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

by Jo Raven

  Nephi was shushing him for language? Tryp could not fucking believe it. “How old were your wives when you married them?”

  “Heavenly Father decreed that I should marry them, that they were mature women and would be obedient wives and loving mothers.”

  “How old? Fifteen? Fourteen?”

  “My family is none of your concern. I need you to retract your statements about us. You know in your heart that they are untrue, that we don’t abuse children or marry women who are too young.”

  “Fucking bullshit, Nephi. Kumen raped Sariah that night. I saw it.”

  “She went to the temple and his bed willingly, and her maidenhood was his to take.”

  The whiskey backed up in Tryp’s throat, choking him, and he tugged his drumsticks out of his back pocket to spin in his fingers. “I can’t believe you would ask me to do this. We were friends.”

  “You’re lying about my home and my family.”

  “It was my home and my family, too, until they threw me out.”

  “You committed apostasy, Brother Tryfon. You were usurping Sariah’s husband’s privilege by taking her chastity.”

  “I held her hand! She was crying because her brother had gone missing and she didn’t know what happened to him, and I held her hand!”

  “You said that you loved her, at the time, on the radio last week, and in the magazine article.”

  He spun his drumsticks around his hand. “I was fourteen and had a teenage crush.”

  “You had no right to love her, Brother Tryfon. She belonged to Heavenly Father until He gave her to her husband. Love means nothing.”

  “It’s the most important thing! It’s the only thing! Don’t you love your wives and your children?”

  “I provide for them and protect them as Heavenly Father has decreed, so that Heavenly Father will allow me to continue to be their husband and father.” Nephi’s blue eyes were as lonely as a faraway shallow sea.

  That cult had perverted every sense of a man’s love for a woman and even his children and turned them into religious hostages, and he just had to pay for the house, fuck the underage girls until they gave birth, and control the children. It sickened Tryp, sickened him to death. He flipped his drumsticks around his knuckles and picked up spinning them again.

  Tryp said, “I swear to God, I will continue to play that song every fucking chance I get, and I will tell every reporter that I talk to that you guys are sick and that you abandon children by kicking them out of the car on the highway and that you rape underage girls and force them into marriage.”

  Nephi shook his head. “You leave us no choice, Brother Tryfon. We tried to reason with you, but we have over twenty-two hundred adults in New Empyrean, and every one of them will write a scathing, one-star review of your single and all of Killer Valentine’s albums, though we certainly won’t stoop to your kind of profanity. For your next album, we’ll have them up on the first day everywhere that sells it.”

  Tryp caught his drumsticks and held them with white knuckles. If Killer Valentine went down in flames, the tour would disintegrate, and Elfie would leave him when she went elsewhere.

  A gaping hole the size of a tiny blonde ripped down his core, and his face flushed hot. He would die. He would drink himself to death without her, willingly, purposely.

  Tryp said, “Everyone will know what you guys are doing.”

  “You can tell people that it’s a conspiracy, but then you’ll look like a raving lunatic and it’ll cast doubt on everything you’ve ever said, including what you’ve said about us. We don’t want to do this, Brother Tryfon.”

  “Why the fuck are you calling me ‘Brother?’ I was excommunicated seven years ago, as a child.”

  “If you recant publicly, a church court will allow you to be baptized again.”

  “You have got to be fucking shitting me! No fucking way would I ever go back to that church that fucks over children!” He stood.

  “I am disappointed, Tryfon. I am leaving my phone number.” Nephi laid a card on the coffee table. “I beg you to reconsider. Perhaps you’ll listen to Sariah.”

  Nephi held up his cell phone, a surprisingly modern smartphone with video. The young woman on the screen wore her hair in a bouffant bun instead of braids, as befitted a married woman. Tryp caught his drumsticks and clenched them in his fist.

  Nephi clicked the video to play.

  On the tiny screen, Sariah said, “Brother Tryfon, I’m begging you not to spread these lies about me.” She looked at whomever was holding the video camera.

  A cramp of panic hit Tryp. Living with a violent man as a child had taught Tryp to learn to read nuance.

