“When we’re there, you can’t call me Alex or Alexandre, and certainly not Grimaldi.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve called myself Xan Valentine since I matriculated at Juilliard. Even Cadell doesn’t know the whole Monégasque and French dukedom things.”
“They don’t know your real name?”
“No. None of them.”
“Or about your background.”
Alex studied her, but this time, he seemed to be searching her for something else. “How much do you know about that?”
Georgie’s surprise stretched her eyes before she had a chance to compose herself. She drew a circle in the air, indicating the airplane. “The duke thing.”
“They don’t know about ‘the duke thing,’” he said.
“Or the Monaco connection.”
“Not at all.”
“Can I call you Alex when we’re alone?”
His smile warmed, and the sparkle in his dark eyes was of an altogether different nature. “I’m counting on it.”
XAN VALENTINE
Alexandre de Valentinois
Alexandre and Georgie stood in the cement tunnel hung with blackout curtains that led to the stage in the arena. Thumping music echoed off the concrete and blended into an atonal, chaotic mass of sound.
He took her hand. The silver death’s head rings on his knuckles were hard between their skin. “Remember,” he said, projecting near her ear to be heard over the din from the stage and the screaming audience. “Remember, I’m Xan, now.”
She nodded, and Alexandre caught one, last whiff of her perfume, night-blooming jasmine and vanilla, that sounded like the drawn-out notes of a cello speaking of love.
He thought, Remember this. Remember her.
Alex found his silver chains in his costume pocket and dropped them over his head. The heavy silver chilled the back of his neck.
On the stage, Cadell cranked his guitar into a primal scream.
Tryp battered an insistent heartbeat on his drums.
Thirty thousand fans stomped the floorboards like thunder harnessed and forced into unison.
“I’ll be done in a few hours,” Alexandre whispered, “and I’ll come back to you.”
Cadell had begun the guitar solo intro to “Nine Levels of Tortured Souls,” an arena rock anthem that pulled the crowd to their feet. Alexandre felt them out there, their barely contained fury about to erupt.
“I’ll come back,” he whispered to her.
He took a flask out of his hip pocket, under the velvet frock coat, and knocked back a swallow. It burned his throat and vocal cords with dark red fire and infiltrated every cell in his body, and the alcohol stripped any slimy gunk off his vocal cords.
The dark tendrils that Alexandre thought of as Xan Valentine’s persona trickled toward him, surrounding him with the flashing colors of rock music and the scent of dust burning in the stage lights.
Alex let go.
He and Jonas needed to meet with the Artists and Repertoire guy from Interscope Records late this week and the woman from Griffin next week.
He needed to cut these demos and send the tracks to his producers for processing as soon as he could, probably as soon as he could roust Tryp and Cadell for a stripped-down cut. Those had to be done before the meetings with the A&R people.
But now, right now, he needed to stride onto that stage and command every one of those thirty thousand people, mold them into his own army, and drive them into a berserker madness.
Lightning cracked through him. This was what he was made for.
Xan Valentine threw back another shot of the scotch and wrapped one arm around Georgie’s waist, shoving her against the wall for one last fiery kiss, and he dropped her to take the stage.
ALWAYSLAND
Georgie
Georgie watched Alex, her sweet rescuer and introspective classical musician, who was so private about his violin and so sparkling in his discussion of music, his posh British accent smooth in her ears.
Alex took a swig from the flask and looked out the part in the curtain at the roaring crowd and swirling lights, and he changed.
She had seen glimmers of it before, that glower and swagger. She had felt it when his hands covered hers at the piano in Paris and when he had tied her up and fucked her at The Devilhouse.
His dark eyes glittered, became almost malevolent. His face hardened.
When he looked back at her, hunger and power flowing off of him, Georgie stepped back, but he was on her, his arm around her waist and bending her back and shoving her up against the wall, sucking at her mouth, his fingers almost bruising her arms.
He released her and marched for the stage, his every movement eager to destroy the audience.
Georgie slid down the cold, cement wall. The abrupt change was shocking, and she rubbed her lower lip where he had bitten her.
She stood on shaking legs and made her way to the black curtains. Stage lights infiltrated the crease into the dark tunnel. She used one finger to part the curtains so she could see.
