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by Laurelin Paige

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  Ryder’s Brothers Book One

  Laurelin Paige

  Copyright © 2018 by Laurelin Paige

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  * * *

  Cover by Laurelin Paige

  Photographer: WANDER AGUIAR :: PHOTOGRAPHY

  Cover Model: Kaz Vanderwaard

  Content Editor and Plot Partner: Kayti McGee

  Editing: Nancy at Evident Ink and Erica Russikoff at Erica Edits

  Contents

  Also by Laurelin Paige

  Foreword

  1. Inappropriate

  2. Off Limits

  3. Oh my god

  4. Getting Dirty

  5. I’d Hit That

  6. Do It Like a Rock Star

  7. Something to Talk About

  8. Let’s Do This

  9. Good Girls Don’t Do Rock Stars

  10. Taboo

  11. Better than Sex

  12. Close Enough

  13. Wow

  14. Roller Coaster

  15. Caught

  16. Too Far

  17. Time to Show Him the (Back) Door

  18. More

  19. Hard Words

  20. I Can Love You Right

  Epilogue

  Also in Kindle Unlimited!

  Also by Laurelin Paige

  Acknowledgments

  Let’s stay in touch!

  About Laurelin Paige

  Also by Laurelin Paige

  Visit my website for a more detailed reading order.

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  Also in Kindle Unlimited

  * * *

  Spark Books (short, steamy bursts of romance)

  One More Time

  Ryder Brothers Close

  Want by Kayti McGee (coming soon!)

  More by JD Hawkins (coming soon!)

  * * *

  Hollywood Heat

  Sex Symbol | Star Struck

  * * *

  Fixed Universe Standalone

  Chandler (a spinoff novel)

  * * *

  Written with Sierra Simone

  Porn Star | Hot Cop

  Other books by Laurelin Paige

  * * *

  The Dirty Universe

  Dirty Filthy Rich Boys - READ FREE

  Dirty Duet: Dirty Filthy Rich Men | Dirty Filthy Rich Love

  Dirty Games Duet: Dirty Sexy Player | Dirty Sexy Games

  Dirty Sweet Duet: Sweet Liar | Sweet Fate (early 2019)

  Dirty Filthy Fix (a spinoff novella)

  * * *

  The Fixed Universe

  Fixed Series: Fixed on You | Found in You | Forever with You | Hudson | Fixed Forever

  Found Duet: Free Me | Find Me

  Chandler (a spinoff novel)

  Falling Under You (a spinoff novella)

  Dirty Filthy Fix (a spinoff novella)

  Slay Trilogy Slay One | Slay Two (fall 2019) | Slay Three (winter 2019)

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  First and Last

  First Touch | Last Kiss

  * * *

  Written with Kayti McGee under the name Laurelin McGee

  Miss Match | Love Struck | MisTaken | Holiday for Hire

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  DID YOU KNOW…

  This book is available in both paperback and audiobook editions at all major online retailers! Links are on my website.

  If you’d like to order a signed paperback, my online store is open several times a year here.

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  Want to be notified when I have a new release?

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  Chapter One

  Inappropriate

  Natalia

  I tug my black miniskirt down and fret. No matter how much I pull, it won’t go any farther past the top of my thighs. I’m not just worried about bending over, but also about walking up stairs, and getting up and down from seats. My panties are barely hidden by the scrap of cloth masquerading as a skirt, and it feels like I’m asking for trouble. Or an upskirt shot on TMI.

  Same thing.

  “Are you sure I’m not too old for this outfit?” I ask, regretting the clothing I’m wearing for the umpteenth time. Regretting my decision to come out with the girls. Getting decked out and hitting the clubs always sounds better before I actually leave my house.

  “Fuck, no,” my friend Rowan says, pouring tequila shots into the glasses in the back of the limo. “You look hot, Natalia. There’s no age limit on hot. There’s a reason it’s called Forever 21.”

  Thirty-six is a long way from twenty-one, though, and both Hadley and Rowan are younger than me by years. They arguably also see an awful lot less of themselves in the press. Even Rowan’s popularity is limited to gossip blogs and the filler pages of celebrity rags—not cover material. If either of them show off their thongs accidentally while climbing out of the limo, they don’t have to worry about their grandfather seeing it in line at the supermarket the next day.

  “You look great,” Hadley reassures me, taking a shot glass into her own hand. “And you needed this. After everything you’ve been through lately, don’t you deserve a little time out for yourself?”

  Hadley always knows how to soothe me. Of course she does—she’s my life coach, although she prefers the title life designer. As always, she’s full to the brim with inspiration, but tonight we are out as friends. And I really do need the advice—I shouldn’t feel nervous about letting loose with my girlfriends for just one night.

  “Exactly!” Rowan says, as she hands me my shot. “This is you announcing to the world that Garner Lee didn’t break you. You’re single, and ready to mingle, and happier without him.”

