Title:
Insider (Exodus End #1)
Release
Date: June 30, 2015
Toni
wants to be an insider.
Logan
just wants inside her.
She’s
finally ready to rock...
Toni
Nichols set aside her dreams to raise her little sister, but now
she's reaching for the stars as the creator of a
revolutionary interactive biography about Exodus End. She’s
on tour with the rock band to immerse herself in their world, but how
will she ever gain the trust of four veteran superstars who've
been burned by the media before? Nobody said this was going to be
easy. Then again, good things can come in hard
packages.
He's
always ready to roll…
Adrenaline
junkie Logan Schmidt lives for the rush of playing his bass guitar
before thousands of screaming fans. When he's not performing
onstage or in the bedroom, he's looking for his next thrill
in extreme sports. So why does a sweet, innocent journalist get his
heart pumping and capture his full attention? Is Toni the real deal
or just digging up dirt on his band? Logan’s eager to rock
Toni’s world and roll her in the sack, but when she starts
to get too close to his heart, she takes her insider look to a place
he may never be willing to go.
“Have
a seat, Toni,” Dare offered. He stood and took a gym bag
from her hand. He set it on the floor next to the spot he’d
vacated, making it clear that Toni should sit next to Logan on the
sofa. Logan loved the guy. Such a thoughtful son of a bitch.
Toni’s dark eyes, hidden behind a pair of thick-rimmed
glasses, scanned the interior of the bus as if searching for refuge.
Apparently the seat next to Logan was not it. Dare plopped himself
down in the only available recliner and extended the leg rest, as if
he had no intention of moving for the
night.
“Th-thanks,”
Toni said, pushing her glasses up her nose with one trembling
hand.
Logan
wasn’t sure what she was so nervous about all of a sudden.
She’d seemed perfectly at ease when they’d been
interacting with their fans. Perhaps she’d taken his
comment about a lamb in a den of wolves to heart. He’d only
been teasing, but he found her skittishness endearing in a world
where most women threw all inhibitions to the wind when in the
presence of any member of his band, much less all four of
them.
The bus
rumbled as it rolled forward. They were on the road again.
Toni’s hands flew out as the unexpected movement threw her
off balance.
She
plopped down beside Logan, perching on the edge of a cushion as if
the sofa’s back was made of shards of glass. Logan was
pretty sure she was looking for the emergency exit. Her gaze settled
on Butch, who was standing next to their driver and running over a
strict schedule detailing how to get them to their next show in time
while making a promotional stop between venues. Their schedule never
had an inch of give. Their manager, Sam, was a genius when it came to
getting the band the most exposure, but he had the tendency to
believe that because they were a metal band, they were made of iron.
They didn’t require useless things like down time and
rest.
“So
tell us more about this book,” Dare said, which was
apparently the exact right thing to say to Toni, because her unease
evaporated instantly.
“Have
you seen the new interactive electronic textbooks?” she
asked, her eager gaze moving from Dare to Max to
Steve.
Logan was
very conscious of the fact that she didn’t look at him
once. He’d thought their attraction was mutual, but maybe
not. He scooted several inches closer to her because he saw something
he wanted and wasn’t one to sacrifice his personal needs
for the greater good.
“Textbooks?”
Steve asked. “Like for school and
shit?”
“Yeah,
that’s usually where textbooks are used,” she
said, a teasing grin on her lush lips. When no one laughed, her face
fell. Logan forced a guffaw about five seconds too late. That got his
bandmates laughing. Not at Toni’s understated joke. They
were laughing at his blatant stupidity. Nothing new
there.
“I
can’t say I’ve even seen a textbook since high
school,” Steve said.
“These
new interactive ones are amazing. Each topic has videos and pictures
and links. It presents the information in a way that gets students
who are used to constant entertainment excited about
learning.”
“So
you’re writing a textbook about us?” Dare asked,
brows drawn together in a confused scowl.
“What
kind of textbook would that be? A manual on mayhem and
debauchery?” Toni cringed when no one laughed at that joke
either.
Logan
guffawed five seconds too late again. He was going to have to pay
really close attention to what she said to figure out when she was
joking. He didn’t think she lacked a sense of humor, she
just looked serious. She’d definitely fit in better at a
library than at standup-comedy night.
“The
publishing company I work for designs and distributes these
interactive textbooks,” she said. “Samuel Baily
approached us to make an interactive book about the band, the first
of its kind. He’s very forward
thinking.”
That got
the band laughing. “You might say that,” Max
said. “Sometimes he’s a bit too forward thinking.
He’s got every minute of our schedules booked for the next
eighteen years. He thinks we’re robots or
something.”
Toni’s
eyes bulged. “Eighteen years?” she muttered under
her breath.
