Red Hot Lovers: 18 Contemporary Romance Books of Love, Passion, and Sexy Heroes by Your Favorite Top-Selling Authors

by Milly Taiden

  “Yeah, she knocked him clean out, though he was probably drunk. They’re going to let her go. Luckily, she doesn’t look nearly as dangerous as she is.”

  After they hung up, Rhiannon let out the panicked breath that she had been holding since she had found Rade on the floor, unconscious.

  Jonas hadn’t fired her for going to the stripper club with Rade.

  She was still shaking at the thought that Jonas would slap her butt on a plane back to L.A. that very night, and she would have shown up tomorrow morning at that horrible hovel house where they ate hot dogs out of Styrofoam ice chests because the refrigerator had blown its Freon months before in a cloud of noxious gas, and she would have had to beg Gaston to give her that piece-of-shit car back.

  Physical in Her Art

  Rhiannon found Jonas in the hotel lobby, asleep in the chair nearest to the automatic sliding doors. His long arms and legs draped over the chair, his fingertips nearly skimming the blue carpet patterned with golden vines.

  She touched his shoulder to wake him up, but when he didn’t stir, she said his name a little louder and held his shoulder, jostling him. Under her fingers, his rounded shoulder filled out his smooth suit jacket.

  She knew that he was athletic from their noontime workout sessions where she wore a long, baggy tee shirt over shorts and he sported black Lycra stuff that clung to his wide shoulders and narrow waist, but he felt muscular under his suit. His suit jacket sleeves hid the tattoo of the red and black snake coiling around his left forearm that she peeked at every day in the gym.

  Not that she was scamming on the band manager. Certainly not after reading that contract.

  Was the manager really a band member?

  Rhiannon hadn’t had a boyfriend for years, though she had occasionally benefited from other band members or the occasional guy-groupie. She was a musician: passionate, emotional, and physical in her art. Celibacy wasn’t natural for her. Her blocked schedule just didn’t allow her to troll bars and scam on guys, or go on dates, or talk on the phone, or take five minutes to sign up for an online dating account, or peruse Craigslist for something quick and dirty.

  Jonas’s shoulder under her palm was built of hard flesh, and if that suit fell off him, she would bet that he would look very nice.

  She swallowed, refocusing her thoughts.

  It was normal to have feelings like this around an attractive man, a very attractive man, but one of her band mates was unconscious in the car.

  “Jonas.” She shook his shoulder with more authority. “Can you help me get Rade to his room?”

  This time, Jonas’s pale green eyes opened, though sleep still fogged them for a minute. He blinked. “Still dreaming?”

  She asked, “Are you okay?”

  He shook his head. “Yeah, fine. Where’s Rade?” He gathered his arms and legs underneath him and teetered as he stood.

  She reached to steady him, catching his warm hand, just like he did for her on the nights when she pried her shoes off before a runner.

  He looked from the floor to her eyes, and his wariness as he searched for what she meant by the gesture made her believe that he had thought about some contract-forbidden things, too, and he didn’t let go for a long moment.

  She lifted her fingers out of his.

  Jonas said, “Thanks.”

  “No prob. This way.”

  “Sure.”

  He followed her out of the lobby to the waiting SUV, where Lester had the car still running. He peered out the open window at them. “I figured we would use the side door?”

  “Oh, God, yes,” Jonas said. “It’s four-thirty, so the early-riser business crowd will be coming down for their egg white omelets and lattes any minute.”

  Rhiannon rode shotgun, and Jonas inspected Rade while they drove through the dark parking lot to the back side of the resort hotel, retracting his eyelids and checking his pulse.

  “He’s fine,” Jonas pronounced. “Just wasted.”

  “The girls said he was snorting something.” Rhiannon twisted in the seat.

  Jonas’s eyes flicked toward the driver. “He’s probably just drunk.”

