Page 128 of Ghost Note

His face had paled, a ghost he never thought he’d see staring back at him, singing loud and proud with ruby red lips, and wearing heels designed to kill. It was hard to sing perfectly with my smile so wide, but I gave it my best shot until I was following the beat of the song by tapping my hand on my thigh and my foot on the floor.

When the instrumental bit hit—the part which was meant to be Danny’s guitar solo masterpiece—I pulled away from the microphone and raised a brow, my challenging smirk holding his pale face in question until slowly, and ever so surely, his brought his hands back to the guitar, and his fingers began to move of their own accord.

Danny’s eyes never broke away from mine.

He barely blinked, just licked his lips and stared.

But he somehow played that damn solo and put one foot in front of the other until he was walking towards me, his pace slow at first until he was making gigantic strides he couldn’t contain.

He’d been inside of me a hundred times before, and we’d kissed in all the ways you could be kissed, but never once had I seen such feral hunger in his eyes when he came to a stop only a few feet in front of me.

When it was my cue, I sang again, pouring my voice out as though the stadium was already packed with those twenty thousand fans, and this was my only shot to make them stand up and listen.

Eventually, after the longest four minutes of my life, the song drifted out until only the instruments were playing, leaving Archer to perform a drum solo that somehow seemed to set an empty arena on fire. The song ended abruptly on a final note from each of them, leaving the last note to ring out around us in an echo, and everyone to fall quiet.

Danny stared as though it was the first time he’d ever laid eyes on me.

It took a minute before he swallowed and began to lift the guitar strap off his shoulders, and he carefully handed it to Theo without looking away from me.

His eyes eventually trailed down my body, pausing at my shoes before he let them roam up again and he found my eyes.

“Surprise,” I said quietly, bringing my arms up to soft jazz hands.

“Fucking hell, Zee.” With a breath, he pushed forward, pressed his hands to my cheeks and crashed his lips against mine with the force of a man who’d been starved of a kiss for a century, the pinch of it making my stomach flutter.

I loved the way it stung to love him, and I didn’t give a damn who saw me rise on my toes and hold his hands in place as I kissed him right back with just as much fight, begging him not to let me go as much as I refused to let him leave me again. We could do this. We really could.

For the first time in my life, I’d gone out there and soared.

Forty-Four

The dressing room door slammed shut behind us, but I paid it no mind.

I was too busy losing myself in Danny. In squeezing my thighs around his waist. In the way my ankles crossed, resting over his arse, and the way my arms held on tightly around his neck as I ran small circles in the back of his hair while he kissed me.

This kiss had become my anchor as he’d carried me off the stage to the cries and catcalls of his musical brothers. I’d held onto Danny, not needing anything else but his tongue massaging greedily against mine.

I’d done it.

I’d really done it.

The look on his face had made every nervous flutter worthwhile.

My back came up against a wall, a grunt escaping me as the air got knocked out of my lungs. Danny’s teeth bit down on my bottom lip, and he dragged it out slowly, forcing me to open my eyes and look into those damn pools of green again. They were sparkling with hunger and greed, but also love—a love I’d had no idea still existed in such animal form until he’d stumbled back in my life and turned it on its head in so little time.

Not that there’d been much to flip. I could admit now that my resistance had always been a pretence—a weak wall made from Play-Doh promises to keep him out and hate him forever because he’d dared to dream and put himself first.

What a villain.

I’d been entitled—somewhat of a narcissist, filled with a need to see life through the wayIwanted it to go. The signs of his unhappiness had been there, and I’d chosen to bury my head in the sand of Hope Cove and hope for the best.

That wasn’t the way love worked. You can’t pretend to love someone but ignore it when they speak, no matter how subtle their messages. I saw that now. I saw it, and I wanted to do better.

For him, and for me. For us.

Danny released my lip, and his eyes drifted over my face, taking me in slowly as he rocked his hips back and forth, letting me know exactly how happy he was to see me.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” he breathed. “You sounded sensational out there, Daisy.”

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