It bugged the hell out of me that she didn’t absolutely love my music. Granted, it wasn’t for everyone. Some critics had given us shitty reviews, and it wasn’t like I hadn’t seen nasty comments online. But Emily’s assessment got to me anyway. It felt personal. I wanted her to like our music, at least, even if she couldn’t outright love it the way I loved her writing. It seemed only fair.
Except that too was an outlandish expectation. I didn’t enjoy her books in the hopes that she’d do the same with my music. I just…
I wanted to give her pleasure with my music, the way she’d given it to me.
“What?” Emily said when I continued to gaze at her. “Do I have yolk on my face?” She licked her lips.
The gesture was quick, her pink tongue darting in and out. But somehow it mesmerized me, made my skin tight and hot, like it were a particularly arousing segment in a porn movie. And my body reacted.
Shit.
I shifted in my seat, annoyed with my lack of control. A woman had let me use her shower, let me feed her, then given me a half-assed compliment on my music, and I was hard. Okay, so there was the tongue thing, too, but that didn’t count. I’d seen far more seductive moves from women in skintight dresses with plunging necklines. Emily was in a T-shirt that read Virginia Is for Lovers that didn’t show any cleavage, and stretchy black pants that covered her legs from the ankles up. And unlike the day she’d confronted me to get me to stop drumming, she was wearing a bra. Compared to the groupies at parties and tours, she might as well have been wearing a nun’s habit.
And not a porno nun’s habit. The real deal. Like what you see in churches and…well, wherever authentic nuns hang out.
But Emily had been making me feel something I shouldn’t since the moment we met
in Sunny’s Mart. That spark was there, even though she’d been in hole-y clothes rather than holy clothes. That crackling sensation when she’d come to my place to demand I stop drumming. And the sizzle when I’d acted out the scene with her yesterday.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Emily squinted at me. “You didn’t like the book you took yesterday and you aren’t sure how to tell me?”
I frowned in confusion. How in hell was her mind going in that direction?
“Don’t worry about it. It isn’t my most beloved work,” she said in a small whisper, her cheeks pink, like she was confessing to something embarrassing. “I mean, some people liked it, but not everyone.”
I sat frozen for a moment, unsure how to tell her my mood had nothing to do with her book, because then she’d want to know why I was acting weird, and I didn’t want to tell her the truth. I couldn’t think of a good way to tell her without sounding like I was fishing for a compliment about me or the band. I didn’t want Emily to think I was desperate for a good word from her. That was pathetic, the kind of thing that could make her lose respect.
And her respect and good will mattered in a bizarre way.
“But I wonder why you keep reading romance. Don’t you have better things to do?” she asked finally. “I can’t believe it’s really your kind of thing.”
What did she think I read? “It’s not the first thing I’d typically pick up…but I wouldn’t be reading them if I didn’t like them.”
“Weird. There’s a reason romance is a genre for women, written by women. And you don’t seem like the type to like romance.”
I raised my eyebrows. What made her think that of all things? Her stories generally had nice guys, so… What was she implying? “Are you stereotyping me?”
“Nope. Just looked you up on Google.” Her voice cooled a little.
“And…?” I didn’t remember mentioning dissing romance in any of my interviews. Actually, books had never come up because people don’t get close to a rock star to talk about reading.
“You were surrounded by a lot of half-naked women. So why would you be into stories about everlasting love with one person?”
“That was the conclusion you came to after seeing those pictures?” That was totally unfair. Did she think I could control how women dressed around me? Or that other people’s choice of clothing would affect what I wanted in life? A possibility flashed through my mind. “Were you jealous?” Emily could be, and she was letting me know by being meh about Axelrod’s music and saying romance wasn’t for me.
The notion improved my mood for some reason. It wasn’t like me, since when women grew clingy and territorial, I got annoyed. But with Emily, I wanted her to act possessive.
Emily scoffed. “Don’t be absurd.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You’re no naked Chris Hemsworth in a Thor costume. Now, that’s somebody I could be jealous over. He has the nicest pecs and ass.” She gave me a superior smirk.
“It’s Chris Evans who has America’s Ass,” I said, ignoring her attempt to scratch my ego. She was definitely jealous. And trying to cover it up by dragging another man into the conversation, even though the chances of her, me and Chris Hemsworth hanging out naked or otherwise were pretty slim.
“Chris Hemsworth has Asgard’s Ass,” she countered. “And Asgard is bigger than America! It’s in outer space.”
“Well, he can’t be naked if he’s in the Thor costume.”