Page 197 of Sweet Temptation

“You can sit here,” she said, moving some things off a chair for me, right next to hers.

I sat down. Both were swivel chairs, and she spun hers to face me.

“You need these bad boys.” She slipped a set of headphones over my head, adjusting them gently to fit my ears. Then she took my hand and laid the headphone cord across my palm, pressing my thumb to the slider on the little control piece. “Volume,” she said. “I’d recommend it as loud as you can handle it. Find the sweet spot.”

“Okay.”

“Ready?” she asked me, her eyes sparkling with excitement.

“Yeah, babe.”

Music started playing, and I slid the volume slider up. It was electronic music with what sounded like real instruments mixed in, but I really couldn’t tell for sure. I couldn’t even pick out what instruments I was hearing. Sounded like keyboards, maybe, but the sound had all been… twisted.

Then a heavy beat kicked in, and everything started pumping, rising in intensity.

A man’s voice started singing. Maybe chanting would’ve been the best way to describe it.

Lift with me… lift with me… lift with me…

Gotta give it to me.

Over and over. The lyrics were simple, but clearly the song wasn’t about the words themselves, it was about the feeling in the words. The vibe.

Then the beat really dropped. It was heavier now… with a twisty groove. I didn’t even know how to describe it… I’d never been a musician or particularly understood music.

Like I’d told Summer, I knew what I liked when I heard it.

But there was so much energy and urgency in the man’s voice, like a tribal chant that was dripping with sweat, I could practically picture a guy onstage with a microphone jumping up and down and a whole stadium of people jumping up and down with him.

Give it to me

Give it to me

Summer was just sitting back in her chair, watching me.

I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. Start dancing? I wasn’t much of a dancer, and I really didn’t want Summer to have to see that.

So I closed my eyes.

And the pumping beat of the music, the other sounds that just kept winding and pushing everything higher and higher… it felt like it was lifting me right out of my seat.

Then Summer’s hand wrapped gently around mine and she moved the slider, and the music faded out.

I opened my eyes.

She smiled at me.

I slipped off the headphones. “Who’s voice was that?”

“That,” she said, taking the headphones from me and setting them aside, “was the vocal stylings of Ashley Player.”

“He’s a great vocalist.”

“Oh, I know. You think I’d let just any slob front my band?”

I chuckled. “No. I can’t imagine that.”

“Did you like it?”

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