Surely
she knew Max was joking, so why did she look so unsettled? Wondering
if he could make her blush again, Logan scooted a few more inches
closer to her. His knee brushed her thigh, and she yanked on her
skirt. Other than her hands and face, not an inch of bare flesh was
showing. He wasn’t sure exactly what she was trying to
conceal. Maybe she wasn’t open to his attempts to seduce
her. Which made her a challenge. Which, like her tits, he
couldn’t resist. Or maybe she had a nice boyfriend at home.
His loss.
“Speaking
of robots,” Steve said. “How are the prototypes
of our androids coming?”
“Good
until they tried to replicate my dick and ran out of
materials,” Logan said.
Toni’s
sudden intake of breath made him grin. That
shocked her? Seriously? Too easy.
“If
they ran out of materials, it had to be due to Max’s giant
forehead,” Steve said.
“Or
your enormous feet,” Max
countered.
Toni
grabbed a pad of paper out of her bag and started writing furiously.
Logan leaned against her shoulder to read what had her so excited.
She was writing down their conversation. In the margin, she wrote:
Keep video camera close at hand when all band members are
together. They’re
hilarious.
He was
close enough to feel her body heat and inhale the sweet fragrance of
her fruity shampoo. He wondered if she tasted as sweet as she
smelled.
“For
the record,” Logan said in her ear as he pointed toward her
notes, “I was the one with the big
dick.”
Toni
leaped from the sofa as if it were on fire. Her gaze darted from one
guy to the next, and she pushed her glasses up her nose with the back
of her wrist. God, he wanted to take those glasses off, take those
clothes off, and do things to her. Naughty, devious, delicious
things.
The twin
bumps poking against her shapeless turtleneck drew Logan’s
attention.
Hard
nipples? Did his crassness turn her on? That was all the
encouragement he needed to behave inappropriately. Visible nipples
also meant that her bra was not padded. There was so much win in
that, he should have her name engraved on a
trophy.
“What’s
wrong?” Logan asked. “I won’t bite. But
I will nibble. And suck. And lick.”
She
stared at him with her mouth agape and her eyes wide. Her nipples
strained against her sweater, begging him to do all those things and
more to the tips of those luscious melons.
She
glanced down at her tits and immediately crossed her arms over her
chest. “Is, um, there a bathroom I can
use?”
“At
the back of the bus,” Dare said, nodding his head toward
the end of the corridor.
“Don’t
take a dump in there,” Steve said. “We stop at
rest areas to do that business.”
Face
flaming, she sucked in a deep breath, turned, and sprinted to the
back of the bus. She fumbled with the closet door and when it popped
open, a stack of towels that had shifted during transit tumbled out
and pummeled her in the face.
Logan
climbed to his feet to rescue her. He decided to take it easy on her
for the moment. He wouldn’t want to traumatize her so much
she decided to leave. They both bent to pick up the same towel at the
same time and bumped heads. They jerked apart and rubbed their heads
in unison. Toni looked up at him, her brown, doe-like eyes watery
with tears. He wasn’t sure if they were tears of pain or
humiliation, but seeing them in her eyes did strange things to his
chest. He wasn’t sure why it was suddenly
tight.
“It’s
okay,” he said, deciding that though it was fun to tease
her, he’d better tone it down a bit. She obviously
wasn’t used to it, and he didn’t want to harass a
woman who wasn’t receptive to provocative flirting. He
hadn’t intended to upset her, just wanted to have a little
fun and get under that conservative skirt of hers. “I’ll
get the towels, Toni. You go ahead and do your business.”
He opened the bathroom door for her.
She
lowered her hand from her forehead to reveal a large reddened
bump.
Logan
winced and leaned forward to press his lips to the lump. She sucked a
startled breath into her chest. Shit. There he went crossing the line
again.
“Sorry,”
he murmured. “I always kiss
boo-boos.”
“I
have a pimple on my ass that needs kissing,” Steve
called.
Logan
closed his eyes and shook his head. “One of the things you
should consider stressing in your book is how little fucking
privacy a man has while on tour with his
band.”
“I
can include that,” she said, “but I think fans
are more interested in the size of your dick.” She backed
into the bathroom. “I know I am.” She bit her lip
before closing the door in his face.
Combining
her love for romantic fiction and rock 'n roll, USA Today
Best-Selling Author Olivia Cunning writes erotic romance centered
around rock musicians.
Raised on hard rock music from the
cradle, she attended her first Styx concert at age six and fell
instantly in love with live music. She's been known to travel
over a thousand miles just to see a favorite band in concert. As a
teen, she discovered her second love, romantic fiction -- first,
voraciously reading steamy romance novels and then penning her
own.
She’s
earned the devoted love of not only one, but two spectacular men. Her
committed threesome with sexy guitarist Trey Mills and her hunky
bodyguard Ethan Conner is stable, loving, deep, and satisfying for
all involved.
She’s
earned the devoted love of not only one, but two spectacular men. Her
committed threesome with sexy guitarist Trey Mills and her hunky
bodyguard Ethan Conner is stable, loving, deep, and satisfying for
all involved.
