Exclusive Extra: Bonus Short Story featuring Noah and Kit

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GIANT SPOILER WARNING: Please save this short story to read after you read Rock Redemption (unless you don't mind spoilers, in which case, enjoy!).

Sunshine

By Nalini Singh

Noah’s mouth fell open as David brought a bright pink Ferrari to a stop in front of Noah and Kit’s home. “What the fuck man?” he said as the drummer slid out, a smiling Thea getting out on the other side.

“You like it?” David petted the top of the car with an adoring hand. “She runs like a dream. I couldn’t help myself when I saw her in the showroom.”

Blinking, Noah looked from David to Thea, then back to the glaring travesty parked in the drive. “I seriously have no words.” He walked to the car, looked inside. “Christ, it’s baby pink inside too! Oh man, are those diamantes on the dash?” What a horrible fate to befall a crouching beast of a machine.

It had been ruthlessly neutered.

Noah’s own balls ached in sympathy.

“Yes,” Thea said, peering at him through the open window on the other side, her silky black hair falling over the shoulders of her short-sleeved white top and her sunglasses big and dramatic. “The pink inside was extra. Special detailing you know.”

Noah’s eyes narrowed. Rising to his full height, he looked at David, caught the other man with a suspiciously bland look on his face. “Funny.” He punched his bandmate on the arm. “Where the hell did you get the hideous abomination?”

Shoulders shaking as his laughter erupted, David bent over, bracing his hands on his thighs, his jeans so well-washed they were faded and soft. Thea, meanwhile, her long legs bared by her tailored black shorts, grinned and went to hug Kit, who’d just walked out of the house. She’d told Noah to go welcome the others while she finished putting out the snacks. They’d have been out already if he hadn’t distracted her with kisses that had led to a tangle of limbs in the garden, her khaki colored shorts pulled off and thrown over a tree limb.

Kit’s cheeks were still glowing from it.

Noah resisted the urge to strut. “David,” he said as Kit’s eyes widened at first sight of the pinkmobile. “Explain this.”

Another car roared down the drive before the drummer could reply. A much more acceptable hot red, the Lamborghini was Fox’s pride and joy. Getting out, the lead singer groaned in agony at seeing the pink Ferrari before shielding the dark green of his eyes. “Don’t look, baby,” he said to Molly, making as if to turn her face away. “It’ll traumatize you for life.”

Laughing, Molly kissed his palm before going over to examine the pinkmobile. “Where did you get it?” she asked, all curious brown eyes and slightly sunburned limbs in her shorts and floaty top. “I like pink but this is pretty hideous. Like the color of that lotion people use when they have chickenpox.”

“It was a gift,” David finally managed to get out, the golden brown of his skin flushed from his laughter.

Noah raised an eyebrow. “A hopeful groupie with a lot of money and really bad taste?”

“Not a gift for me.” David’s grin was slow. “For Thea.”

Everyone’s mouths fell open this time. Thea was definitely not a pink car type of woman. She probably ate pink cars for breakfast and still had room to chew up a paparazzo or three.

“Hey, I could do pink,” the band’s publicist said into the stunned quiet, a mock-offended look on her face.

Shaking her head, Kit came over to wrap her arms around Noah. His heart went boom, still not used to being claimed so openly. But damn it felt good, he thought, cuddling her against him. No one else had ever looked at him with such pride. It humbled him, destroyed him, made him fight each and every day to be the man she saw in him. A better, stronger man than Noah had ever thought he could be.

“Sorry, Thea,” she said as he stroked his hand down her back, “but I’m with these guys. What idiot sent you a pink car as a gift?”

“A corporate that wants to hire me.” Thea pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head, her uptilted eyes a sparkling burnished brown. “I’m going to send it back, but I couldn’t resist bringing it today, especially when David agreed to drive.”

“Those photos are going to follow you to your grave,” Fox predicted, pointing a finger at David, his other arm hooked easily around Molly’s shoulders. “You know the press vultures caught you. They’ll start questioning your sexuality any second now.”

