And this one was no different. Through tired and bleary eyes, I could still see that she was beautiful. Hell, a blind man would know just by the sound of her voice that she was sex on legs. She had shoulder-length strawberry-colored hair that had a slight wave to it, and green eyes with a ring of caramel around the edges. She was dressed in a V-neck shirt that revealed just a hint of cleavage and medium-length shorts that showed off her tanned legs. Breathtaking.
She was still glaring at me, though, and trying to get over her shock. I was glad that she could speak English, at least. My French was good enough, but it was easier this way. I pegged her accent from somewhere on the southeast coast maybe. Florida or North Carolina.
I could see the cogs of her mind whirling behind those big beautiful eyes. She was no doubt warring with herself about what to do next. My bet would be she’d ask for an autograph in a few seconds and forget this whole thing ever happened. Or maybe she’d get down on her knees and offer me a blow-job. I could use the release, I thought. I maintained my grin, the whisky churning in my gut, waiting for her to come around.
After finally leaving the bar, I had to admit it probably wasn’t the best move to get in the truck that a local dealership had given me to use, but it had been too much of a temptation. I couldn’t deal with getting picked up by my driver or using public transportation so that everyone knew where I was or what kind of state I was in. They’d all just start nagging at me again, and my dad would go ape-shit.
The driver of the other car was still tongue-tied; she hadn’t said another word. I looked at the woman in front of me, seeing indecision on her face. She wanted to call the cops. And in my state, cops would most definitely mean a trip downtown and probably one pissed-off agent. No, not probably. Jim would be royally pissed off that I had yet again caused some kind of media shit-storm. Reporters would lap it up. He hated the fact that the press found something wrong with every step I made, and I had started to find them hiding out, waiting for the perfect opportunity to see me screw up. I was surprised they weren’t already descending on this accident. But at that moment in time, I really couldn’t give a shit anymore. About any of it. Let them lock me up and throw away the damn key! Maybe I could get away with one last hurrah for the road with the sexy minx before me, I thought as I concentrated on the shape of her lips—not too big, or too small. They had a perfect plumpness to them and a sweetheart shape, and I wondered how she’d taste. Her lips started moving.
“We’ve got to go,” she was saying, anxiously looking around. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“You’re right,” I answered, wanting nothing more than to go back to my apartment, have some fun, then crash and sleep it off. Things were looking up for that blow-job. “You’ll have to give me your info, and I’ll get this damage taken care of, or we can get to that later, after we find a quiet spot, if you know what I mean.” I raised my eyebrows suggestively.
“No, you don’t understand,” she said, her expression darkening as she turned around. Maybe I was losing my touch.
I noticed the crowd starting to gather and swore under my breath. Cell phones were already out. Photos would be taken soon. I couldn’t understand a damn word the lookieloos were saying, but it probably wasn’t good. My agent was going to kill me. He said I needed less publicity, not more of it. But fuck him, fuck everyone. I didn’t care.
“Mademoiselle? Do you need some help?” a man asked, his English heavily tinged with a French accent.
We both turned to find an elderly gentleman standing near us, an ancient flip phone in his hand and a concerned look on his weathered face.
“No,” my soon-to-be conquest replied, waving her hands as she took a step backward. “We are OK; I mean I’m OK. Merci.”
She was stepping off the sidewalk, trying to move us away from the crowd. I followed as I started to hear the telltale electronic click of camera phones. But the more I moved to follow her, the more she moved away, edging back towards the road, where the crazy drivers of this country had jurisdiction. And when I say road, I meant all of it. Even parked cars weren’t safe. I couldn’t let her get run over.
Even with the amount of alcohol I’d drunk, my reflexes kicked in, and I reached out and slid an arm around her waist, jerking her back to safety. Her hands reached out instinctively to steady herself and landed on my chest. I tightened my hold around her as she looked up, her mouth in a perfectly round O, surprise flaring in her eyes.
