Red Hot Alphas: 11 Novels of Sexy, Bad Boy, Alpha Males (Red Hot Boxed Sets Book 2)

by Jo Raven

  “You didn’t. That’s why we have fail-safes and manual cues.”

  Before the next song, while Cadell played an intricate intro and Xan stood beside him like he was watching in amazement, just like for the last several hundred shows, Elfie spoke in Xan’s ear, “We’re rearranging the pyros. The downstage gerbs will go off during ‘Rock the World.’ Stick to your usual marks and you’ll be way behind them.”

  Xan pumped a fist into the air and pointed at the sound booth, indicating he had heard.

  Elfie sagged in her chair. She had been distracted by Tryp while she was trying to install the gerbs and too busy mooning over Tryp’s voice to keep an eye on the monitor. She couldn’t ever, ever do that again, and she would be explaining this horrific mistake to Rock and probably Xan and Jonas after the show.

  Tunnel

  Elfie waited in the tunnel with Jonas, who passed backpacks and other bug-out kits to the musos as they jogged off the stage and then sprinted for the cars.

  Tryp, Xan, and Cadell were left on the stage for the next-to-last encore, so Jonas readied bags. “Xan will want to have a meeting to do a post-mortem,” he said. “Rock won’t leave until the stage is loaded out, though. We’ll meet tomorrow morning after you handle Tryp.”

  “Okay. I already explained it to Rock.”

  “And that’s good. Nobody’s mad, Elfie. The audience didn’t notice a thing.” He looked up at the cement ceiling, nonchalant in what he was about to ask. “Just how close was it?”

  “I always look at the monitor before I light the electric match,” Elfie said, “so if I hadn’t noticed beforehand, the most likely outcome would have been a missed cue.”

  “That would have been okay, too. And if you hadn’t looked?”

  “The flame projectors would have converged on Xan’s head, probably at least setting his hair on fire, probably much worse.”

  Jonas sat in a chair and clapped his face into his hands. “Why the fuck do we even have flame throwers and bombs on the stage?”

  “Because audiences expect it.”

  He nodded. “And we wouldn’t want to give the audience a lame show, not when we can endanger the talent just a little.” He dropped his hands to his knees. “Okay. Screw the meeting. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen again, and I’ll clear it with Xan. Don’t even worry about it. I’ll tell him that we’ve instituted a new procedure or something to prevent it from happening again.”

  “Thanks.”

  Jonas cornered her with a hard look. “Just one more thing: what made it happen this time?”

  “Just one of those things, Jonas. With the sound and the lighting and specials, we’ve got thousands of cues per show. Even with six-sigma, mistakes sometimes happen.”

  “Is dealing with Tryp’s shenanigans too much for you?”

  Her first bonus check had already been deposited, and if she kept making that kind of money, she really could go to college in the fall instead of in two or three years, or more.

  Plus, the thought of not seeing Tryp, of only catching glimpses of him during sound check because their schedules were out of sync, sent a ache through her chest. “It’s fine. I’m handling it.”

  “If I have to choose, I’d choose not having my musicians set on fire over having you babysit Tryp. I can deal with him, but he seems better, and it’s only been a few days.”

  “Rock is picking up my slack. I just got distracted, just once.”

  “By Tryp?”

  She should have been more restrained, but it gushed out of her. “He kissed me last night and I kind of freaked.”

  “He kissed you?” Jonas bobbed in his chair like he had almost stood up.

  Elfie stared at her black tennis shoes. “Yeah.”

  “Oh, Jesus. Did you want him to?”

  Good question. “I didn’t think about it beforehand, but, well, yeah.”

  Jonas ran a hand through his hair, ruffling the brown waves. “Be careful with him.”

  That wasn’t what she had expected. “How so?”

  Jonas waved and shook his head, refusing to divulge details. “He’s been through a lot his whole life and especially in the last year.”

  “Oh?”

  He sighed. “Plus, I don’t know if he had a thing for Rhiannon, but she and I are together now.”

  Out on the stage, the song ended.

