Tracy Wolff - Crash Into Me

His voice roared over her. Loud, sexy, and so richly decadent that she felt her limbs going loose with excitement. With arousal. With need. Jamison Matthews knew she wasnt the only woman in the audience to feel that way while listening to Ryder Montgomery singhis deep, raspy baritone was one long mind-and-body-fuckbut that didnt make it any less powerful. Neither did the fact that shed been listening to it for ten long yearsever since she was a thirteen-year-old kid with a crush on the lead singer of her brothers band.

Some things didnt change.

And some things did. Shaken Dirty had come a long way from the teenage garage band theyd once been. The tens of thousands of screaming fans currently filling this very amphitheater attested to that. As did the bras and panties that haphazardly littered the stage. Her brother, Jared, had picked up a sheer red thong and draped it over the neck of his guitar, while Micahs base was decorated with lacy purple boy shorts. Totally disgusting if she let herself dwell on where those panties had been just a short time before.

But she wasnt going to do that, wasnt going to let anything mar her enjoyment of the show. Being here, watching her brother play with the others in the middle of this gigantic venue, co-headlining the Rock On tour with some of the hottest bands around, was a dream come true. She wouldnt waste a second of it.

The song ended and the crowd went nuts, screaming and whistling, chanting and shouting. Begging for more. Jamison went nuts right along with them, didnt even mind when the surging fans pressed her closer and closer to the barricade that kept eager devotees off the stage. That was her big brother up on that stage. Her big brother and Ryder and Wyatt and Quinn and Micah. Theyd come a long way since Jared had let her listen in while theyd practiced in the garage, and she couldnt be more proud. After all theyd been through, theyd finally made it.

Unlike her.

For a second, panic threatened at the disaster her life had become practically overnight. It wasnt the accident that hadnt been her fault but had left her with a totaled car anyway. A car that had been worth only three thousand dollars, which gave her pretty much no chance of buying a reliable replacement for the amount the insurance would pony up.

Nor was it that her douchebag boyfriend had dumped her while she was down. Sure, shed thought she was in love with Charles, but in retrospect she was willing to admit that there had been some major red flags in their relationship. Chief among them was his inability to keep his zipper up around other women.

Not even the fact that the closest friend shed made since moving to San Diego had been sleeping with her douchebag of a boyfriend had made her feel this tied up in knots. Shed thought Lisa was pretty cool, but her friendmake that her ex-friendhad never made a secret of her freewheeling morals.

But losing her job this morninga job shed loved and had invested so much of her time inhad been the piece de resistance on top of the shit-pile her life had recently become. Especially considering shed uprooted her whole life to move to San Diego less than six months before just so she could take the stupid job. It was the first step on the ten-year plan shed had for her life, a plan that now lay in utter ruins around her.

She wanted to crawl back into bed and forget the last forty-eight hours had ever happened. Or, barring that, rewind the clock so that she could have seen coming some of the crap that had been heaped on her. Not all of it, obviously, but it might have been nice to know the restaurant where shed landed her first big job out of cooking school was having to close before shed bought, and worn, the most gorgeous pair of Louboutins shed ever seen. Or before Charles had forced her to listen to his diatribe of all the reasons hed cheated on her, reasons that were, of course, completely her fault.

Shed called bullshit on him, but still. Standing here with all these women, so many of whom were skinnier and prettier than her, only gave his words credence in her head. Not to mention the last thing she should be doing right now was screaming along with a bunch of Shaken Dirty fans while fantasizing about the lead singer of her brothers band.

Onstage, the band launched into Awake, one of the power ballads that had made them famous. The crowd screamed their approval and so did she. Totally not her typical modus operandi, but she couldnt help it. Something about listening to Ryder croonthe darkly haunting lyrics had her knees trembling and her heart beating much too quickly. If she closed her eyes, she could do what all the other women in the audience were doing and pretend that he was singing straight to her.

So much better than remembering hed written these heartfelt words for another woman. For Carrie, who had killed herself and broken his heart so many years before. Her own heart ached at the thought. For him. Always for him. At twenty-nine, Ryder had already been through more darkness and despair than any one person should have to handle.

Awake finally came to a close, the last note hanging in the air for long, tension-fueled seconds. Then the band fell silent and the audience did the same, as if they were all holding their breaths. Ryder lowered his guitar, shuffled and stamped his feet once, twice. It was a familiar gesture, one years of experience had taught her was his way of shaking off excess emotion. Again her heart twisted. It devastated her that more than ten years after the fact he was still eaten up by what had happened. Still determined to bury it under a bunch of layers that not only insulated him from his pain but also hid the real Ryder so deep inside the public Ryder that she wondered sometimes if he even existed anymore. Or if the boy who had held her while she cried, who had let her whisper her pre-adolescent fears without ever making fun of her, had disappeared forever.

She searched for him, in that one endless moment.

Looked for him in the obsidian eyes that arrowed to the heart of the crowd even as they barricaded his own emotions.

Combed through her own memories and expectations in an effort to see Ryder as he really was instead of how he portrayed himself.

And when his eyeshis crazy, beautiful eyesmet hers, she found him. Seconds passed, long, intense seconds where she lost the ability to hear or breathe or even think. All she could do was look into Ryders eyes, at the feral heat boiling up and out of them, and want.

She smiled at him, waved. He snarled back. But it wasnt a leave-me-alone snarl. No, definitely not. It was his I-want-to-fuck-you-up-against-a-wall snarlshe knew it well, had seen it directed at a lot of women through the yearsand her knees gave way when she realized that this time, finally, it was directed at her. It didnt matter that there was no sign of recognition in his eyes, no knowledge that the woman he was looking at like that was actually her. Jamison. For one moment he wanted her the way shed always wanted him.

It was more than enough.

And then Jared thrust a hand in the air and the moment was gone. The silence shattered, the crowd exploding in catcalls and screams and whistles, pleas for more mingling with pledges of undying love. It was awe-inspiring, yet humbling, to witness. She still remembered the guys as lanky teenagers beating out a rhythm in her garage. As struggling musicians driving up and down the coast to play at dives that barely paid. As an opening act to bands much bigger and better than they were.

She watched as Ryder flirted with the crowd a little in true lead singer fashion. Women screamed in response, while men shouted and cheered. And when Ryder walked to the edge of the stage and switched out the acoustic guitar for his electric one, Jamison felt herself swoon right along with the others. She couldnt help it. This had always been her favorite part of the show and when theyd gotten so close to the end of their set without it making an appearance, shed worried theyd cut it.