She was pressed hard against me. Her cleavage was more prominent now. The soft fabric of her shirt had been pulled down and stretched in such a way I could see the tops of her breasts and the lacy edge of her bra. She had tiny freckles sprinkled over her chest. Not only that, but this close I could see a smattering of matching tiny dots across the bridge of her nose, and the way her green eyes were flecked with gold. She was not the slender supermodel type I was used to hanging around with, but I couldn’t deny that she was gorgeous or that her curvy body seemed to mold perfectly to mine.
Her pink tongue darted out, and I watched her lick her lower lip. I felt the tightness in my groin as a result. When had one movement of a tongue become so erotic? Suddenly I wanted to yank her even closer, tilt her head towards mine and devour that mouth and suck on that tongue. I’d kiss the hell out of her. But what would she do? Would she be excited that Damon Holden was kissing her? Holding her and touching her in a way that would make even a porn star blush? Looking at her, I doubted it. Something told me she wasn’t my run-of-the-mill fan; she wasn’t a groupie that would go for that sort of thing, but hey, if you didn’t try…
I lowered my chin, about to go in for the kill when her head cocked to the side, and she pushed at my chest, presumably to let her go.
“I’m fine,” she said softly, her hands still pressing on my chest as she looked up at me. Another dart of her tongue, another tightening of my groin. Damn, I was hard as a rock. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Rescuing me from certain death,” she answered, her cheeks blooming red. I grinned, enjoying life for the first time that day. The thrill of the chase. “You can let me go now, though.”
“Are you sure you want me to do that?”
Her eyes opened up wider as she digested my words. Two darker pink circles, the size of dimes, reappeared upon her cheeks. Then she frowned as she caught herself blushing, ignored my question, and pushed even harder to step out of my arms. She crossed her own over her rounded chest. “You still hit my car.”
Honeymoon over, back to pissed-off driver. She was even hotter when she was pissed off, but I refrained from saying it aloud.
I scratched at the back of my neck and looked back at her car. It looked fine. A new taillight and it was good to go.
“I said I would take care of it.”
“Mon Dieu, c’est Damon Holden!”
I turned at the sound of my name to see the crowd really picking up, and my head starting to pound from the large amount of alcohol I’d consumed. Either I needed another drink, or I needed to get the hell out of here before the crowd mobbed me.
A hand snaked around my arm and I turned back to the woman who had held my attention just a few moments before, worry on her face now.
“We have to get you out of here,” she urged, tugging on my arm. “You can’t afford this press.”
I laughed aloud, thinking press was the last thing I was worried about. So what if they had caught another Damon Holden moment on camera? There was a whole damn website dedicated to my every move. My agent had shown it to me a few days ago. Some of the photos I had laughed at, though Jim, my agent, hadn’t found them very funny at all.
“God, Damon,” Jim said, shaking his head as he leaned back in the chair. “You don’t pay me enough to deal with these fuck-ups.”
“Is this your way of asking for a raise? ’Cause I have to say, it’s not very professional of you, Jim.”
“Shove it, you know what I mean. This has got to stop.”
I sat down, grinnin
g, as I looked at a picture of me in a hot tub surrounded by a bevy of women. There were more empty bottles of liquor around me than I could count, and it probably didn’t help that I had my hands strategically placed over the nearest woman’s breasts. That had been a great night.
“What can I say? They fucking love me.”
Jim sighed loudly, rubbing a hand over his face. Jim had been my agent for a few years, and besides my coach, he was the only other person I would trust in this world who wasn’t family. Not that I trusted my family a whole lot, but those guys, hell, they were better than family to me. Jim had gotten me out of more scrapes than I cared to admit, and I paid him damn well to continue doing so.
“You gotta clean up your image, just a tiny bit,” he pleaded as I looked through a few more of the pictures on the site; some I couldn’t even remember. The events, the women, the alcohol had all started to blend into one big, swirling mess.
