Undeniable Read online

  Undeniable

  The Unexpected Trilogy Companion #4

  Nicole R. Taylor writing as

  Amity Cross

  Undeniable (Unexpected#4) by Amity Cross

  Copyright © 2014 Amity Cross / Nicole R. Taylor

  Kindle Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All song titles, song lyrics, products and band names mentioned in this book are the property of the sole copyright owners.

  Cover Design: © Nicole R. Taylor

  Contents

  One – Joe

  Two – Alexis

  Three – Joe

  Four – Alexis

  Five – Joe

  Six – Alexis

  Seven – Joe

  Eight – Alexis

  Nine – Joe

  Ten – Alexis

  Eleven – Joe

  Twelve – Alexis

  Thirteen – Joe

  Fourteen – Alexis

  Fifteen - Joe

  About Amity

  See that I'm losing my heart, It's never seen the likes of you

  Bright lights of night, That burn into my soul

  Don't worry, I'll find you, I've never been gone

  The view from here is Undeniable

  - from The Devil’s Tattoo by Nicole R. Taylor

  Joe

  Joe Fox was a floater. I was a coaster on the coffee table of life.

  I was in a highly successful band, I did what I loved for a living and then some, but I just went with the flow. I knew my hard limits down to the wire and stuck to them like superglue. I never went further than I had to and never went out of my way to make something happen. Shit happened for me.

  Affliction was the band of the moment and through the flurry of gigs, fans and media, I was the eye of it all. I was the voice of reason, the calm in the storm. Sometimes it made me want to stab myself in the eye with a rusty fork.

  I had the money and the opportunities, but the fame part didn't swallow me as much as the other guys. Being the bass player meant I was practically invisible. I could stand there and pick my nose or stick my hand down the front of my pants and play with my dick and nobody would notice. All eyes were on the front man, my best mate, Jake West. His life was the roller coaster, not mine.

  I could walk through the door of a hotel and the paps would only give me a few snaps and a cursory glance. I could sit at an airport at the gate with everyone else without having to hide in the lounge. I could go out to a restaurant with minimal fuckwattage. I could go about my business without making headlines.

  So, why did it piss me the fuck off? Because through all his fuck ups and addictions, Jake could still come out the other side with a happy ending and smelling like his shit don't stink.

  Dumping my duffle bag at my feet, I glanced up at the screen that listed all the different flights and their gate numbers. Heathrow was London's busiest airport and you'd think someone would look at me with a little bit of recognition, but all I was getting was the stink eye. I was nothing but a six-foot, buff, tattooed tough guy to them. People thought I'd snap them in half if they looked at me the wrong way.

  This time I wasn't going to meet the guys for another tour or recording stint, I was going to Melbourne. Affliction was on a break, the first substantial one we'd had in seven years and I had no fucking idea what to do with it. Jake had finally gotten a hold of his drug problems, gotten his girl back and Mick and Rob, well, they had places of their own to go. And what did I have? Zip. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Nobody to go back to other than to see my parents out on their farm, but I wasn't ready to go home home yet.

  Facing three to six months on my own in my apartment in Sydney wasn't something I was looking forward to. So, Melbourne it was. I didn't mind Sydney, it was where I lived between tours and recording, but Melbourne was good for new music. I'd stick around a week or two, catch some local bands, dick around, have some solo time, then I'd go home.

  Finally spotting my gate number, I picked up my bag and weaved my way through the terminal, past all the shops and slow walking tourists. Out of all the fucking people in the world, there wasn't one for me? My lack of direction outside of Affliction should've scared me more than it did. If the band ended, I had nothing.

  Sliding into the first seat available at the gate, I stretched out my legs and watched the people around me. Couples, singles, families going home or going on holiday. All kinds of nationalities sat around me as was substandard for an airport.

  My gaze instantly settled on a woman a few rows over from me. I mean, I couldn't not look at her. She was sitting on the floor with her back against the big metal support beam that ran between the panes of floor to ceiling glass, a knee up to her chest and the other leg stretched out in front of her. Huge headphones sat over her ears, long straight black hair flipped over one shoulder. There was this grungy, effortless rock look to her that floated my boat right to the surface and toward the fucking sky.

  She was writing furiously in a notebook while everyone around her was nose deep in their tablets and smartphones. I'm sure even I'd forgotten what it felt like using a real life fucking pen outside of signing autographs. That's what caught my attention first, which was a mind-fuck right there. Usually, I'd be checking out her tits and ass, and then calibrating the amount of suction she'd be able to get with her full, pouty lips. I never stared at a woman for more than a minute before getting her attention. This time, it had been at least five, which was some kind of high score. That's when she pulled her teeth against the skin of her bottom lip and began worrying it, like she'd gotten to a hard bit in whatever she was writing down. Hard was the most important word in that sentence.

  I'd looked at beautiful women before and felt my cock turn itself to the on position, but I'd never looked at someone and had it harden in t-minus zero point one seconds. And she hadn't even glanced my way once. Fucking fucked up shit that was.

