Prologue
Bright lights blinded from above and gleamed against the stark white floor. I hurtled down the narrow hall, desperate for escape.
With every pounding step, I felt the separation grow. A chasm rending and ripping until I felt myself splitting in two.
Gasping for breath, I stumbled out the building and into the vacancy of the deep, deep night. Wind gusted, tumbling along the surface of the ground, a stir of agitation at my feet.
Above, the storm raged. Clouds dark and heavy and ominous.
Lightning struck. A crackle of energy shocked through the air and wrapped me in coils of white-hot agony.
For a moment, I gave into it and let myself feel. I lifted my face to the tormented sky, hands gripping my hair as I screamed.
Screamed in anguish.
Screamed in regret.
Screamed loud enough I would never forget.
A crack of thunder opened the sky.
Rain poured.
My hands fisted at my sides. I buried the memory of his face and the memory of the way he’d felt in my arms in the deepest part of me.
Sealed it off and cemented my heart.
My spirit grasped and wove with the promise I made him.
I will never fall in love again.
Not ever again.
Not after tonight.
Chapter One
Tamar
I pushed through the crowd roving the sidewalk.
What the hell was wrong with me?
Running?
Hiding?
This wasn’t me. This wasn’t who I’d worked so hard to become.
But Lyrik West made me this way.
Desperate to escape the overwhelming intrigue simmering in the sky.
Do you know what it feels like right before lightning strikes? How you can feel the current running through your veins? The trembles of warning that ripple through the dense air? The crackling energy that bristles across your skin and shakes you to your bones?
It’s as if nitrogen and oxygen have come alive.
As if every element in the air is combustible.
Explosive.
Your heart beats fast because you know you’re in danger. It’s instinctive. The awareness that in the mere flash of a second and without warning you could be consumed by the force. By nature and blinding light.
Incinerated.
But there is also an overwhelming exhilaration surrounding it. A power in standing below those foreboding clouds with your face lifted to their bloated, sagging bellies, as if you’re issuing up the bravest plea.
Let me be a part of what you are.
You feel so small. Scared. Yet strong at the same time. As if you’re witnessing beauty unseen. Touching upon an experience meant only to be observed from afar.
That feeling? I’d chased it for a long, long time.
The excitement.
The thrill.
Growing up, I’d been the girl who’d try anything once. I’d thought that attitude made me brave. Turned out, it’d just made me stupid. Naïve and unsuspecting and vulnerable.
In the end, it had only burned me.
Now, I did anything and everything in my power to stay as far away from that feeling as possible.
I sought safety from that storm in the walls I’d built up around myself. Behind the façade of this hardened exterior—tattoos and makeup and dyed hair—that had become my home.
No longer were they just a mask.
They had become me.
Yet somehow…somehow he kept reappearing at the fringes of my life, pushing and prodding and drawing me back into all those excited, convoluted feelings I didn’t want to feel.
Lyrik West.
Cowardly, I ran, tracking him like a lunatic over my shoulder as I did.
A short yelp flew from me when I bumped into a guy in front of me. My face whipped back around to meet the irritation in his scowl.
“Think you could watch where you’re going?”
“I’m so sorry,” I mumbled. Too shaken to wait for his pardon, I ducked my head and quickly wove deeper into the crowd browsing the farmers’ market set up along the sidewalk.
My nerves raced like a panicked dog as I constantly looked over my shoulder in fear he’d spotted me.
I had to be crazy. Insane. Every reasonable, rational part of me was screaming at me to stop and handle this like a normal human being.
There was absolutely nothing to fear.
Lyrik West wasn’t Cameron Lucan.
Yet he made me feel things I couldn’t allow myself to feel.
The Savannah afternoon was hot and the humidity thick. Trees that had been here for over a century overhung the sidewalk—their old branches stretched out, full of leaves and dripping with Spanish Moss—as if loaded down by the weight of wisdom. The June sun shone high, rays slanting and burning bright.
I felt flustered by the heat. Flustered by his presence.
I glanced again.
