Chapter Text
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“You came a damn long way just to see me.”
The words were harsh, terribly uncaring and might have made a lesser person cry.
Perhaps if Nasir had been some lovesick fan his reaction might have been different. But Nasir wasn’t a fan and he was more than capable of dealing with this man's type without losing his head. Nasir couldn’t have cared less about his pretty face, celebrity status, gold records or millions of dollars. There was only one thing he wanted from Agron Hoffmann and it wasn’t an autograph. “Let’s make it worth the trip then.”
Nasir didn’t bother to wait for an invitation as he took a seat beside Agron in the adjoining armchair.
In the shadowed corner of the dimly lit café a half-drawn velvet curtain shielded them from public view. It created a sense of privacy and solitude amidst the chaos. It muffled the chatter of other patrons, the hiss of the espresso machine, even the clatter of dishes. The curtain created a barrier between their world and his.
Rumor had it that this was Agron’s favorite hangout whenever he was back in his hometown. Nasir’s sources, damn secretive sources that had been almost impossible to crack, had told him Agron always made it a point to stop in for a cup of coffee.
Though he’d managed to escape the notice of the other patrons in the quiet café, he hadn’t escaped Nasir, and he certainly wasn’t happy to see him.
“You want an interview you’ll have to contact my agent. I don’t get friendly with the media and I don’t like reporters.” “So they tell me.” That was just fine by him. Nasir sure as hell wasn’t looking to get friendly with him either—his reputation as a player had made him as famous as his chart-topping records.
Despite his repugnance for celebrity players Nasir forced a smile. He might not have been interested in seducing the man, but he had every intention of putting his story to bed. The story they told him was impossible to get. The story that would make his career and prove once and for all to his prick of a boss that Nasir Al-Hamsi was worthy of his own byline. “This isn’t your typical interview.”
“Really? What is it then?”
“It’s a bedtime story.” A hint of a smile curved his lips. “I don’t do celebrity weddings. I don’t do dirty gossip. I don’t give a damn where you grew up, who you’re dating or when your next album is dropping. Unveiled Magazine is all about the sex. We’re the best magazine to expose it all without ever exposing a thing.”
It was a spiel he had given countless times before. A smirk, a smile, sometimes laughter, that was the standard response. But Agron just stared blankly. Nasir’s words, fraught with danger and sensuality hadn’t cracked even the tiniest layer in his stone-cold façade.
“What’s your name?”
Nasir reached across the table and offered his hand. “Nasir Al-Hamsi, Unveiled Magazine.”
Agron took Nasir’s hand in his. As his thumb grazed the back of Nasir’s knuckles it ignited a trail of heat that flamed across his skin. “You’re not exactly playing by the rules, Nasir Al-Hamsi.”
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He watched Agron slip a single cigarette out of the pack of Camels sitting on table. The pack was rumpled, no doubt having been shoved into the pocket of his jeans one time too many. Nasir stared longingly at it. It had been two years since he’d quit but he couldn’t deny the subtle and thankfully fleeting urge to light up. “Well, you know what they say about rules.”
“They’re meant to be broken.” Agron put the tip between his lips and touched the lighter’s flame to it.
“There’s no smoking in here.” Nasir nodded to the signs posted near the back door.
“Yeah well, they make an exception for me.” His words were cool and confident giving him the impression that he really wouldn’t have given a damn if they didn’t. If Nasir had to wager a bet he’d say the exception was made simply because he was the Agron Hoffmann. Apparently that afforded him a complete lack of manners.
Even as he puffed away on the cigarette, Agron’s gaze drew up to his mouth. Whether he was measuring him up or admiring the curve of his lips she couldn’t be sure. As a journalist Nasir had prided himself on being able to read people, but Agron’s expression revealed no insight into his character. He remained hard, dark and unyielding. It had him wondering if anything, or anyone, had ever managed to slip beneath that rock-hard exterior.
