by Piper Lawson
The next show brought in over twelve hundred partiers.
To celebrate, I took the next day to explore the island, Toro more than happy to show me both tourist places and local haunts.
Natalia, having caught me working at odd hours one too many times, decided I needed a hobby. When I told her about the little crocheted dolls I made during my art school undergrad and sold on Etsy for extra cash, she surprised me the next day with yarn and materials.
If I expected to hear from Harrison about the increase in sales, there’s been nothing since the night he came after me like a tuxedo-clad god on the steps of Christian’s villa.
“I’m fucking sorry.”
As if he expected that to undo everything he’d done.
But the sick thing is part of me wanted to accept his apology. Not only for that night but for all of it.
I start typing out a text to him.
Rae: Toro’s started showing me the island by driving me around, but I’m pretty sure it’s so he can tell stories. Ash broke this blue vase shaped like a mermaid while playing soccer inside yesterday. Barney whines every morning when he sees you’re not there.
I pocket the phone without hitting Send.
But later, the thing vibrates in my pocket.
Harrison: Tell Toro to take a goddamned day off. Ash needs to fuck around outside. And you can let my dog know I’m catching a flight back today.
Shit.
I must have accidentally hit Send.
There’s no dwelling on the humiliation, though, because he’s coming back. And I’m looking forward to seeing him.
Instead of my fucked-up feelings over one mysterious billionaire, I focus on this evening’s set.
I choose a black jumpsuit, plus the wedge sandals that were returned to me by one of Christian’s staff the day after the gala. Once I got over the embarrassment of being tracked down to return the footwear I left in the hall, I decided to break them in.
I like how feminine I feel. Not as much beautiful as powerful.
A goddess, in Harrison’s words.
I line my eyes extra dark and take care with my shiny, neutral lip gloss.
“Are you coming tonight?” I ask Ash on my way out.
“I have a date. But it’s a secret.” He winks.
“Damn secrets. Between you and Harry—”
“Harry?” He cocks a brow. “Have you called him that to his face?”
I glare. “Are you ten years old?”
“Nope, and neither are you.” His gaze runs down my body. “Which is why it’ll be interesting when he finds out.”
Unreal.
“You get why he’s more of a prick than usual around you. He’s not used to wanting what he can’t have. Between you and La Mer...it’s a rough summer for him.”
As I get into the front seat of the car with Toro, I’m still thinking of Harrison.
I miss his suits. His smooth voice, his icy-blue stare, the firm lips that make my stomach tighten imagining how they’d feel on mine.
How they’d feel other places.
When I get to the club, I drop off coffee and pastries I purchased on the way with security, wave to everyone as I get ready for my set. I even accept a drink to take the edge off.
The crowd goes crazy when I’m introduced and I take over the booth.
Energy flows through me, hot and electric. A power surge of my own creation reflected back at me.
I take it all.
Without thinking, I look up at his private booth. There’s a crowd in suits and cocktail dresses. A dozen men and women are spilling out of the booth and onto the catwalk.
The hairs on my neck lift before I catch sight of his golden head, angular jaw, and square shoulders through the crowd.
Harrison’s back.
A surge of emotion rockets through me.
Anticipation, nerves, longing.
I watch as a bartender serves drinks, and they toast.
One woman leans over to whisper in his ear. When her hand lingers on the shoulder of his jacket, I almost fuck up my transition.
But someone nudges my shoulder with a champagne bucket of ice and waters. Plus a bottle of champagne nestled in the middle, a number on a Post-it stuck to the glass.
The door, I realize. Fourteen hundred sixty-three.
It’s thrilling. I did this, but it feels like a shared victory. Shared with Leni, the team here, and the man I never thought I’d want to share anything with.
I make a change, dropping in a new song I’ve been working on. As the chorus comes on, the man I’m totally not watching out of the corner of my eye leans over the railing upstairs.
When I lift my chin and catch him staring, I’m knocked off balance by the intense focus on his face.
Each beat I feel his eyes on me is a thrill.
A dirty promise that feels less dangerous with the distance between us.
I lift both hands in the air and flip off the catwalk.
A few of the well-dressed people above gasp, but most ignore me.
Harrison King, a decade older than me and probably a dozen tax brackets above, leans elegantly over the railing separating the upstairs VIP booth from the crowd with a glass in one hand.
Then he lifts the other hand and offers me the same finger I gave him.
Good God.
I’m dead. Slain.
If a billionaire flipping me off makes my ovaries flutter, I’m a fucked-up woman.
But it does, and I am, and the smirk on his face is so sexy it makes me throb.
When my set concludes, I drink a gallon of water and take selfies with every fan before I head to the private VIP lounge. Security offers grins and fist bumps along the way.
Leni descends on me the moment I set foot through the door. “You were fucking rad tonight. Keep doing this, I’ll take you on a surfing trip the next time I’m home.”
“Deal.”
