Page 30 of Ticket to the Stars: Part Two

Ramona called the next Wednesday, telling Priest and me that we were needed to re-record a few lines before certain tracks could be finalized. The sound guy would be at the recording studio Thursday at nine. Early for Priest, but not so early for me.

I thought all of the guys would come, but Deacon and Bishop elected not to come, which meant it was just Priest and me.

Lucky me.

Not that I was complaining about being alone with him; he was one of my boyfriends, after all, and I did love him, but ever since he’d found out I’d slept with Bishop, he’d been a teensy-weensy unbearable. I still loved him, but God, sometimes I wanted to strangle him.

We were in the car, on the way to the studio, when Priest made his first sarcastic comment: “You know, you didn’t have to go through all this trouble just to get me alone. If you wanted to get away from the others, I’m always down to go rent a nice hotel room downtown, order room service, and stay in for the night.”

As if I purposefully hadn’t sung a verse right or something so we’d have to re-record it. Right.

I rolled my eyes. “Please.”

Priest took on the same seductive, whispery tone he did when he was on stage, the voice that gave me goosebumps, “Oh, yes. Beg for me, Angel.”

The sad thing was, I could easily imagine him saying that while we were… doing things. But, since we were in a car and the mood wasn’t exactly sexy, I only sighed and said, “I will not be begging for anything, Priest.”

“Fine, fine, but someday I will have you begging on your knees, mark my words.” He smirked, and I’d bet anything he was taking a moment to imagine me doing just that. “Not to change the subject, but it occurred to me that, since you knew Bishop before, you also know his real name—and he knows yours.”

I didn’t say anything to that. It was true. I was surprised it had taken him this long to bring it up. Bishop was really Cody, and he knew I was really Maggie. Mags to my friends. Priest and Deacon didn’t know that part of me, so Bishop was one step ahead of them.

“Honestly,” Priest went on, “it’s not very fair.”

“Fair?” I repeated, incredulous. “Last I checked, life’s not very fair.”

“Yes, but seeing as how you’re with us, love, I think we should all be on the same playing field, so to speak. I think I have the right to know your real name.” The smirk Priest wore only grew when he saw how suspicious I was. I wouldn’t put it past him to use this bit of information to rub in Deacon’s face.

Because, if I told Priest, then Deacon would be the last to know.

“Maybe if you start being nice to me, I’ll tell you,” I spoke with a shrug.

“Nice? I am nice to you. Please.”

“Who’s begging now?”

That got Priest to chuckle, and the sound filled my body with tension. Not the bad kind of tension, more like… well, more like the kind of tension that only another set of hands could help me work out of my body. “Touché, Angel. Touché.”

He dropped the whole name thing after that, but I knew it hadn’t stopped bothering him. We made it to the studio and parked in the attached parking garage. Priest had to flash some badge for the security guard to let us in. Within ten minutes, we were walking into the recording room to do what we had to.

Singing with Priest… even with someone watching and listening in the sound room, I still couldn’t get over how easy it was. How effortless it was to stand there beside him and sing, to really feel the lyrics inside my soul. It was like we became the song.

And the eye contact, God, the eye contact while we sang was some of the most intense eye contact I’d ever experienced in my life. The way those gray eyes of his could pin you down and nail you in place, eye-fuck you while you were two feet away; I fought a blush the whole time.

Priest really was attractive. Stupidly sexy. Immensely tall, over six feet, with the kind of messy blond hair that looked like he spent ages fixing it up but also like he just rolled out of bed. He had that smoldering expression down. And his arms, his chest, his abs—seeing him shirtless so often meant I could easily picture what he looked like underneath his clothes.

Don’t even get me started on the tattoos lining his pectorals, arms, and upper stomach… I’d never been into tattoos, they were really more Alexa’s thing than mine, but Priest wore them well. Like, insanely well.

The guy was hot, okay? Hotter than hell. Sin on two legs. It really was a wonder how I didn’t fall into his naked lap first.

We had one more song to re-record, but the sound guy had to take five, and he wandered out into the hall as he answered his phone, leaving Priest and I in the recording room. I slipped off the headphones and watched as Priest did the same.

“So, you going to tell me your real name now?” Priest asked with a lopsided smile, taking a teeny step toward me. Less than a foot away now, and he towered over me easily. He was taller than Bishop and Deacon; I felt like a child next to him.

But I wasn’t, and the way he stared down at me reminded me of that, his eyes full of heated desire, even now. Even though the sound guy might come back in at anymoment. A stare like that had a habit of making any scene feel intimate.

“You wish,” I replied, folding my arms over my chest. The headphones rested around my neck, bunching up my hair, but I didn’t care. Their tiny weight on my shoulders was something else to focus on, something other than the way Priest smirked as he loomed over me.

God, did he really have to be so damned tall and attractive? I couldn’t believe I was in love with this guy. The playboy flirt; he was so not my type—but then again, if this experience had taught me anything, it’s that I apparently had a lot of types I didn’t know about.

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