I don’t know who these guys are or what they want, but no way am I answering that question. I don’t trust sincerity, I don’t trust badges, I don’t trust men. Three strikes and you’re out.
The muscle-bound one who doesn’t talk much gives his friend a warning look that the blond guy completely ignores. I guess he just went off script.
Good. That means that I’m in charge now, and that’s exactly how I like it.
“Rape me?” I roll my eyes even as my stomach twists uncomfortably. “I thought this was about money.”
He looks at me, his gray eyes shifting back and forth like he’s trying to figure me out. Like I’m a puzzle and if he moves the pieces around long enough, they’ll fall into place.
Well, joke’s on him. I’m missing half of the pieces that would make me whole. No matter how long he stares at me, I’m still going to look like a Rorschach test—maybe something you can make sense of if you squint, but in reality just a splatter stain.
“It is.” He shifts forward onto the balls of his feet, then back onto his heels. He’s thinking.
I roll my eyes. “Okay, well, it was fun watching you shove my manager out of the suite, but before I call hotel security and have you kicked out for trespassing, I’m going to ask you to leave. Nicely.”
“You want us to leave nicely?” He crooks one eyebrow. Wanna dance, little one?
He knows what I meant. I ignore the petulant whine that rises in my chest. “Yes, please.”
“Make you a deal. Tell us more than yes/no answers about your relationship with Lively—financial, sexual, etcetera—and we’ll leave super nicely.”
“No can do, sir.” I stand and move toward the phone. “I don’t have a relationship with him, so there’s nothing to elaborate on.”
“We’re not done here.” His words tug at my insides. Oh yeah, we are.
“I have a show to get ready for tonight, unfortunately. And my vocal coach insists I don’t use my voice for six hours before a performance, so…” I shrug.
His eyes glitter, just for a second, then he blinks and it’s gone. Emotion…poof. That’s a neat trick. I’d love to be able to do that without a bottle of tequila or a pile of naked bodies.
“What time is your show?” He glances at his watch, then back at me. Bland again.
I don’t like that.
I don’t like this interview, I don’t like him, I don’t like being put in this position where my life is exposed because Grant wanted to play Lifestyles of the Rich and Perverted six years ago.
One time. That’s all I put up with.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind an orgy. Only way I have sex. But there’s no way those girls had consented to be there.
I don’t really get it. There are plenty of us sluts to go around—why the hell verge into criminal behavior to get your rocks off?
I live my life on the edge of the law, and nobody knows it. I’m sure as hell not going to recklessly wander across that line just for a dirty fuck.
Those are as easy to come by as apple-fucking-pie. I could have one with these two wannabe-cops right now.
“I asked you a question,” the blond one repeats and his friend mutters something I don’t catch. Frankly, I’d forgotten the other guy was in the room until my mind turned to sex.
Safety in numbers, that’s my motto.
And suddenly I realize that this bitchiness is because I want this guy. The blond one. Agent Asshole. I want him on his knees, licking my pussy and calling me ma’am.
There is nothing I like better than bringing grown men to heel.
“Tabitha.” His voice is unreal. Quiet, steely, and commanding. I jerk my shoulders back. “We’re not here to expose you. We’re strictly interested in understanding more about how Lively operates—the financial side, and yes, the sexual violence.”
“Why?”
He stills, and I look back and forth between the two of them. He’s not usually in charge, I decide. Why he’s taking the lead here, I’m not sure. Maybe this is his investigation. But the other guy is watching him carefully.
‘The nature of the investigation is confidential,” he finally answers.
“Well, then so is the nature of my knowledge, should I have any. Which I don’t.” I stand up, and I don’t miss how his eyelids drop just a hair, just enough to mask that he’s looking at me. Tracing down my body, then back up again, and his gaze lingers on my hips. My tits.
Fucking men. So easily swayed.
