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

by Milly Taiden

  The audience continued to pound and scream like they were trying to shake the roadies off the catwalks.

  Xan glared at the opening of the tunnel, stage lights still blazing at the end, like there was an angry mob out there screaming for his head.

  “Take your guitar,” Rhiannon said to him. “I’ll sing some, and we’ll get the audience to sing the rest. When Sting used to lose his voice at the end of his concerts, he’d sing one line of a verse, and the audience sang the rest.”

  “I haven’t lost my voice,” Xan insisted, his voice grating in his throat. He grabbed his acoustic guitar from its stand.

  “Of course not, but you don’t want to stress it any more tonight. Hum if they’ll let you, just like if we were cooling down.”

  The audience roared as they walked out. The roadies had already set a bar stool at center stage, and Xan perched on it. Rhiannon waved to a technician on the side to get a hand microphone.

  Xan set his guitar between his thighs with the neck near his shoulder, playing it like a classical guitar instead of laying it across his lap. He adjusted the mic pointing at the body of the instrument and picked the strings with his fingertips.

  The audience shrieked at the opening melody line of “Alwaysland,” but Rhiannon held up her hand, shushing them. The quieter they were, the less Xan would have to project.

  Truth be told, her throat was tiring, too.

  Xan played the melody, plucking harmonics on the strings, and Rhiannon stopped to watch. His long fingers looked delicate, plucking the guitar’s strings, and his left hand danced down the frets.

  He nodded to Rhiannon.

  She sang the first verse quietly, sweetly, to the crowd, and the audience began to sway. Xan hummed the harmony line behind her and came in gently on the first line of the refrain.

  The audience began to sing.

  Rhiannon and Xan glanced at each other and let their voices fade, leaving the audience to sing the rest of the chorus while Xan played his guitar for them.

  For the next verse, they sang the first line again and then dropped down to humming while the audience took over.

  The crowd’s soft singing bordered on reverence, 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.

  Chills swept over Rhiannon’s arms and down her back.

  Damn, but these people loved Xan. He played his guitar like he was stroking a woman’s back and gazed past the dimmed footlights into the crowd, watching them sing to him when he couldn’t go on, and a tear glistened on his mascara-black eyelashes and spilled over.

  Another Runner

  Jonas stood at the gaping entrance of the blocked-off stairwell, seats filled with fans stomping on the cement above and all around him and packed to the dark, laser-swept rafters, waiting for Xan and, this time, Rhiannon, too. The burly security guys had returned from running to the SUVs with the rest of the band.

  Xan had to call Leena. She would set the singer straight that he couldn’t go on like this. No one could.

  Rhiannon stood out on the thrust stage, surrounded on the peninsula that stuck out into the crowd. She was checking in with Xan, coordinating their ad-libbing, but she sang to the crowd, swaying to the music and the crowd’s chorus.

  Jonas watched her more closely, watched the crowd respond to her, even the girls down below the boards who should have been eye-fucking Xan.

  Huh.

  Rhiannon was beautiful out there and as charismatic as Xan, which was saying something.

  He snagged a set of oversized headphones off the wall and, speaking into his walkie-talkie, asked Rock, the head roadie, to feed her channel into the headset.

  After a second, her bright soprano rang through the headphones, clear and sweet on some lines, throaty and sexy on others, and damn near perfect. Every line sounded like she was speaking with heartfelt emotion, not singing notes.

  Jonas stroked the five o’clock shadow on his chin, wondering just how much longer Rhiannon would be content to sing upstage in the supporting role and what he should do with her when she was ready to make the leap to the front of a band.

  Plans swirled in his head, plots for getting air time and interviews, what type of music she would be best suited for, and what kind of musicians she would need behind her to make this work.

  The song ended with the chorus of the audience holding a sustained note while Xan plucked a few final notes from his guitar, and an instant of silence stretched before the crowd erupted into applause.

  That was a victory out there.

