by Molly Joseph
Okay. So she was sexy. She was fucking beautiful. Maybe he should have fucked her last night, if he could have pried off her skintight shorts. She wouldn’t have remembered it today.
He mentally shook himself and shoved the rest of the doughnut in his mouth. These inappropriate feelings wouldn’t last. He wasn’t the type of guy who panted over dwarf-sized, pink-haired twenty year olds. His last girlfriend had been a high-powered lawyer in New York, a statuesque prosecutor who was strong enough to challenge him both physically and intellectually. Those were the type of women he sought when the job gave him time to pursue a social life.
Not…this.
Lola tripped over her luggage and let loose a string of epithets in her Memphis drawl. Fucking motherfucker goddamn cocksucker piece of shit. Was she talking about the luggage, or him?
“Come eat something,” he said.
She gave him a dirty look and righted the luggage. “I’m not hungry.”
“Why’d you haul your whole suitcase into the bathroom?”
Her dirty look grew even dirtier. “What, I’m supposed to leave it out here so you can paw through it again?”
“I’m done pawing through it. I already got rid of the stuff you can’t have.”
Instead of coming to the table, she collapsed face down on the bed and closed her eyes. Her hair was a tousled, wavy mess now that it wasn’t tamed into those silly dreadlocks. The sun fell across the bed, slanting over the sinfully round ass showcased by the world’s sexiest jeans.
I want to be slanting over that ass. I want to be inside it.
Fuck. Ransom, really. That’s enough.
“When did you eat last?” he asked aloud.
She didn’t open her eyes. “I don’t know. I had something before last night’s set.”
“Come have something to eat, then.”
“I want to sleep. Leave me alone.”
Ransom usually tried to give women what they wanted, but in this case, he couldn’t.
“Here’s how this is going to go,” he said in a firm, direct voice. “I have a job to do here. So when I tell you to eat, you’re going to eat, whether you feel hungry or not. When I tell you to sleep, you’re going to sleep.”
“Are you going to tell me when to blink and breathe too?” she murmured, stretching and arching her back.
Was she trying to seduce him? Or was she just naturally, horribly provocative? He pretended to be unaffected. “Get up and eat something. Don’t make me shove it down your throat. You only have a day or so to get yourself straightened out for the next set.”
She turned on her back and regarded him from beneath her lashes. “Would you really shove it down my throat?”
Jesus. Don’t think about shoving anything down her throat, cowboy. Focus.
“Get up and eat,” he said. “When you’re done, we’ll head out for a walk.”
Her lips twisted in disdain. “A walk?”
“A walk. I doubt you’d survive a run, but we could try it if you’d like. Either one.”
She glared at him like she wanted to argue, but in the end, she got up and came to the table. Sometimes you just had to remind someone they were hungry. She bent a slice of bread around some cheese and stuck it in her mouth as Ransom poured her a glass of water.
“A walk,” she muttered. “I don’t even know where we are.”
“Hamburg, Germany. You have a show tomorrow night. Don’t worry, I’ll get you there.”
He pushed the plate of fruit and leftover doughnuts toward her, and checked his phone while she put away a decent amount of breakfast. Feed her. Walk her. Keep her on the leash, even if she tugs a little. Or a lot.
“How are you feeling now?” he asked when she was done.
“Shitty.”
He put down his phone and regarded her. “Why do you think you feel so bad, Lola?”
“Because you won’t let me sleep. I’m tired. My performances take a lot of energy.”
He couldn’t muffle the snort that escaped. “What? Pushing buttons exhausts you that much? Those dials must be hell to twist.”
“Playing rave sets is more than pushing buttons and twisting dials, you idiot. It’s way more difficult than that. You have to engage the crowd. You have to help them escape to this otherworld so they feel the magic. You have to create satisfying run-ups and drops. It looks fun and careless, but it’s very complicated.”
There. There was a spark of real emotion beneath her bitchy veneer. “Tell me about it,” he said, trying to draw her out more.
She bit her lip and looked away. “You wouldn’t understand. You don’t understand anything about what I do.”
“I saw the final part of your set last night. I saw you have some kind of epileptic fit.”
“That was dancing, asshole.”
“I saw you fling yourself into the crowd.” He pointed at her, serious as sin. “Don’t ever do that again, by the way. No stage diving. It’s forbidden in your contract.”
“So what?”
“Would you like to be paralyzed by a spinal injury, or trampled by the crowd?”
“They don’t drop you, dude. That’s the point. They catch you.”
He rolled his eyes and gave up the argument. For now.
“Ready for that walk?” he asked, pushing back his chair.
“I don’t want to walk.”
“I don’t care.”
She remained planted in her chair. “You can’t make me walk if I don’t want to walk.”
“Going to throw a tantrum? How old are you?” he asked, although he knew exactly how old she was. Old enough to know better. Like him. There was a damn good reason he needed to get her out of this hotel room, not that he cared to think about it too deeply.
She polished off the last doughnut and glared at him. “So this is all about you making me fit and healthy? Are you my new trainer?”
