Page 74 of Claimed By the Rockstars: Part One
Phoenix points at Rex with a cream-covered paper towel. "If you murder him and dump his body in the woods, I'm not helping you hide the evidence. Not this time."
"Noted," Rex says without inflection.
"This time?" I echo.
"He's joking," Rafael says quickly.
Rex is already heading for the door. I grab a donut—vanilla with rainbow sprinkles, my favorite—and follow him, licking the frosting off my fingers while while trying to ignore the way Rafael and Phoenix are both tracking the movement.
What the fuck?
The elevator ride down is silent. Rex stands with his back to the corner, arms crossed, that single visible eye fixed on the doors like they might open and reveal the gates of hell. I lean against the opposite wall, studying him when he's not looking.
He isn't wearing bandages under the mask today. Or if he is, they're not as extensive as the ones he came home in. Maybe they'd just overdone the coverage to conceal his scars while he was in the hospital. But I can still see the slight tension in his jaw, the way he favors his left side. He's still healing.
Wounded or not, Rex is still the most intense fucking alpha I've ever encountered in my life.
"So," I say around my last mouthful of donut. Shit, I should've brought a napkin. I settle for licking my fingers off, acutely aware of the tightening of his jaw and the slight shift of his pupil as he watches me out of the corner of his eye without actually looking at me. "Are you going to murder me? Is that what this is about?"
"If I wanted to murder you," Rex says, still staring straight ahead, "I wouldn't need to leave the building to do it."
"That's... not as reassuring as you think it is."
His lips quirk. Just barely, but it's there. A ghost of amusement that makes him seem almost human for half a second.
"How are you feeling?" The question slips out before I can stop it.
His eye flicks to me this time, but he doesn't turn his head. "Fine."
"Liar."
He doesn't respond.
"Shit, give mesomethingto work with," I mutter, following him out of the elevator when the doors slide open. "It's like talking to a statue. Makes me feel like a fucking dumbass."
His eye flicks to me again, then back ahead. "Why do you want to talk to me?" he asks in that flat, bored tone that only ever changes when he's emotional. So far, the only emotions I've seen from Rex are annoyed, pissed, anddeluxepissed.
I start counting off my fingers. "We're bandmates, I sleep in your room, now I sleep in your fuckingbed?—"
"You can sleep in Rafael's room if it means you'll leave me alone," he replies, but there's a slight edge of dry humor to his voice that wasn't there before. He blows a puff of air through his nose. Never knew breathing could sound sarcastic. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to befriend me."
"That would be better than enemies, wouldn't it?" I challenge him. "Then we could stop fighting constantlyandyou could get revenge on Stephen."
The mention of Stephen's name makes his jaw tick. "We're never going to befriends, Bells."
"Not with that attitude," I mutter, snorting.
The parking garage is dim and echoing, our footsteps bouncing off concrete walls. Rex leads me to a black sedan that's more understated than I was expecting. I don't know why I pictured a bright red convertible to the point I was almost looking for it. Rex is flashy as fuck onstage, but now that I'm thinking about it, when he isn't performing, he acts like he'd rather not be noticed.
I slide into a buttery-smooth leather seat on the passenger's side and Rex slides in beside me, the masked side facing me, impassive and solemn. The engine purrs to life. He drives in total silence, one hand holding the wheel loosely, fingers barely brushing it, the other resting on his thigh.
No music. No conversation. Just the sound of Seattle rain pattering on the windshield and the foggy city waking up around us with the occasional honk and tires squealing on wet roads.
We head east, away from downtown, toward the outskirts where buildings give way to trees. The roads get narrower, more winding, remote enough that there are no guardrails between the car and drop-offs that seem to go on forever into the fog like we're driving into the clouds.
"Are you taking me to be sacrificed?" I ask dryly, only half-joking.
"Yes," Rex says, deadpan. "To the devil."
