Image wasn’t real. It was just an extension of a stage costume. He hadn’t given much thought to those instructions. Dylan figured that Ariel would keep staging more photo shoots to show the world his new persona. “So?”
“I told you the same thing. You’ve got the music covered, Dylan. You owned that stage tonight. But you know what else? The whole time you were singing, you owned the hearts of every woman in that audience. When you started the keyboard solo in Not Over You, I thought panties were going to fly onto the stage. You’ve got the dominoes lined up. Now you’ve got to knock some down.”
More than once, reviewers had called 4X4 bubble-gum pop. Dylan felt like he’d had bubble-gum relationships while in the band. Thin. Hollow. Sweet for about five minutes and then tasteless. He’d been more than ready for a change. For something adult and meaningful. Now he finally had his dream girl in his sights. No way in hell did he intend to date anyone else as long as he had a real shot at Ariel.
“I changed my hair. My clothes. Posed for all those new publicity shots.” He jabbed a finger against his open palm to emphasize each point. “I’m toeing the line. But you can’t make me fuck every woman who smiles at me.”
“No, but I can make it look like you do. As long as you’re willing to show them some semblance of a good time. Make them feel special. At least give them their fifty dollars’ worth for tonight.”
“Always interesting to hear what other people think I’m worth.” An idea shoved aside a good chunk of Dylan’s anger. A way to make her stupid scheme work for him. “I’ll play along. Give them their money’s worth.” He crowded into her. Barely grazed her cheek with his lips to whisper in her ear, “Bet you’ll watch and wonder what I’d do for a hundred-dollar ticket.”
Then he left to set his plan in motion.
CHAPTER SIX
Ariel’s feet hurt. Since it was the wrong side of one a.m., exhaustion dragged at every cell in her body. She’d gotten up crazy early to put in a full workday before hopping on a plane with Dylan to Colorado. But neither of those things was her chief complaint. No, the biggest problem in her life right now was her fresh-off-the-assembly-line rock god. Now she knew how Frankenstein felt. Because she’d gone and created a monster.
Dylan had been the perfect date for the three raffle winners…while still somehow convincing every woman in the room that she had a shot with him, too. He’d been a flirting machine. And watching Dylan drape himself—enthusiastically—all over women all night long had driven her absolutely crazy.
Which was ridiculous. Infuriating. Maddening. Dylan told her repeatedly that he didn’t want to fake-flirt. That he wanted only her. She’d browbeaten him into doing this. It was totally her idea. And thus it was totally her fault that she’d been so miserable all night. Jealousy wasn’t any fun. Self-induced jealousy was even less fun.
So she didn’t just knock on the top-floor room of the Hotel Boulderado. No, Ariel poured all of her pent-up aggression into her fist pounding. And she kept it up far longer than would be considered either necessary or polite. To heck with anyone unlucky enough to be within earshot.
Dylan opened the door a crack. Just enough to poke his head out sideways. “What’s up?”
No apology for being late. No apology for dragging her out in the middle of the night to fetch him like a recalcitrant teenager once she’d realized he was missing. “Seriously? That’s your opener?”
A bare elbow came through the crack, too, as he stroked his chin in thought. “I’d normally go with how’s it hanging, but that feels imprecise and, well, wrong.”
“Dylan.” Ariel ground her teeth together. Took a deep breath. And tried like heck not to fly off the handle. “Why aren’t you on one of the Riptide tour buses? They were scheduled to leave ten minutes ago for Denver. I’m not your babysitter. I shouldn’t have to use Twitter to track you down.”
He opened the door a little wider and leaned his upper body against the doorjamb. His completely bare upper body. Yes, she’d seen it before. But that didn’t take away any of its impact. Ariel’s knees still went a little weak and wobbly as she looked at all that golden skin stretched taut over muscles.
Dylan lazily scratched his collarbone. “I already texted the driver—um, Kyoko, I think—to leave without me.”
“Why would you do that?” Her plan to not fly off the handle lacked in execution, since her voice rose about two octaves and probably a dozen decibels.