  Rhiannon turned around to look out the front and didn’t say anything else. Lester might seem like a nice guy, but he wasn’t employed by the tour. He was just another limo driver in just another city, and he would spread rumors about them as soon as they left, assuming that he didn’t email one of the celebrity nasty-gossip sites from his phone as soon as the car door slammed behind them.

  After they parked the SUV, Lester and Jonas half-carried Rade to his room, but Rade managed to stumble between them at least part of the way. Rhiannon scouted ahead, making sure that the halls were clear. They dumped Rade on his bed, turned his face to the side, and left a trash can near his head. He was mumbling and batting at his cheek when they left, so he wasn’t going to drown in his own vomit or anything.

  They closed the door behind themselves. Rhiannon and Jonas shook Lester’s hand and watched him walk down the hallway and out of their lives.

  Jonas sagged against the wall. “Thank you for handling that.”

  “It’s fine,” she said, waving her hand to blow away his thanks.

  “You’ve helped out a lot with the Terrible Threesome. It’s not your job, and I don’t want to take your focus away from your singing, but I appreciate it.”

  “It’s nothing,” she insisted.

  “Sometimes, I want to strangle those two, and Tryp, too. You never lose your temper with them.”

  “Oh, I never get mad.”

  “Never?”

  “Nope. Never.”

  He watched her for a moment like he was measuring something. “So you’re not a fiery redhead.”

  “No. Are you jealous all the time because you have green eyes?”

  “Probably not.” Jonas looked down the hall where Lester had walked. “Even if it is all over the internet tomorrow, it could have been so much worse.”

  “How in Hell could it be worse than strippers and drugs?”

  Jonas ticked off the possibilities on his long fingers. “Rade could have ODed and died. He could have ended up in the hospital with a ring of police asking him to rat out his dealers and then hauling him off to jail. He could have gone all cocaine paranoid-crazy and killed a stripper. He could have driven impaired and killed a whole family on their vacation.”

  Horrified, Rhiannon asked, “How could he have driven? No one has a car.”

  Jonas blew air through his soft lips with a plosive P sound. “He doesn’t have a license anymore, either. That hasn’t stopped him.”

  Whoa. “It must be hard to clean up after all these grown men acting like children.”

  Jonas laughed, a bitter sound. “Yeah, it is.”

  She admitted, “Tonight was my fault.”

  “Not unless you dragged him to the strip club against his will, shoved drugs up his nose, and paid the strippers to dry-hump him,” Jonas scoffed.

  “I went along with it. I didn’t tell him no.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. Rade would have ended up somewhere with women and drugs. He had already set his mind on it. I’m just glad Grayson wasn’t with him. I try to keep those two separated because they egg each other on, and then they drag that poor baby Tryp along with them. Losing three band members in one night would have been catastrophic. Stuff like that keeps me awake at night.”

  She felt like she should give Jonas the information, but she didn’t want to sound like a narc. “The girls said that he was using a white powder.”

  “That’s the zombie dust. They’re also injecting heroin.” Jonas ran his hand over the top of his head, messing his shaggy hair so that it curled around his ears. “I’ve tried ransacking their luggage and flushing it. They just go out to buy more, and every time they do that, they risk getting mugged or murdered or busted or getting some bad shit from someone they don’t know. Rade and Grayson have been to rehab twice, each. They don’t want to recover. They want to do the drugs.”


  “That’s horrible.” She leaned on the wall beside him, and they stared at the red fire extinguisher case on the other wall that implored them to break the glass only in case of a fire.

  He said, “It’s horrible to watch them. It’s horrible to wait until they hit bottom again to try to help them. It’s horrible to have to pick up the pieces of their lives and our business when they go bad.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “I’m sorry. I’m on my high horse. They are who they are, and I just have to get them to the show in Phoenix tomorrow and the ones in Utah the day after that.”

  Xan Valentine’s breakneck schedule didn’t allow Jonas to decompress, either. “When was the last time you had a break?”

  “I stayed with some friends at Christmas. The damn tour nearly fell apart when I left for four days.”

  Sweat had formed beads near his hairline.