  She continued, “Please tell the reporters that they were lies. Please don’t tell them any more lies about my—” she glanced up again, “happy marriage to my husband. I am a happy and obedient wife, and lies will cause discord in my marriage.”

  Her last, fearful glance up broke him. A stripe of pain lashed Tryp’s chest. He understood the threat. He squeezed his drumsticks so hard that his knuckles ached.

  Nephi snatched the phone back, and his cold stare was more confident. “You need to remove the song from sale, retract your statements, and say that Sariah was older than you had remembered. You have a week before the one-star reviews begin hitting your albums and Kumen becomes angry with her failure to sway you. I look forward to your call.”

  He strode out of the room, leaving Tryp alone with his bottle of whiskey on the coffee table.

  Counter-Attack

  Elfie had just returned to the hotel from the load-out and was walking up the hallway to Tryp’s suite, rubbing her filthy hands on her cargo pants and trying to get black grease streaks off, when Tryp burst through his door, grabbed her, and kissed her hard up against the wall with his hot mouth and lips tasting like whiskey. Her braid was already loose, and he threaded his hand up in her hair and then grabbed her around the waist and clutched her to his body like he was famished for her. She wrapped her arms around his neck, even though she knew she was dusty and grimy, kissing him back.

  Finally, he slowed the kiss, panting, his body fuming with liquor around her. “I have to take care of this,” he mumbled, pulling away. He stumbled down the hallway, holding a bottle and dropping his drumsticks.

  She ran after him, stooping to retrieve the drumsticks as she ran. “Tryp? What’s going on?”

  “I’ve got to tell him to pull the single, and I have to say I lied during the interviews.” He turned to Elfie. His dark eyes were bleary and bloodshot, and he gulped more whiskey from the bottle. “And then we have to save her.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “Come on.” Tryp grabbed her hand and tugged her after him. “You see this?” He shook their entwined hands. “This was how it all started. This was what caused it all, for seven years, this.”

  “Okay.” Elfie trotted beside him, barely keeping up with his long legs as he lurched through the hallway. Something had to have caused this breakdown. She had left Tryp a few hours ago noodling on a small keyboard he had liberated from Rade’s room because Rade was still unconscious. He had declared his intent to write on his day off, even though he said that the death knell for all bands sounded like the drummer saying, “Hey! Let’s try one of my songs!”

  Tryp careened into a wall, but Elfie steadied him, and he shoved her up against the plaster again, his hard body pressed against hers and his free hand grasping the back of her neck. His mouth came down on hers, his tongue sliding into her mouth and curling around hers, licking and sucking her. This drunk necking-pull away thing was weird, even for Tryp.

  He backed off again, then pressed his forehead to hers. “If I fuck it all up, I’ll lose you, and I can’t bear that. I won’t let them take everything away from me again, because you are everything to me. You’re mine. They can’t take you. They can’t force me out and keep me away from you. I’ll do it all for you. We have to rescue Sariah, but I’m doing this for you.”

  She grabbed him
around the neck, holding on. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  He stepped back, and he was so much bigger than she was that he didn’t notice she was trying to hold onto him. He staggered down the hall, still gripping her hand, passing Xan’s security guys, who watched with amused sidelong glances. They didn’t interfere in band business.

  Elfie shook his arm. “Tryp! Talk to me! At least before you do anything nutso, tell me what the hell is going on.”

  At the door to Xan’s suite, Tryp pounded on the door and roared, “Xan! We need to pull the single now!”

  The single? “Set Me on the Open Road?” Oh, no. Elfie couldn’t imagine a reason he should pull it. Too many throwaway people out there needed to hear it. “Tryp, if it’s for me, I don’t want you to pull it.”

  Tryp slammed his fist into the door again. “Valentine!”

  Xan Valentine opened the door and glanced down the row of doors, but the suite-level hallway was empty. He grabbed Tryp’s arm and pulled him inside, hauling Elfie with him. Elfie dropped his hand as they came through the door, lest someone see.

  Xan asked, “What the fuck?”