He blew out a breath laced with smoke that fanned across the table between them and made him wince in response. His reaction sent the hint of smile to toy on his lips. A crack in the wall he had built around him. He wasn’t sure what that said about him, after all he couldn’t seem to read him and that, more than the second-hand smoke, unnerved him. It made him feel ill-prepared and out of control. Those were two things Nasir never was.
“What does Unveiled want with me?”
Nasir bit down on his lower lip. How was he supposed to answer that? He could have told him plain and simple that Unveiled was after a story. But he doubted very much that simple truth would make an impression on him. He needed some way to get past that barrier, to slip beyond the wall he’d built around himself and invoke a reaction. Any reaction at that point would have done. Laugh in his face, spit on the floor, hell, call him a nosey-bastard and walk away. Anything would have been better than his dark, silent stare.
“A lyrical lay.” The words dripped off his tongue like melted chocolate. Dark, sweet and terribly sinful. It was his favorite play on words and one that often worked so well in his particular line of work. The words painted a sensual, almost poetic picture in the mind and that was exactly what Nasir did. He conjured fantasies on paper for the masses. In fact, if that asshole Ashur ever gave him his own column that was exactly what he intended to title it.
There was another crack in the wall as Agron’s lips curved into a sexy, half-cocked smile—fleeting but genuine. He wasn’t known for being generous with his smiles and perhaps that was something Nasir should have kept in mind. That dark, brooding gaze of his had become rather like an unwitting trademark.
He shifted uncomfortably, as though he hadn’t intended for that momentary lapse in character. “What exactly is that?”
“Sex,” he murmured breathlessly, as though the word itself was enough to ignite his inner passions. And in truth, he found that his hidden desires were strangely alive and wired. It shouldn’t have come as any surprise, for there was no other man more adept at making a person ache with a single, unintentional glance, but ache he did.
He wasn’t the type to be so easily enchanted by anyone. He dealt with celebrities all the time. Handsome, charming men who were accustomed to getting exactly what they desired—men just like Agron.
But something about him had captivated him. It wasn’t his name or his striking face. Certainly not his record sales or celebrity status. Perhaps it was his inhibited manner. This coupled with his inability to read exactly what was on his mind intrigued him as much as it unnerved him. Perhaps it was that old adage, opposites attract. As clichéd as that was, Nasir couldn’t deny there was some truth behind it. It felt as though he was always holding back from saying what he was really thinking when he, a polar opposite, too often blurted out whatever happened to be on his mind.
He shifted, suddenly much too aware of the heat building. Business, he reminded himself, he was here on business. He didn’t have time for men. His career saw to that on more than one occasion. But if he had the time and was so inclined, he certainly couldn’t afford for it to be this man. Not when he unknowingly held his career in his hands. “Unveiled readers want to know what Agron Hoffmann yearns for. What you desire. You provide the image, we provide the fantasy.”
“But you don’t want an interview.”
“What Unveiled wants is foreplay.”
“I thought you wanted sex.” A dark, almost devilish smile curved at the corner of his mouth. A dimple played in the scruffy hair on his cheek. It added a childlike innocence to his face that contradicted the roguish gleam in his eyes and the wicked curve of his smile.
Perhaps he thought this was a joke, but for Nasir there was nothing amusing about the situation. His peers had warned him that trying to pry a story from Hoffmann was like trying to uncork wine with your teeth. Agron was notorious for being incredibly tight-lipped and very private. If you were lucky enough to get a few moments of his time, he never talked about anything more than his music. Nasir was hoping his direct tactics would yield better results than those who had come before him. He hadn’t hinted about what he wanted. He hadn’t eluded his questions with queries of his own. He hadn’t wrangled the conversation in hopes that he’d accidentally spill some deep, dark secret. There were no games, no illusions. He was after one thing and one thing only and that was sex between the sheets of his magazine.