  Tryp blazed into the tunnel, hooked his bag off Jonas’s arm, and caught Elfie’s hand, running with her through the tunnel toward the parking lot. Her backpack bounced against her spine because their luggage would probably be a couple hours behind them.

  All the musos hated runners, the mad dash to cars waiting to spirit them away from the arenas before the crowd’s traffic gridlocked the parking lots. If the arena or club didn’t have facilities for showers and cooling down, a runner was the only other option to being stuck, sitting on metal folding chairs in a concrete tunnel for hours.

  The technicians, however, worked their asses off during those hours, loading out the show for the next stop on the tour. They wished they were sleeping in the leather seats of wide SUVs in the dark of midnight.

  After a short sprint to the cars, Tryp dragged Elfie into a car after him and reached past her to yank the door shut. He slapped the front seat. The limo surged out of the parking garage, tossing her backwards and Tryp onto her.

  “To the hotel in Monterey?” the driver asked. The next city was only an hour up the road, so they were taking the cars directly there. The tour bus would meet them for the next long overnight drive to Los Angeles the night after that.

  “Yep. Privacy screen, if you would?”

  A black divider rose between them and the driver, cutting off their view of the oncoming road through the windshield.

  Runner

  The privacy visor slid up in the car, locking them in the small box of the back seat, but Tryp hadn’t dropped Elfie’s hand. Her small fingers were coiled in his, and just being in the car with the tinted windows and the divider up was making him hard, a reflex from countless other car trips with women squirming with excitement. Images flashed through Tryp’s mind: his pants and hers tangled on the floor, Elfie straddling his thighs while she rode him and staring at her pale throat because her head was thrown back, or her back toward him as she turned in a reverse cowgirl and he watched her ass sliding over his dick, or her holding the back of the seat while he clutched her hips and rammed up into her.

  Instead, he held her hand, and her light eyes watching their fingers were wary of the dirty rocker.

  He still wanted to tell her about the song. He wanted her to ask about it. Just telling her would sound like he was making stuff up.

  He held her hand and asked, “What happened last night?”

  She sighed hard. “What if I don’t want to talk about it?”

  He squeezed her hand. “I made a move, and you were upset. Did I miss something?”

  “You didn’t.”

  “And then you came back and were nice to me while I was ralphing.”

  “Everybody ralphs sometimes.”

  “And you seem to want me to touch you. In the tunnel, and now, you haven’t let go of my hand. I’m confused here.”

  “You know what isn’t confusing?” Elfie asked. “Explosives. You push the button, and boom. It explodes. Button. Boom. Button. Boom.”

  She was talking about explosives? He stared at her angry face. “Good God. You’re a serious pyromaniac. You’re as fucked up as I am.”

  She looked up at him. Light from passing streetlamps crossed her determined expression. “I wish I hadn’t chickened out last night. I’m tired of being afraid.”

  “Of the explosives?” Something huge was missing here.

  Her earnest eyes and the tough set of her lips seemed so different from the crying girl who had fled last night. “Let’s have a great night tonight, Tryp. Let’s go dancing at a nightclub or wherever you want. Let’s have a night to remember the rest of our lives.”

  Her normally hard express
ion seemed brittle. “Elfie, you aren’t going to blow yourself up or anything, are you?”

  She laughed a single, harsh chuckle. “No.”

  She sounded fatalistic. Tryp asked, “Do you have a no-fraternization clause or something? Is this going to get you fired? Xan’s been insisting on those, lately.”

  “Nope. There is absolutely nothing keeping me from doing whatever I want to. I’m nineteen years old. It’s time I grew up.”

  She launched herself onto him, her slim body smacking his chest. If he hadn’t leaned back and caught her around the waist, she would have bounced off. Her lips found his, and she kissed him like she was the dirty rocker.

  Power filled him, an energy fueled with testosterone and sex, and he rose to his knees, bending her in his arms and kissing her hard. Her lips became pliant under his, which he liked, and all those fantasies about having her in the car rose up again. He ran his hands over her back and sides, feeling her spare curves and her body in his hands. Her lips opened, and he twisted his head to kiss her deeper, stroking her soft tongue with his.

