Title:
Insider (Exodus End
#1)
Author:
Olivia
Cunning
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.
“Um . . .”
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.
REVIEW
Toni is ready to set out on her own and find her way. She has raised her sister since Toni was 15, and she even dropped out of regular school and did all of her schooling online to get her college degree. When she is able to land the job of her dreams, creating an virtual biography of one of the world's best rock bands, she knows this is what she needs to do for herself. What she doesn't count on is her immediate chemistry with Logan, the bassist for the band. What was supposed to be something it get rid of her virginity and help her find her way turns into a great love story that doesn't let you down with drama and sex.
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.
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