“I needed a room. A private room. Denver’s only thirty minutes down the mountain. I’ll get a ride in the morning and make it in plenty of time for rehearsal.”
So. He’d given in to temptation. He’d gone ahead and decided to screw one of those women she’d flung at him. Which Ariel had no right to say anything about. The most she could do was offer him a hearty handshake and say, Job well done.
But…but how could he? How could he say all those absolutely wonderful, romantic things about wanting only her? About not wanting a handful of girls, but one woman?
Apparently, he truly was a typical rock star. Just when Ariel had been convinced that Dylan was different. Special. That he lived for the music and not the lifestyle. Instead, he’d lived down to her original expectations. She was disappointed. And she was furious. It didn’t matter if all three of the girls were in there, hanging from a chandelier, butt-naked, waiting for him. Dylan Royce deserved a piece of her mind, and he was going to get it.
“Let’s get something straight. Your career is not the only one on the line here.”
Dylan shook his head, clearly caught off guard by her seemingly random segue. “Huh?”
He obviously thought his money and his fame were all he needed. Maturity? Decency? That all fell under the optional column for most rock stars. She’d seen it happen again and again. “You’ve already made, what, a gajillion and two dollars?”
“I think you left out a decimal point,” he quipped dryly.
Ariel wasn’t in the mood. “Remember, I’m in the music business, too. I know rounded up to, oh, the nearest million what you made in your last deal. If you never work again a day in your life, you can still easily afford a pretty sweet life.”
His eyebrows drew together with a sternness Ariel hadn’t seen before. “You have no idea how much money I need. Or want. Or what plans I have for it. Not to mention that I don’t sing for the money. I love it. I do it because I can’t imagine going a day without music in my life.”
Fine. He could stay up on his high horse. Insist he created art for art’s sake. It didn’t change her point. Ariel barreled onward. “Plus, you’re incredibly hot. If you stopped singing tomorrow, you could be a model. Actually, we should hook you up with new endorsements regardless. Maybe underwear, like that rocker in the nineties. You could judge reality music shows. You could go to college, get a degree in music ed and lead one heck of a choir someplace. You. Will. Be. Fine.” Ariel jabbed a pink-tipped finger into his chest on each of the last four words of her rant.
“Yeah? Is that rant supposed to be a pep talk?” He crossed his arms. “One I don’t need after giving the best freaking performance of my life tonight?”
“This isn’t about you, Dylan. That’s my point. You can screw up, screw around, and you’ll be fine. What you don’t get is that my career is on the line, too.”
“How’s that?”
Pride had kept her mouth shut up till now. What had that gotten her, though? She might as well toss pride out the window and lay it all out for him. It was too late to salvage whatever…start of a personal relationship they’d kindled. But hopefully it wasn’t too late to salvage their professional relationship.
“I’m new at the agency. Brand new. Do you want to know why? Because I got fired from my last job. Not because I did anything wrong. I got fired because my idiot brother, Cam, your idol, royally fucked up. My job, my first job, at the agency that Riptide used, was part of the fallout. It took months for me to get another job. I’m at PKCL only because I delivered Riptide to them on a silver platte
r. But now I have to prove that I’ve got what it takes, or I’m out the door. Every move I make is being watched. They gave you to me as a test. My success is tied to your success.”
“Ariel, nobody told me.” Dylan reached for her arm, but she jerked away.
“Because they expected you to fall in line. Follow the program. When you screw up, though, it reflects badly on me. So if you’re late to the bus, someone notices. It gets tweeted. Or texted. You get buzz, but not the good, sexy kind. Not the ‘oh, look, he’s a hot rocker’ kind. No, it’s the ‘look at that kid who needs to grow up’ kind of buzz. Which, yes, probably isn’t helped by me shouting at you in a hotel corridor. If you look bad…well, I end up looking for another job. Except that I won’t find one, because I’ll be branded a failure.”
“Would you come in already?”
