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“Fuck off.”

The youngest member of Midnight Storm laughed, unbothered as always. He unfurled himself from the chair, stretching his arms over his head, any tension from his earlier insinuation falling away. “Want to grab something to eat after we both shower? Zach says the brunch buffet in this hotel is incredible.”

“I’m not getting brunch with you.”

“Why not?” Nico asked, looking a little wounded.

Beckett scraped his hand over his jaw, knowing that what he said next was likely to set Nico off on another round of teasing. “I’m meeting Kat.”

Nico waggled his eyebrows. “For brunch?”

“Get out.”

His bandmate threw his head back and laughed. “Alright, old man.”

“I’m only three years older than you.”

“But you’re in your forties now and I’m still in my thirties.”

“I’m forty-fucking-one,” Beckett grumbled.

Nico grabbed his water bottle and the yoga strap he’d brought with him in case Beckett needed it—as if Beckett would ever let Nico see him needing the help of a fucking strap to do something as simple as fancy stretching. “Say hi to your fiancée for me.”

“I will not.”

The door closed behind Nico as he laughed again, but Beckett didn’t have time to stand around shooting the shit. He had fifteen minutes to shower and make himself presentable before he was supposed to meet Kat. Fifteen minutes to figure out what the hell he was supposed to say to her.

When Jo called earlier that morning, she seemed confident that the only option was to lean into the lie, to spend the next month pretending he and Kat were engaged—and she swore Kat was on board. She hadn’t seemed on board the night before. And why would she be? After everything that had happened between them, all the years of silence…

She may have worn the earrings he gave her all those years ago, but that didn’t mean she’d forgiven him… did it?

The bathroom filled with steam as the shower heated, and Beckett stepped beneath the spray, tipping his face up to let the water fall across his eyelids and roll down his throat.

A month of pretending to be Kat’s fiancé. A month of lying to his fans, his best friends, his brother.

A month of getting to put his arm around her, to hold her hand, to act like she was his again. Because there was no way in hell the guys would believe he and Kat were engaged if they never touched. Never kissed. Not when they all knew how they’d been before.

His cock kicked at the idea of kissing her again, the memory of her softness pressed against him, the little sounds she made in the back of her throat when he licked along the seam of her lips.

She could be mad at him all she wanted. There was no denying that she’d kissed him back. And despite the way she snarled and spat like an angry kitten on the ride back to the hotel, he’d caught the hazy look in her eyes, the flush of her skin. It might have been a lifetime since he’d first learned exactly how to put that look on her face, but he would never fail to recognize it.

The shower pounded his shoulders, hot water caressing the muscles of his back, as he took himself in hand, squeezing at the base of his painfully hard cock. Time had been good to Kat, sharpening her tongue and rounding out her curves. She’d been gorgeous at twenty-three, but the way her wide hips and round ass filled out a pair of jeans at thirty-three was downright sinful.

He shouldn’t do this, shouldn’t jerk off to the idea of sinking his teeth into her ass, of burying his tongue between her plush thighs and licking her until she screamed for him. But he was already lying to everyone else—why not lie to himself as well?

So he stroked himself as he remembered the way she used to shiver when he raked his teeth over her nipples, how she’d blush and bite her lip when he’d fall to his knees in his dressing room and undo her jeans. “Just a quick taste,” he’d tell her, and they’d both know he was lying.

His hand moved faster, sparks chasing each other down his spine as he rocked his hips into his hand and imagined how it would be now, how she’d claw and bite as she parted her thighs for him. How she’d tug on his hair and hold his mouth to her sweet pussy until her clit pulsed against his tongue. He’d fight for every last one of her orgasms until she was soaked and swollen, and then, only then, would he bury himself inside her.

His climax took him by surprise, punching the air from his lungs as he came. Steadying himself against the shower wall, he pumped into his hand and pretended it was her. His perfect woman. His Luna.

The only woman he’d ever loved.

The only woman who would never forgive him.

Chapter Seven

Kat slid on her oversized sunglasses and stepped out of the service entrance to the hotel, keeping her head down for the few steps to the car where Ray stood holding the door open for her. She was probably being overly cautious, but Gideon had insisted that she and Beckett use the more private entrance, and she wasn’t in the habit of arguing with their head of security.