URGENT (Book 2 of the Soundcrush Series)

Chapter 9: Bad Girls Break Into Hotel Safes

Mac

I wake before Adam, but I try not to stretch and wake him, because I'm still hugged up next to him. He has his right arm around me, and his left hand placidly on his stomach. We haven't slept together like these last two nights since my dorm room at UGA—where we had to sleep like this, because the bed was so small. I move my head so that I can watch him sleep.

He's so fucking handsome. Not just the angles of his strong face, or his sandy, tan good looks. There's something more. You know how some people look different when they sleep? Adam looks the same...peaceful. Calm. Deliberate.

I wish I knew where to find the kind of peace that seems built into his bones. It's not that he doesn't get angry or exasperated, he does. But he has the inner peace that he can summon like a wave to quell his anger. Whatever calm strength Adam is made of...I'm the opposite. My blood is like gasoline...and the tiniest spark ignites me. All these times I say mean things to Adam, it's like I can't even stop myself. The only thing that ever stops my anger is music, or...apparently recently, sex with Adam.

I don't know why sex with Adam is so much better this time. Maybe because it's been a whole year that I have missed him, and I have learned to really appreciate what I was missing. We'd never had a dry spell that long, before. I thought we were done, after Portland. I thought I had deliberately unraveled his affection for me. That's what I meant to do—what I tried to do—that night...with the choker in the green room.

The day I nearly died from erotic asphyxiation, we shot the Ties that Bind video. Adam was very unhappy. He didn't like one of the sequences —the BDSM scenes, which featured Trace tying me up, preparing me for the King's kinky pleasure while Bodie watched from a throne, as if he commanded it. Leed was in a separate sequence where he was given lashes for a crime.

Adam was irritated with my sequence, though—he said the video did not represent me well and we should go a different direction.

Adam's protests halted the shoot. Everyone was on edge. We were all uncomfortable, shuffling around in costume...Trace and I in bondage gear, Bodie dressed in regal robes and a mask, Leed practically naked except for a body-colored Speedo and lots of gross special effects, Adam in the white linens of a Saint. Time is money in this business and Adam was wasting a lot of money with his protests. The director, the label execs and Dawes were furious.

While the director talked to Label VP, who talked to Dawes, who was in turn supposed to talk Adam down, Adam hustled me off the set into storage, where we had a hissing fight.

"Adam, this is business," My voice was pure venom. "It's a video. Get over yourself. You have no right to play the boyfriend card. Jesus, nobody even knows we are seeing each other."

"Wow, Mac, I had no idea you even considered me your boyfriend," Adam snapped back. "I didn't know fucking in secret occasionally qualified as a relationship."

"Don't be an asshole. This is where we are, because of the band."

"No, this is where we are, because of you. Because you think you don't deserve us or something. And this video is the same kind of shit. You don't always have to play the bad girl, you know."

He was so condescending. I saw red. When that happens, I will say anything. Hell, half the time, I don't even remember what I say in an argument. But I remember what I said that day.

"Adam—I'm not playing anything. I've never been the girl you think I am. I am a bad girl. Actually, I'm a slut, ok? I always have been. I took you to bed two hours after I met you. What exactly is your fucking issue here—that I fuck so good you had the misfortune to fall in love with a girl like me, or that I will never love you like the perfect fucking angel you want me be? I can only love you like me, Adam. But I guess the way I love you won't ever be enough for you."