“Who cares?” Sanguine, David walked over to steal a kiss from Thea. She smiled into it. Before David and Thea got together, Noah would’ve never believed that Thea could go all soft and happy as she did at that moment. Only for Schoolboy Choir’s drummer, however.

To everyone else, she remained a scary hardass of a publicist.

“Worth it to see the looks on your faces,” David added after the kiss, walking behind Thea to wrap his arms around her. “And the world can question all they like—I’m confident in my sexuality.” A glint in his eye, he turned to look at Noah, then Fox. “Are you?”

Fox blanched. “I could be dead and you’d still not see my corpse in that insult to the most gorgeous machines on the earth.”

“Chickenshit.” David’s eyes landed on Noah.

“Only if I can take a sledgehammer to it afterward.” Nuzzling his chin on Kit’s hair, Noah soaked in her laughter. “Where’s Abe anyway? He better not miss our pool-warming.”

It was Molly who answered. “He’s on his way.” She held up Fox’s phone. “Message came in while Fox was driving. He had to chase down an escapee dog.”

Abe didn’t have a dog. Interesting.

Noah looked down into Kit’s eyes, saw identical speculation. Lifting a finger to her lips, she shook her head. He nodded. There was a time to hassle a man and there was a time to let him be. When he glanced up, he saw the others had all made the same decision. Fox was the one who spoke. “Where’s this pool you’ve been so secretive about?”

Noah grinned. “Follow us.” He and Kit led everyone around the house and through the shiny new gate that opened out into the pool area—which could also be accessed via the back of the house

“Oh my God!” Molly danced in place. “You have waterfalls!”

Beaming at the other woman’s delight, Kit waved her over. “I want to show you something else.” She led Molly to the other side of the pool. “Thea, come on!” The three women disappeared around a garden island full of plants and small palms. Noah knew the exact moment the women saw the outdoor spa.

Their laughing, happy voices filled the air.

David, having found the beers Noah had put out right before everyone arrived, popped the top off one and passed it to Fox, then did the same for Noah. “Waterfalls, huh?” Walking to stand at the edge of the pool, he looked down the length of the sunshine-kissed water, to the double waterfall at the curve of the pool, one small, one large.

“Kit wanted them.” Noah rocked back on his heels, so stupidly happy that he was almost terrified. But it was getting easier to accept the joy with each day that passed, each night he spent in Kit’s arms. “It’s fun.”

“Why the hell aren’t we in the water, then?” Fox asked.

Two minutes later, they were, everyone having come prepared to swim. The women joined them within the next five minutes and each person in the pool had swum under the waterfalls at least once by the time Abe’s SUV pulled into the yard.

Noah, having swum to the head of the pool to brace his arms on the edge, took a sip of the beer he’d left there. “Everyone’s here,” he said to Kit, who’d swum up next to him.

“Just in time for the pizza I put into the oven.” She pulled herself up so she was sitting on the edge, those glorious long legs within his reach—so of course he had to press a kiss to her thigh.

“I love this pool,” she said, her hand in his hair. “Thank you.”

He felt his lips curving, the stupid happiness overflowing his body. It was still scary as hell leaving himself this vulnerable, this open, but every time Kit smiled at him with her heart—her love—right there for him to see, it got infinitesimally easier. “I suppose you want some romantic bullshit now.”

Kit’s striking amber eyes lit with laughter. They both knew which one of them loved kissing the most. But all she said was, “Yes, please.”

So he tugged her down into the water and kissed her under a chrome blue sky while the sun caressed their bodies and their friends laughed and splashed in the pool he’d had built for her. “Thank you,” he whispered to the woman who’d never given up on him.

Kit’s smile lit up his world. “I love you, Noah St. John.” A sweetheart of a kiss... before she laughingly shoved him underwater just as Abe opened the gate and called out, “Who the hell brought the pink horror?”

Fighting laughter, Noah pulled Kit under with him, his arms around her legs, and then he kissed her again, while the sunshine made the water sparkle all around them. Yeah, fine, he liked the romantic bullshit.

© Copyright 2015 by Nalini Singh

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