She braced herself for whatever random skankiness might be inside. As he closed the door behind her, Ariel gaped at the room. Or what would’ve passed for a room in a nineteenth-century bordello. The red carpet led to red and gold paisley wallpaper with drapes in the same gaudy pattern, but with the colors reversed. An old-timey red velvet love seat was set between two walls of windows overlooking the dark hulk of the Flatirons, illuminated by the full moon. But what really gave her pause was that they were the only two people in the room.
She whirled to confront him. “Where are your dates? Hiding in the bathroom?”
“The raffle girls, you mean? I ditched them an hour ago. After signing various body parts and taking tons of pictures. I promise, I showed them a good time. Followed your orders to the letter.”
Oh, she knew. Ariel had never been so upset with a client for doing every last little thing she asked. “I saw the photos on Instagram. It’s how I found you. I followed the timeline of both them and tweets like bread crumbs.”
“Pretty genius, huh?” Dylan flashed a cocky smile.
“I don’t follow.”
“You told me to make it look like I was serial-dating my way through this tour. I provided plenty of photographic evidence of just that. Did you catch the artsy, sideways shot of just the bed with my jacket on it?”
Ariel glanced over at the white coverlet with its distinctively old-fashioned fringe. “Yes. But… it still looks untouched.”
“Of course it is.”
So…what...he had sex with them all standing up against the wall? And she was supposed to applaud his strength and stamina? “I don’t understand.”
Dylan spread his arms wide. “This room? I got it for us. Nobody else has been in it. I’m seizing the moment. With you. That’s why I sent the bus on without us. Nobody will know.”
Everything Ariel thought she knew about tonight, everything she felt in this moment, suddenly tilted in the completely opposite direction. The room was a skank-free zone? Dylan wanted to be with her, only her, just as he’d said? She could trust him after all?
“It’s the perfect cover,” he continued. “The world will see me as a bad-boy rock star, the reverse of the perfect image I started with. All they know is that I’m shirtless with three women hanging off of me in a hotel room. Nobody knows that I sent those women on their way. That I told them the next three raffle winners had me for the rest of the night.”
“There were no other winners,” Ariel murmured slowly.
Dylan widened his stance and drew her in between his legs. His arms went around her waist in a loose embrace. One that rested his linked hands right on the curve of her ass. “I’m hoping you’re the winner by the time the night is over. Because I don’t want to be bad. I want to be good—be perfect—for you.”
Her heart threatened to burst. She could trust him. Not only that, but Dylan had gone out of his way to not ignore her sound business advice, but find a work-around. He’d gone to all that trouble for her.
Shimmying closer, Ariel said, “Well…you can still be a little bad for me…”
It was apparently all the green light he needed. Dylan immediately tightened his hold, bringing her entire body flush against his. The quick move took her breath away. It made her aware of the strength in the corded arms against her ribs. How even with Ariel in her usual stilettos, Dylan towered over her in an overwhelmingly good way. And then he raked his teeth over the spot in her neck where her pulse throbbed, and Ariel stopped thinking. Stopped noticing. Just surrendered to feeling.
Feeling the muscled width of his thighs.
Feeling the heat of his touch.
The heat of his obvious desire.
The heat that ignited deep inside her with every rasp of his tongue and suckle of his lips as they moved up her neck to the sensitive lobe of her ear.
“How do you want it?” Dylan whispered, his breath feathering across her skin.
“What do you mean?”
“Ariel, I’ve wanted you for four years. Ever since I saw you in that silver lamé slip dress, hugging Cam to stay warm in the middle of Times Square on New Year’s Eve.”
She surfaced from the haze of lust that already clouded her brain. Four years ago. The only time that Riptide played the ball drop. The dress she remembered because Cam bought it for her just hours before at a funky boutique in the Village to make up for not getting her a Christmas present. Even though he’d been on tour in Asia and Australia over the holiday and she’d never expected him to worry about a gift.
Ariel still had the dress. Treasured it. And couldn’t believe that Dylan remembered it. She would now treasure it all the more for knowing that it had caught the attention of this amazing man. “I wish I remembered seeing you there.”
