The fucking jig is up. James wasn’t a band manager. Nor was he a decent man. The longer he kept the charade up, the harder it would be to walk away from Lita. And since the night he’d taken away any chance of normalcy between them—because once that particular beast was woken, it didn’t go back to sleep—he’d known this day would come to pass. His appetite had no business with a fragile girl, twelve years his junior. One who’d raced from one tragedy to another more permanent one. Him.
James didn’t question Lita’s intelligence. She happened to be the most astute person he’d ever met. A huge heart reserved for her friends and an accurate judge of character. When it came to him, however, she couldn’t see below the surface. Had no idea what moved in the shadows of his psyche. Lita wanted something she didn’t understand—and worse, James didn’t fully understand it either. How could he get a bead on something that constantly shifted and grew, wanting more?
Without thinking, James removed Lita’s room key from his pocket and dipped it into the metal reader. As natural as breathing, except it shouldn’t be. Lovers kept keys to one another’s rooms. He hadn’t laid a hand on Lita in four years.
James pushed open the door and set the plastic bag inside, refusing to take one step inside the room. He held out the card for Lita to take as she passed, eyes fastened on the air above her head, but so aware of her nearness his stomach muscles protested from being clenched so tight.
“Oh, goddamn you.” Lita plucked the card from his fingers and hurled it back into the hallway with a muffled scream. “Four years leads to this, huh? You’re just going to dump me in this fucking…”—she waved her hands to encompass the hotel—“…rock star purgatory and bail? If you’re doing this to teach me a lesson, I will never forgive you, James.”
“I’m not.” He cleared the cobwebs from his throat. “That’s not what this is.”
Without looking at Lita, he knew she’d be chewing her bottom lip, leaving teeth marks that would take until nighttime to fade. “I guess we really meant a lot to you if it’s this easy. No notice. Just…peace out, suckers.”
James swallowed the urge to shake her. “I think you know this is the furthest thing from easy.”
“No. I don’t know anything,” she shouted before several silent beats passed. “Except that you’re a coward. You can’t even look me in the eye.”
He surged forward, pushing her back against the doorjamb. Going to break. Too much. I shouldn’t have come up here. He’d made the mistake of looking down into green eyes swimming with moisture, calling her bluff. “Does the thought of you hurting yourself to get my attention make me a coward? Yes? So be it, Lita.” His fingernails dug into the flesh of his palms. “If something happened to you, I wouldn’t make it to the next sunrise.”
Lita’s body deflated, head falling back. “You can’t say something like that and leave,” she said, lips hardly moving. “It’s cruel.”
“I’m a cruel man.”
“No.” Lita moved into the elegant room, booted feet dragging. A miniature hurricane in a gilded cage. He’d chosen the room himself, another sign of his madness, his need to control her surroundings. Have knowledge of everything she touched. His neck grew hot when she turned, sliding a gaze down his front.
Turning and leaving was imperative at that moment, but he couldn’t resist hearing what she would say next. Delaying the good-bye.
“Remember what you called me the first night we met?” She sat down on the edge of the bed. “Before you leave, call me that one more time.”
Panic spread dots across his vision. “No.”
There was calculation in her expression, but a thread of desperation he’d never witnessed in Lita before. A hint of hysteria. Gone was the sarcasm and wit he’d come to rely on. The difference held him in thrall as she toed off her boots…and peeled the T-shirt over her head, leaving her in a black bra and jeans. Jesus Christ. The flesh behind his fly fought to be free of its denim prison. Needing her. Forever needing her. His lungs couldn’t find satisfaction, ripping at the air to no avail.
“Enough.”
Shaking her head, Lita’s tongue danced across her bottom lip. “Maybe I’ll ask the new manager to call me that name.”
The world turned a dangerous color of red, blood pumping in waves behind his eardrums. James had traversed the room to tower over Lita without a conscious decision. Inside him, something shook, a rattle of chains against a cage, warning him to pull back, but he couldn’t. Couldn’t. Visions of another man’s hands on Lita’s skin were all he could process. James’s hands circled her biceps, lifting her off the bed and tossing her backward into the mattress’s center, finding perverse pleasure in the way her little figure bounced, green eyes widening.
James crawled over Lita, the bed dipping beneath his knees. “The new manager is a woman. Did you think for a second, after everything, that I would overlook a detail so important?” He planted his fists on either side of her head, every inch of his skin feeling raw, exposed. I’m starving. “I had no plans to manage a band. Not until you. Now I’ve spent the last four years deciding where you slept. Where you ate. It’s not normal. Not good for you.”