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

by Jo Raven

  “I might need you to go slow,” she whispered.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he growled. “I’m drunk, but I’m not out of my mind.” His voice lowered. “Not quite.”

  He slid his hand down her stomach toward her sex, and he kissed her as his fingers traced soft ripples over her folds.

  Elfie grabbed his shoulders more tightly, almost pulling him on top of her, but he leaned back and his fingers slid deeper, parting her skin.

  He barely dipped one finger inside her, but Elfie felt the invasion all the way up her body like a wave of hot water. His fingers got slippery, and he glided his fingers over her skin, getting her wet.

  “Why?” she panted.

  “Slippery feels good,” he said, watching her breath lifting her breasts and his hand between her legs. He pushed himself up on his elbow, though his arm was still behind her shoulders and his body stretched beside her. He watched her face and her body, his breath panting.

  “Don’t look at me,” she begged. “It’s embarrassing.”

  “I love it when you moan and your body moves under me,” he said, his hand slipping through her folds and cresting waves up her body. “You’re so beautiful when you come. I love watching a woman lose her mind, and I like forcing her over the edge. Let me watch you.” His arm under her shoulders gathered her close to his chest and his other fingers explored her, slicking her folds with wetness there. “I like watching you.”

  The pleasure sharpened, and Elfie arched her back, driving herself onto his hand. His laugh was breathy and deep in his chest, and Elfie felt the tremor through the raw skin over her ribs.

  He eased one finger inside her, and when her body pulsed, the resistance drove her higher. Her gasp sounded like a cry, and he stroked her slowly, his strong finger rubbing her deep inside.

  Her body coiled tight, kept getting tighter around him, and when her belly was knotted hard and she could barely breathe, he pressed his thumb to her clit and the shock waves hit her hard.

  Elfie cried out and her body balled up, wracked by his hand and her response.

  Tryp’s arms behind her shoulders held her closer, and he laid his cheek on the top of her head. She clung to him, still buffeted by the waves and his thumb stroking her until his hand stilled, and then he brushed her stomach, soothing her. Her breath rasped in her ears until she could open her eyes.

  Tryp rocked her, his burly arms tight around her, until she sat up in his lap. He still wore his jeans, but even though the thick denim was buttoned tight, she could feel he was hard against her side.

  He brushed her hair back from her face. “You okay?”

  “Oh God, yes.” She flung her arms around his waist and buried her face in his neck.

  He held her closer, rubbing his hand on her bare back.

  The long, hard lump in his jeans wasn’t diminishing, and she twinged in shame at her selfishness, but he had wanted it that way, and she wasn’t sure if the problem of blue balls was really a thing or not.

  Elfie turned sideways and slithered off his lap, unbuttoning his jeans and tugged him to the edge of the bed.

  “You don’t have to,” Tryp said, but he was holding his breath.

  “I want to,” she said, and she pulled his fly apart and tugged his jeans and tight black underwear down.

  He sprang free, and Tryp leaned back and braced himself with his arms.

  Elfie laid her hands on his skin below his navel where the tattoo of vines crawled and ended in delicate tendrils, and stroked downward, toward the nest of soft hair and his erection.

  Tryp’s dark eyes unfocused, and his breath deepened in his chest.

  She curled her fingers around the head, holding his thick hardness. The skin was taut over the shaft but softer near the top, gathered in pleats, which looked different. The whole length was as red and swollen as Tryp’s bruised lips. She stroked down, barely grazing him, and felt the throb of his heartbeat in her hand.

  She gave him a good, long lick right up the shaft with the flat of her tongue.

  His lips parted, and he was breathing through his mouth, watching her.

  She looked up at him from between his knees, watching the glazed light in his eyes. “I’m really good at this.”

  “Are you?” he said, a languid smile spreading on his face, but then his dark eyes widened and he grabbed her shoulders, setting her back from him. He crossed his legs away from her. “You’re as naive as a New Empyrean virgin bride in everything sexual. Why are you really good at this?”

  Elfie bit her lip, and she couldn’t bring herself to say it or look at him anymore. Her fingernails dug into the white sheets beside his bare thighs. Wiry hairs sprinkled his skin.