  An announcement boomed overhead and people started moving to line up at the gate, boarding passes and passports in hand. The woman glanced up at the movement around her and tugged off her headphones. There was pretty, fuck there was even beautiful, and then there was her. As she stood and went to join the line, I let my gaze wander all over, absorbing all the parts that I couldn't see while she was sitting down. She had on one of those oversized jumpers, so I couldn't get a good look at her ass, but from the rest of her, I knew it'd be perfect. I stared until the flight attendant scanned her boarding pass and then she was gone, disappearing through the doors.

  Hissing through my teeth, I shook my head. Had I suddenly reverted to a fucking thirteen year old? Staring at women and getting instant boners. Fuck that shit.

  The line was getting smaller, so I joined the end. I had a business class ticket, but there was something about sitting on a plane for longer than I had to that got my goat. I travelled most of the year and having two feet on the ground was better than being caged in a pressurized cabin for hours on end.

  When I reached the head of the line, the woman at the gate took my boarding pass. "You didn't have to wait, sir," she said, nodding to the business and first class line.

  I gave her a wink and she smiled brightly at me. "I know. I prefer to keep my feet on the ground for as long as possible."

  Her eyelashes fluttered at me and it was the boos
t I needed. I still had it. Fuck that woman who couldn't look at me. Fuck her. Shit, I wanted to do more than just fuck her. A dirty image flashed through my mind and I grinned to myself. It was past time to schedule a little fun once I got to Melbourne.

  Finally looking at the seating assignment on my pass, I grimaced. Aisle seat. Going by how my day was panning out, I'd get stuck next to some suit douchwad who kept their laptop open the entire flight with the brightest screen setting and wanted to get up to take a piss every half hour. I just wanted to sit back, close my eyes and forget the nothing I was going to have to face for the next fuck knows how long. I'd slide a couple of fifties to the flight attendant and get the drinks coming one after the other until I was too numb to give a fuck.

  Finally getting onto the plane, I found my spot, took out some reading material and shoved my bag into the overhead compartment. Dumping my pile of magazines onto the seat, a pair of green eyes looked up at me and my breath did this stupid hitching thing. It was the woman I'd been blatantly staring at in the terminal, the one who hadn't even glanced my way and now she was looking at me with her come fuck me eyes. Realization hit me then like a ton of bricks - I'd be sitting next to her for the next thirteen hours.

  She frowned and looked away like I was some kind of crazy person and I snapped out of it. Picking up the magazines, I slid into my seat and peered at the woman out the corner of my eye. She had her notebook in her lap, one leg tucked under the other, and headphones around her neck. Fuck me, she even smelt good…and she'd finally looked at me with her big green eyes.

  My cock seemed to have a mind of it's own and I felt it begin to stiffen. Fuck, I'd have to do a mile high beat off in the toilet the moment the seatbelt sign flipped off. Shit, when did I last get off? It was a week ago, right before all the shit blew up with Jake and Blair in London. Kinda seemed low priory, finding a hole to sick your dick in when your best mate was going through a crisis that crossed multiple time zones.

  Then, in typical guy fashion, my mind went straight to the gutter. I hadn't fucked in a plane before, but Jake had. Jake had fucked a lot of women in awkward places. He said planes sucked the worst. Somehow, I didn't care. I wanted to fuck this woman over and over and all she'd done was glance at me.

  Shit, thirteen hours next to that. What the hell did I do to deserve this fucking torture?

  Alexis

  Airplanes sucked big hairy balls.

  Shrinking into my oversized business class seat, I hugged my notebook and pen to my chest. Planes were cold, noisy and smelt funny. Every time I sat on one waiting for take off, which wasn't often, I prayed for the miracle of teleportation. That was a fantasy, but fantasy was the one thing I was good at. The one thing that brightened my dull existence.

  In real life I was Alexis Broadbridge, but that didn't really translate to a book cover, which was what I did for a living these days. It was boring and plain, which was exactly what and who I was. When I let my imagination fly and my inner smut queen come out, I was sexy and wild Alexis Storm, best-selling Erotic Romance author. Simply put, I was better on paper than I would ever be in real life.

  I'd been in London for a book signing and before that, one in Edinburgh and one in Dublin. My publisher sat me at a table, people who loved my smutty stories came and I signed books for them, answered a few questions and said clever things about orgasms. I'd rather be locked away with my laptop than dealing with that annoying thing called real life, but it was in my spectacular multiple zeroed advance laden contract. I got to go to three amazing cities most expenses paid, so I really shouldn't be a child about it. At the end of the day, writing suited me down to the ground. I hated people and they hated me…unless I played the part of Alexis Storm. Capiche?

  A stack of magazines were dumped unceremoniously into the seat next to me and I glanced up and into the face of pure sex. The man who stood in the aisle staring down at me was, for lack of a better word, hot. Seriously, I was a writer and I couldn't think of a better word than hot? My synapses were currently miss-firing and I realized I was staring like a slack jawed yokel.

