tone clipped, words short. The friendliness she used to look at me with has vanished. Then she turns and walks back down the hall, her wedge heels clopping out an aggressive staccato rhythm.
Was she only friendly with me because she didn’t see me as a threat? As competition?
A door slams, making me jump.
“Fuck,” Dex whispers behind me. “You’re gonna get us in trouble.”
“Like you wouldn’t enjoy it,” I say back, which makes him chuckle.
We head down the hallway, past the recording studio, and into a meeting room at the end of the corridor. Michael, Lucas, and Sebastian are already seated at the big mahogany table, and they look up when we walk in.
I don’t know what gives us away—maybe it’s my tousled hair and the heat in my cheeks—but Michael is the only one who doesn’t look surprised. Lucas’s eyes narrow as he looks us over, and beside him, Sebastian blinks his big brown eyes, looking like a deer caught in the headlights. Maybe he was so drunk that night coming home from Velvet that he doesn’t remember Dex kissing me at my door under the porch light.
“Nora!” says a familiar friendly voice, and my gaze shifts to the right, where Ashton stands from the table to gesture to the empty seat beside her. “Come in, come in.”
My body doesn’t want to move from Dex’s side; it’s like we’re magnets and there’s an invisible force drawing us to each other, trying to hold us together even as the world tugs us apart.
I force myself not to look back at him and walk around the table to join Ashton. She rolls the plush office chair out for me, and I take a seat, startling a bit at the cold faux leather against the backs of my bare thighs. Across from me, Dex rolls out a chair and sits down. I allow myself to glance at him, but when I catch his gaze, he gives me a heated smirk that sends warmth flaring to life between my legs. Before anyone can notice, I look quickly away.
Seated at the head of the table are four people—two men and two women—I’ve never seen before. They’re dressed in tailored business wear, and looking at their gleaming watches and sharp-edged MacBooks, I can only guess these are the people who run the label.
Who run the band.
“Nora Miller,” the man closest to me says, offering a hand for me to shake. “My wife and I saw you at the orchestra this past October. A phenomenal show. Always such a pleasure.” His handshake is firm, but not too firm, and his eyes are kind behind his black-rimmed glasses.
The heads of the label introduce themselves, but the whole time, all I’m wondering is why they called us—me—in here for this meeting in the first place. Dex keeps staring at me from across the table, and it takes all my willpower to focus on the label heads and not him. He sure isn’t making it easy though.
Finally, one of the men places his elbows on the table, steeples his fingers, and says, “ ‘Ghost’ has far exceeded our expectations. It’s LGC’s fastest-selling single to date.”
The guys let out a round of gruff cheers, and Sebastian pounds his fists on the table—Ashton, however, stops him with a quick cutting glance.
“And,” the man continues, “we have no intention of letting this momentum die. So, we want to keep the ball rolling with a music video. And we’d like you, Ms. Miller”—his gaze shifts to me, and I tense up in my chair—“to feature in the video.” His smile is kind, unpretentious. He looks genuinely excited. “What do you say?”
I’m not sure what I expected when Dex told me this was going to be a surprise, but I’m fairly certain this wasn’t it. I thought maybe, maybe they’d ask me to play on another track, and I would’ve said yes to that in a heartbeat.
