I’m not sure when the change began. As much as my parents would like to blame it on Mike Owens, I realize it was growing long before I met him. Something inside of me knew that the path I was on wasn’t the right one. I had music in my soul, it was crying to come out, and along with it were these ideas—ideas about who I could be, how I wanted to live, and what was right and wrong in the world.

Then I met Michael, and all my ideas became possible. A new road appeared, and every part of me rejoiced in a wholly different way. Michael Owens, guitarist for Lush walked into a tiny, run down, country bar and told me I could have anything I wanted and everything I’d ever dreamed. It’s a heady sensation to be plucked from obscurity, to have the whole world opened to you when you’ve spent twenty-four years hearing about what you can’t do rather than what you can.

It’s no small wonder I fell in love with the man who gave me that high.

I’m watching that man now as he works out. It’s one of my favorite times of the day. I usually track him down in the hotel gym first thing in the morning just so I can see this sight. He’s big—like, massive—his muscles straining out of whatever shirt he might be wearing, and just plain straining when he’s not wearing a shirt like today. He’s covered in tattoos, tribal patterns swirling over his shoulders and down his pecs all the way to that incredible ‘v’ that leads south alongside his perfect six-pack.

My daddy and brother are men of God, the mind, and philosophy. They’re handsome men, but in a completely different way than Mike. Mike is sex, pure and simple. He oozes it from his pores, whispers it from his lips. All it takes is one heated look from him and I’m a goner, panties wet, short of breath, warm from head to toe.

The only problem is he doesn’t want me back. For some reason, Michael has put me on a pedestal so high that not even he’s allowed to reach for it. He thinks I’m this perfect, innocent, girl made of glass that will shatter if he gets too close. And I am a virgin, but I’m far from perfect or innocent, and I sure as heck won’t shatter from the likes of him. In fact, I might just be more than he can handle if he ever gives me a chance.

Every day that we’re together I crave his touch, burn inside when I look at him, and dream of what he would feel like doing bad things to me. But the man who blew apart my world, opened windows to my soul, and freed my heart would rather spend his Friday and Saturday nights screwing trash he picks up at the bars we play in.

So, I get this part of him—the protective-best-friend part. The do-anything-for-me, worship-me-from-afar part, and while I wouldn’t trade that part for all the tea in China, I would also do most anything to get the part those trashy women do. I want all of Michael—the good, the bad, the outrageously sexy. He’s brilliant, talented, unpredictable, and hotter than an afternoon in a Texas oilfield. What woman wouldn’t want that?