“I know you are enjoying this, but you need to get serious about your game. The endorsements are starting to talk. You’re a liability.”
“Oh, come on,” I laughed. “There’s no way they are going to drop me. I’m a hot commodity, dude, they won’t get rid of me. I bring in too much free advertising for them.”
Jim eyed me, disbelief on his face. “It’s business, Damon. They’ll get rid of you the moment you start negatively affecting their image and brand. So you better stay out of trouble. At least for a couple of months.”
Even now, those words were running through my brain. Jim wasn’t going to understand why I was in the state I was; he wasn’t going to see past the latest scandalous photos.
“Come on, we can’t wait any longer,” she was saying as she tugged harder, which was really starting to get on my nerves. I looked back at the crowd and decided that flipping them off probably wasn’t going to be the best of photos, but I did it anyway.
“Oh, dear god, are you insane? Come on,” she hissed, finally pulling me enough that I fell her way. “Are you deliberately trying to ruin your career?”
“Ruin it?” I chuckled as I stumbled toward her car, her hand firmly on my arm. “Hell, I’m making myself a household name, lady.”
“Yeah, right,” she said.
I grinned, because I didn’t know what else to do as she maneuvered me to the passenger side of her car, throwing open the door while she muttered to herself. I caught words like ‘dumbass’ and ‘stupid,’ figuring those words applied to me and me only.
“So what now? Are you kidnapping me?”
“Get in the car and shut up before I change my mind,” she muttered and pushed me hard towards the open door.
“You are, aren’t you? You don’t want to settle for a little piece of me, you want all me. Damon Holden, all to yourself. Right?”
“Just get in! The police will probably be here soon!”
“Yeah, and we wouldn’t want that, would we? Especially since you’re most definitely taking me against my will,” I said, teasing. I climbed in, thinking what the heck? Being kidnapped was not something I would have imagined happening to me today, but hell, if I had to have a kidnapper, at least I had a good-looking one. And it would be a damn sight better than being hauled off in handcuffs. I called out few meek cries for help as she slammed the door in my face. She was so serious that I couldn’t help but laugh as she skirted around the front of her VW.
“Biegen sie in zweihundert metern rechts ab.”
“What the hell?” I muttered as she climbed into the driver’s seat. Was she supposed to be in Germany instead of France? The thought that maybe she was gonna take me across country, over the border, and really kidnap me did cross my mind for a second.
“Damn GPS,” she said, then looked in the mirror. “I don’t know what to do with your car.”
“It’s a freebie, who cares? Besides, you’re the criminal mastermind here, not me. I’m just a drunken fool that you’re taking advantage of.” I shrugged, leaning back in the seat. Damn it felt good to sit down. My head was starting to throb something fierce.
“Fool is right,” she said under her breath and started the car.
She sighed as I fumbled in my pocket, retrieving my cell phone. Squinting with one eye, I fired off a text message to Jim, letting him know that the car was sitting in the middle of the city, needing to be picked up pronto. He was going to fucking love that. “Taken care of,” I announced, dropping the phone between my legs. “Off to my prison, oh lovely kidnapper!”
She snorted and pulled out into traffic, laying on the horn as she did so.
3
Ginny
I was kidnapping a famous tennis star. The words ran through my mind as I zipped through the streets of France like a pro, like one of their own. The threat of being arrested made it really easy for me to drive angrily and get where I needed to go.
“Jetzt abbiegen.”
“Shut up!” I yelled, tired of the stupid machine. Damon, on the right side of me, broke out into laughter, and I felt my cheeks heat, not believing the madness of the day. I mean, you couldn’t make this stuff up.
“A fan of German or should you be in Germany? Did you get lost?”