  Chills ran down his back, just the same as when he had seen Xan carry an acoustic guitar onto a scummy little stage at a New York bar’s open-microphone night and captivate a crowd in thirty seconds.

  She had upstaged Xan Valentine.

  Rhiannon had Jonas Rees’s full professional attention.

  A thrill shocked down Jonas’s spine like he had picked up a shiny rock on the side of a mountain and then seen the blue fire inside an enormous rough diamond.

  Rhiannon trotted off the stage, leaving Xan standing in the last spotlight within the thundering darkness. Jonas reached out to her and she held his hand to yank off her shoes, just like every night, and he hadn’t quite realized how much he looked forward to this moment of contact with her.

  He tugged her hand to pull her close. His lips were just above hers when he whispered, “Wait. I’ll run with you.”

  She stepped back and looked wildly around at who might have seen them. Xan was still backing off the stage, blinded by the follow spot.

  “But I’m slow,” she said, her blue eyes wide on her sweet face.

  “I won’t leave you behind.” He still clutched her satchel. On the stage, the white cone of the follow spot turned black, and from the wan lights in the stairwell, they saw the outline of Xan turn and walk toward them.

  As soon as he reached the safety of the stairwell, Xan grabbed Rhiannon, pulling her into his arms—she went shock-stiff—and he whispered, “Thank you.”

  Jonas was just reaching to pull that arrogant rocker off of her, but Xan set her back and broke into a run, brown and blond hair flying.

  Most of the security guys fell in step around him.

  Jonas yelled after him, “Call Leena from the car! Seriously!”

  He held Rhiannon’s hand and ran with her at her pace, which wasn’t nearly as slow as she had made it sound. They were only a few yards behind Xan when he dove into the lead SUV and yanked the door closed behind him. The black SUV screeched as it accelerated into the night outside of the garage.

  The last SUV crept closer to the door, idling and waiting for them.

  Jonas whirled, swept Rhiannon into his arms, and shoved her in the SUV ahead of him. He slammed the door and was thrown against the back seat as the driver took off and the glowing neon lights blurred into lines.

  Rhiannon was grabbing at her seat belt, but Jonas pulled her to him. He whispered into her red-gold curls, “You were magnificent. Xan would have gone out there and broken a cord before he stopped a concert, especially this one. Thank you.”

  “I didn’t even think.” She was panting in his arms, a vibrating bundle of nerves and feminine softness. “I just grabbed his note when I heard his throat close up. I think he’s having, like, muscle spasms. He’s going to fire me, isn’t he?”

  Jonas tapped the seat and asked the driver, “Privacy screen, if you would?”

  The screen whirred so goddamn slowly into place. He watched the damn thing drift upward forever before it clicked.

  He told Rhiannon, “He won’t fire you. You saved the show. Xan will forgive anything if it was done in service to the show, and now we’ll have to take a break. Leena will set him straight.” Jonas ran his fingers under Rhiannon’s soft jawline, and her face lifted toward his. “You looked beautiful out there.” He dragged her against his body, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. “You always look beautiful, Luscious.”

  Lim
o

  The flimsy privacy screen blocked the headlights from the oncoming traffic that beamed through the front windshield, and the black-tinted windows filtered most of the light from there, further darkening the limo’s back seat. The leather upholstery under Rhiannon’s thighs warmed and softened as her tight skirt rode up when Jonas pulled her against his hard body.

  The energy from the show still burned Rhiannon from the inside, and recklessness shot through her. Any show would be enough to instill this wildness, but she had taken the lead singer’s line and survived, and standing in the midst of the crowd, singing right to them and with them, had been exhilarating. She was young and immortal and she felt like her heart could encompass the whole world.

  Jonas’s smile reached his eyes, and he looked so relieved that Rhiannon couldn’t resist reaching up and kissing him.

  Her lips slid out from under his as the SUV took a sharp corner, throwing them. Jonas ended up half-lying on her, and in the darkness, his lips parted as he kissed her more deeply. The car drove fast, tossing them between the seat and the dark-tinted windows, as the driver tried to get out of the parking lot before they were boxed in by the crowd that was spilling out of the arena and racing to their cars.