Oh, he’d like to train her, but not the type of training she thought. He’d like to train her to show some fucking respect to people who were trying to help her. “I’m your bodyguard,” he said, “as I’ve explained several times. And if you ever dive off a stage again during this festival, we’re running five miles nonstop. That’s a promise.” He cut her off as soon as she opened her mouth. “Don’t ask how I’ll make you. You don’t want to know.”
He would make her if it came to that, ride her and browbeat her until she ran a full five miles. He didn’t make empty threats. “Are you ready to walk?” he asked again.
“Walk where? We’re in fucking Hamburg. I don’t know anything about this place. I can’t just walk around. It’s not safe.”
He nodded toward her bags. “Go put on some shoes you can walk in. No six-inch platforms. Regular shoes.”
“I don’t have regular shoes.”
“I went through everything. I know what you have.”
She groaned and pushed back from the table. Ransom watched her flounce across the room. Jesus, those jeans were criminal. They were a sex offense. He turned away before she bent over, because he wasn’t made of steel. Well, one part of him was made of steel.
He looked back at his phone until she was ready. “It’s chilly,” he said. “Put on a jacket.”
“If something happens to me on this godforsaken walk, it’s on your head.”
“Nothing’s going to happen. You ready?”
Her tousled pink hair was almost dry. It stuck out from her head every which way, and she didn’t give a fuck. She was adorable. And still bitching about safety, like going for a walk was the most terrifying thing she’d done all year. He finally stuck out a finger and pressed it to her lips.
“Listen to me, kid, and try to understand. I’m your bodyguard. I’m here to protect you. As long as you’re with me, you’re going to be safe.”
CHAPTER THREE
Crazy
Lola walked beside him through the scenic streets of Hamburg, and yes, she felt safe, even if her legs hurt and she didn’t want to be hanging out in the crowds and the sun.
“It’s a beautiful day,” he said. “Anything you want to see?”
“My bed in the hotel room. I’m tired.”
“Yeah? You have a busy day ahead of you. Greg said you’re scheduled for a radio interview this afternoon, and dinner at some famous Hamburg restaurant. I might let you hit a few nightclubs afterward if you behave yourself. You can sleep after that. You notice I said sleep, not black out.”
“What’s the difference?”
He was silent a moment before he answered. “I think you remember the difference, Lola Mae.”
Yeah, maybe she did, but every time he called her Lola Mae she wanted to punch him. Even Lola threw her off, because for the past two years everyone had called her Lady Paradise, and she’d come to think of it not just as her stage name, but her persona. Lady Paradise was the deity who stood behind the sound console and reigned over the worshipping masses.
Lola was the real her, the awkward, emo geek who’d lost her mother at five and her father at fifteen, which was the worst possible age to lose the bedrock of your life. After his heart attack, she’d moved to L.A. to live with a rich aunt and uncle and attend a rich-kid high school. Her pop had never emphasized school in Memphis, so she was far behind her classmates. They’d called her stupid, redneck, slow.
To cope, she’d remade herself into the school’s crazy party girl, the rave head, the slut, so the boys at least would like her. When they made fun of her Memphis twang, she stopped talking and made beats instead. Those beats eventually won her a recording contract, but Lola would always be the sad, desperate outcast masquerading as a goddess.
And Lola Mae…
Lola Mae was that girl with the twang, her pop’s special girl, and this bodyguard wasn’t her pop. He wasn’t even her friend.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked, an abrupt poke into painful memories.
“Nothing.”
Fuck him. She wasn’t letting this guy into her thoughts, not telling him about anything going on inside her. The last guy she’d let in was Marty. Now he was gone and she thought maybe, maybe Ransom was right, that Marty had done bad things for her. To her. Maybe Marty had been using her for her money, but she’d allowed it. He’d kept her too drug-happy to care.
Drug-happy? Or drug-sad?
Oh, she was going to need more pharmaceuticals. A few pre-show happy tablets quieted her neuroses and gave her confidence and energy. They helped the beats flow. The bodyguard would never understand that, because he had no flow. He was unrelentingly businesslike. He walked too fast, and he got way more attention from passersby than she did. Men and women both slowed to look him over. One woman almost walked into him, she was mentally undressing him so hard. So he was tall and big, and dark, and disgustingly masculine and handsome. So what? What a cliché.
She didn’t care how sexy he looked. He did nothing for her, because she liked interesting men. Complicated men. Ransom was so boring and wholesome. For fuck’s sake, he was still wearing that fucking red tie.
The only break she got from her bodyguard over the next twenty-four hours was the radio interview Greg had arranged, which was awkward and stressful. By the time they returned to the hotel, Ransom had showered and changed—into another suit and tie.
It freaked her out that she had to share a hotel room with the man. She complained to Greg but he said he couldn’t do anything. “You chose this consequence,” he told her. “You started partying too hard.”
Now she was standing in the shower before dinner, looking at a stranger’s soap and shampoo. A male stranger’s. He’d been respectful so far, even waiting to take a shower until she was out with Greg, but still…she didn’t know him. How was she supposed to live like this?