  He backed off, watching her dazed eyes. She was breathing hard, pushing her small breasts against his chest. He wanted to have her right there, rip off both their clothes and scandalize the driver on the other side of that black leather with her cries, but he kissed her more gently, just caressing her lips.

  Something still wasn’t quite right. Girls don’t just start crying and run for no reason. He might be a dirty rocker, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to take advantage of someone he shouldn’t.

  He’d go slow tonight.

  Hell, having a real date with a woman rather than a hard, dirty fuck and waking up alone sounded like a fantastic idea.

  Jokes in the Limo

  During the ride over to the hotel in Monterey, Elfie counted stoplights and watched the GPS line on her phone incrementally shorten every few minutes like it was trying to be slow. She wanted to go out and do something with Tryp, anything that she could look back on as a fond memory, and then she wanted to go to his hotel room and fall in his bed and get this the hell over with.

  Tryp kept trying to get her to talk, and they did. She talked about growing up in Texas, omitting a hell of lot, and she talked about her job when he asked her about being a roadie.

  She asked, “You don’t actually use that term with any of the other technicians, do you?”

  “What?”

  “Roadie.”

  “I thought it was a badge of honor.”

  “It’s considered derogatory.”

  “Hey,” he elbowed her, “What’s a derogatory term for a musician?”

  Muso. “I don’t know.”

  “Pizza guy.”

  “Oh, stop.”

  “What do you call a musician without a girlfriend?” He looked far too gleeful about this.

  “What?”

  “Homeless!”

  “Oh, my God, stop.” She bit her lip, unsure just how good a sense of humor Tryp had. “How many drummers does it take to change a light bulb?”

  “None. They have a machine that can do that now?”

  “Ah! That’s good. I was going to say five, one to change it and four to talk about how much better Neil Peart would have done it.”

  He cracked up, even drawing one of his long legs up. “I’ll bet you roadies have a lot of those.”

  “Dude! Language! And just the usual. Why does the drummer always knock on the door so long?” She waited for a second in case he answered. “Because the drummer never knows when to come in.”

  “Oh! The pain! I’ve got some about politicians.”

  And they told each other jokes for forty more miles through the dark night, until Elfie was surprised when someone knocked on the privacy divider.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  Tryp grinned. “Five minute warning so we can get our clothes back on.”

  “Oh, my God. He thinks we’re—”

  “Yeah, but we’re not.” Tryp scooted forward and tapped on the divider. “Hey! You can drop this!”

  The divider lowered, and the driver kept his eyes firmly on the road ahead. “We’ve nearly arrived.”

  “Thank you,” Tryp said.

  Their rooms were already checked in, so they just had to pick up keycards from the front desk. Tryp’s room was booked under the name Tryfon Diavolos, and hers was under the name that was on her driver’s license when she got the job: Elsa Hernandez.

  In the elevator, Tryp said, “You don’t look like a Hernandez.”

  “Genes are weird.”

  “Okay.” He paused. “My first driver’s license said Gunther Haas.”

  “You don’t look like a Gunther Haas.”

  “Genes are weird,” he said.

  In her hotel room, Elfie jumped in the shower and then stared at her dripping self in the mirror, reading a bottle of the silicone treatment that Left Blonde and Right Blonde had perscribed on the napkin. Since Elfie had more hair than most girls—and as wet as it was, it flowed past her waist to the dimples of her ass—she poured a large palmful and started working it through her hair. The clear goo felt sticky at first, but when she got it all smoothed through and then blow-dried it with the hair drier attached to the wall, her hair practically glowed with blond light and fell in wide, soft curls to her waist.

  Damn. Those silicone products did work. Maybe she’d have to try something other than sample-size hotel shampoo at some point.

  She wiggled into her last new dress, a pale gold one, and checked her back for zits since the vee back there dipped nearly to her waist. Luckily, she didn’t have much boobage to speak of, so she could get away with not wearing a strapless, backless, cast-iron bra.