  Rhiannon reached over, slid her fingers into his hand, and watched his face. “That must be rough for you.”

  Jonas blinked three times fast. “Kinda. Yeah.”

  He swallowed.

  His fingers curled around hers.

  There had been the chance that she might get fired for fraternizing, but his fingers tightened around hers, not painfully, just like he was holding on for dear life.

  He asked, “Do you want to come to my room for a drink?”

  Stage Fright

  Standing in the long hallway, her hand trapped in his warm fingers, Rhiannon sucked a slow breath into her lungs, trying to calm her thumping heart before she answered Jonas. The white wall opposite them had a subtle indentation where some couple must have tried to shag against the wall but he was so rough that her back had broken through the plaster.

  A smart girl would shake off Jonas’s hand and go back to her own room, thus securing her place in the band as a non-fuckee and a professional.

  Plus, she hadn’t showered after the show and was quite, ahem, ripe after several sweaty hours of hanging out in a smoky, nasty titty bar. Her own sweat wafted out of her dress, offending even herself.

  She held his hand tighter to show him what she wanted. “I kind of need a shower.”

  “My room has a shower.”

  Her voice came out like she couldn’t breathe. “I should stop at my room and pick up a few things.”

  “I’ll walk with you.”

  He didn’t let go of her sticky palm as they walked, fingers entwined, to her room where she grabbed some casual clothes, toiletries, her good underwear, and a couple of the condoms that her friend from the cafe had mailed to her as a joke. Her fingers were vibrantly aware of Jonas’s warm hand around hers the whole way down the corridors and up the elevator.

  Jonas waited outside her door for her. “We should book your room next to Elfie’s. Other than Xan’s assistant, you’re the only two ladies on the tour.”

  They rode the elevator farther up to his room, both of them swallowing a little more than normal and examining the wood panels, but with their hands clasped between them as if letting go would cause one of them to come to their senses.

  Because Jonas was the manager, he had a small suite with a sitting room. He hung his suit jacket over the back of an armchair and rummaged through his suitcase open on the coffee table, producing a green bottle. “Do you like scotch?”

  “My name is Rhiannon Macallen. I bleed scotch.”

  She sounded just like her mother sometimes.

  He poured her a drink of amber whiskey from the bottle, walked over, and held it out to her. “Was that your given name?”

  “That’s what my momma named me. She liked Stevie Nicks.”

  He raised his eyebrows and smiled, accepting the story, and held out the highball glass. “Just so you know,” he said, and his light green eyes seemed to not blink as he stared straight at her, “you can leave at any time. No harm, no foul. If you change your mind, starting right this minute, nothing could change how much I appreciate how you took care of Rade tonight. Cheers.”

  Her glass clinked against his, and their knuckles brushed. “Cheers. It really was nothing.”

  He continued, “Xan has the last word on your contract, not me, and the sum total of what I will say is that you’re a team player and invaluable on the road. Hell, if Xan thinks your singing isn’t up to snuff, which will mean that he’s finally snapped because your voice is gorgeous and getting better, I’ll hire you as my assistant in charge of damage control.”

  “My voice isn’t that good. I make up for it by working hard.” She sipped the scotch, and it was a sweet, smooth spirit after the cheap, gutrot stuff that she used to drink at the slum house in L.A.

  “I’ve been a manager for six years, now. Killer Valentine is my fourth band. I know what makes a good voice, and you have a great voice.”

  “Well, thanks, I guess.”

  He said, “Whatever happens here, including just a friendly drink together to decompress after a tough night, is personal.”

  “I understand.” Her skin flushed hot, wanting his hands on her.

  He stepped closer, turned his hand over, and ran his knuckles down her cheek and her neck. “Very personal.”

  She stretched, letting him stroke her skin. Her heart sped, and the highball glass felt heavy in her fingers. Those drinks at the strip club had been watered down, but there had been quite a few of them.

  A trace of dark gold stubble covered his jaw and neck, glinting in the light. “All you have to do is step back. You can just make a joke, and I’ll laugh and step back, too.”