The laser-cannon lights from the stage blasted her eyes, and she blinked to clear the tears.
On the stage, Xan Valentine roared to the crowd, and they screamed back.
He sang. He played the guitar. He rocked the crowd.
For hours.
For hours, he held them in his hands, and all thirty thousand were as helpless as Georgie had been when he had shoved her against the wall. You can’t resist a force of personality like that.
Georgie watched him, unable to look away. Every move of his body exuded sex and power. When he tore off the frock coat and his shirt gaped open, silver chains and charms glittering in the stage lights, the women in the audience went wild, and then men felt the animal power wash over them.
Hours went by.
God, that kind of passion was—her heart was pounding so hard she couldn’t think—was attractive.
At the end, during the last few songs, Georgie barely noticed the other band members ran past her, their sprinting footsteps thundering in the concrete tunnel. She only saw Xan with his guitar, singing in a shining pool of silver light in the center of the stage.
The back-up singer, a petite, voluptuous redhead, sang the first verse with him, but he twitched his head toward the tunnel, telling her to go and leave him alone in the follow spotlight with thirty thousand people reaching for him.
That song ended, and he bowed his head for a moment.
The crowd still roared, almost rioting. Their voices shook the cement floor under her.
Xan strummed his guitar and played the intro chords for “Alwaysland.”
His hoarse voice was shredded from so many hours of singing, but he sang in a breathy tenor, “Because while I live, because while I breathe, because while my heart beats in my body, I will love you like we live in Alwaysland.”
The pain from his throat sounded like it emanated directly from his heart, and Georgie’s fingernails pressed into her palms. Her hands wanted to play the song with him, even though the thought of pressing the piano keys in front of all of those thousands of people made a horrified sweat sting her skin.
She wanted to be out there. She wanted to touch the music with him.
The song was over too soon, and Xan strode off the stage. As he hit the edge, the follow spot extinguished.
Darkness covered Georgie’s eyes, and Xan’s pale face emerged from the night, the green emergency lights just frosting his skin. He held her around the waist and whispered, “You’re still here.”
Georgie held back her tears and forced her voice through her clenched throat. “Yes. I’m here.”
Jonas, the stage manager, tugged Xan’s arm. “We have to go.”
Xan’s eyes—those long, exotic eyes that tempted her—never left her gaze, and he whispered to her, “Come on. We have to run.”
Georgie held his hand and followed him into the dark.
~~~~~
~~~~~
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Want to read more about Xan Valentine right now?
Two years ago….
Xan Valentine, the frontman for the emerging rock band Killer Valentine, is exhausted from his oppressive touring schedule and trying to maintain a relationship with his girlfriend, Natasha Howard, a virtuoso classical cellist. When a few concerts are canceled, Xan finds himself with two days of freedom and an engagement ring. Can he convince Natasha that she belongs on the road with him?
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~~~~~
The first book in the Rock Stars in Disguise series is
What A Girl Wants
Rock Stars in Disguise: Rhiannon
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ROCK STARS IN DISGUISE:
RHIANNON
When Rhiannon is hired as a back-up singer for Killer Valentine, the hottest breakout rock band on the planet, her contract includes an iron-clad no-fraternization clause. However, it doesn’t take her long to figure out that Killer Valentine is falling apart from the stresses of touring and promotion. The band’s manager Jonas Rees, a green-eyed starmaker, is frantically trying to prevent them from self-destructing during their grueling tour and right before their first major-label record deal, but neither Jonas nor Rhiannon can deny the attraction that flares between them. When the band’s problems threaten to derail the tour and Jonas slips and reveals their relationship, the lead singer demands that Rhiannon choose between music and love.
~~~~~
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Someone to Love (Rock Stars in Disguise: Tryp)
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Rock Stars in Disguise: Cadell - Fall, 2015
Billionaires in Disguise: Flicka – - Winter, 2015
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SPECIAL SNEAK PEEK OF SOMEONE TO LOVE (ROCK STARS IN DISGUISE: TRYP)
Tryp Areleous’s arm lay heavy on Elfie’s shoulders, and he stumbled beside her as she half-led, half-carried him down the hotel hallway. His long legs tangled as he walked, and he nearly tripped and fell. His other arm flopped by his side as she read the numbers on the doors, 506, 508, and hoped that 514 was right around the corner. His drunken flopping was going to knock her into one of the too-close walls.