  Rhiannon had had sex in the back seats of cars, but never one that was speeding out of a parking lot and down the brightly lit Las Vegas Strip.

  Her lips opened, and Jonas’s hot tongue touched hers. His hands slid over her body, grabbing her, but he backed up, breathing hard, even though his hands clamped her hips. He said, “I’m going to tell them.”

  “Tell who what?” She reached to kiss him but he was too far.

  He sat up and pulled her to her knees on the seat. “Tell them we’re dating. Tell them that we’re, darn it, this. That we’re together. I hated it when Xan grabbed you.”

  The SUV turned a corner, and they swayed to compensate. She said, “He didn’t grab me. It was just a hug. Musicians do that. Actors do it, too. We’re physical people. He didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “He grabbed you like he was coming on to you.”

  “It was just performance energy. The guys are all over each other, playing grab-ass and just being normal musicians.”

  Jonas held her arms in his big hands and moved her to straddle his legs with her knees. His hard thighs pressed her legs open. She reached for his belt and flipped the leather through the buckle.

  Jonas looked up, searching to meet her gaze. Lamplight from outside the SUV passed over his earnest face, catching the green in his eyes. “I want him to know that he can’t have you, that you’re mine.”

  Rhiannon’s breath caught in her throat. “I don’t belong to anyone.”

  The intensity in his eyes bore down on her. He pulled her hips against himself. Her clit rubbed against his pants, sending ribbons of pleasure through her. She closed her eyes, lost in it.

  He said, “Not like that, but he can’t have you. None of them can.”

  “Of course not,” she said.

  “He needs to keep his hands off of you.” His hands smoothed her body, stroking her sides and back from her shoulders to her ass, pressing her on him. “He needs to know.”

  “He’ll fire me.” The SUV’s engine roared as it accelerated, sending deep thrums through the floor and seat that reverberated in her knees and body. “The contract is clear, and he even said during the audition. No fucking other band members.”

  “I wrote that contract. Xan only cares about creative stuff. I care about you, Rhiannon. I can’t even think about my damn job, about keeping these overgrown teenagers in line, because you’re all that I can think about. I keep thinking about one of those damn musicians coming on to you, pressuring you, and I want to take them apart.”

  “They haven’t,” she insisted. “They’ve all kept their distance way more than I had expected they would and, you know, groupies. They’re not even interested in me.”

  “I want you,” Jonas said, not even taking a breath. “I can’t write love songs like Xan and I’m not a poet, but I want you. I want you in my bed, wherever that bed is tonight. I can’t ask you to move in with me because I don’t even keep an apartment, but I want you in my arms. Come with me, wherever I am, wherever I go. I want them to know that you’re mine and that I will punch their fucking lights out if they hassle you. I know it hasn’t been long enough to say this, but it’s been an intense two months. We’ve been thrown together more than most people who have been dating for years. I’m trying to tell you that I love you.”

  Rhiannon stopped trying to unhook his pants. He had actually said that, right there, to her, in real life, and this wasn’t a movie or a dream or a song or anything. “You do?”

  “Yes.” He moved her hand up his shirt, past the hard lumps of his abs, to the valley between his pecs. His heart thudded under her palm. He licked his lips. “I love you.”

  Her body shivered. Her voice came out with the catch in it because she had never, ever said it before. “I love you, too.”

  No one laughed at her.

  The dark car and Jonas wavered like everything around her was drowning. One tear spilled over, hot on her cheek.

  Jonas ran his hand up her curves to the back of her neck and pulled her mouth down to his. His warm mouth sucked on her lips, tasting her. The wetness of her tears reached her lips, and salt touched her tongue as Jonas’s mouth opened under hers.

  She pulled back a little, but she could feel his breath on her lips. She whispered, “I don’t want you to tell them.”

