time came.
That sort of confidence was hot.
He grinned her way as he took his guitar back from Ira and they went out once more.
Three encores later and it was time to go home.
* * *
AFTER A SHOW was even louder and more chaotic than it was before the show. When Ezra came offstage, he ended up at Tuesday’s side as they all headed back to the greenroom.
The energy seemed to spiral through him and he needed to clean up and get himself together.
He leaned in toward Tuesday once they got to the greenroom. “I’m going to shower and change. Okay with you?”
She nodded. “Of course. I’ll be here when you’re finished.” Her mouth, good sweet Christ, he wanted to lean in and kiss it. So much his hands shook a little.
Tuesday tipped her chin at him. “Go on then. You won’t break me.”
He halted, stunned. “What?”
“You were looking at my mouth like you wanted it. So take it.”
In two steps he’d slid his arm around her waist as he met her body, his mouth sliding over hers, over lips that opened on a sigh as she gave over to him.
He sucked her bottom lip, grazing it with his teeth. Her fingers dug into the front of his T-shirt, holding him to her.
Need clawed at him, sharp and insistent. He wanted to back her up to the wall and fuck her right then and there.
With a groan, he stepped back right as a bunch of people came into the room.
“We’ll continue this conversation when I’m cleaned up.” He licked over his lips and tasted her again.
She breathed out slowly, one corner of her mouth tipped up into a smile.
But he got waylaid before he could reach the door, as his brothers surrounded him, slapping his back and hugging him.
His energy mingled with theirs and it was okay. This was okay to want. This was part of how it was between the Hurley boys and it was good and elemental and he needed to hold on to that.
But it sure didn’t hurt to hear Paddy nearly shout, “Best fucking show in years, man. Ez, you fucking ran that shit out there tonight. Well done.” Paddy grinned at his brother and Ezra gave him one right back.
There was a flurry of hugs from Mary and Natalie and their other friends who’d come to the show.
Tuesday got tugged away to meet someone so he watched her move as he drank some tea and listened to Vaughan and Damien.
Mary patted his arm, following his gaze. “Looks like we interrupted something when we came in here.”
Ezra shrugged. It would happen. He’d been sure from that first time he’d kissed her downtown and then, just three weeks earlier, in the darkness between the grape arbor at her house and the wall.
They’d been heading toward a naked collision for months now. He smiled at his sister-in-law. “No worries, sweetheart.”
He managed to escape to his dressing room nearly an hour later and by the time the water hit his skin, he was ready to run a marathon or fuck.
No marathon that night. Maybe fucking—they certainly had chemistry. Maybe not. Yes. It would happen, though. Ezra found the slow pace, this long seduction of Tuesday and Ezra to not only be sexy, but it gave him the time to work through the way he felt about her. All that desire was seriously hot but the want...he needed to find a way to handle it so he could enjoy it and stop being wary.
It made him feel alive on a whole new level.
“SO.” EZRA PAUSED at his car, a sleek, sexy, low-slung Porsche. He backed her to the door and her arms slid around his neck as he stepped close for a kiss.
“So?” she breathed as he pulled back after smooching the wits right from her head.
“Nothing really. I just wanted to kiss you again before you got into the car.”
Tuesday laughed, delighted. Sometimes he came off so serious and broody that when he cracked a joke and exposed his dry sense of humor it always felt like a delicious secret.
“All right then.”
She got in, bending to unstrap her shoes and slide them off.
When she straightened, she found him staring.
“You have great legs,” he said in that snarly voice of his and she smiled, leaning back into the buttery-soft leather seats.
He drove with the same sort of intensity he did everything else she’d seen him do. Though their show had ended nearly two hours earlier, the surface streets around the venue were still busy. He seemed to be doing some sort of complicated geometry so she looked out the window as he wended and wove his way to the freeway.
Once they’d got away from the crowded streets he relaxed a little. Enough that she felt she could speak again.
“You were on point tonight.”
He smiled, keeping his attention on the road. “Yeah?”
“I saw you once. I mean before. When you were still touring. In Louisville. I was there visiting my family.”
“It’s crazy to me that we both have family within a forty-mile radius of one another in Kentucky.” Wariness edged his words. She talked about family but she bet he thought about his addiction.
“It was early,” she said because it was important he know she saw him at his best. Preheroin. “I think maybe right after Ten To Midnight came out. Anyway, that’s a long way to say I saw you play before so I have a comparison to make. You were good at the club shows last December. You were like that times a thousand. Tonight, Ezra Hurley was a rock star.”
And it was hot. So hot she’d nearly melted just watching him move. The Ezra he’d been out there, utterly self-assured, sexy, in charge, made her shiver. When he played and wasn’t singing, he’d worn a smirk like he was thinking of something really dirty.
Best of all, he’d owned it, putting it on like a shirt that fit perfectly. All that hot, in-charge stuff had rolled off him in rushing waves. Tuesday wondered what he did with all that energy when he wasn’t onstage. Except for those brief moments when he turned it on her and she nearly drowned in it, he was pretty chill.
From a distance.
There was a darkness to Ezra. Something the darkness that lived in her seemed to respond to. A bone-deep grief he didn’t use as a shield—in fact he tried to downplay it. But it was there and she bet it was part of what motivated him to succeed now.
She shivered at the idea of being the focus of that sort of attention. She had a very strong feeling Ezra didn’t