  The scotch was malty in her mouth. “That contract you gave me, it said that there was no fraternizing between band members.”

  He was examining her too-white skin as he stroked her neck, smiling a little. “I’m not a band member. I’m management. Different leg on the org chart.”

  Awesome.

  She grabbed his tie and pulled his head down to her.

  His lips opened as soon as their mouths touched, and his free arm wrapped around her waist and dragged her against his body. The whiskey he had just sipped flavored his breath, just like hers, and she splayed her hand on his chest. Heat from his muscled body seeped through his clothes and warmed her hand.

  Without pulling away, he set his drink on a table and ran his hand down her side from her breast to her hip, then pulled her more tightly against himself. The hardness of his body against hers shouldn’t have surprised her, considering what she had seen in the gym, but feeling his thick torso and thighs pushing against her body made her suck in a breath. Already, her soft flesh yielded to him.

  Rhiannon gasped against his lips because this was suddenly going fast, very fast, but she found the table to set her drink on and wound her arm up and around his neck, holding him there, kissing her.

  Six months. She hoped she remembered how everything worked.

  He bent and kissed her neck, his mouth warm against her skin, and she arched against him, whispering, “I really need to take a shower.”

  His voice dropped deeper in his throat, growling, as he said, “Me, too.”

  He stepped away from her, and she stumbled without his arms around her to hold her up. He pulled her hand and led her toward the door at the back of the sitting room, through a bedroom, and to the small hotel bathroom.

  He whirled, and his arms were around her again. He reached with one hand, slapping the glass shower door aside and fumbling for the tap while kissing her, sucking on her lower lip and taking it between his teeth for an instant. Water hissed behind them. Rhiannon felt his hands wrap her waist and lift her onto the counter.

  His hands reached around her for the zipper on the back of her dress.

  Oh, God.

  “Would it be all right if I just showered first?” she asked. “Then we could do it in the bedroom? With the covers up? And the lights off?”

  “Why would you want that, Luscious? Let me look at you.” He wedged himself between her chubby thighs and took a long, scorching look at her, right down to where his hips pressed against
the place where her silver skirt was riding up, and then back up to her eyes. She tried not to look terrified that he wanted to see her naked.

  Hot lust filled his pale green eyes, and he told her right to her face, “I want to wash you, and taste you, and run my hands all over you.”

  It was like the Jonas-the-professional-guy mask had been torn off, and he was a bundle of raw energy that had been suppressed too long.

  He tugged the zipper down her back to her waist, pushed the sequined material down her arms, and buried his face in her neck, running his mouth over her skin.

  Rhiannon gasped and pulled him against her, reaching with her mouth for his earlobe. Her nose was in his hair, curling low around his ears, and he smelled like tangerines.

  She tried to flip the light switch off, but it was out of her reach. Jonas didn’t seem the type to demean her for her chubs, but you never knew with guys.

  His arms tightened, and steam billowed around them from behind the glass doors, tracing warm moisture on her skin.

  Indeed, Jonas had always been thoroughly sincere and industrious in everything.

  Those weren’t bad qualities in a lover.

  She unbuttoned his shirt, trying to concentrate on the tiny white buttons and tinier buttonholes rather than his mouth hot on her neck, and when she had a couple undone at his throat, he pulled his shirt and undershirt off over his head and flung it aside.

  His small snake tattoo that she had seen in the gym curled around his forearm with the snake’s head resting on the inside of his wrist. Golden, uninked skin covered his strong shoulders and chest. She trailed her fingers over the bricks of his abs.

  He pulled her against him, scrunching her dress down her arms.

  Rhiannon pulled one arm out of her shoulder strap but held her top over her boobs. “Can we turn the bathroom lights off?”

  Jonas raised his head, and passion misted his eyes. “You’re shy?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  His hands roamed her waist and hips, grabbing her through the dress. “You go on stage every night and sing in front of thousands of people. My throat would close up, and I would choke to death from stage fright if I tried to do that.”