  He was staring right back and I turned away before he could think I was some kind of hussy wanting to get in his pants. He probably had a lot of things in his pants looking like that. He slid into the seat next to mine and, I tried to ignore him, but I felt his eyes boring a hole into the side of my face. When he began fiddling with his seatbelt, I chanced another look.

  He looked rough around the edges, a kind of masculine rawness that I usually wrote about, not experienced in real life. Dark, almost black hair that hung in his eyes and begged to be pulled in the throes of passion, a thin coating of stubble on his jaw and what looked like brown eyes. I couldn't tell exactly what color they were, because I was too chicken shit to look directly at him. But he was sitting next to me, smelling like...smelling like a man, and I couldn't understand the instant want I felt moistening between my legs. Fuck, this shit only happened in books. The instant knicker soaking and the crackling air. It was a plot device…wasn't it?

  He looked like a model from one of those hot fireman calendars, the ones where buff naked guys had things strategically placed over their dicks. Mr. November. The month dedicated to anticipation. Yeah, he'd be Mr. November.

  Like he knew I was staring, he glanced up and our eyes met. There was the shit I wrote about in my novels, the instant connections, the electricity in the air, constricting pussies and throbbing cocks and then there was real life. A smirk pulled at his lips and I rolled my eyes and looked away. My characters might like an easy lay, but I wasn't one of my characters. That thing about being better on paper? Yeah, that.

  "Hey." His voice was deep and had a little rasp to it, like he hadn't spoken to anyone all day.

  I looked at him again, wondering how he was going to do it. If he was going to do it. It was my business to know about the subtle art of picking up. If he had a line, I knew the perfect come back, but something told me that I was in uncharted territory.

  "Hey," I replied slowly and he smiled again.

  He didn't speak to me again, not until the plane had taken off, reached cruising altitude and the seatbelt sign was switched off. At least, not until I caught him staring at me and this time he didn't look away. A lazy smile appeared on his handsome face and I felt myself swooning.

  "Hey," he said. The only word I'd heard him speak.

  "Hey."

  "What do you do?" he asked, like his curiosity had gotten the better of him.

  "I write," I said, holding my notebook closer. My book of ideas, my book full of stuff, my book full of my inner sexual deviant. I couldn't let Mr. November read that. By the look of him, he already knew how to do it all. God, was it hot in here?

  "I can see that." He nodded at the notebook.

  "What do you do?" I asked to distract him.

  "I'm a musician."

  I glanced at the stack of magazines in his lap and realized they were all music related. Guitar whatever, Rolling Stone, NME, Uncut. "For a living?"

  "Yep." He looked me over, making my lady bits ache. "You write for a living?" He asked it just as disbelievingly as I had.

  "Yep." I popped the 'p' at the end to signal my annoyance and he began laughing, a deep rumble that charged the air even further.

  "You're feisty, aren't you?"

  His question hit the button on my dash marked 'asshole'. "No shit."

  "You always this friendly?"

  "You've got this look about you," I said, gesturing up and down his body.

  "Look?" His eyebrows rose.

  "Hot, tattooed, bad boy."

  "And me being hot pisses you off?"

  "Your assumptions piss me off."

  "And what assumption is that?" He straightened up in his seat, brows knitted together in a frown.

  "The assumption that all you have to do is look at a woman and she spreads herself for you."

  His eyebrows rose and he blew out a sharp hiss of air. "You're an observant little thing. You seem to have
gotten me down to the crossed t's and dotted i's."

  I narrowed my eyes, totally baffled at my sudden hostility. "You keep staring at me."

  "You don't like being appreciated?"

  "Appreciated? Visually, like something to eat? I'm a person."

  He bit his lower lip and his hands tightened around the armrests. "I didn't mean to piss you off," he said after a moment.

  "I really have to sit next to you for another ten hours?"

  "Is it the worst thing in the world?" He grinned at me, leaning a little closer than was proper.

  Honestly, I was feeling a little satisfied with our conversation. I was playing the part of Alexis Storm, no holes barred, challenging a swoon worthy tattooed guy who looked like he stepped right out of one of my novels...and it was exhilarating.

  "You are nice to look at-" He went to open his mouth, but I said, "When you shut your mouth."

  "Good thing I don't need words," he said, rising to the challenge.

  "My legs are welded together," I bit out at him and went to pull my headphones on, but he reached out and grabbed the iPod from my lap. A little too close to the sweet spot for my liking and I felt that tingle of desire in all the right places.

  "Hey," I cried, reaching out to snatch the iPod from him, but he held it out of reach and began scrolling through it. Suddenly, I wondered if my tastes were up to scratch.

  "Are you in a band?" I asked, kind of shocked at the blatant questions that were dribbling out my slack jawed mouth. Straight through the filter.

  "Yes." He glanced up at me with a sly smile and turned his attention back to the iPod.

  "Do I have any of your songs?"

  "Yes."

  "Is that a good thing?"

  "If you bought 'em, yeah."

  I got the feeling he was a player. Hedging around personal questions, biting back, filling his words with innuendo. Anything to not make it personal…and that only made me want to know more about him. It was like forbidden fruit and fuck, did I want to sink my teeth into him.