  “Who was it?” he demanded, his eyes burning with anger.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” She tried to shrink back, but he held her arms.

  “Was it one of the guys here? Was it Rock?”

  “No! No, of course not. He’s been wonderful. I stayed with him between tours last year. His wife is an amazing cook. She’s Italian.” Elfie was babbling. “It wasn’t him. Rock would never.”

  “Who then?”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “Your father?” His horror-struck eyes widened.

  “My parents were divorced. I haven’t seen my real father since I was three. I—” Her throat closed, and she held onto the bed because the floor was spinning and she was getting carsick. “I had a step-father.”

  “He did it. He made you do it.”

  “I’m really okay now.” She leaned forward, reaching for him.

  “No.” He pulled her to her feet. “No.”

  “I’m all right with it now.”

  “Not me. Not now,” he said. “I don’t want those brain things—” one of his big hands fluttered around his head, “—damn it, I’m drunk. I don’t want you to think of me that way. I’m someone else, not him.”

  “I won’t think that.” She reached between them and around his leg, grasping him carefully.

  His breath hitched in his throat and he closed his eyes. “I’m drunk, Elfie. I don’t think I can tell you no again.” He ran his hand down her back to her ass.

  He didn’t move away, and a slippery bead squeezed out of the top of the head.

  Slippery was good, he had said. Elfie smoothed the drop over the suede knob, and more leaked out. She pushed that drop around his darkened skin, too. Tryp bit one side of his lower lip, his straight, white teeth indenting his flesh. His leg moved away, letting her hold more of him.

  She moved her hand on him, and his breathing roughened. The slipperiness at the bulb didn’t go very far, and her palm dragged on the delicate membranes below. Dry was not good, she figured. She bent, intending to take him into her mouth.

  “No.” Tryp’s voice was still so low in his throat. He grabbed her hip, flipped her over to lie on her side, and fitted himself behind her. His hot flesh blazed on her back and butt.

  He might be adverse to popping her cherry, but she liked her butt virginity and wasn’t ready to give up that one at all. “Wait. Not there.”

  Tryp nudged himself between her thighs, and his thick rod slipped on her skin, still wet from him, and rubbed through her slit, sliding and rubbing her wet, swollen tissues again. Her body pulsed on him. “Oh!”

  “Still want me to wait?” he grated out.

  “No. Don’t wait. Please!” She pushed her ass against him. He gathered her long hair, holding it out of the way, and his breath hissed on the back of her neck. He pulled her hips back against him and thrust between her legs, grinding deep. When Elfie looked down, his dark head poked out from between her pale thighs each time he shoved himself through her folds, sending shivers up her spine.

  Behind her, Tryp’s pelvis slapped her ass and he ground up, like he was trying to force his way inside her, but he grunted and his body jerked behind her. His strength jammed him against her nub, and the jolt echoed up her body and buzzed in her skull, a deep, deep orgasm. Tryp’s b
ody jerked, and he spent himself on the sheet beyond her legs.

  Elfie was shaking, but Tryp’s heavy arms held her tight. He whispered, “I’ve got you.”

  Yeah, she was beginning to think that he did. “I’m okay.”

  He loosened his grip, rolled back, and turned her to cuddle against him.

  She was still breathing hard. “I thought you were going to get it over with there for a minute.”

  He shook his head. “Even this feels wrong. All this should be with someone you love, not some dirty rocker who’s got the hots for you.”

  “You’ve got the hots for me, huh?” She smirked at him over his chest.

  “It crept up on me, but now it’s every damned second of every day. I made eight mistakes last night during the show because I kept thinking about you. I dropped bars. I came in two measures early on ‘Love Me Like I’m Leaving.’ I couldn’t make the fills fit right.”

  “I nearly killed Xan a couple days ago.”

  “Okay, you win. What?”

  “I got the cues programmed into the computer backward a couple nights ago, and I almost set off the flame projectors when he was standing right between them.”

  “Was that in San Jose when he ran upstage like a banshee was chasing him?”