I glanced over, taking in his handsome profile as I screeched to a halt at a red light. Damon Holden was sitting next to me. Mere inches away. I still couldn’t fathom that he was there and that it wasn’t some crazy hallucination. But I wasn’t hallucinating the heady scent of delicious musky vanilla with a hint of smoky whisky that was drifting and filling the small space of the car. That I was definitely not imagining. The smell was making my mouth water and my lower region dance. No one was going to believe this.
He looked at me as if he were waiting for an answer to something. My mind had gone completely blank, too preoccupied with studying the contours of his face.
“Sorry, did you say something?”
“The GPS. You speak German?”
I shook my head. “It was like that when I got the car, and I haven’t been able to change it back. All the settings are in German, too.”
He grinned at me, and I felt warmth spiral down my spine. He was gorgeous in person, even more so than on camera, his teeth pearly white against his tanned face.
“That’s an easy fix,” he said as he jabbed a finger towards the off button on the console.
“Don’t. I need it to find my way…” I stopped. What the hell was I going to do with him? Where was I planning on going? I couldn’t let him stay back there and have his career obliterated for being arrested for drunk driving! He had saved me from being smushed like a bug on someone else’s car’s windshield, too, so I knew I had to help him. It didn’t matter that my body had turned instantly to a gooey state when he had wrapped his arms around me. That had nothing to do with this. Or so I kept on telling myself… I just had to stay cool and not look like a crazy kidnapper. I was helping him. That’s right, helping, not committing a felony.
He shrugged and pressed the button anyway. The flashing on the dashboard blinked out and went dark. The crazed German voice was cut off in mid-sentence.
“Well I’ll definitely get lost now,” I said.
Damon shrugged again. “I don’t have anywhere else to be.” He leaned his head against the window, slumping down low. I hoped he wasn’t passing out. That would be all I needed.
Looking down at the car clock that was still lit up, I sighed inwardly as I realized that the first tennis match of the day would already be starting soon. So much for my chance of a lifetime to watch the French Open. But at least I had one of the best players in the world sitting right there next to me, probably waiting for me to pull out the duct tape and zip ties, though he didn’t seem to bothered or concerned at all as to where we were going or what I was going to do to him. Then it hit me. The match. Surely he had a match today? I was pretty sure he was on the listings for the first day. Either today or tomorrow at the very least.
“Um, Mr. Holden?” I asked, not feeling confident enough to call him by his first name.
�
�Shh, sleeping. Let your captive sleep.”
“But, erm, this is important.”
“What is?” he mumbled from the side.
His voice sounded tired, as if he were done with it all. He seemed exhausted and running on fumes, and I felt a twinge of sympathy for him.
“When’s your match?”
“My what?”
“You know, your tennis match. Is it today? The French Open?”
He snorted, and I was caught off guard. To me the Open was a lifetime of savings, years of dreaming of what it would be like to see it in person, a chance to see, well, him, in action against the best players in the world. But he sounded like the very mention of the tournament was beneath him. Something disgusting that should be scraped off the sole of his pristine white tennis shoes.
“I don’t care about the match,” he finally said.
I gripped the steering wheel, my thoughts churning. He didn’t care? How could he not care?
“Won’t it hurt your record or something?” I said, stating the obvious but not wanting to pry too much.
He didn’t say anything, and I didn’t press him any further. Why did I care about his career when he obviously was willing to throw it away so casually? If he missed the first match, he’d simply be out of the tournament, a forfeit. Inevitably his rankings would slip. It made me wonder what on earth had happened to make him want to throw it all away. But I was in no position to intrude and ask about it. He wasn’t one of my regulars at the bar whom I could grill or coerce with beer to spill whatever was on their minds and plaguing them. He had the aura of being off-limits. I mean, I guess I could’ve tied him up and made him talk… I shook my head.
A ring tone filled the air, and my phone began to vibrate violently against the plastic edging of the cup holder. I grabbed it and pressed the button before holding it up to my ear. “Hello?”
“You shouldn’t use your phone when driving,” Damon mumbled.
The Love Game Page 2
