Lead Me On
by Lexxie Couper
Copyright © 2017 by Lexxie Couper. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Chapter One
Searching For Synergy.
Rumor has it rock god Nick Blackthorne’s one time band is on the hunt for a new front man. An unnamed source has revealed the band, Samuel Gibson (lead guitar), Levi Levistan (bass), Jaxon Campbell (keyboard) and Noah Holden (drums), have spent the last two months secretly searching for a new singer for an upcoming album. The source has suggested the rock legends will call themselves Synergy, and their first release will be the end credit track for the hotly anticipated sequel to the box-office smash, Dead Even.
New manager, Pepper Kerrigan, drummer Holden’s partner and the daughter of famed Rolling Stone magazine journalist, Paul Kerrigan, was not available for comment.
If the rumors are true, one can only imagine what Nick Blackthorne thinks. Does the rock guru bestow his blessings on what seems like a futile endeavor? After all, is it even possible to replace him or his song writing—
A furious growl caught in his throat, Samuel Gibson flung the computer tablet with the infuriating gossip article on its screen across his living room.
“Hey!” Jax burst out, watching the device smack against the cushion of a sleek leather sofa a few feet away. “That’s my iPad you’re throwing, mate.”
Samuel shot his fellow band member a sideways glare. “Who leaked the info to the press?”
A sheepish grin tugged at the corners of Jax’s mouth. “Errr…that would be me.”
Murderous rage flooded through Samuel. “You?”
Jax held out his hands, palms out, as if warding off an imminent attack. “In my defense, she was so fucking hot.”
Letting out an exasperated groan, Samuel slumped back into his armchair. “Who was so fucking hot?”
Jax snagged his iPad mini from the sofa and then settled back into his chair. Turning the tablet over in his hands, he let out a satisfied grunt at its state and then tossed it onto the coffee table between them. “The redhead who sat beside me on the flight over here. Seriously, she’d given me a blowjob before we even left Australian airspace. I think she may have gone down on the flight attendant before the flight as well, ’cause that guy didn’t come anywhere near us for a good twenty minutes.” He gave Samuel the kind of grin that made Samuel’s jaw clench. “And then when she was finished, she undid her shirt and stuck my hand through the opening. No bra, Strings. Nadda. Nyet. And her nipples were pierced. Little hoops in both. Holy shit, the noises she made when I—”
“Why did you tell her about us looking for someone to replace Nick, Jax?” Samuel cut him off. Jax had always been the player. He was incorrigible. A goddamn freak on a keyboard, but incorrigible all the same. And that was saying something given Samuel’s rather debauched past.
Jax shrugged and scratched his stomach. “She asked what we were all doing.”
Samuel narrowed his eyes. “When?”
“When I was feeling her up.”
“How many drinks had you downed by then?”
“Two or three scotches.” Jax paused. “Maybe four.”
Samuel bit back a growl. “So you had four scotches, a woman gave you head in your seat, stuck your hand on her tit and then asked you about the band? You didn’t happen to think she was maybe after something?”
Jax chuckled. “I had a handful of soft, warm boob, Strings, and a fourteen-hour flight ahead of me. I wasn’t thinking about much of anything.”
Samuel scrubbed at his face. He loved Jaxon Campbell, he really did, but he wanted to kill him. Without Noah or Levi here to intervene, he may very well do so. “Jax, do you realize now the word is out we’re going to have every bloody tosser who thinks he’s got a set of pipes hassling us?”
“Hassling Pepper,” Jax pointed out. “And she can deal with them. Do you remember the way she handled that fuck-knuckle from Beat who tried to railroad Noah into an interview on the sidewalk last week? Man, for a shy little thing she’s got claws.”
Despite his frustration with Jax, Samuel chuckled. Pepper Kerrigan was proving to be the perfect band manager—as the obnoxious reporter from the drumming magazine had discovered firsthand when he’d ambushed them after they’d all left Resonance, the bar Noah owned here on the Upper West Side. Pepper knew how to handle intrusive wankers with the right amount of sarcasm and schmooze. It wasn’t until they were all settled in the back of Noah’s limo that she’d buried her face in her hands to hide her characteristic blush.
