Page 11 of The Encore Effect

His eyes danced over her face. He knew every freckle, every fleck of gold in her eyes. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and the light sparkled off the tiny diamonds in her earrings. The night he’d given them to her, the world had seemed so full of possibility, of nights spent tangled in her arms and mornings that broke with her hands on his skin. It had to mean something that she’d worn them after all this time. It had to.

“Come on.” He snagged her hand, ignoring the electricity crackling across his palm at her touch, and led her to the front door. On the other side, a sea of photographers waited, sharks circling, biding their time, holding out for someone—anyone—to give them a story.

Her brow furrowed as he reached for the doorknob. “Beckett—”

She broke off with a sharp inhale when he wrapped an arm around her waist and tugged her close, her softness pressed against him. Before she could protest, he kissed her, infusing the kiss with years of want and regret and no small bit of anger that this was what it took to get her lips on his again.

And just as she started to soften, to kiss him back, he opened the door.

Chapter Five

The drive back to the hotel felt twice as long with Beckett’s stare focused on Kat, heat flashing across her skin under its intensity. For her part, she kept her attention on her phone, sending a message to Gideon to meet them at the delivery entrance so he could help get Jackson up to his room without being seen. She hardly heard Jackson’s snoring or Nico’s attempts at cutting the tension in the car, but she was acutely aware of Beckett’s barked demand that he shut the fuck up. And she was far too aware of the inconvenient effect his gravelly command had on her, the lingering feeling of his lips on hers, the empty ache between her thighs.

Damn him.

“Beckett! Over here!”

“Who’s the girl?”

Her heart hadn’t slowed down since the moment he’d pulled her tight against his body. She’d almost forgotten how well they fit together, all his sharp edges meeting her soft curves.

Who the hell was she kidding? She hadn’t forgotten anything.

Still, the reality was so much better than the memory. The way he tilted her head with a hand on the nape of her neck until he had her exactly where he wanted her. The tug of his fist closing around her shirt, bunching the fabric at the base of her spine. And his mouth. Good lord, that mouth. A full bottom lip to rival the marble sculptures of antiquity.

She hadn’t meant to kiss him back. But then he’d made that sound in the back of his throat as he kissed her—a low growl that teetered on the edge between frustration and relief. All her thoughts zeroed in on that sound, on the urgent movement of his lips over hers, the insistent pressure of his hand on her back—

“Beckett! What’s her name?”

“Is she your girlfriend?”

He’d broken the kiss then, staring into her eyes with the kind of hunger that used to mean she had exactly three point five seconds to get naked before he literally ripped the clothing off her. She’d lost more good pairs of underwear testing the boundaries of that hunger.

“She’s my fiancée.”

She’d been too shocked to refute it, her body frozen between being more turned on than she’d been in years and so furious her vision went hazy at the edges. And then he’d kissed her again, hard, as though he were equal parts desperate for her and angry. Her fingernails clawed at his back beneath his hoodie and his teeth tugged on her lower lip. She wanted to push him away even as she pulled him closer because how dare he? How cruel could he be?

The car slowed to a stop at the delivery entrance to the hotel. Gideon tugged open the door, his solid frame blocking out the neon lights of the Strip. “Path’s clear. We’ll take the service elevator.”

She rattled off the usual instructions as the bodyguard and Nico helped Jackson out of the car—put the trash basket by his bed, and a bottle of Gatorade, some Advil, his cell phone. But Gideon knew the drill. They’d been through this more times than she cared to count, though it had been almost a month since the last time. She’d foolishly allowed herself to believe that Jackson might be done with his party boy ways, that he could go four and a half months without earning another scandalous headline. That this could actually be her ticket out of the endless cycle of touring, the exhausting work of always being on the road.

Would the label consider her public make-out session with Beckett bad press? Would it be enough to forfeit her bonus? She didn’t know.

Nico and Gideon wrestled Jackson through the door into his hotel room, Beckett close behind. But Kat caught his hand in hers, tugging him back into the hallway. He cast a worried glance over his shoulder at his brother as the door closed him off from view, but then his eyes dropped to their interlocked hands. The phoenix tattoo on the back of his hand seemed to flex its wings when he squeezed tighter. She tugged him down the hall to her room, dropping his hand to unlock her door despite his grunt of protest when she released her hold on him.

She held the door open, waiting with an arched eyebrow for him to enter. He hesitated at the threshold, but only for a moment, the door slamming shut behind them.

“What were you thinking?” she demanded.

“We needed a distraction.”

“A loud noise, Becks, or posing for some pictures—”

“Think they got plenty of pictures.”

“—not a fake engagement!”

His scowl deepened, the roses on the side of his throat rippling with the tension in his jaw. There had been a time when Kat would have given anything to have Beckett kiss her in front of a wall of photographers and announce their engagement. But in all the times she’d imagined what it would feel like to have Beckett publicly claim her, she’d never thought it would be like this. A lie. A distraction.