Page 4 of Wild

"That's not what I mean. Do you feel off? Like, weak, dizzy..."

"I'm fine, Noah. Can you let me shower now?"

He shoves one hand into his tangled hair, ruffling it even more as he thinks.

"Yeah, okay, but please eat that," he says, nodding toward the food.

"Later," she promises.

Noah accepts her answer and leaves the dressing room, pulling the door shut. Mia slides the lock and looks at the food. Cold pasta is her favorite, but after a show, eating is the last thing her body wants to do.

"Oh my God, you're—" the woman gasps as Mia pulls back from her.

It's two in the morning and the singer is in her hotel suite, wearing nothing but her shirt, next to a woman who just came and is lying there with one hand on her chest and a wide smile on her lips. Mia watches her and can't help but smile back, satisfied. She doesn't know her name—or rather, she doesn't remember it, because too many women pass through her bed on a temporary basis to bother memorizing them all—but she does remember her age: thirty-three. She remembers it because Mia Janssen Wilder has never been drawn to women her own age. Not when she was fourteen and figured out without a second thought that she liked women, and not now at twenty-six. Maybe it's because she had to grow up fast and has never felt comfortable aroundpeople her age—except for Noah and Danny, but they don't count because their childhoods forced them to grow up just as quickly as she did—which is why she only notices women who are past thirty.

"Did you like it?" the woman asks, uncertain, as Mia gets up from the bed.

She smiles again, letting only one corner of her mouth lift, and winks, sending a jolt straight between her lover's legs.

"It was really good," she says, and the woman seems to breathe out every bit of air she'd been holding.

Mia hasn't lied. She came twice and feels satisfied—which is exactly what she was after. She opens the closet and pulls out the small box Noah always has ready for her, containing a single joint rolled by his expert fingers.

"You mind if I smoke?" the singer asks, drifting toward the floor-to-ceiling window to step out onto the balcony.

"Not at all," the woman says, sitting up slowly, her legs still carrying a slight tremor. "You might want to put some pants on before you go out, though."

Mia turns, then glances down at her bare legs, remembering she's not wearing anything under the shirt.

"Someone could get a photo of you, you know..."

The singer looks out at the terrace. She's at the top of the building and the nearest adjacent one is pretty far away, but she decides the woman has a point—she needs to be careful, like Noah always reminds her.

She pulls on a pair of sweatpants, grabs a lighter, and throws the doors wide open, lighting the joint the moment she steps outside.

"Don't you want me to leave?" the woman asks, appearing at her side.

Mia leans one arm on the railing, takes a drag, and offers the joint to the woman, who takes it with a smile.

"Do whatever you want—there's coffee and breakfast in the morning if you stay." Mia shrugs.

She honestly doesn't care what her lover decides. If she goes, she'll finish the joint, take another shower, and go to bed. If she stays, she'll finish the joint either way, sleep with her again, then go to bed and shower in the morning. Either way, she'll sleep—because that's what she's after right now: enough of a buzz from the weed to take the edge off, since she always spends hours wound up after a concert.

"You don't have anything stronger?" the woman asks, handing the joint back.

Mia takes it and shakes her head, her expression flat.

"This is the only thing I allow myself," she says, then turns toward the city, resting her arms on the railing as she stares out at nothing and the thousands of lights of Miami blur into a thick cloud of mixed colors that bleed into each other in front of her.

She's not lying about that either. By now she's been offered everything, for all kinds of reasons—to have fun, to keep her energy up on stage, to unwind, to make things better in bed—but both she and Noah have one rule that's sacred to them both: no hard drugs. This joint is the only thing Mia has in the room. Noah rolls one for her after every concert, one for her and one for himself, and that's the full extent of Mia Wilder's relationship with drugs.

The woman can't stop watching her. Up close and in person, Mia Wilder is shorter than she looks on stage—though right now she's barefoot—and she doesn't seem nearly as dangerous as she does when she's singing and moving like she owns the world. In fact, she seems almost vulnerable, but that does nothing to take the edge off the magnetism that radiates from her.

At nine-thirty in the morning, there's a knock at the door. Mia is already out of the shower and the woman is finishing tying her shoes, getting ready to head out. Mia opens the door withouthesitating, and Noah walks in, his hair so disheveled it looks like he hasn't touched it, but he smells like mint when he gets close, and she smiles because she loves that smell on her friend fresh out of the shower.

"Hey," Noah says, glancing sideways at the woman.

"Good morning," she answers, getting to her feet to find her bag.