“No.” A self-deprecating laugh burst out. “Trust me, you don’t. That’s okay. Point being, I’ve got a ton of pent-up want for you ready to explode. We could go fast this first time, just to take the edge off, and then be more leisurely for round two. But I don’t want to be selfish. If you’re not all fired up yet, I can go slow. Just tell me what you want. How you want it.”
He was thoughtful. Considerate. He put her needs above his. Every time Ariel thought she had Dylan pegged, another layer peeled back and revealed something more special about him. Which scared her a little. This would be only a road-trip fling. It would be all about sating the need between them. Burning off the chemistry. Except that the more time she spent with Dylan, the more it started to feel like a real relationship. Not just sex. Which was not an option.
“Now is how I want it.” Ariel pulled out of his grasp. Frantically worked the tight denim at his fly over the buttons and undid the zipper. Then she put her hand straight down to wrap around his hot, pulsing length. “Right now.”
“Holy shit, Ariel.” Grabbing her wrist, Dylan yanked her hand back up and out. “‘Now’ doesn’t mean before I get my pants off. This is for both of us to enjoy.”
“I’ll enjoy having you in me.”
“One second. Give me one damn second, and then you can have all of me.” Dylan spun to the nightstand. Scrabbled at a big pile of bright red foil wrappers. The black band logo stood out from across the room. Riptide, with a guitar as the T.
“My brother had personalized band condoms made? That’s…that’s…ewww.”
“Nope. Jones gave these to me.” He flipped one to show her the saying on the opposite side: Drummers Hit It Harder. “Told me to go to town tonight.”
There had to be a dozen condoms on the pile. “That was optimistic of him.”
“Or realistic. Let’s wait to decide that until morning.”
“I like your thinking.”
“Good. Then go with it.” His hands worked the tie at the side of her waist with ease. Those dexterous fingers made equally quick work of her bra.
Oh, yes, all signs pointed to Dylan definitely knowing his way around a woman. Especially when he ran his thumbs along the crease of her inner thigh to slide her panties and skirt off in one fell swoop. It took only a few sharp movements until he stood before her naked. Gloriously naked. With a long penis that angled up and out, as if reaching for her. Not that she objecte
d.
Ariel ripped the condom open with her teeth. “One.” She laughed, tossing the wrapper over her shoulder.
As he slid the condom on, Dylan said, “How about we keep a separate count for your orgasms? ’Cause I’m betting that number’s going to double the condom total by morning.”
Omigod. “Now who’s being optimistic?” she teased. And hoping beyond hope that it wasn’t just an empty promise. Because it turned out that so far he was very good at keeping his word…
“Nope. That statement is one hundred percent realistic.” Dylan crossed to the funny, curved velvet love seat and sat right in the middle. Then he patted his lap. “C’mere, beautiful.”
Ariel loved that they weren’t just going with the norm for their first time. That Dylan wasn’t one of those by-the-numbers lovers...which was really all she’d ever known. Excitement heated her from the inside out.
It seemed like the position should be awkward. But she slid onto his lap, ankles crossing behind his back, as easily as the right two puzzle pieces fitting together. It was the sexiest, most intimate hug she’d ever had. Ariel threw her arms around his neck and held on tight. “This is pretty awesome.”
Dylan nuzzled her neck. “It sure is. But we had a plan. Fast, remember? Or did you change your mind?”
Seriously? The guy was checking in with her? With his penis pulsing against her abdomen with every breath he took, he still bothered to be sure they were on the same page? Dylan Royce was too good to be true. She had to be dreaming. “If anything, I want you even more.”
“Done.” Hands under her butt, Dylan lifted her up, onto him and then surged upward into her. All at once. All the way.
“Sooooo good.” At least, that’s what Ariel tried to say. She was pretty sure it came out as way more of a moan than actual words.
“Just hang on, babe. I’ve got this.” Between rocking his hips and lifting her, Dylan was in complete control. His biceps were popped out and solid as rock with the effort. God, it was hot to watch. The stamina, the control, the sheer strength that it took made her burn even hotter for him.
The Reverse of Perfection (Bad Decisions Book 2) Page 6