He wants to see my tits? Happy to oblige. I cross my hands at my waist and grip the bottom of my tank top. The other guy curses under his breath as I slide the cotton fabric up my torso, over my head, and let it fall on the ground.
“Like I said, I can’t talk anymore this afternoon, but my vocal coach doesn’t have any rules about other uses for my mouth.” I wink at the blond one and turn around, denying him the view of my chest. But before I lose his attention, I undo the heavy leather belt that decorates the top of my hip hugger jeans and shove those to the ground.
The other one is staring at the ceiling now. That won’t do.
“You,” I purr. He looks at me. Good, he’s not embarrassed. I don’t have any time for chivalry, either, but it’s more easily worked around than nerves.
Nothing worse than a guy coming in his pants before I get my mouth on him.
“What’s your name, really?”
“Kevin Weston.”
I laugh. “And what’s your friend’s name?”
From behind me—closer than I expect—I hear the voice of steel again. “Wilson…Gough.”
Ah. “Wilson,” I say, blinking at him over my shoulder. Shit, he’s tall. Like a foot taller than me, and big. And he smells like he’d taste amazing. Asshole.
I can hear my therapist in my head. It’s not this guy’s fault that he’s hot. That I’m fucked up and use sex as a replacement for everything in my life.
Better than tequila, I usually joke.
Dr. Yost really hates jokes.
I think Wilson’s not big on them either. He glares down at my half-naked body, then back at my face again. “This stunt isn’t convincing me that you’re unaffected by your encounters with Gerome Lively, Tabitha.”
“Should I give your friend a blow job, Wilson?” I lick my lips as I ask the question, loving the way the tension in the room ratchets up a thousand degrees. Welcome to my world, men. Where I finally have an advantage because fucked-up is my life, my every day, so now that you’re off-kilter, I can forge ahead and seize the upper hand. “That’s what I asked Lively, by the way, the one time I spent any time with him. He looked me up and down and told me that he’d like to split me in two. I slid my hands into his pants and told him I prefer to be split in three, and he’d need a friend to help.”
Blink.
That’s all I get. I’m supposed to get red faces and stammering apologies. Offers of trauma counselling and kind words about how none of it is my fault.
Instead I get a whisper that cuts me to the quick. “My friend is a bit tense,” Wilson murmurs, his eyes strangely warm. Not like he thinks I’m kidding—there’s a scary edge there that says, no, he knows exactly what goes on with Lively’s parties and he believes that exchange really happened. But he’s not going to let me shock my way out of this conversation.
Well, I’m not backing down, either. I spin, then sway my way toward Kevin. Definitely not his name. Wilson’s pupils dilate when I say his name. This guy is cold and hard like granite. I reach behind me and unclasp my bra, then hold on to the cups in the front so it doesn’t fall away. Not for modesty—I don’t have any—but because the lure of what they can’t see is so much more powerful than what they can.
I get as far as reaching for his belt before he steps back, and I wobble, catching myself from falling onto all fours.
Then I hear it. A catch in Wilson’s throat, maybe. A groan of the quietest order.
And I drop to my hands and knees, pressing my ass in the air.
“Ms. Le
yton, we’ll let you get ready for your performance now,” Kevin says. I push back onto my knees and glance at Wilson, but he’s already standing.
Walking around me.
Walking away from me, because I’m a fucked-up mess and was no use to them.
Exactly what I set out to do, but damn, it doesn’t feel good.
Nothing about my life feels good outside the two hours I’m on stage, and I close my eyes, grateful that tonight I’ll get to escape for a bit.
I start shivering as soon as the door clicks shut behind them. I don’t even hear Grant come in a few minutes later.
“What did you tell them?”
I shake my head. “Nothing. Of course I told them nothing.”
He sneers down at me. “I don’t know. Sometimes you get these crazy ideas in your head.”
“Well, I didn’t today.” I stand up and walk to the kitchenette, grabbing a robe from one of bar stools on my way. “Can you call the concierge and arrange for a massage therapist in an hour? I’m feeling tense.”
