One Night with Sole Regret 01 Try Me

Try Me

(One Night With Sole Regret
#1)

by

Olivia Cunning

Copyright 2012 Olivia Cunning

Smashwords Edition

Edited by Beth Hill
at
http://www.ANovelEdit.com

Cover Art by Olivia Cunning

All Rights Reserved

Books by Olivia Cunning

Sinners on Tour
Series:

Backstage Pass

Rock Hard

Coming Soon:

Double Time

Hot Ticket

One Night with Sole Regret
Series:

Try Me

Coming Soon:

Take Me

Tempt Me

Lovers’ Leap
Series:

Loving on Borrowed Time

Twice Upon a Time

Writing as Olivia Downing

Defying Destiny

Chapter 1

Melanie caught the gleam in Nikki’s eyes in the
public restroom mirror they shared. Oh crap. She knew that look.
What was the woman scheming now? Melanie was not in the mood to
deal with her drama tonight.

The long drive to Tulsa, followed by a parking
nightmare, overpaying a scalper for tickets, and standing in line
through high winds for two hours had Melanie out of sorts. Okay,
she admitted it; she was downright bitchy. Her hair looked like it
had lost a fight with a raccoon—a rabid raccoon with a powerful
nesting instinct, and her toes, crammed into highly insensible
high-heeled, strappy sandals, felt like they’d were being whacked
with tiny pickaxes wielded by miniature coalminers.

Nikki, on the other hand, looked her typical
polished self, except for the unsettling extra dose of deviousness
in her big blue eyes. Melanie paused with her tube of pink lipstick
halfway to her lips, her Nikki-is-about-to-get-us-into-trouble
alarm sounding in her head.

“What's that look for?” Melanie asked.

“Tonight's the night,” Nikki said. She tucked a
strand of silky chestnut-brown hair behind one ear and turned to
catch her good side in the mirror. Both sides were gorgeous, but
Melanie had never convinced Nikki of that or that she was worth
more than a string of one-night stands with losers.

“That's what you said last night,” Melanie said and
focused her attention back on her lipstick application.

Nikki wrinkled her nose at Melanie’s hair and yanked
a brush from her purse to try to free the nest of raccoons from the
tangled mass.

Good luck with that
.

There was a reason Melanie wore it up most of the
time. Only the sturdiest of hair clips kept the thick and wavy
waist-length tresses under control. Nikki had talked her into
keeping it down tonight, saying that it made her look gorgeous.
Melanie never looked gorgeous when standing next to Nikki—a simple
fact that she’d learn to live with when they’d attended college
together. Men flocked to Nikki. Melanie faded into the background.
She was used to it.

Nikki went at Melanie’s hair with determination and
immediately caught the brush on a tangle of snags. With a sigh of
defeat, she handed her brush to Melanie. Melanie supposed she
should try to calm the mess into something less offensive. She
didn’t want to frighten the band.

"I mean it this time." Nikki rearranged her boobs in
her push-up bra, unfastened another button on her skintight white
blouse to show off more cleavage, and checked out her bad side. "I
almost got back stage last night. If I’m lucky, that cute roadie I
talked to in Wichita will remember me. The band had to leave right
after the show, or I’m sure Jack would’ve introduced us to the guys
last night."

And now they were in Tulsa, trailing after a band
like a pair of desperate Sole Regret groupies. Melanie wasn’t a
serious fan, but she was positive the cute roadie would remember
Nikki. Nikki was the kind of woman men drooled over. Wanted.
Dumped.

Melanie guessed the roadie would ask Nikki for a
sexual favor in exchange for introducing her to the members of her
latest band obsession and Nikki would use sex to get what she
wanted. It saddened Melanie. None of the men who used and discarded
her friend knew how much they hurt her. Melanie already dreaded
having to lift Nikki out of her cloud of self-doubt and despair in
the morning. She didn't understand why Nikki continued to put
herself in these situations. She was a sweet girl. A pretty girl. A
smart
girl. Until she found herself in the company of any
asshole in the music business, then she acted as if she'd been
lobotomized. With only ten lobes to utilize, Nikki had to be
running low on parts by now.

"You are not bailing on me again," Melanie said,
still trying to tame her hair. She was looking less like a
lightning-strike victim already, though her scalp protested each
tug.
Gorgeous, my ass. More like ridiculous.
"I'm not going
to wait for you out in the car while you get laid by some guy who
won't remember your name by the time he blows his load."

"Of course you're not going to wait out in the
car."

Well, at least they agreed on something.

Nikki ran her tongue over her teeth and caught
Melanie's gaze in the mirror. "You're coming with me."

"Oh no, I'm not. I don't even like musicians."
Especially not the tattooed metal-head freaks Nikki lusted after.
Nikki had a serious bad-boy complex. Maybe her father should have
paid more attention to her as a child.

"Please." Nikki clasped her hands together in front
of her chest and managed to make her already wide blue eyes appear
even larger than usual.

"Why would you even ask? You know tattooed guys give
me the creeps."

Nikki shook her head at her. “If you’d take the time
to get to know them, you’d recognize how hot they are.”

Doubtful. Just seeing men with tattoos made
Melanie’s heart race with fear. Her reaction wasn’t intentional.
She’d been scared by a group of bikers when she was a teen. Had she
been older, she probably would’ve recognized they were only teasing
and meant her no harm. But they’d terrified her. Her parents had
intensified her fear by saying she could’ve been kidnapped, raped,
murdered, or worse. She hadn’t even wanted to know what was worse
than being raped and murdered. Her thirteen-year-old mind had
associated her parents’ warnings with men who looked a certain way.
Men like those bikers who’d cornered her in the entryway of an
abandoned storefront.