  “If Xan fires you, I meant what I said.” He was talking fast as he scrunched her skirt up around her hips. “I will hire you in a heartbeat. Seriously, twice the money. Three times. The money isn’t in being a rock star. It’s in managing the rock stars. Producing, too.”

  “But I’m a singer, Jonas. I’ve given up everything to sing, for art.”

  The lights outside sped backwards, past the SUV’s windows. She put her feet on the floor and half-stood, her arms still around his neck. He raked his teeth over her neck and rolled the ruined stockings and panties down her legs, tearing at them with his fingers as he pulled them off her foot. The shredded nylon snagged her toes.

  She said, “I’ve spent every cent I’ve made on instruments and coaching and lessons, and every second of my life for years has been devoted to music, not the music business. I auditioned to be a back-up singer to get experience, to make contacts.”

  He brushed her between her legs with his fingers, sending deep shivers through her, and he mouthed the hollow of her collarbone.

  He whispered against her skin, “I won’t let Xan fire you.”

  She knew that he couldn’t promise that but could barely talk with each slow drag of his hand through her folds that unleashed fire up her body. She reached around his neck, holding his hot mouth on the skin of her throat.

  She gasped, “I want a band and a career. When I write songs, all I can think about is how to arrange the music when I record them someday and what they’ll sound like in front of an audience.”

  He rubbed her deeper, slower, and his finger slipped into her core. His mouth lowered to her chest, and he said against her breast, “You’ll have all that.”

  She groaned, then said, “I don’t want to be an assistant manager, Jonas. I want to be a musician. I want to write. I want to sing.”

  Jonas leaned back. Her skin was cold where he had been sucking on her. He slipped his fingers in and out of her, sliding slowly, building tension within her. Through her half-closed eyes and eyelashes, she saw Jonas smile, and she could feel him breathing hard on her throat.

  He asked, “What do you think I do? I make stars.”

  She laid her forehead on his hard shoulder, panting.

  His hand left her clit, and she nearly cried with longing. He fumbled between them. Rhiannon realized that he was unzipping his fly. She grabbed his shirt and jerked the white fabric tails out of the way.

  He angled himself between them. Rhiannon plunged her hand
into her backpack and came up with a long ribbon of condom packets.

  His eyes widened, and he gasped, “Oh, thank God.”

  She ripped a packet apart and reached down. He was big, really long and thick in her hands and against her stomach as she rolled the condom onto him. Her heart vibrated in her chest.

  Jonas grabbed her dress around her hips like he was hanging over the edge of a cliff.

  She stood on her knees, hovered, and sank onto him. Jonas didn’t yank her down hard, but his fists pulled down on her dress, and her shoulder straps dug into her skin. She arched as he pressed into her, filling her body.

  His burly shoulders were round in her hands. She rested her feverish forehead against the leather seatback over his shoulder, breathing in the citrus scent in his hair and the dark musk of his body, and gasped, “Don’t tell them. Please don’t tell them.”

  His sharp smile and dazed eyes lit wanton fires in her belly. “I want them to know.”

  He thrust up into her, pushing her, and he used handfuls of her silver dress to muscle her down onto him. The leather seat creaked under her knees. The SUV’s diesel engine vibrated through Jonas’s hardness inside her.

  “No,” she said. “You can’t tell them. Please.”

  “I won’t if you don’t want me to,” he said, “but I want you in my bed at night. Every night. And if someone makes a move on you, I will stop them.”

  “Okay. Okay, yes.” She bit her lower lip, trying not to cry out because the driver was just on the other side of the flimsy plastic divider, but Jonas wrapped his arms around her waist and held her down. Her fingernails dug into the soft fabric of his suit jacket on his shoulders as wildness spun up her body. Streetlights rushed past the windows outside. She ground down on him, frantic, and felt him strain upward as she flew apart.

  Earthquake, Again

  Another high-rise building, another hotel room suspended high above the Earth.

  Another sleepless night, sitting up in the bed, feeling the floor shiver below him.