By the time they’d hit the first traffic light, however, Noah had been kissing her so thoroughly Samuel had felt his cock stiffen.
He had no designs on his best mate’s woman, but a guy could only watch such passion for so long before things…stirred. Especially when passion, real passion was very much missing in Samuel’s life.
Letting out a sigh, he pushed himself to his feet and crossed to his apartment’s window. Central Park sat on the other side of the expansive glass, the last of autumn clinging to the branches of its trees.
“Y’know, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” Jax said from behind him. “We’ve had no luck so far finding someone to replace Nick. Maybe this will help?”
“It’s only been two months, Jax.”
“And the song for Dead Even 2 is due in another four. Not long when you think about it. Levi’s got the music down, but we need lyrics, and if you’re not writing them, that leaves Nick’s replacement. Assuming whoever that is can pen a song worth recording. If he can’t—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Samuel interrupted, glaring out the window. “I get your point.”
He turned from the view of Central Park and leant his back against the cool glass. Crossing his arms, he puffed out a breath and studied the toes of his boots. Pepper and Noah were currently in LA, dealing with the legal crap connected with the new name of the band, Synergy. Levi was somewhere in the US, dealing with his own crap. From the sounds of it, Samuel didn’t envy what was going on with the bass player and his partner, but Levi Levistan always played it close to the chest, so Samuel wasn’t sure just how much crap was involved. Which left Samuel and Jax to nut out the next plan of attack in finding a new lead singer.
Which, in Samuel’s opinion, wasn’t a smart thing. Jax rarely took things seriously, and Samuel rarely paid attention to anything but himself. He was narcissistic, brooding and arrogant after all. At least, that’s how he was portrayed in the media, and he never did anything to challenge that portrayal.
What he currently was, however, was pissed. And lonely. But be fucked if he was going to tell Jax that. Not after the guy had just shared his mile-high-club blowjob story.
Once upon a time, Samuel would have regaled Jax with his own sex-in-the-sky story. That kind of behavior though seemed to be a thing of Samuel’s past. The last time he’d done anything remotely rock starish was when he’d shared a groupie with Jax two months ago. Maybe he was getting too old? He was in his forties after all. Mid-forties. Plus a year or two.
“So?” Jax’s voice raised Samuel’s attention from his boots. “Any thoughts? On singers?”
Samuel pulled a face. “Brian Mc—”
Jax shook his head before Samuel could finish saying the name. “Nope. The guy hates me. Apparently I slept with his mum a while ago.”
Samuel cocked an eyebrow at the keyboardist.
Jax shrugged. “Hey, how was I to know? She was fucking hot and boy did she go off like a firecracker in the sack.”
Rolling his eyes, Samuel pushed himself from the window and crossed back to the sofa. He dropped into it, crossed his ankles on the coffee table and threaded his fingers behind his head. “Brandon F—”
“Nope.” Jax shook his head again. “Noah beat the crap outta him ten years ago, remember? When he called Levi a fucking knob jockey at the Grammys.”
Samuel scratched at the back of his neck. “Shit, I forgot about that. That was the first time we saw Holden the Hulk really lose his temper, wasn’t it?”
Jax pulled a face. “I think Noah would have killed the guy if Nick hadn’t pulled him off him. If I remember correctly, Variety called it ‘The Feud That Rocked’. Stupid fucking title if you ask me. No feud, just a bloke teaching a dick not to be one.”
Samuel had to agree. The band’s reputation had taken a caning that day. If they hadn’t already been known for their wild antics—and they were—that altercation had firmly cemented it in the public’s eye. Of course, it hadn’t had an impact on sales at all. Nick’s next album had gone platinum three times over in record time. “What about Ben Fields?” he asked. “He might be a tad older than us, but damn, that guy knows how to—”
“Dead.”