He doesn’t answer right away.
I yank open the fridge and grab a pre-made kale and pineapple smoothie. Mmm. Lunch. Fuck my life. “Okay, fine. I’ll call myself. Or just watch porn and masturbate like regular people do.”
“You don’t need to be like that. I’m just wondering if it’s wise—”
Fuck. He thinks I’m going to hit on the RMT they send up. He has no clue that the last person I fucked alone was him, ten years ago. I’ll never make that mistake again. “Tell you what. I’ll keep my hands to myself, okay?” An easy promise to make, seeing as how I never planned to violate the poor person in the first place.
He sighs, and for a second, I see the guy who discovered me. Who cared, a little too much and a lot too inappropriately, but he did care.
Now? Now we’re tied together for life and it all rides on my ability to not fall apart. So I need a fucking massage, and he knows he needs to make that happen.
When he leaves again, I slump back against the kitchen counter and feel the almost-tears burning in the back of my eyes. They never fall.
I cried all the tears when I gave birth to my stillborn son, my baby, when I was fifteen.
Since then I’ve been on a slow-burning self-destruct sequence, and nothing will change that.
No well-meaning investigators from God knows where.
No massage.
No fucking kale and pineapple smoothie.
Not even a crowd of thousands of fans, all cheering my name as I belt out blistering song after blistering song about the cruelty of love.
If only they knew.
—nine—
Wilson
Jason pulls out his phone as soon as we’re back in our suite.
“What are you going to tell them?” If it hadn’t been trained out of me, I’d be breathing hard right now. Inside, my pulse is racing and my mind is swirling with the imagined scent of her and the coppery taste of regret that I have to make something up, that she didn’t get close enough for me to know.
“Not about the wood you popped at the thought of me getting a blow job from that nut, if that’s your fear.” He rolls his eyes. “I’m actually going to change my flight. This is a dead end.”
He’s exaggerating about the hard-on. No way did he see that—he wouldn’t stare at my junk long enough to. But we both know that I lost my distance from Tabitha in that interview.
I fucked it up.
Or maybe he doesn’t know how much I fucked it up if he thinks this was a dead end. I bite back a retort that she’s not a nut—hard to argue after that display, anyway—and pull out my computer as he talks to Ellie back in our office. Ignoring the pop-up for the hotel Wi-Fi, I grab a cable from my messenger bag and plug into the Ethernet port on the wall. Easier to hack into the system from within.
It doesn’t take long to get into the reservations system and change our hotel room to non-refundable. Poor Ellie’s gonna bear the brunt of that, but Jason’s cheap and I’m not leaving Los Angeles.
Not yet.
Ms. Leyton and I need to have another talk, one without a chaperone.
Plus I need to fuck her out of my system, and since I can’t actually fuck her, I’m going to hire the most expensive redhead call girl in the greater L.A. area and make her call me Daddy.
From the other side of the room, Jason swears. “What do you mean you can’t cancel the hotel reservation?”
I glance up. “You head back if you want. I’ve got some work I can do here. Maybe get Ellie to pull a couple of the cold-call inquiries and I can take some client interviews over the next day or two.”
He scowls, then barks the new plan into the phone.
I flip over to a new browser window and order Ellie one of those fruit basket bouquets with the chocolate strawberries. To further be a bastard, I use Jason’s credit card and make the personal note sound like it’s from him. You go above and beyond. I’d be lost without you. J.
Then I buy a ticket for Tabitha’s show and start looking for whatever the hell is in Fargo, North Dakota.
—ten—
Wilson
The music hall isn’t that big, maybe three thousand maximum capacity, and I was able to buy a ticket earlier this afternoon so it wasn’t sold out—not like that would’ve stopped me—but right now it feels full. Packed to the rafters with die-hard fans who are radiating a crazy amount of energy to be able to see Tabitha Leyton sing.