He prided himself on his honesty and he was hoping it was that honesty Agron would ultimately respond to. But without the ability to read him, to really be able to discern what he was thinking, he didn’t know where he stood with him. It felt as though he was stranded on a sinking ship. He couldn’t seem to relate to him. Couldn’t seem to slip beneath the shield surrounding him and touch on the truth of his character beneath.
He huffed out a breath in irritation. Nasir, like the men he wrote about, always got what he wanted. The fact that Agron was refusing to give it to him only made Nasir all the more determined to have it.
“Give me a drag?” Nasir motioned to the dwindling cigarette in his hand.
Without a word Agron offered him his cigarette and watched as he slipped it between his lips. He took a deep drag that flamed to life within him. It burned his lungs for a split uncomfortable second, then, as he exhaled, every muscle in his body relaxed. He was wound tighter than a drum. The cigarette, that momentary lapse in his character, had let loose one of the ties binding him.
“Want one?”
“No. Yes. No… Fuck it, yes.” He took the cigarette he offered and let it rest between his lips. “Thank you.”
“Once a smoker, always a smoker, as they say.” Agron examined the cigarette in his hand. “So what, you want to ask me if I wear boxers or briefs?” He spoke to the cigarette rather than to him.
Nasir laughed as he turned his attention to the cigarette between his fingers and avoided the eye contact that seemed to be the source of his tension. “Unveiled is more interested in what it takes to get you out of them.”
“You have a glib little comment for everything.”
“I’m just honest.”
“Okay. Let’s do honest.” His words were curt and he couldn’t have said for sure what he saw etched on his face. He was a master at masking his emotions, but he saw something. A flicker of anger maybe. A glimmer of despair. “Why me?”
“Because they say you can’t be had.”
“So you think if you get me it’ll make you some big-shot reporter?” It was anger he saw this time and there was no mistaking it.
“You symbolize everything we offer. Intrigue, desire…sex. You’ve got what everyone wants and we want to give it to them.”
“You make me sound like a dirty novel when in reality I’m just another guy.” This time his words were wrought with despair. It was a startling contrast to the anger from just a moment before. It made his heart ache strangely—something in his voice, even more than his words, told him that perhaps normality was the one thing he longed for. The one thing he was trying to take away from him.
“I get the whole private life thing, I do. I’m not looking to invade. I just want to share with our readers, your fans—”
“The most intimate part of my life.”
Nasir laughed. It came out jittery, more nervous than he had intended. It seemed as if no matter what he said, no matter how he said it, his words seemed to elicit a negative response from him. All he wanted was a little harmless word play attached to a picture of his pretty face. Really, he didn’t think that was so much to ask for. Didn’t he understand that’s all it was? Harmless words. A pretty picture. “Well yes, I suppose you could look at it that way, but—”
“How else would you look at it?”
“Unveiled isn’t exactly after the human interest side of the story. We want sex. It’s empty, it’s meaningless…”
His words trailed off, chased away by the disapproving dip of his brow. “People don’t want empty sex. They want the intimate connection. It should never be meaningless. It’s the details, not the act that matters.”
Nasir’s heart dipped as if it had dislodged from his chest and fallen with a heavy thump into his stomach. It wasn’t so much what he said as how he said it. The desperate ache of his words. The tremble of his lips. It made him…he made him…want. He made him desire. He made him care. The worst of the four letter words. He didn’t care about the people he interviewed. They never stirred him. They never got under his skin. They never made him think. Never made him feel. He shivered at the thought of another one of those four letter words.
“Can I quote you on that?”
Agron shook his head. Disappointment etched his face. Unmasked and completely naked. There could be no misinterpretation of his reaction to his bold question.
He rose from his seat and snatched up a pair of dark sunglasses. Turned the collar up on his leather jacket as he walked away without so much as backward glance, without so much as a word.
Nasir sat, stunned and speechless. His heart reached out to him as he struggled to think of something, anything to keep him from walking away.
For one fleeting moment he thought not of losing the story but of losing the man.
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