“Really?”
Jax snorted. “He took up NASCAR racing as a hobby.”
Samuel frowned. “And?”
Jax’s expression turned bleak. “It didn’t take.”
An image of twisted metal carnage filled Samuel’s head. As did the memory of his parents’ constant disapproval of any motor sport. As a doctor and surgeon, his father despised it for the threat to life it presented. As a politician, his mother was offended by the base disregard for the environment—unless of course it helped her during election time, then she was all for it. In fact, Samuel was half-positive she’d successfully lobbied to get the Australian leg of the International Formula One competition relocated to the city she represented in state parliament when Samuel was only a kid. And then successfully painted the rival politician who took it away years later as an environmental butcher more concerned with money than the planet.
“Strings?”
The sound of Jax snapping his fingers jerked Samuel out of his reverie. He frowned at the keyboardist. Thoughts of his high-achieving, high-pressure parents always yanked him out of reality, even if he hadn’t spoken to them for over twenty years. “What?” he snarled, falling back on his brooding-as-shit persona the world knew well.
Jax chuckled, not fooled at all. Nothing seemed to bother the guy. “I said what about the lead singer for that band you dragged us to a few years ago in San Francisco? The last time we toured there? What were they called? Zombie BBQ? Zombie Pie? Something like that.”
Samuel sat jolt upright. He stared at Jax. His heart beat faster. “Eugene Pearce,” he said. “The lead singer of Zombie Grill.”
Jax’s eyebrows shot up. “The lead singer’s name was Eugene?”
Samuel shoved himself out of the sofa. His blood tingled in his ears, behind his eyes. Eugene Pearce. Holy shit, why hadn’t he thought of Eugene himself? He’d discovered Zombie Grill one night while the band was in San Francisco. After a week of debauchery with too many women to name—most shared with Jax in Samuel’s hotel suite—he’d left the room in need of some fresh air and wandered into a bar. The hard-rock group playing there was going off, their sounds raw and carnal and wicked. The lead singer really knew how to wail, and Samuel had been impressed with his vocal ability. He’d pulled the guys in the next night—wanting them all to experience the group. Two songs in, however, the crowd realized Nick Blackthorne was in the audience and a riot had started. If it wasn’t for Nick and Samuel’s bodyguards weighing into the fray, it could have ended badly.
Still, Samuel had followed Zombie Grill’s progress in the indie charts for a while, even buying a few of their albums. The last—released over two years ago—had been their worst, but Eugene’s unique voice still rocked the sounds.
He spun to the sofa, snatched up Jax’s iPad, opened the Google app and typed in Zombie Grill.
The first entry told him exactly what he needed to know. Zombie Grill still performed in San Francisco, and the lead singer, Eugene Pearce, was still alive.
Bingo.
Raising his head, he looked over Jax’s shoulder towards his apartment’s kitchen. “Brutal?” he bellowed.
A bald man the size of an office block with half his head covered in tribal tattoos walked into the living area. “Yeah, boss?”
“I need to know where Eugene Pearce of San Francisco is as of right now. Where I can find him? Where I can speak to him?”
His bodyguard nodded. “Give me a few moments, boss.”
Samuel returned his attention to Jax and grinned. “Ready to head to San Fran, Liberace?”
Jax leapt to his feet. “You better fucking believe it!”
…
Lily Pearce studied her brother in the harsh fluorescent lighting and suppressed a sigh. He looked like shit.
Keeping her expression as neutral as possible, she closed her thumb and forefinger over the ivory horse’s head and moved it. “Knight to C3.”
Eugene muttered a disgruntled, “Fuck”. Striking green eyes lifted from the chessboard to regard her with a steady contemplation.
Lily swallowed another sigh. His irises may still be arresting—the color once described by the gig reporter of the San Francisco Gate as “emerald worlds of concentrated passion”—but the whites of his eyes were streaked with tiny blood veins and stained yellow with years of substance abuse.