  If only it were just Garner Lee, the latest one of Hollywood’s top twenty most beautiful men that I’ve been hooked up with. It was also that carpenter on the last movie I did with Heather Wainwright, who didn’t give me the time of day. It was also the four other major relationships that the paparazzi spread all over the news, every relationship dissected and analyzed. It was ten years ago, when I was Hollywood’s most famous Other Woman to Tanner James, even though that was simply a misunderstanding.

  I’ve worked so hard to rehabilitate my image, with charity work and children’s movies, wearing less eyeliner and having a more natural hair color, and never, ever doing anything or saying anything in public that could possibly be misconstrued.

  It half-worked; my image is polished up to a shine, but the narrative in the press about me is no better. Different, but not better.

  Every headline spouts off about how America’s Sweetheart is ready to settle down and have babies, but no man is ready to have her. They say I drive them all away with my ambition.

  I’m beginning to believe it might be true.

  “You know what? You’re right. I’m allowed to have fun. I’m allowed to have friends. And I’m not at home, crying over his picture. I’m not hiding from him.” Although, I think guiltily, I didn’t agree to this girls’ night until I knew we were going to a club that he’d never in a million years frequent.

  Avoiding and hiding are two different things, right?

  “Right. Fuck Garner Lee. Or rather, here’s to not fucking Garner Lee anymore,” R
owan cackles. She takes her shot, realizes we weren’t in step, and quickly pours herself another. Typical Rowan. She’s right, too, which is not so typical.

  For our entire relationship, Garner and I had our once-a-week scheduled missionary position. Then for the last year, not even once a week—more like whenever we could fit it into our busy schedules. Shooting movies and having a relationship oftentimes don’t seem to go together.

  Maybe actors really aren’t meant to have love lives.

  Maybe this job means walking a solitary path in life.

  And when I have fans all over the world who adore me, can I really be upset that my bed is cold? Isn’t it selfish to want it all?

  “You’re thinking too much again,” Hadley warns. “I can see it in your eyes.” She lifts her shot glass. “To girls’ night.”

  “To orgasms that aren’t self-induced,” Rowan adds.

  We all clink our glasses and down them. The tequila burns the lump out of my throat and I shake my head, laughing, enjoying the mix of heat and discomfort it makes as it goes down. It’s the only thing that’s gone down lately.

  As if on cue, our limo pulls up in front of the nightclub. I roll my shoulders and shake my arms at my sides. This is the last chance I have at backing out. Once I get out of the car, there will be cameras and spectators, People Magazine hunting for fresh meat for their Celebrities-Spotted column. I tug nervously at my skirt again, wondering if an evening out is worth this.

  I feel Hadley wrap her hand around my elbow, calming me with just a touch.

  “Once we get inside, honey, the cameras are gone. You know we chose Club 24 specifically because it doesn’t allow that kind of shit. We just have to walk through the crowd out here, and then you’re home free. Just us. Us and all the tequila we can feed you,” she smiles mischievously.

  I take another deep breath, and let her words wash over me.

  I have built a career in the most brutal industry in existence. I have faced down men with cameras in the tree outside my bathroom window. I have dealt with legitimate stalkers, whose overtures go from sexual to violent overnight.

  So why am I worried about the small throng of press outside a club?

  As Hadley says, they’re the only thing between me and another much-needed drink—and more importantly, the dance floor.

  “Okay,” I say. “Let’s do this.”

  We step outside the limo and the flashes start immediately, as they always do. My tendency is to stop and pose, giving them what they want, but Hadley reminds me to keep walking. It feels odd to ignore the press, to ignore my fans, to ignore the people who have made me the celebrity I am—the people who have put me on the covers of magazines and the headlines of their movies.

  Normally I’d do whatever they asked, my natural compliance with the press taking over.

  But tonight I take Rowan’s lead. She may be a celebrity starling, a newbie, but she’s a pro at the party. She trucks right up to the bouncer, who lets us into the front of the line, and we’re escorted into the club before I know it.

  Immediately, I am surrounded by the warmth of bodies, the smell of sex, and the thump thump thump of good bass in the music, the uncertain vibe of outside fading into memory as quickly as the DJ fades one song into the next.

  Club 24 is popular with celebrities for many reasons.

  The club has rules about no paparazzi being allowed inside, most importantly. Patrons have their phones, of course, but there are so many celebrities—only the elite and the most prestigious people are let in—that it generally doesn’t matter. There’s an honor code among famous people. And the others are either with them, or trying to become one of them, so they’ll abide by the code as well.

  I recognize a full half of the crowd tonight, friends and industry people grinding on the dance floor and sitting at the tables. Around the bar, people I’ve worked with, people I’ve seen at after-shows, and people from all over the studio lots.