  Tryp braced an arm against the wall. “We have to pull the single, and we have to do it now.”

  Jonas sat in front of the computer, scrolling through something managerial and spreadsheet-ish. He turned and frowned.

  “Even if we did so immediately,” Xan said, “it would take a few days for the venders to remove it from the international sites. Elfie, do you have any idea—”

  She shook her head and raised her clueless hands. “I just got here.”

  Xan stared straight at him. “Tryp, look at me. Tell me.”

  “One of the guys from my old church, home, my old town visited me.” Tryp paced, drinking straight from the bottle again.

  “Why don’t you give me the whiskey, there?” Xan asked. “That can’t be good for you, can it?”

  Tryp staggered back and forth. “They said that all twenty-two hundred people in New Empyrean were going to one-star all of our albums starting next week unless we pulled the single and I retracted everything that I said.”

  “Ah, shit,” Jonas muttered.

  Elfie wasn’t surprised. People who prey on children are usually vicious when someone narcs on them. Elfie had hopped on the tour’s bus leaving Texas before her step-father could find her. An entire town of them? Yeah, she could see the retaliation being overwhelming.

  “I assume that you spoke the truth?” Xan said, leaning back on the couch and crossing his long legs.

  “Of course, and there was a lot of worse stuff, too, but it doesn’t matter. They’ll ruin the albums. It’ll crash sales. We’re indie. We don’t have a record label to back us up.”

  “Jonas?” Xan asked.

  “Already on it.” Jonas was holding his cell phone to his ear. “Tryp, what’s the zip code of the town where they all are?”

  Tryp told him. “What’re you doing?”

  “Calling our reps.” Xan glanced back. “Our representatives, or liaisons, with the vendors. We’ll inform them of the threat, and they’ll block any reviews coming out of that zip code. We’ve got reps at all the sites. This is taken care of.”

  “Won’t help,” Tryp said. “They’ll get around it. Fuck with the IP addresses or something. Call up the other strongholds in Illinois, New Mexico, and Canada to post them. They’re not stupid. They get around everything. They always fucking win.”

  Tryp’s pained expression was so despondent that Elfie almost reached over to him, but Xan and Jonas were there, so she didn’t.

  Xan said, “Tryp, we will handle it. This is now a technical problem.”

  “But Sariah.” Tryp stumbled sideways and took another swig from the bottle. “Shit,” he whispered, and his eyes rolled up.

  Elfie tried to grab his arm but missed.

  Xan leapt as Tryp passed out, tackling him backward into an armchair before he smacked his head or hands against the glass coffee table. Xan plucked the whiskey bottle from Tryp’s hand before it hit the floor and set it on the table between them. “Seems like we might all need a stiff drink. Jonas, how bad is this?”

  Jonas glanced at Elfie, obviously wishing she wasn’t there so that he and Xan could really talk. “We’ll mitigate the damage as much as possible. I’ll call my office and have them pull some temps in to flag reviews at the vendor sites. We can also activate the fans, tell them what’s going on, and ask them to keep an eye out for revenge reviews. But yeah, Xan, this could suck hard.”

  Xan leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. He cleared his throat, looking down at his fancy boots as his throat worked, and then he said, his voice still hoarse, “Obviously someone has threatened the shit out of him.”

  Jonas nodded and started talking to someone on the phone about the possibility of a shitstorm of revenge reviews that might be coming.

  “Do you know anything else, Elfie? Did you see anyone in his rooms?”

  She shook her head. “I left a few hours ago for the load-out. He hasn’t said anything more than the stuff that was in the Rolling Stone article.”

  Which was horrific and devastating and gut-wrenching.

  “We’ll have hotel security review the tapes and file a report with the local police, for all the good that will do, but it will at least establish a record of the threats for any future problems.” Xan braced his hands on his knees, preparing to stand. “Let’s just pour him into my bed to let him sleep it off, the poor sod.” Xan looked up at her. “Unless you have any objections?”

  And so Xan knew that she had shacked up with Tryp.

  Elfie glanced over at Jonas, but he was turned to stare at the computer and was talking fast.