Who the hell knew what substances exactly? “Shit” was all he’d told her the day she’d driven him to rehab—for the fourth time in as many years. “Bad, expensive shit.”
Lily, the paramedic in a family of performers, worried constantly just what level of shit her twin was injecting/snorting/popping. Worry, however, didn’t stop Eugene living the life of a rock star, even if he hadn’t quite achieved star status yet.
Zombie Grill had a following large enough to fill a small bar whenever they played, but not enough to justify—in Lily’s opinion—the star behavior the band indulged in. Hell, no one was star enough to justify fucking up their body.
The thing was, Eugene could have been a star. Lily knew that. Their parents knew that. Their father, a professional Frank Sinatra impersonator who traveled the state performing, always said Eugene had a set of pipes God would envy. Their mom, a dinner theatre actress who still clung to dreams of being on Broadway, told Lily often Eugene was blessed.
Sitting here now, looking at her twin and the wretched state he was in, Lily had to question what kind of deity would bestow a blessing that included pumping your body full of crap. Not one she wanted anything to do with, that was for sure.
“Queen to D4.”
Eugene’s raspy proclamation sounded nothing like the dulcet tones of his normal speaking voice.
Unable to hold it in any longer, Lily finally released her sigh. “How long are you going to keep doing this, Gene?”
Her brother dropped a glance at the board between them before raising his eyebrows at her. “Beating you at chess? As long as I can. You usually kick my ass. Your mind not on the game today?”
Lily scrunched up her face and balled her fist in front of it. “This. Killing yourself one party, one gig at a time?”
“Ahh, that.” Eugene returned his attention to the chessboard the Hopeton Rehab Centre provided for their regular Friday game. “It was an amazing gig, Ly. You should have been there. We went off. Tall Man heard there was a suit from Psyche Records in the audience and we killed. I’ve never sounded better.”
Lily kept her expression calm. “And was there a rep from Psyche Records there?”
Eugene fingered his rook, his head down. “Don’t know. The guys and I went backstage to celebrate and…” His shoulders rose and fell. “And then I woke up naked on the Golden Gate with one of Tall Man’s…”
His voice faded away. His fingers worried the chess piece.
Lily stared at the top of his head. She knew the rest. Her brother didn’t remember, but she had been the attending paramedic to the 911 call about a naked man unconscious on the side of the south-bound lanes of the bridge.
It wasn’t every workday you found your flesh and blood passed out in a pool of urine and vomit with a drumstick inserted halfway into his rectum. But that’s what had happened, and Lily didn’t think she’d ever erase the image of her brother’s humiliation from her mind. It really did top a very long list of party-induced malarkey—their father’s word, not hers—Eugene indulged in.
“Err…with one of Tall Man’s sticks in my hand,” Eugene finally finished, raising his gaze from the chess game to give her a sheepish grin. “It was a good gig, Ly. We really celebrated.”
Lily stared at his ravished countenance. Hiding behind the devastation of countless excesses was a good-looking guy. A guy who, when he’d first started performing with Zombie Grill, could make women melt with just one slow, crooked smile. That guy would never have shot up or snorted or whatever the hell Eugene had done after the gig knowing there was a label rep in the crowd. That guy would have kept his shit together and schmoozed the suit with charm, sex appeal, intelligence and talent.
That guy, the Eugene Lily had first watched with sibling pride take the stage all those ago, would have been appalled at the guy sitting opposite her now.
The guy sitting opposite her now, in the middle of his fourth rehab session, didn’t look like a twenty-six-year-old who’d once promised his sister he’d never get caught up in the shit that came with the world of rock. The guy sitting opposite her now looked closer to fifty, undernourished and twitchy, the bags under his bloodshot eyes dark, his skin sallow, his dark hair lank and greasy, his teeth yellow.
A guy who hadn’t just been caught up in the crap that came with the rock-music world, but who had plunged into it as deep as he could. Who’d drowned in the decadence and depravity and lurid lifestyle.
That guy kept promising Lily he was going to clean up his act, and yet after each gig Lily knew he was just going to surrender to it all over again.
