Page 57 of One Day Like This (Excess All Areas 1)

“Do you need to get that?” she asked.

“Not while you’re naked in my bed, I don’t.” The phone stopped ringing.

With his thigh between hers, she was already open to him.

“Mm,” she sighed, as he tenderly ran his finger between her lips.

“Are you sore? I was pretty rough in the shower yesterday.”

“Tender in a good and perfectly used way.”

Matt shifted so he was raised up on one elbow. “Tender as in a I’d-prefer-not-to-have-sex-right-now way, or tender as in make-love-to-me-Matt kind of way?”

She turned slightly so he could kiss her lips. “Definitely a make-love-to-me kind of way.”

“Good,” he said as he closed the gap between them. The kiss was slow, soft. A lazy exploration of each other. A complete and utter contrast to the evening before. If she’d felt as though sex at the wedding had been amazing, the last eight hours with him had been something altogether different.

“How is the head?” she asked quietly.

“Better than it should be. Thanks for making me eat.”

“I feel like I perhaps should have fed you and then left. You were pretty drunk.”

Matt kissed her again, his lips warm against hers. “I give you my full permission to make out with me when I’m drunk. Especially when I’m practically begging you to get naked.”

She ran her fingers over his. “Is that what it takes for you to get onstage?”

“To play. To escape. To forget. I want the roar of the crowd as much as failing in front of them terrifies me. I doubt myself. Those voices take a lot of quieting.”

His fingers cupped her, entered her slowly, just as his phone rang again.

“For fuck’s sake,” he cursed, releasing her. “It might be Nan. Give me a sec. Only she’s this persistent this early in a morning.”

Izabel grinned as he rolled over and reached for his phone. She turned in the bed to study him. His back covered in tattoos. Song lyrics, musical scores, and abstract instruments. She ran her fingers along them as he answered.

“What the fuck, Alex? Do I want to know why you’re up at six in the morning?”

There was a pause, and then Matt swung his legs out of bed. “Who the hell is that?”

Naked, he marched to his laptop and logged into something. “And she did what? Is that an app or something?”

Matt dragged his hand through his hair as he scanned various screens. “It’s off the charts. All of them. Millions of downloads.” His voice had gone from the gruffness he’d been in the middle of seducing her with to unconfined excitement.

“Yeah ... No ... I will. Fuck me. This could be it, Alex. Yeah, I know. Later.”

Matt put the phone down but remained looking at the screen.

Curious, Izabel slipped out of bed and wandered over to him. “Is everything okay?”

Matt slid his hand around her and tugged her down onto his lap. “It’s better than okay. Look at this.”

Graphs with lines trending up exponentially. “What is it?”

“Downloads. Some American chick, Willow Warner—who’s the hero of some, I don’t know, like dance or storytelling video app or something—used one of our songs to make a break-up video about her actor boyfriend. And now everyone is copying her with their own break-up videos, and our song is suddenly viral. And because it’s viral, people went looking for the song and found us. She has over a hundred million followers on her platform.”

She took Matt’s face in her hands. He looked ... shell-shocked. “That sounds like a great thing.”

“Iz, we made mid five figures in the last twenty-four hours.”

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