A crown of ebony hair bobbed through the mass as he ambled along the busy sidewalk, as if he were just another person meandering the quaint Savannah street.
It didn’t matter he was surrounded by a crush of bodies. He might as well have been alone. Or more apt, under a spotlight up on a stage.
He stood out like a fiery bolt of electricity. A streak of light and a blanket of dark. So destructive and compelling it was impossible to look away, the boy poised to strike and set you aflame.
My eyes scanned for a place where I could cower and hide.
Shit.
You are strong. You are strong, I chanted beneath my breath.
I hated being this girl. Fearful and scared of emotions I didn’t want to feel. But that’s how this boy made me. Shaky and confused and losing the grip of the carefully constructed walls I clung to.
Like each step he took tipped my world further on its side.
He shouldn’t have been here.
Not in my adopted town.
Not yet.
Last fall, I’d nearly dropped to my knees and shouted my relief toward the heavens when he’d returned to Los Angeles for seven months. He’d gone with the rest of his band, Sunder, where the four had been working on their latest album.
I’d known he’d be returning. But I’d thought I had another week. Another week to prepare and fortify and strengthen all my shields.
I needed that week.
And there he was, twenty feet away.
He paused beneath one of the many canopies set up along the sidewalk, grinning at a middle-aged woman offering her wares at her stand. He smiled, spoke words I was too far away to hear, but in the short distance, I was pretty sure the poor girl was melting at his feet.
I understood her pain.
His hair was thick and black, pieces chunky and unruly. Just as unruly as the near pitch-black of his eyes. I was convinced they’d be completely black except for the fact those darkened pools of obsidian were broken up by flecks of grays and browns that sucked you into their depth. Like sharp, cutting edges of crystallized molten flamed from within.
He was tall.
So damned ridiculously tall.
Lean but strong in a menacing way. Bad was written across him, just like the tattoos covering every inch of exposed skin. Each cocky grin was hand-delivered with a lethal dose of masculinity, and I was sure I heard every single movement of that sinewy body scream with the same warning:
Touch at your own risk.
That same feeling of endangered excitement shivered down my spine and flipped in my belly.
The buzz before the strike.
No. No. No.
Those dark, dark eyes suddenly snapped my direction. I yanked my attention back front and center. I pretended I was all too interested in the Red Delicious apples spilling out of a short wooden barrel turned on its side to make a display on the table in front of where I stood.
Damn it.
“Those are as fresh as they come,” the man running the booth was telling me. “Picked them myself this morning.” My head bobbed along in agreement as if I possessed the faculty to process what he was saying, while I fought against that warm sensation welling firm and far too quickly.
A bristle of energy and a flash of light.
Coming closer.
Growing stronger.
A tattooed hand darted out in front of me and plucked up an apple. He began to toss it in the air.
With nowhere left to hide, I conjured the fight. The promise I’d made myself that I was the one in control.
No man would ever hold the power to hurt me. Not ever again.
Eyes narrowed, I turned to glare up at him.
The air rippled and shook.
Or maybe it was my knees.
Lyrik smirked, amusement tweaking his red, full lips that I’d bet had to be just as delicious as the apple.
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t Red.”
Damn Sebastian Stone, lead singer of Lyrik’s band, for giving me that nickname. I mean, come on, my hair was red. He could have come up with something more ingenious than that.
It’d stuck.
But the way it slid off Lyrik’s tongue? It sounded as if it were one of the seven deadly sins. One he’d sell his soul to commit.
“What are you doing here?” I forced a sneer, praying he’d get the message and go on his way.
He kept tossing that apple.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Right into his big, capable hand.
“Here for the big wedding. What do you think I’m doing here? And don’t tell me you didn’t miss me.”
“Can’t miss what doesn’t even cross your mind.”
“Ouch.” He inflected the word as if it were nothing more than a joke, as if the idea were completely absurd. His laughter was cool and confident. “You really gonna stand there and tell me in the last seven months, you haven’t thought about me at all?”
“Yeah, I really am.”
Big, fat lie.
One I was taking to my grave.
And like there was a chance I’d crossed his mind. Even once. This boy didn’t just look bad.