It was a sickness, she’d decided. The world of the professional performer was a ravenous disease that infected all it touched.
She hated it.
Passionately.
“But I fucked up,” Eugene said, that crooked smile of his pulling at lips more ashen than they should be. “And I won’t do it again. I’m getting clean, Ly. Promise. Getting clean and staying that way, because I’ve heard Nick Blackthorne’s band is looking for a new lead singer, and I was born to be that singer, Ly. Born to.” Her brother held out his arms wide, and Lily’s stomach knotted at the dark blue marks lining the inside of his elbows. “Remember when I met them all back in, fuck, when was it? Six? Seven years ago? Remember when they came to Grill’s second ever live performance and Nick himself came over and told me I really knew how to rock? Remember that? That was fate tellin’ me then it was coming.” He nodded, his grin stretching wider. And then he picked up his queen and slammed it down onto the chessboard. “Checkmate.”
Lily’s heart clenched. “It’s not your turn, Gene,” she murmured.
He reached across the table and cupped her face in his hands. “Yes, it is, Ly.” He squeezed her cheeks like he used to when they were kids. “Yes, it is.”
Lily laughed. She couldn’t help herself. Despite the grief in her soul for her brother’s state, despite her hate for the lifestyle he was caught in, his joyous, infectious excitement—as always—wrapped around her like a warm blanket.
She covered his hands with hers and gave his fingers a gentle squeeze. Perhaps he really would clean up this time. Perhaps a shot at superstardom would keep him away from the shit—the drugs, the parties, the groupies.
After all, Nick Blackthorne had survived the heights of rock world superstardom unscathed, hadn’t he? Lily was sure she’d heard he was living a normal life with his wife in rural Australia now. In fact, didn’t he spend most of his time watching his son play professional soccer for Sydney? Something like that. She was positive she’d read that or heard it somewhere. If Nick Blackthorne had survived it all, maybe Eugene would see how self-destructive the clichéd rock-star life was.
Your logic isn’t making sense, Lily.
She ignored her nagging doubt.
Perhaps, if Eugene landed the role of Nick Blackthorne’s replacement, he’d be too scared of blowing the opportunity to ever get wasted again.
Perhaps.
Yeah, and perhaps he’ll become the world’s first rock-star Pope as well. And play live on Mars. With Elvis as his opening act.
The snarky thought tainted Lily’s wary happiness for her brother. She removed his hands from her face and lowered them to the table either side of the board.
But not before noticing how much they trembled.
“How goes your treatment?” she asked, keeping her voice calm, almost off-hand. She picked up her bishop and slid it across the board.
“Good,” Eugene answered, moving his rook. “We’re trying a different approach this time.”
Lily raised her eyebrows. “What’s that?”
“Cold turkey.”
The answer sent icy dismay into her chest. She’d seen more than one junkie and alcoholic attempt sudden withdrawal from their addiction. It was never pretty.
And rarely successful.
“Is that wise?”
He grinned at her. “It is if I’m getting out of here by Saturday next week.”
“Saturday?”
He smirked. “I didn’t want to tell you until they got here, but Samuel Gibson and Jaxon Campbell are flying out from New York to see me. They called two hours ago.”
Lily blinked. “Who are Samuel Gibson and Jaxon Campbell?”
Eugene’s laugh bounced around the communal visiting room of the rehab clinic. Lily couldn’t miss the suspicious glances his jubilance earned from the attending staff monitoring her time with him. A lick of anger shot through her. She wanted to tell them Eugene’s laughter came from happiness, not some pill or substance she’d slipped him. She was a paramedic, for Christ’s sake. She spent over fifty hours a week doing her best to keep people alive. Did they think she’d sneak something in to her brother when all she wanted with her whole heart was to see him rid of the monkey on his back?
“Samuel Gibson and Jaxon Campbell,” Eugene said, drawing her ire away from the staffs’ speculative contemplation, “are from the band. Nick Blackthorne’s band.”