  “Yep. I was listening to you sing in my headphones, and—”

  He looked at her, his dark eyes puzzled. “You were doing what?”

  “I wear monitor headphones up in the mid-house booth, so I can isolate everybody’s mics. The person who blows things up gets the good tech, not just a walkie-talkie.” She shrugged. “I like your voice. It was like you were right there with me, singing to me, and I didn’t realize until I almost hit the button that the wrong thing was going to blow up.”

  “So you’ve got the hots for me so bad that you almost killed someone.”

  “Well, I didn’t say that.”

  “You do, though.” He rolled over on her and smoothed her hair back like he was contemplating her brain under there. “But someday you’re still going to leave me and break my heart.”

  The sadness in his eyes was wrenching, and she held his cheek in her hand. “We’re friends, Tryp. Friends don’t do that.”

  “I’m a dirty rocker. Everyone wants a hard, dirty fuck and, once they’ve had it, they don’t give a shit. They always leave, and I’m shattered every time.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t say ‘you.’ You said ‘they always leave,’ and that might be the truth, but I’m not one of them, Tryfon.”

  He smiled at her, but his eyes were still sad. “Yes, you are.”

  Set Me on the Open Road

  Tryp was wailing on his drums, really smashing the fuck out of the skins, during “Standing on the Mountaintop,” when in his in-ear monitor, he heard Xan Valentine’s voice crack on the first line of the refrain.

  He glanced at Rhiannon where she was swaying by his drum kit. She had stopped dancing and was scrutinizing Xan, though still singing into her mic.

  Xan spun, his arms spread and stomping his boots, and his long coat flowed through the air around him. Tryp drummed through the fill between the lines, waiting to hear if Xan’s voice was going to fail again.

  Downstage, Xan sang, “Sing it from the mountaintop!” and at the top of the line, his voice broke.

  Rhiannon vaulted over her monitor wedge and ran toward the audience, holding a water bottle out to Xan.

  Fuck. Xan pushed his own voice harder than he pushed any of the band members, and sometimes he paid for it. They’d had to cancel a few shows a couple weeks ago, a blessed break for the band that had nearly driven Xan out of his workaholic mind. Tryp had never seen someone in—he swore to God—work-withdrawal delirium tremens.

  Tryp cracked his drums during the next fill, pissed that Xan was endangering the whole tour by refusing to deal with his voice.

  Xan only got two words into the third line “Shout it from the mountaintop,” before he turned away from the audience and grabbed his throat. Rhiannon took his note and sang to the audience, her hand resting on Xan’s back.

  Tryp’s drum kit was positioned at the back of the stage, so he had a great view as his frontman struggled to breathe.

  Rhiannon finished the song for him and led him offstage. Jonas met them halfway to the wings.

  Cadell shook his guitar and called up to Tryp, “You wanna play ‘Eruption’ again?”

  “Sure!” he yelled down.

  Cadell spoke into his mic, and his voice amplified as he spoke when the sound roadies realized that Cadell now had the ball and should be the primary channel. “Hey, folks. Xan is going to take a break. Tryp and I,” Tryp raised his hands in the air and spun his sticks through his fingers, acknowledging Cadell’s intro and cuing the audience to his existence up there, “have been working on an arrangement of ‘Eruption’ by Eddie Van Halen for guitar and drums, and we’d like to share it with you tonight.”

  They ran through the piece, which started out easy for Tryp, just barely keeping time for Cadell just like Alex Van Halen had for Eddie, while Cadell played the Baroque two-handed tapping on his guitar, then they went back to the beginning, and Tryp used the different tonal pitches of his drums to play the whole piece again.

  It had started out as just screwing around in rehearsal, of course. All weird stuff does. Cadell had played it, and Tryp had played it back to him, and then Cadell made him do it a hundred more times, taking notes and incrementally making it better every time.

  Tryp had to admit that the pounding drum solo was pretty damn awesome, even if his shoulders ached when he finished it.

  Over in the wings, Xan was still sitting in a chair, that tube pressed to his throat that always looked to Tryp like a lamprey sucking on a shark, while Rhiannon crouched beside him and Jonas paced.

