"What do you want?"

A finger slicked across my bottom lip. "You need a bib," Eliza laughed.

I snickered, shooting him a dirty look. "Leave me alone. You don't see me raining on your parade when you're flirting with girls."

He started to say something else, but Sacha started talking into the microphone about some guy in the audience wearing a Christmas hat and how Christmas was his favorite holiday. "But it's not my favorite day in the year," he said with a smile at the crowd.

Eli leaned into me. "It's steak and BJ day."

I leaned away from him, smirking. "That's your favorite holiday," I told him, earning an excited nod in response.

The opening rift of one of their songs swept through the venue as Sacha stood on one of the floor speakers and pressed the microphone against his lips. "December 2nd!" he screamed into it before the loud crash of the drums signaled the rest of the song.

What in the hell was happening?

"My birthday? Is he gay?” Eli asked me with a confused look on his face.

I punched him in the stomach just for being an idiot.

Chapter Seventeen

It was the bang, bang, bang on the door that scared the shit out of me.

The fact that it was two o’clock in the morning only added to what-the-hell-is-happening panic that burned through my thoughts.

We’d gotten back to the hotel an hour ago. It was long enough for me to shower and begin to wind down from the hectic sold-out show in Perth. The fact that half the dates in Australia were sold out was both exciting and daunting.

Mostly exciting. Australians had the sexiest accents I’d ever heard. Whoo.

“Who is it?” I called out a little hesitantly, wishing I had a knife or a bat or at least a rock I could chuck nearby. Then again, every room around mine had one of the guys on the tour in it. If I yelled loud enough someone would come, right?

Eh. I could use a lamp if push came to shove.

Someone—or something?—scratched at the door lightly.

Jesus Christ. “Seriously, who is it?”

There was more scratching.

Damn it! “Eli, I swear to God—”

A loud laugh pierced through the door. “It’s me.”

Me.

Sassy.

I groaned and grumbled climbing off the bed. “Damn it, Sacha. Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“Yes.”

Yeah, I rolled my eyes, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t greedily sucking up the attention, especially after what he’d said during The Cloud Collision’s set. His favorite day was my birthday? That wasn’t him calling me cute or saying something else along those lines. So what the hell did it mean? What the hell did it mean, damn it?

It wasn’t like I could talk to any of the monsters, or even Carter, about it. It also wasn’t as if I could hop onto Skype and get Laila’s input because of the time difference. This wasn’t an e-mail-worthy conversation; it required a face-to-face conversation.

I had no one.

So…

I wasn’t going to bring it up and possibly make our friendship awkward until I could figure out how I was supposed to handle what he’d said and might have meant.

“One sec, Sassy pants,” I said in the middle of turning the deadbolt. I’d barely cracked the door when his smiling face greeted me. “Hi.”

“Princess,” he said with a long blink of his cool-colored eyes as he pushed the door open and slid inside.

He toed off his shoes the instant after he’d kicked the door closed. Before I'd even locked it, he was climbing onto my bed and reclining against the headboard. My mind said, “Danger!” But my ovaries screamed, “Naked! Now!”