Inside, the room is bustling with twice the usual dozen or so VIPs. Harrison’s seated in a booth with a handful of the people from upstairs, perfectly collected in a dark suit that sets off his clear, blue eyes. His legs are stretched out in front of him, women on each side looking as if they’d like to crawl into his lap.
I catch his eye and jerk my head toward the bar.
With a cocked brow, he shifts out of the booth.
“More spoiled princesses?” I ask as he falls into step next to me.
“Business associates.”
I feel every inch of him in my space. We’re not touching, but having him near is oh so good.
Once we get to the bar, I lean an elbow on it and hold up the sheet of paper from Leni. “Guess what this number is?”
He’s close enough I can smell his ocean scent.
“Your SAT score.”
I smack his shoulder. “It’s the door, dumbass.”
Harrison lifts his cool, blue gaze to mine, but the triumph behind it matches the way I feel.
I grin as two drinks are set in front of us. We clink glasses, our arguments set aside for a moment as we share in a victory we’ve both wanted for different reasons.
“How do you like the espresso machine?” he asks.
“It’s very shiny.”
His mouth twitches. “I meant, are you pleased with how it functions? It’s a new model and the best available.”
“I haven’t used it.”
Harrison frowns, and I take a sip of my drink, feeling his attention linger on me.
Finally, I say, “The French press is good enough. Besides, I don’t want to get attached. It’s not as if I can take it with me.”
“Of course you can. I bought it for you.”
“No, I mean… thank you.” Processing his confusion is hard. He seems offended his gift didn’t rock my world. “But I’m always on the road, so I pack light. The only things that come with me are my computer and gear and clothes.”
He leans in, as if genuinely willing himself to understand. “Is it so difficult to see yourself staying somewh
ere?”
“I’ve tried that. It didn’t work out. People have a habit of disappointing me.”
“Perhaps you simply expected too much.”
I turn that over as I glance past his shoulder to see his business associates talking and laughing.
“Where were you all week?” I ask.
“Visiting venues in LA and Miami. Putting in place new policies to address a few lingering issues.” He hesitates, regret flickering behind his eyes. “In building an empire, it’s easy to be lured by the facade and miss the cracks. The past year, I was distracted. I allowed the cracks to extend further than they should.”
I blink. I don’t know if he left because I called him out after the party, but he was trying to fix the mistakes he made. The ones I called him out for.
“I thought your next move was buying La Mer.”
“I can do both. You’d be surprised what I can accomplish when I set out to.”
It’s not the first time he’s looked at me as if I have what he wants. But it’s the first time I can’t resist looking back at him the same way.
The feeling deep in my stomach, expanding in my chest, isn’t only attraction. It’s not only about how irresistible he looks in his dark suit, how his dirty-blond hair and electric-blue eyes lull me into thinking he could have been the boy next door…
If the boy next door kept a safe full of secrets capable of slicing you clean in two.
“You’re an asshole,” I whisper, but the warmth in my voice betrays me. “And a prick. And a liar—“
“And you missed me.” The gleam in his eye is so sexy it derails my brain.
“I did not.”
“Then why did you text?”
“It was an accident.” A flush crawls up my face, and his grin widens.
“Ah. But you were thinking of me.”
“I’m thinking of how much money I’m going to make in my final two weeks here. But if it helps your ego, they’re thinking of you.” I nod to the fan club across the room.
The women are both pouting their full lips and adjusting their skirts to show even more insanely toned thigh. From the way they’re staring, they miss his company.
“My attention is occupied.”
I can’t stop the surge of adrenaline that pulses through me or the breathless smile that tugs at my lips.
I ask something I know I shouldn’t.
“Where do you… you know?”
“What?”
“Hook up. You don’t do it at the house. I would’ve heard you if it was in your room, and I explored every inch of the villa while you were gone. There’s no secret sex room or anything.”
“Ah. Because I’m such a prolific adorer of women, I must be bedding them indiscriminately? Including since you arrived?”
The flash of his eyes should be a warning.
“Pretty much. I mean, you are the chairman of the British Billionaire Club.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a thing,” I go on, deadpan. “You have elections, and meetings, and a dress code. Plus closed door events where you whip out your cash and measure how tall the stacks are.”
He leans in and tugs on my hair, his expression solemn. “You’re not supposed to know about that.”
I toss back my head and laugh. It feels so damn good, and when he grins too, I wonder if it’s contagious.
“Besides,” he goes on, “I’m keeping busy with the DJ in residence at ‘one of Ibiza’s hidden gems.’”
He holds out his phone.
I scan the social media post from an influencer who happened to be at one of last week’s shows.
His hand covers mine. The contact has my pulse thudding harder as I finish scanning the raving post. “That’s fucking awesome,” I say.
“It’d be more fucking awesome if she’d clean my pool with her thong.”
We made that bargain weeks ago. Something has shifted between us since, though I never gave permission. Now, the alcohol and high from the show and the way he’s looking at me have me feeling invincible.