  Rowan takes us past them all, to a table in the back that’s already reserved for us, and signals a bartender on the way.

  “Patrón all around,” she shouts, and by the time we’re seated, another round of tequila is being delivered to our table by a knockout blonde carrying a cup full of limes in her cleavage. God bless Los Angeles.

  “At this rate, I’m going to be drunk before I even get on the dance floor,” I say. There’s no telling when I last had this many shots. And my heels have to be at least three inches high. Combined with my skirt? I’m not nervous enough to wave the drink off, but I’m definitely not feeling comfortable enough to let loose quite yet.

  “Quit your bitching. The tequila makes dancing easier. Trust me.” Rowan is the expert. And if Hadley is on board, then I am as well. I used to love dancing. It’s just been so long since I’ve turned my mind off and let myself move without worrying what people think that I have to wonder if I still remember how.

  Maybe Garner did more of a number on me than I’d originally thought. I don’t think I danced in the entire year we were together.

  We down our next shots, and now I’m really feeling buzzed. There’s warmth running through my body, and my hips are already beginning to respond to the beat. I feel better than I’ve felt in a long time.

  “See?” Rowan says. “Now let’s get on the floor.”

  We just got here, and I thought we’d maybe sit and talk for a while first. But now that I’m buzzing and happy, now that I’m remembering how much I have missed having fun, there’s nothing I’d rather do than dance.

  Rowan takes my hand and leads me to the floor, Hadley following behind. We stick together for the first song, and as the alcohol continues its magical happy-making path through my body, I find that I am less concerned about what I’m wearing. I forget why I was worried I was too old to hang out at the club. I don’t know why I thought maybe I’d forgotten how to dance as I let the music take over.

  Soon it’s all I feel. The rhythm, the beat.

  It feels good to lose myself like this, to just move my body, to sway my hips.

  By the time the first song has disappeared into the melody of the next, I’ve lost track of where Hadley and Rowan are, but I don’t even care at this point. It doesn’t matter who I’m dancing with—I am in my own space, enveloped in the rush and the adrenaline of freedom. I lift my arms up and let the new song sweep me away.

  New bodies move closer to me, and their rhythms start to match mine. New faces. I close my eyes, and disappear. It isn’t until someone’s elbow collides with my rib that I’m reluctantly shaken from my trance.

  When I turn around, I recognize the face of one of the bodies close to me. It would be hard not to. Not only is he famous, he’s freaking hot, and I know millions of girls have swooned over that perfect jawline, those penetrating eyes.

  Hell, I have, each and every time I watch one of his videos.

  Nick Ryder.

  And now the swoon-worthy rock star who used to be part of the Ryder Brothers, one of the last American boy bands, has turned those eyes on me. He’s young, at least a decade younger than me, but he knows this world of cameras and press and schedules made by everyone else.

  I recognize his expression. He’s losing himself in someone else’s music, and I feel the same need for this escape as he grinds his hips near mine. I twist again so that my backside is up toward his pelvis, and then we’re torquing together.

  Our bodies move in sync.

  Everything around us disappears, and it’s just us, just two people trying to be ourselves for one night of our lives. We twist and we turn around each other, our bodies never touching, but we’re close. Oh, so close. I can feel his heat everywhere around me, everywhere on me. It carries the scent of him, a heady combination of woodsy cologne and the pheromones carried on his sweat that are easily as intoxicating as the tequila shots burning through me.

  We move as though choreographed, letting loose. Letting go.

  I only measure time passing as one song fades into the next, and then
the next. The heels I was cursing at the beginning of the night have become an asset, making sure my ass is exactly at the level of his hips. The skirt I was nervous about gives my legs the freedom to move in and out of his.

  Whoever would have thought, as the girls were getting me ready tonight, that they’d gotten me so perfectly ready for this?

  It’s so utterly euphoric, this experience of a shared need to exorcise ourselves of demons, and it’s been so long since I’ve been able to share that need with someone. Maybe I never have. Garner and I didn’t discuss the trappings of fame. Hadley doesn’t have it; Rowan always craves more.

  But somehow, wordlessly, Nick Ryder and I are commiserating. The unique loneliness of fame has its own beat, and we’re dancing to it.

  I’ve not been so intimate with a man—with anyone—physically like this, either. It shouldn’t surprise me that the connection starts to feel sexual. And in the silent push and pull of our bodies’ force fields, I can tell he feels it too. We lock eyes, our shared gaze the only still moment in our frenetic dance.

  Our mouths are so close.

  It would only take one push off the floor with my heels, the incremental lowering of his head. It would only take a second to close the distance between us. I close my eyes and I swear I can taste the sweat off the top of his lip, swear I can feel his fingers touching my skin, swear I can feel what it would be like if he were moving inside me. It’s orgasmic. Quite unreal.