  “Um, no,” she said.

  “If these recent revelations haven’t alerted you, you know that he’s had a rough life, correct?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  “He’s had his heart broken more times than I can count.”

  “We’re just friends,” she said, even as her own heart rebelled at the lie.

  “No, you’re not,” Xan said. “I’m not a fool. Jonas, help me carry Tryp to the bedroom so he can sleep off this drunk.”

  Aftermath

  On Monday, the semi tractor-trailers and tour busses drove to Birmingham for a show the next night, Tuesday, and Elfie again rode the bumping technicians’ bus rather than the band bus with bunk beds and refrigerators.

  Every time they hit a bump while she was trying to sleep and the weird chair wrenched her neck, Elfie tried harder to remember why she had to keep her relationship with Tryp a secret from the other techs if it meant that she could have been riding on the half-million-dollar band bus with the cozy bunk beds instead of this refurb Greyhound with the busted-out shocks.

  Tryp had awakened from his bender a few hours later, and for the next day, he had been brittle. He didn’t snap at people, he just kept watching the exits as if he might have to make a break for it. When Elfie held his hand, he clutched it like he thought she might run.

  Last night, even though he drank a lot, he had nightmares, full-on twitching and moaning and then jumping backward out of bed like he had freed himself from the claws of a monster and skittering across the room until he slammed into the wall. When he woke up and she saw the human come back into his dark eyes, he sank to the floor with his hands covering his face.

  Elfie rocked him on the floor until he stopped shaking and then got him back into bed.

  The bus ride to Birmingham took over eight hours, and Elfie was frantic to get to Tryp by the time they got to the hotel. He stumbled off the bus and blinked at the sunset, and Elfie grabbed his arm.

  Jonas leaned down and whispered near her ear, “He slept the whole way. I don’t think he drank much more.”

  When they got into the hotel room, Tryp grabbed her and shoved her up against the wall again, kissing her hard. His breath had a light malt of a little beer on it, not a lot of whiskey. Elfie looped her arms around his neck and, when he
broke off to mouth her neck, she whispered, “It’s okay. I’m right here.”

  His hands found the end of her braid, stripped off the elastic, and combed her hair out, and his fingers ran up her scalp, luxuriating in her hair. He grabbed her legs and yoked them around his waist, holding her against the wall with the force of his body, and kissing her like he couldn’t get enough.

  She really should ask him what was up and have a serious heart-to-heart about why he was being so physically possessive, not jealous-possessive, which can get creepy real fast, but possessive like his hands all over her and kissing her deeply like he wanted to be inside her, but Elfie couldn’t string together a sentence with his mouth biting the pulse in her throat and his palm on her breast and his hardness grinding between her legs.

  He swung her legs around like they were swing dancing and carried her to the bedroom, his breath harsh in his chest. Elfie reached for him, already needing to touch his strong arms, his shoulders, to wrap herself around him.

  Tryp set her on the bed and crawled on top of her, caging her with his arms and legs and kissed her just like that, blotting out the light from the lamps and the sunset in the window like a mountain falling on her. She couldn’t breathe, and her fingers tightened on Tryp’s shoulders as she tried to hold it in, but with a sharp intake of breath, he said, “Oh, God. I’m sorry,” and rolled so that he lay beside her.

  As soon as the light hit Elfie’s face, she was okay, and she held his cheeks while she kissed him.

  Tryp didn’t let up, grabbing her body and pulling her leg over his hips. He rubbed his thigh between her legs, winding her up so fast. She moaned against his lips, wanting more.

  Tryp flung her clothes off, grabbing handfuls of cloth and pulling them off her, then ran his tongue down to her breast, flicking her nip until it drew up in a hard pebble and sliding his fingers down into her swollen folds.

  He rubbed deep, dipping into her core and glazing her softness. His fingers slipped over her, first teasing while he moved to her other breast and sucked there until the longing in her twisted so sharply that she rose off the bed, seeking more. He delved into her, sliding in and out and brushing her nub with his thumb until she cried out and arched hard onto his hand, the pulses running through her like electricity.