She’s got talent. Anyone who has watched her videos knows that. Her range is incredible, and she seeds her songs with exactly the right hooks. But before tonight, I’d have said she was just another pop star.
I was so fucking wrong.
She’s standing in front of a mic stand, feet planted wide, and her hands are resting easy on her electric guitar. The last song, she played the shit out of it. This song, though, she’s letting her band do the heavy lifting on the music, because she’s just singing.
Just nothing. Her voice is a finely-tuned instrument and she’s under my skin, a reaction that seems standard.
The lyrics soar above us, which is for the best, because they’re so raw, so powerful, they’d hurt if she didn’t belt them to the heavens.
From the tortured look on her face, she didn’t believe they reached.
Oh, baby girl. An unfamiliar ache bursts in my chest. Does nobody else see that the pain is real for her?
There’s something clawing at the back of my head. A warning—I’m aware of that much. But I can’t stop myself from getting up. From finding the head of security and introducing myself, so I get invited backstage. Unlike Tabitha, he buys the badge, and my story that she’s coming to the White House for a private concert and I’m doing advance reconnaissance.
Hacking pro-tip: pretend to be an insider. Works just as well with social hacking as online.
He shows me around, and tells me everything I need to know about the team around her—nobody’s telling her no. She’s self-destructive, powerful, and enough of a professional to keep that mostly hidden.
“Drugs?” I ask casually, like, no biggie, but I gotta ask.
He shakes his head. “Booze. After the show, never before. But she gets blitzed afterward.”
“The reception is before the concert,” I lie effortlessly.
“For the best.” His radio squawks and he excuses himself to go deal with a drunk in the front of house. I make my way right to the edge of the stage. She’s head-down, biting her lip as she plays her guitar. This song is about the death of a lover, and the frozen surprise of not having a chance to say goodbye.
Did I tell you I loved you
Enough times for you to remember
Won’t make it to heaven, though
So you’re on your own there, love
But you’ll be fine
You’ll fly
You’ve got wings I’ll never have
You’ll fly
So carry my dreams, love
And you’ll be fine
Y
ou’ll fly
She repeats the last line a few times until it’s a whisper and she drops to her knees. The lights go black and the crowd loses its mind, cheering for her in a way I’ve never heard.
In the dimness, as my eyes adjust, I see she’s still on her knees.
I take two steps toward her before I remember she has no idea who I am. I’m just the asshole who asked her if she’d been raped by a billionaire she hates.
Maybe she was.
Maybe she wasn’t, but it came close.
It doesn’t matter. A hostile witness won’t do us any good, and Cole and Tag had better luck with another witness lead in New York.
I need to fly home to Washington and leave this woman behind.
As she’s helped up from the polished wood of the stage, I melt into the shadows, but I don’t go far.
I watch as she comes backstage, stopping less than ten feet from me. She rubs at the back of her neck, then waves her hand in the air that someone understands as a universal demand for a drink. She’s handed a bottle of water, and takes a few sips before tossing it back to Handler #1.
She looks exhausted. Someone hands her a different drink, this one in a more tell-tale short glass with ice. Then another. She tosses both back like they’re water.
“Do you want to shower here?” someone else asks her. A tall, willowy blonde.
Tabitha shakes her head. “Not here.” Then she offers the other woman a glittery smile. “Not enough room for a crowd in the showers here, right? You coming back with me?”
The blonde laughed and nodded, her legs doing this simpering sideways wobble thing that make her look like a giraffe.
“Awesome. I need to blow off some steam. Okay.” She bobs her head, then hops on the spot, recharging herself like she’s got an internal battery fueled by vodka and flirting with pretty girls.
“You can do this,” the blonde calls, and then she’s gone.
And she does do it. Her encore is two songs, a ballad and an anthem, ending on a high note that brings down the house for a second time.
Dirty Love (Forbidden Bodyguards #3) Page 4