As she’d been too afraid to actually look at their
faces, all she remembered was their body art and their words. The
one with a skull tattoo had and told her all the lewd things he
wanted to do to her pretty mouth. She hadn’t understood what he’d
meant at the time, but now that she was older, she knew she’d had a
reason to be uneasy and disgusted.

One with a barbed-wire tattoo around his arm had
touched her hair. She’d screamed, and they’d laughed at her, but
ultimately had left her alone. She
knew
that tattoos didn’t
make a person bad, but that incident had left a lasting impression.
Attending rock concerts was an exercise in keeping her fear at bay.
Unfortunately, going to concerts was Nikki’s favorite thing to do,
so Melanie’s fears got a fairly regular workout.

“I don’t want to get to know them; I just want to
stay away from them.”

Nikki wrapped an arm around Melanie’s shoulders and
assessed them in the mirror. "You’ll be fine, Mel. I promise.
Besides, I need you to help me pull off my ruse."

Melanie’s inner alarm clanged even louder. "What
ruse?"

The crowd in the stadium roared with enthusiasm.

"Sole Regret’s set is starting!" Nikki scooped her
cosmetics and hairbrush into her purse, grabbed Melanie by the
wrist, and rushed from the bathroom, nearly knocking a
tough-looking biker woman to the floor in her haste.

"Watch it, bitch."

"Sorry," Melanie said as she was yanked into the
stadium's causeway, her heels clicking rapidly on the cement.

There were many benefits of being friends with
Nikki. She was fun. Afraid of nothing. Men liked her. So while they
started out at the back of general admission, with several dozen
coy looks, a bit of exposed cleavage, and some well-placed hands on
the male metal-heads in the crowd, Nikki miraculously managed to
work her way to the area just in front of the stage without being
punched in the face. Melanie was allowed to join her only because
Nikki refused to release her wrist. Along the barrier fence in
front of the stage, Melanie purposely positioned herself between
two women and turned away from the man hanging over the railing.
The thrusting of his fist in the air drew attention to the skull
tattoo on his forearm. One glimpse of that bit of body art had the
hair on the back of her neck standing on end. Melanie forced her
attention to the stage to keep her gaze from straying to the man’s
arm.

She supposed she should be excited to be so close to
the stage, but Melanie much preferred stadium seats to the pit. She
liked to listen to the music, not defend herself from injury. The
pit was hot and sweaty: crowded, loud, lewd, and dangerous. Nikki
called it exciting. Melanie called it painful. Nikki spent the next
forty-five minutes trying to get the attention of the band's lead
singer; Melanie spent her time avoiding elbows in the face by two
enthusiastic fangirls and keeping the guy behind her from squishing
her against the metal bars of the barrier fence and prodding her in
the ass with his junk. How could Nikki enjoy this?

Melanie watched the lead singer—the current object
of Nikki’s obsession–prowl the front of the stage. He could’ve been
a gorgeous man. Tattoos ruined his otherwise good looks. Had he
been dressed in a nice suit and discussing philosophy instead of
wearing ripped denim and screaming something about descending into
Hell, Melanie might have admired the wide cut of his shoulders and
his strong, handsome profile. But, yeah, the ink completely turned
her off. She wondered what color his eyes were. He had yet to take
off his sunglasses. The stage lights were blinding, but she figured
the shades were part of his image. He’d worn them onstage the night
before, too, and by the way the two fangirls were screeching
Shaaaaade
every time he stalked in their direction, she
assumed he’d been named after his fondness for eyewear. Melanie had
a heck of a time keeping the names of the band members straight
even though Nikki had gone on and on and
on
about them on
the drive down from Wichita.

Melanie did enjoy watching Shade and the other band
members interact with the crowd and each other. The bassist was
surprisingly popular with the audience; Melanie found most bass
players to be obscure by default. This one had a softer look than
the two guitarists— handsome, even features, a
normal
haircut sans black dye, a perpetual smile, and gentle eyes. Had he
not decorated his every inch of his hard-muscled arms with tattoos
and bore piercings in his eyebrow and lip, Melanie might not have
crossed the street if he’d approached her in public. Why did these
men insist on destroying their looks with permanent accessories? It
was a damn shame.

The lead guitarist, who had an inordinate fondness
for black, was big on chains and trying to upstage the vocalist.
They competed for the crowd’s affection with an active rivalry. The
rhythm guitarist, who had a gorgeous mane of long, straight hair
and no shirt—much to the delight of any female who didn’t mind a
fully inked torso—mocked the competing stage hogs behind their
backs. The bassist found his antics so hilarious that he had to
pause a few times to catch his breath from laughing so hard.
Melanie doubted she would’ve noticed the nuances of their dynamic
from stadium seats, so at least she had something interesting to
watch as she tried to convince the guy behind her that her ass was
off limits and not designed as a pincushion for his boner.

Near the end of the final song of their set list—the
same set list they’d played the night before—the lead singer hopped
off the stage and walked the narrow path on the other side of the
barrier fence, slapping hands with fans in the front row as he
passed them. Nikki used Melanie for leverage so she could stretch
her body into Shade’s path. She got a hand on his skintight
T-shirt, but was unable to keep her hold as he blazed past. He
returned to the stage just as the song ended on a long, wailing
guitar note.

“I touched him,” Nikki squealed excitedly and
covered her mouth with her rock-god-blessed hand.

“Congratulations,” Melanie said.

“God, I want him.”

“What about the rest of the band? They’re all
totally your type.”

“They’re my backup plan, but Shade is the one I
really want.” Nikki’s eyes rolled upward, and Melanie suspected she
was in the throes of an orgasm. Melanie took a deep breath and
shook her head at her friend. What was the appeal?