He was bad.
There wasn’t a photo I saw him in where he didn’t have at least two girls hanging on him, those arms wrapped around their shoulders with a lusty gleam in his eye. Not to mention, I’d seen him in action on more occasions than I cared to count at the bar where I worked.
It was apparent Lyrik West had a type.
Maybe I looked like it from the outside. Short skirts and high, high heels, dark-rimmed eyes, tattoos and lace.
But I was nothing like those girls.
It didn’t matter how hard he tried to coax me into being her.
He chuckled, playing his game. This guy was so absurdly hot, so damned gorgeous, he rode around on a chariot of presumption.
He just reached out and took whatever he wanted, probably because he was so accustomed to it being thrown at him at every turn.
“That’s a shame, Red,” he said, giving another toss of that apple. “I was hoping when I got back, you and I could be friends.”
My mouth dropped open with a snippy retort, but I made the mistake of looking back at him again. The words froze on my tongue. My stupid, unfaithful gaze wandered up, then down, slower as it dragged back up again. He wore the tightest pair of black skinny jeans you’d ever seen, and an even tighter white V-neck tee.
Every exposed inch of skin was inked, a vast canvas of beautiful art etched on a darkly beautiful man.
I knew if he tore off that thin piece of material, his back was covered, too.
Beneath that extravagant, intricate ink was packed, solid muscle.
That attraction I’d been running from for months slicked warm and slow through my veins, this fluttery feeling I hated thrumming through my senses.
God, this guy was doing his all to make me break the promises I’d made myself.
I didn’t want this. Didn’t want to stand up against the allure and seduction. Didn’t want to admit he made me feel things I didn’t want to feel.
Things I hadn’t felt in a long, long time.
Dangerous things.
Those dark eyes tracked the way my throat tremored and rolled as I glared up at him and tried to pretend I wasn’t affected.
Brazen, he reached out. Callused fingertips glided down the hollow of my neck to my collarbone, as if he couldn’t resist but call me out.
I should have been repulsed. But I knew those calluses were bred from years of playing across the strings of his guitar, forged in the music he made.
Tingles spread like wildfire.
That energy buzzed.
I shook.
“What do you think, Red? You wanna be friends?” he murmured, his voice a lure as he dipped his head closer.
I tore myself away and forced an incredulous snort. “Don’t flatter yourself, rock star.” I said it like a dirty word. “Not every girl is going to fall at your feet.”
He tossed the apple once more, caught it in his hand, before he lifted it and took a big, crunching bite. He chewed, that damned smirk making a reappearance, red, red lips twisting like a decadent bow. “You sure you don’t want a taste?”
It was pure innuendo.
“I’d rather starve.”
He barked out a laugh. “Want to know what I think?”
“Nope.”
I most definitely did not. That was my cue to make an escape.
I took a rigid step back.
He just inched forward, crowding my space, his head inclining toward mine the nearer he came. He ducked down until his nose nearly brushed mine and his voice went rough. “I think you are absolutely dying for a taste. I think that sassy little mouth of yours is watering and your belly is growling for a fill. And I think in order for you to finally get that stick out of your ass, all you really need is to get a sample of what it’s like to really be satisfied.”
My chin lifted defiantly in the same second my shoulders rolled back, my hard, rigid armor snapping into place. “And just what makes you think you could satisfy me?”
His grin was smug as he straightened and took another bite. “You brave enough to find out?”
My mouth dropped open, and I clamored around in my foggy brain for a response, for a way to shut him up and shut him down.
He called it brave.
I called it stupid.
He was smiling a self-satisfied smile when he dug in his pocket and pulled out a five. “Don’t look so freaked out, Red. All you have to say is no.”
Tongue tied, I could say nothing.
His attention turned to the man selling the apples, and he tossed the bill on the display table.
“Delicious.”
He shot me a wink.
He actually freaking winked.
He turned and strode in the same direction he’d come, his horrible, horrible promise floating on the breeze as he gave me a casual wave over his shoulder.
“See ya around, Red.”
I was sure I felt the ground shake.
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