She needed something to help her cope. She’d have settled for a bottle of wine at this point, even though she hated the taste of it, even though it gave her worse headaches than the drugs. But she had no wine, and no drugs either, thanks to Ransom. She could probably subsist on some hot, monkey sex…
A therapist had warned her once that she had sex for unhealthy reasons. Nope. She had sex because it was fun and passed the time. Tonight, at the clubs, she’d find a good, strong candidate and invite him back to the hotel room. Maybe more than one guy. Maybe a whole slew of hot, horny guys to work her over and make the tension go away.
Ransom could stay and watch if he wanted to be protective, but he wasn’t telling her no. She needed some fucking release, and sex was an all-natural indulgence. German guys were beautiful, athletic, and enthusiastic, and she still had plenty of condoms in her luggage. Unlike the drugs, Ransom hadn’t thrown those away, which counted as permission to be as slutty as she wanted.
Well, she was choosing to interpret it that way.
*
As soon as the nightclub’s management learned that Lady Paradise had arrived, they swept her into the DJ booth. Ransom watched for signs of irritation, but she didn’t seem to mind. She spun an hour-long set as the massive club filled with more and more bodies. Word had gotten around Hamburg’s party scene that the megastar was in their midst.
But everything was okay. The club had an adequate number of emergency exits and an impressive amount of security staff. He monitored these metrics for his client’s protection. They wouldn’t have stayed here otherwise.
And with Lola in the booth, he could supervise her much more easily than when she was twerking and slithering on the dance floor. Honestly, the way she moved her body… It should have been illegal. It probably would be, if more women were capable of it.
Ransom sat by the booth’s entrance and tried not to ogle her too much, but it was difficult. She was wearing a mesh crop top with a barely-there bralette, and sequined leggings that left nothing to the imagination. Instead of scattered braids, her hair was tamed into a dozen or so mini-buns that rose from her head like proliferating antennae.
And damn her, she was still beautiful. It wasn’t right.
He forced his eyes from her body to her fingers, flitting nimbly across the bank of audio equipment. He couldn’t seem to match up the sound coming out of the speakers with anything she was doing, but then he realized she was working on a delay. That was why she took the headphones on and off as she played with the buttons. Her head never stopped bobbing.
Her ass never stopped shaking.
Fuck. He had to pull himself together. She was too young, too wild, too pink, and he was too professional to think about what it might feel like to press her back on that mixing console, tear off her clothes and yank apart her thighs, and—
“Hey, bodyguard!” She turned to him, waving her arms in the air. “How come you never dance?”
“I’m here to work, not dance.”
“Do you even know how to dance?”
He slid a glance over her bare torso and undulating hips. “Not like you.”
She laughed and turned away. Headphones on, headphones off, lights flashing, a frenetic buildup of beats he’d already come to recognize. Next would come the thing she called the “drop,” the testicle-rumbling bass explosion that made everyone go wild. The entire club screamed in the throes of aural orgasm. The other DJ in the booth grabbed Lola and kissed her on the mouth.
Ransom stiffened, every muscle going tense. The man’s arms snaked around her waist but she did nothing to pull away. They only kissed for a few seconds, but it was too long, because the man was some random Hamburg DJ she didn’t even know.
She turned away, laughed again, and adjusted a few levers. Headphones on, her shoulders scrunched up, her features taut with concentration as her fingers lingered on the dials. Headphones off, more laughter, and the beats rolled on and on and on. He still didn’t have those ear plugs.
She finally gave the spotlight back to the regular DJ and exited the booth. People applauded as she reappeared on the dance floor and sketched an exaggerated bow. Ransom took her arm and leaned to speak in her ear.
“How long are we staying? This place is really crowded.”
&nb
sp; “I know. Isn’t it wonderful?”
She surged into the energetic mass, insinuating herself between pockets of humping, bumping dancers, which was easy enough to do when you were tiny. He had to nudge people aside to follow her. No way was he letting her roam freely around this place. People were drunk and high and really handsy.
His last client had been an alcoholic actor. There had been no nightclubs, no sequined hot pants, nothing but making sure the client didn’t drink too heavily before he learned his lines for the next day.
Ransom would have given anything to be running lines with a half-drunk actor right now.
He called Lola’s name when she got too far away from him. Somehow she heard it, even in the deafening clamor of the club. She turned to him and held out her arms. “Dance with me.”
He shook his head and leaned against a nearby pillar, close enough to watch her, but not so close that she could grind against him with those hips. She found someone else to grind on, a sweaty, muscled Teutonic Adonis with spiky blond hair. The man leered down at her like a creep, and she encouraged him, drawing his arms around her.
Ransom rolled his eyes and let out a sigh, even if no one in this godforsaken club could hear him. He was the only person in the vicinity who wasn’t jerking to the skull-shattering music.
A few minutes later, Lola was gyrating in the middle of a Hans and Franz sandwich. Hans, the original creep, had been joined by a creepy friend and all of them were basically having sex without taking off their clothes. Bodies pressed in around them, party people who wanted to brush up against the actual, real Lady Paradise. People took pictures, poking her, prodding her to get her attention, but she kept dancing, and Hans and Franz kept most of the interlopers away.
Finally, Ransom got too disgusted to deal with it anymore. It was almost two in the morning. Time to go. He wove through the group surrounding Lola and got her attention, and pointed at his watch.