“How old are you, Elfie?” Tryp slurred. He was bent nearly in half, resting his forehead on her shoulder. His black curls—big, soft curls—brushed her cheek and tickled her nose, making her want to sneeze.
“I just turned nineteen,” Elfie said. Her broad Texas twang made it sound like she said Ah.
“You’ve been on the road with us for two years.”
“I have a good fake I.D.” She adjusted his arm, which was surprisingly burly considering how rarely he exercised at the hotel gyms or did any honest work. He never got up before the radio stations called to interview, and then the shows were soon after. Maybe he was still benefitting from the effects of the Utah shock gym that the lead singer had checked them into before that Rolling Stone cover shoot where the band was all naked to the waist and ripped.
Not that Elfie had looked at it.
Not that she was any kind of connoisseur of men’s bodies.
Not that she was even inadvertently copping a feel of his very muscular back, especially his lats, that tapered down to his narrow waist as she dragged his drunk butt back to his hotel room to pour him into bed.
“You were seventeen?” Tryp asked.
He wasn’t too shitfaced to do simple math, astounding, but he was probably too messed up to remember anything she told him right now. Tryp had a lot of blackouts. She said, “I ran away from home. Long story.”
His breath smelled like fresh whiskey, a comforting scent, when he said, “When I was nineteen, I was a millionaire with a gold record.”
“Way to make me feel better about my life, buddy.” Elfie adjusted his arm on her shoulders to hold him up while she frisked him for his wallet and, not finding it because it had probably been stolen by some desperate groupie again, his hotel room keycard. She shoved him up against the wall and found it in his sock. He still had his drumsticks shoved in his back pocket. A long, blond lank of her hair dangled in front of her face, escaped from her tight braid down the back of her head. She shoved it behind her ear.
Tryp said, “I was living in a shitty hotel because my girlfriend OD’ed on heroin and was in a coma. I didn’t know how to wash the blood off the walls of her apartment.”
“That must have been terrible.” She opened his door, frog-marched him through the living room of the suite to his bedroom, and shoved him toward the bed. He landed on it like a redwood falling in the forest.
“She died,” Tryp said. “Liver failure.”
Elfie really should cut him some slack. She had been hanging around the other techs too long, verbally abusing the drunk musos. “I am really sorry about that.”
She closed the drapes, darkening the room and shutting out the bright morning sun outside. He only had five hours to sleep before his wake-up call.
“You wanna suck my dick?” Tryp mumbled into the pillow.
Elfie jumped back, nearly slamming into the wall, but Tryp was still prone on the bed, nearly comatose. She said, “Not in the slightest.”
“Why not? What kind of a groupie are you?” he kind-of whined.
She shook out her arms and started toward the door. “I’m the pyrotechnics technician, you jackass. Now go the fuck to sleep before I put a bomb in your bass drum tonight.”
“Promises, promises,” he muttered. “Where was the show today, Elfie?”
“Sacramento.”
“And where are we now?”
“Berkeley.”
“No wonde
r it’s so fucking cold.”
He looked cold, lying on his belly on the bed like that, even though he was dressed in leather pants and a ripped-up tee shirt, his scarlet and black tattoos visible through the slices in the fabric. Hotel rooms are always damp and cold, so Elfie flipped the other side of the comforter over him.
He said, “I hate Berkeley. We always have to do a runner.”
In arenas without backstage facilities, the musicians ran to waiting SUVs where they were cooped up and belted down, sweaty and shaking with adrenaline, sometimes for hours while they were driven to the hotel or the tour bus.
Technicians didn’t rate runners. Elfie stayed and tore down her pyro effects and the lighting battans.
“Yeah, runners suck.” Elfie edged toward the door and put her hand on the light switch.
“Don’t go.”
“I’m not going to fuck you, Tryp.”
“Just stay.” His face was half-buried in the pillow. “I’ll die and no one will know.”
Every Breath You Take (Billionaires in Disguise: Georgie and Rock Stars in Disguise: Xan #1) Page 19
