All Night Long (17 page)
Authors: Madelynne Ellis
‘Xane has boltholes all over the place. My money is on him either having gone to his place or hers, so with the info I have here –’ he patted his jacket over the place where his pocket lay ‘– we should have no problem tracking him down.’
A taxicab pulled up alongside them at the hotel entrance. Ash made an immediate dive towards it. ‘Gore,’ he insisted, when the driver wound the window down. He dragged Spook along with him, and the two of them took over the backseat, despite the driver’s insistence that he was there for somebody Clements.
‘I’m still not seeing what that has to do with Ginny’s address. She’s never even met Xane.’
‘Doesn’t matter. Forget it.’ Ash scratched at a sticky spot on his jeans, reluctant to announce his suspicions. He’d look pretty foolish if he was wrong, and, honestly, he hadn’t been paying enough attention when Xane had left the stadium last night; at least, not enough to be certain the girl he’d left with had been Ginny’s absent roommate. And even if it had, there was no guaranteeing that Xane had actually gone anywhere with her. He might, given the piss-poor mood he’d been in, just have screwed her up against a lamppost, or over the bonnet of her car.
‘Where to, lads?’ The cabbie had relented, Ash suspected, because he’d recognised them, and his actual passengers were nowhere in sight.
Ash supplied him with the address of Xane’s secret hideaway. They could test other possibilities if this one failed, but, suspicions about Ginny’s friend aside, he fully expected to find Xane face-down in a pool of vomit, in a vodka-induced coma, but you never knew. Stranger things had happened. Like him meeting Ginny, for example.
‘Can I borrow your phone?’
Spook cast him a wary glance. ‘Why? I don’t think warning him of our arrival is going to do us any favours.’
‘Not for that.’
‘You’re not using it to test Ginny’s number either. Use your own.’
‘Can’t. I don’t have one, do I? Sally banned me from carrying one after that girl in Oslo stole the last one.’ Sally Kettering their PR guru, had nearly minced him, since the thief had gone through the whole of Ash’s extensive list of celebrity contacts and posted most of them online, along with a few dozen highly dodgy photographs of people doing things they shouldn’t.
‘But you admit that’s what you were going to do?’
Ash turned to look out of the window. Even when he’d handed over his home number, there’d still been a part of him that was seeking to find loopholes in the arrangement. The notion of having a girlfriend still knotted his insides in a distinctly uncomfortable way. Plus, the complications of them living in different worlds, and of him constantly being on the road, were genuine barriers to making things work. He might not have personal experience of trying to maintain a relationship under such circumstances, but some of the other guys had, and in every case they’d failed. Shame, then, that he couldn’t get the vision, the smell or the taste of her out of his head. He wanted her back in his arms. He wanted her holding his hand, supporting him.
‘It’s a bit soon for that.’ Spook glanced backwards out of the rear window. ‘We’re not even a mile down the road. You only left her five minutes ago. If you call her now she’s going to know your balls are in her fists. Get real, Ash. Since when did you ever get smitten? You average four women a night.’
Trust his wingman to strip his life down to the basics. And to answer Spook’s question: none of the million others had ever been like Ginny. They hadn’t seen or affected him in the same way. ‘I wasn’t going to say anything. I’d only be checking the number worked.’
‘Not on my phone. Actually, not on any phone for at least forty-eight hours. That’s standard cooling-off period. Stuff like this you have to think about, be real certain about, otherwise you end up being shafted. And there’s enough crap going on already with Xane on the loose, without you sticking your head in the clouds.’
‘All right. I hear yer.’ Ash sighed. ‘I won’t call. Yet. But can I borrow your phone to call my mum? I ought to. She’ll be worried sick over all these news reports.’
Spook shook his head. He slumped back against the seat and settled himself for the rest of the drive. ‘I’m not thick, Ash,’ he muttered, closing his eyes. ‘I know you’re a mummy’s boy but, seriously, you need to stop thinking with your dick.’
‘You can dial the number,’ Ash said persuasively. ‘Say hello too, if you like.’
Spook opened one eye. ‘Still not stupid. You’ll let me make a fool of myself and then hang up. Besides, I know perfectly well she’s in Majorca at the minute. If you still want to call in forty-eight hours, then you can use my phone.’
‘Tomorrow,’ he negotiated.
‘Night,’ Spook added as a qualifier. ‘And only if we’re on top of the Xane situation by then.’
Oh, they would be, because there was no way he was going to let Xane screw this up for him. No way, on earth.
Ginny you’re mine. I’m going to wine you, dine you and take you to see that movie.
And then they were going to have fucking awesome sex.