  She didn’t bother to put on underwear.

  She stepped into her heels that raised her up to five feet-four and tapped a new contact on her phone. “Tryp? I’m ready.”

  His voice seemed unnaturally deep in her ear. “I’ll be right there.”

  A Date with a Rock Star

  They stayed up in the VIP section of a nightclub this time, and Elfie had a half a glass of white wine despite both of them knowing she was underage for alcohol. In the VIP section, no one got carded, anyway. They hid back in a dark corner, sitting on a sofa sectional where they drank, ate from an array of appetizers that filled the table after Tryp had read the entire menu to the waiter, and talked. The VIP dance floor was far over on the other side, diagonally around the catwalks, and Elfie could just make out bodies twisting through the haze. Below them, the crowd boiled and shrieked, and Elfie leaned over the balcony to watch for a few minutes. Tryp stood beside her but leaned with his back to the crowd, talking to her and sipping his drink.

  He was sipping his drinks tonight, Elfie noticed, and no shot glasses littered the small cracks between the half-eaten plates of deep-fried food.

  Even that half, maybe a third, of a glass of wine calmed her down so that she enjoyed dancing with Tryp. He had his hands on her just enough to be attentive, to be sexy, but not enough so that she felt molested in public.

  During the car ride back to the hotel room, she giggled at his jokes some more, because he had a lot of them. “Where are you getting all these?”

  He laughed with her. “Rhiannon knows a lot of jokes, and on the tour bus, we watch stupid horror movies and she tells me jokes. Or we used to, anyway. Now that Jonas is practically taking a whizz on her every chance he gets, she sits with him instead of watching Zom-pocalypse movies with me.”

  “I’m sorry. That sucks.”

  “She was my friend first, damn it. I should still get to watch stupid horror movies with her.”

  They arrived back at the hotel and rode the elevator up to Tryp’s suite. Jonas had started putting Tryp’s room farther away from Rade and Grayson’s in a transparent attempt to literally separate them. In the elevator, Elfie watched Tryp through the mirrors on the walls. His dark eyes scanned the elevator, taking in the buttons and fixtures. A tendril of a tattoo wove up his neck
toward the back of his ear. She had liked that the first time she’d noticed it, and she almost reached over to touch it, but there was plenty of time for that later.

  In his suite, Tryp shut the door behind them. “Would you like a drink?”

  “No,” she said. “Yes. Yes, I would.”

  “What would you like?”

  The bar in the corner had a selection on hard liquor bottles crowded on top. “I don’t know. Make me something.”

  “Okay,” Tryp said, bending to take some orange juice out of the mini-fridge. He poured some in a highball glass and more glass clinked over there as he poured from the bottles.

  Elfie trailed her hand over the back of the sofa, trying to look sexy.

  He walked over to her holding two glasses and held the orange one out to her, keeping the brown-filled one for himself.

  Elfie sipped, and the sweet juice ran down her throat. “This is really good. What is it?”

  “Orange juice.”

  “No, no. Load it up.” She handed the glass back to him.

  “One of us needs to be lucid tomorrow morning.” He drank from his own glass.

  “It’ll be fine. Load it up.”

  Tryp doctored it back at the bar and returned, holding it out to her. “With vodka.”

  She tasted it, and something astringent tickled her tongue. “That’s better.”

  Tryp drank some of his. “You’re not going to get wasted, are you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You don’t usually drink.”

  “Some occasions call for a drink.”

  “And what occasion is this?” he asked.

  The last night I’m a virgin.

  “Our first night,” she said, throwing that right out in the open, and she held up her glass for a toast.

  He clinked her glass, and they both sipped. The screwdriver burned down her throat, and Elfie tossed the whole rest of the glass back.

  Not with a Drunk, Dirty Rocker

  Tryp sipped his Scotch and watched Elfie shoot back the whole screwdriver. He had made her drink weak, but he suspected that her tolerance was low and he knew that her body mass was scant. When he had picked her up to carry her to the bed last night, he’d nearly tossed her at the ceiling, expecting more resistance.