“And they are coming here? To your rehab?”
A guilty tension pulled at Eugene’s face. “I didn’t tell them I was in rehab. Just gave them the address of where I was.”
Lily closed her eyes and shook her head. “Oh, Gene.”
“I had to, Ly. Honest. I couldn’t let this opportunity get away. Samuel Gibson is a guitar legend, up there with Santana and Eddie Van Halen. He played lead guitar whenever Nick was just singing. Campbell is the keyboardist and holy shit, the things that guy can do. He’s a genius. I gave you his autobiography for your birthday two years ago, remember?” He laughed again. “Guess you didn’t read it, eh?”
Prickling heat spread over Lily’s cheeks. She ducked her gaze to the chessboard.
Eugene knew how much she disliked the rock-music world. Since the first time he’d passed out on their parents’ living room floor after a post-gig party—sixteen years old, naked and stinking of booze—she’d grown to hate it. He’d tried to make her come around, buying her damn near every reformed rocker’s biography, suggesting she watch this documentary or that one, dragging her along to as many of his gigs as he could.
She was resistant to it all. For starters, the women who threw themselves at him whenever he came over to see her in between sets made her feel dirty somehow, as did the way he willingly took what they offered so publicly.
It also didn’t help their parents lived in the same world as he did. Their dad returned home from most shows smelling of scotch, cheap perfume and desperation, with strange panties shoved in his pockets. Their mother existed day-to-day in a red-wine-soaked coma dreaming of the big Broadway break that never came.
Lily did her best to be supportive of her family. She loved them all more than she could ever admit, but watching the lifestyle they lived devour them—of health, of hope, of heart—was hard. And harrowing.
“I didn’t read it,” she confessed. She lifted her gaze back to her brother. “But I—”
The rest of the sentence died in her throat.
Because at that very moment in time, the most stunning man she’d ever seen walked into the communal visiting room.
Oh. My. God.
He strode into the room as if he owned it, all six-foot plus of him. Not even the battered black-leather cowboy hat pulled down low over his face could take away his overt sensual dominance. His body was the perfect specimen of the male species—broad shouldered, wide chested, lean hipped and with long, muscular thighs. The clothes he wore only served to highlight his Adonis stature, the black T-shirt hugging his torso, impressive pecs and very impressive biceps, black leather pants snug enough she could make out the corded strength of his thighs and the large bulge of his—
Lily jerked her eyes upwards, mortified by the fact she was staring at a perfect stranger’s perfect groin.
Her gaze landed on his face and for a second, she forgot to breathe.
Sky-blue eyes regarded her through tousled dark-blond hair, open interest clear in their piercing depths.
Her pulse leapt into a frantic staccato. Her pussy constricted.
“Gibson.” The excitement in Eugene’s mutter tore Lily’s stare from the gorgeous guy. Or maybe it was her brain registering what her brother had said that broke the surreal connection.
“Huh?”
Eugene was twisted in his seat, gaping over his shoulder at the man currently walking towards them. The man only a few feet away, currently looking at her.
“Eugene Pearce?” Her brother’s name flowed from the man’s lips on a relaxed question, a subtle Australian accent playing havoc with Lily’s befuddled brain.
That gorgeous? With that accent? God help me.
The scrape of metal on linoleum reverberated through the quiet visiting room as Eugene jolted to his feet, knocking his chair sideways. “That’s me,” he burst out, wiping his palms on his thighs in furious, downward swipes before thrusting out his right hand. “And you’re Samuel Gibson.”
The man with the mesmerizing blue eyes laughed. “That I am.”
Lily stared at him, her breath shallow. Quick. Her nipples grew into tight points, his accent sexier with each syllable.
And then the penny dropped. Hard. Killing her wildly heated lust for the man in one solid thud.
The guy shaking her brother’s hand was Samuel Gibson.
The guy who had instantly made her sex throb was a rock star. No, not a rock star—a rock legend.
The worst kind of guy imaginable.
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