This place might not be my home, but I can’t argue with the feeling pulsing through me, the familiarity of the staff and the setup and the bar, the hope that I could belong here—not only Little Queen, but Rae too.
And the man who owns it, the one I spent months hating, is one I would have run from once but now I want to lean into.
Every time he pushes me, I push back.
I don’t break, only bend.
The newfound confidence makes me brave.
It makes me bold.
“Come on, Harry, don’t be shy.” I’m close enough to see the tiny dots in his shirt print. His body blocks most of the room, and I can only see one of the envious women eyeing us from the corner. “You can admit that what you want most after coming home from a long, hard work trip is a pair of my underwear to jerk off with.”
His nostrils flare.
The hit of triumph twines with attraction surging through my veins, a cocktail more potent than the one I’m drinking.
I take the cherry from the bottom of my glass and suck on it.
If I didn’t already know I’d raised the stakes, it’s evident in the pulse in his neck. The way his gaze darkens with intent as he leans in, resting a hand lightly on my hip.
“Then give them to me.”
His rough whisper in my ear, his firm lips tickling my skin, makes me forget basic functions.
Like how to chew.
The cherry gets stuck in my throat, and a second later, he’s hitting me on the back. I spit the thing out on the woman crossing the floor to interrupt us. She squeals, flicking the fruit off her dress.
The other occupants of the VIP room fall silent as they stare at us.
Whoops.
Harrison turns to block me from the rest of the room as if I need protection.
Maybe I do.
“Fuck, you’re savage.” But his mouth twitches.
That’s what I get for trying to out-cool this man. Choking is the least sexy thing a woman can do.
“I can raid my drawer when I get back tonight if you still want a pair of my panties,” I joke, my voice hoarse.
“No.”
“That’s what I fig—“
“They don’t taste like you.”
Desire slams into me, the creep of attraction overtaken by a tsunami of need.
“You can flirt with me, Raegan,” he drawls. “I’ll even enjoy it. But if you want me to treat you like my equal, you’d better be ready for all that comes with it.”
Every part of me tingles, from the tips of my breasts to between my thighs. My panties are wet, and as I squeeze my legs together, his jaw flexes as if he knows exactly why I’m doing it.
A throat clearing has Harrison wrenching back to look over his shoulder at Leni. “Boss. We need to talk.”
He shifts out of his stool, but I swear it’s reluctantly. Before he walks away, he says to me, “We’re going out tomorrow night.”
“Calling in another favor?”
“No. A do-over of the first one. And trust me, you’ll want to be there.”
13
Rae
It started with a picture.
One I posted of the beach when I was out walking Barney one morning.
Since then, I’ve posted on social nearly every day.
Sometimes with Barney, sometimes the scenery. One day I snapped a photo of Toro, his weathered profile smiling, when he came to work on the house, and we ended up talking for an hour about his daughter and the argument they had about her leaving Spain for a job in Australia with a boy she was dating at the time.
In between, I’ve reposted pictures from fans. For the first time, my following is growing, and it’s people saying they love my shows or my music or want to check out Debajo.
It doesn’t hurt that I’ve been scanning the feeds of some hashtags of local partiers to see what’s popular and, more importantly, what people are into but aren’t getting in the bright lights and the
atrics of the biggest clubs.
It’s not Harrison’s pressure. It’s that I want to make Debajo great. It’s less about me, or even getting the money for Callie, and more about believing in a place and the people in it.
This morning, when I check my DMs, the name on top grabs my eye.
Beck, one of my classmates from arts school, who is in LA.
You keep making that party look so good I’m gonna crash it.
I grin. Don’t write checks you can’t cash.
My phone rings as I’m out for a run with Barney. Adrenaline is pumping through my veins as I slow to a walk and answer. After a moment for the video call connection to establish, a handsome grinning face appears.
“I read about you this week,” Beck informs me.
“Wow. I didn’t know you could read.”
His bark of laughter is warm and welcome. Beck’s outside too, his hair blowing in the breeze. “Just because I’m an actor doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”
He’s not. My friend took an arts-school vlog and leveraged it into a TV deal after graduation. He stars as a psychic cop in one of the top shows on television.
“How’s the club gig?”
“I’m going to fill the place if it kills me.”
“Badass. I heard someone’s birthday’s coming up from Tyler and Annie. Which day is the party?”
I frown. I haven’t talked to Annie in a couple weeks except for the odd text. “There’s no party, Beck. My birthday’s not a day to remember.”
He cocks his head, surprised. “Clearly you need to replace it with better memories.”
“I’m trying. Tonight, I’m going to the biggest club on the island.”
When I woke up an hour ago, there was a note on my dresser in Harrison’s scrawl saying we were going to La Mer to scope it out.
Excitement bubbled through me when I stared at it, then the bottle of pills I had demoted to the dresser from my bedside table earlier in the week and replaced with a tiny vase of fresh flowers from Natalia’s garden.
“Sounds like fun.”
“It’s recon,” I say.
“Even better.”