One night and she was hooked … That certainly hadn’t been the plan. Her intention, as far as she remembered it, was to live it wild for a night with an extremely hot rock star and come home the next day with some awesome memories. Cutting loose once in a while was good for the soul. That’s what she told Dani all the time. It helped arm you against the mundane slog of everyday existence.
Except here she was, a mere twelve hours later, mooning around with not a clue what to do with herself, wondering how she was supposed to survive without seeing Ash, and whether he’d picked up her five messages yet. She didn’t even have Dani around to confide in. Yes, she knew Ash had asked her to keep it quiet and she had, but normally she told Dani everything. It’d been damned hard keeping her mouth zipped when Dani had confessed she’d spent the night with Black Halo’s missing frontman Xane Geist, and next to impossible when Xane had subsequently turned up at their flat and whisked Dani off for a dirty weekend. The latter part, especially, didn’t seem fair somehow. Didn’t she deserve a weekend of hot loving too?
Ash had probably gotten cold feet.
Face it, Gin, you’re probably never going to see him again. The number he gave you is probably for his favourite restaurant.
When the doorbell rang she opened the front door with her purse in hand, expecting it to be her pizza delivery. Only it wasn’t anyone holding pizza beaming at her.
‘Ash!’
‘Did you miss me?’ he asked, peeping at her from behind a curtain of jet-black hair.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Oh, you know. I was in the neighbourhood. Looking for Xane. You haven’t happened to see him, have you?’ He gave her a look that told her he knew perfectly well that Xane had been here.
‘He’s gone,’ she said, vexation irritating her nose and making her sneeze. ‘They both have. Is that all you came here for, just to chase him? You knew he was with Dani, didn’t you? And you never told me. You could have saved me a heap of worry.’
‘You weren’t that worried.’
‘That’s all you wanted my address for, isn’t it? So you could track him down.’ God, she’d been so blind and stupid to believe such a hardened player would magically fall for her.
‘That’s just not true.’ He stuck his foot in the door as she tried to shut him out. ‘I can’t get you out of my head. Do you know how much pointless crap I’ve had to endure today? Conversations that went round and round and never got anywhere.’
‘You came here to find Xane,’ she insisted, refusing to be taken in. The truth was plain as day.
‘If that were so, Ginny –’ he reached out to her through the narrow gap, and brushed his fingers against her cheek ‘– I’d have brought everyone along with me. I came alone, so that it could be just you and me.’
She eased the pressure she was putting on the door but didn’t remove it entirely.
‘I’m sorry. I don’t think I can risk taking you out for dinner tonight. I’m something of a wanted man, but I did meet a delivery guy on the way up.’ He didn’t break contact between them, but indicated with a glance and a tilt of his head that he was in possession of her order. ‘And I did bring a movie. So can I come in?’
‘What movie?’
He reached inside his jacket and offered her the DVD box. ‘You’ve probably seen it before, but it’s something of a favourite and I figured it wouldn’t matter too much if we missed bits of it.’
‘
Dracula
.’ She laughed. ‘Bit predictable, Mr Gore.’
‘It’s the Christopher Lee version. Prince of Darkness,’ he said in his defence.
‘I only need one Prince of Darkness.’ She flung the door wide and leaped on him. He’d been home – somewhere – and had a shave. His chin was no longer sandpapery and scratchy as it had been that morning, so there’d be no more stubble burn in store for her. He smelled delicious too, of spicy cologne mixed up with his natural fragrance, and while he looked perfectly scrumptious in that black T-shirt and equally black spray-on jeans, they definitely weren’t staying on him. She grabbed his arse and pulled him tight against her, felt his immediate interest branding her stomach through his pants. ‘I think you’d better come in.’
‘Why’s that?’ he asked, as she dragged him over the threshold by his waistband.
‘Because otherwise my neighbours are going to be calling the cops, complaining about a naked man on the landing.’
‘Yeah. We couldn’t have that,’ he said as she drew down his fly. His hand gripped her wrist, which he brought to his lips and kissed. ‘Slow down, Ginny. There’s no rush.’ He offered her a wry smile. ‘If you’ll have me, I was thinking I could sleep over.’ He hadn’t just brought himself, he’d come with an overnight bag.
Presumptuous, much, but lord, she couldn’t stop grinning. If she’d have him, indeed.
She kissed him full-on, hard against his lips. She got a little lost in the taste of him, and he matched her desire with similar intensity.
He was a fool if he thought she was ever letting him go.
If you’re looking forward to enjoying more from Ash and Ginny, you can catch up with them along with Dani and Xane in the forthcoming novel
Come Together
(Rock Hard #2), due July 2014, and in their second adventure together,
All Fired Up
(Black Halo Unplugged #2), due later this year.
If you’d like to be notified of future book releases in this series, then sign up for Madelynne’s Newsletter at
http://www.madelynne-ellis.com
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