  Cadell leaned to say into the mic, “We’ll be right back, folks!”

  Tryp followed him off the stage, and he asked, “What’s going on?”

  Rhiannon piped up, “He’s still spasming.”

  Xan was singing scales softly, letting air blow through his voice box, trying to take down the inflammation, but he was looking at the wall and not meeting anyone’s eyes. Xan’s black-suited security guys lurked at the end of the tunnel. Tryp was so used to seeing them around that he almost didn’t notice them anymore.

  Cadell asked Jonas, “Are we going to call it?”

  Jonas pointed. “Ask him.”

  “We can’t,” Xan said softly, half-singing it near middle C. “We haven’t finished the show.”

  “We can shorten the show, Xan.” Cadell laid his hand on Xan’s shoulder. “You can’t destroy yourself over one show.”

  “It’s not one show. It’s three shows here at this club. If word gets out that we’re playing short, they won’t come.”

  “They’ll come, Xan. Other bands play ninety minutes.”

  “We aren’t going to short-change them. That’s bollocks.”

  “You can do ‘Alwaysland’ with Rhiannon, get the crowd singing back to you like you have been.”

  “We would be cutting four songs. They’ll know. They’ll talk.”

  Tryp butted in, “You want to do ‘Set Me on the Open Road?’ If you can keep time on a hand drum, I’ll play it on Rade’s keyboards and sing.”

  Xan’s intense stare almost made Tryp chicken out. “Two days ago, you could barely bring yourself to play it for me.”

  “It’s needed,” Tryp said.

  “You don’t have to do this.” Xan set aside the electro-muscular stimulator thingee. “If you want me to debut it, I can do it in a few days.”

  “You won’t quit otherwise.”

  “We’ll figure something out if you’re not ready, Tryp.”

  “You sing ‘Alwaysland’ every night.”

  Xan shook his head. “The first time I sang it to a crowd, it tore the heart out of me. Once you sing it for them, it’s not yours anymore, but it hurts less if you can let it go.”

  Tryp set his hands on his knees. “W
e’ll do ‘Road,’ and then you and Rhiannon can do ‘Alwaysland’ with the crowd. It’ll be enough.”

  Xan shook his head and stood. “Thank you, Tryp. I won’t forget this.”

  Jonas called for barstools to be set centerstage. Rade ran out to set his keyboards to sound like a grand piano.

  Tryp followed Xan onto the stage as the screaming and pounding from the crowd swelled and overtook the stage. Tryp climbed up to his drum kit to retrieve his Bodhran, a flat Celtic hand drum that he kept up there for noodling around during rehearsals, and jumped off the risers to join Xan downstage. The light battans blazed from above like a galaxy center had fallen from the sky, and the audience screamed a wall of sound from just beyond the footlights. Being inside the steel tank of his drum kit felt safe, not like out here, downstage so far that he could see the girls in the first row sweating, with his long, skinny legs cocked up on a swivel chair like a perching spider.

  Xan set up the Bodhran against his arm and held the double-headed beater to the skin. He bent to the mic, his long hair swinging around his face, and rasped, “Folks, we have a special treat for you tonight. Tryp has composed a ballad, and it’s truly beautiful. It’s going to be our next hit, and this is the first time we’ve performed it. Mitch,” he addressed the sound booth, “record this, if you please.”

  Tryp laid his hands on the keyboards, performing on a piano for the first time in years. He knew every word, every note, and every nuance. He’d been crafting it for almost a year.

  After talking it out with Elfie, after confessing his shame, he could sing the song. His throat opened, and he sang out his pain.

  And it did hurt less to let it go.

  Ten Thousand Times Before Midnight

  The next day, when Xan could sing again, he laid down a back-up vocal track, sent the various files to his mixing guy who mixed an amazing version in a couple hours, and played it for Tryp’s approval before he published “Set Me on the Open Road (Live)” as a single at all the major outlets. He sent out one tweet from @XanHimself: Dropped a new single today. #KillerValentine #SetMeOnTheOpenRoad #Grammy