Big Bad Alpha: A Billionaire Romance

by Tia Siren

  I buttoned the shirt and clipped in the diamond cufflinks. “So, let me get this right; I have to go listen to twelve shitty bands, then let the talent acquisition guys know which one I think is the least shitty so we can tentatively award them a contract they will probably end up owing us money on.”

  “That’s about it,” Drew said, bobbing his head. He put his phone away so he could hold out the jacket for me to slip on.

  “What time does this fiasco begin?” I asked as I slipped my bare feet into a pair of brown leather Ferragamos.

  “You have to be at the club by nine tonight,” he said.

  “You mean we have to be at the club by nine,” I said, checking my reflection in the wall of full-length mirrors at the back of the closet.

  “What? No! I have plans,” Drew whined.

  “Yes, you have plans to come with me,” I said. “I’m not going to sit there by myself and be tortured. It’s much more fun to share the torture with you.”

  “Fine,” Drew said with a pout. “But you’re buying all my drinks.”

  “I’ll buy your drinks,” I said. “But if you hook up with some girly-man, don’t put his drinks on my tab.”

  I chose a gold Rolex Mariner from my collection and strapped it on my wrist. I slipped on a couple of gold pinkie rings for good measure and then clicked off the closet light.

  “Fair enough,” Drew said. He gave me the once-over, brushed lint off my lapel, and then turned to go. “I’ll get the car brought around. See you downstairs.”

  CHAPTER THREE: Olivia

  “You nervous, Liv?” the bartender asked as he set four bottles of Miller Lite and four tequila shots on my tray. I handed him the customer’s credit card and tried to act much cooler than I felt.

  “Nah. I’ve played a hundred gigs,” I said, giving him a carefree shrug to prove how not nervous I was. It looked more like a twitch than a shrug. “This is just another one.”

  He snorted at me. “Only this one could land you a record deal with BEG.” He ran the card and handed it back with the receipt for the customer to sign. He nodded at the packed house behind me. “Cain Bohannon himself is supposed to be here at nine. Rusty has a VIP table for him on the upper deck. That’s Sherry’s section. You should see if she’ll let you work the table for her.”

  I hefted the heavy tray onto one hand so I could use the other hand to part the crowd. That was one of the few perks of being a cocktail waitress: My arms were toned and muscled. I had guns like a dude. Which, I’d been told more than once, looked sexy as hell when I was onstage, hammering away at my guitar.

  “Why would I want to work Sherry’s table?” I asked. “My section is full.”

  “So you can schmooze Bohannon ahead of time,” he said in a tone that told me he thought I was an idiot for not thinking of it myself. “Just offer to give Sherry the tips and she’ll do it for you.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  “Don’t think too long,” he said, nodding at the crowd that was already getting restless. “You’re gonna need all the help you can get with this crowd.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I said, flipping him the bird over my shoulder as I turned away. I paused for a second to survey the packed and rowdy crowd. They were young, hard-partying, opinionated assholes. If they liked your music, they let you know by screaming and applauding. If they didn’t like your music, they let you know by booing the shit out of you and throwing beer bottles at your head until you ran offstage in fear for your life.

  I knew every band in the lineup. There were a few rock cover bands I wasn’t too worried about (BEG wasn’t going to give a contract to a freakin’ cover band). Then there were a few bands that bordered on heavy metal, a few that leaned toward old-style grunge, and a few, like the Flakes, that gave new meaning to the term “punk rock.”

  Mona called it “spoiled-rotten white girl punk” because that was what most of our followers were. We were as loud and edgy as the guys, but we were the only all-girl band on the bill. I had no idea how we’d fare with this crowd. Maybe doing a little schmoozing ahead of time wasn’t such a bad idea.

  As I walked from the bar my eyes started scanning the room for Sherry, the waitress assigned to work the upper level. If she would let me work Cain Bohannon’s table, I’d give her all of my tips for the night. Fuck pride and fair play. I would do anything and everything it took to get my name on a BEG contract.

  * * *

  “Okay, kids, this is how this is going to work,” Rusty, the club owner, said as one member of each band stood circling him backstage. We were all nervous as hell—well, those of us who weren’t high or drunk already—but we were all doing our best to act cool.

  Rusty held a paper bag above his head. “There are twelve numbers in the bag,” he said. “Each band gets to pull out one number. The number you get is your number in the lineup for the night. Period. I don’t want to hear any whining or bitching and moaning about high numbers. And no exchanging or selling your numbers. Do that and you’re out. Am I clear?”

  Rusty was a fifty-something hippie with a gray braid that ran halfway down his back and a mountain-man beard that hung halfway down his chest. He always wore a red Willie Nelson bandana tied around his head. He dressed like he was on his way to Woodstock and barked orders like a drill sergeant.

  Rusty held out the bag to me. “Ladies first, Liv,” he said, shaking the bag at me. He gave me a wink. “Good luck.”

  I held my breath as I thrust my hand into the bag. I pulled out a folded slip of paper and handed it to Rusty. He opened the paper. I saw him wince a little when he read the number.

  “The Flakes are number eleven,” he said, holding up the paper for all to see. He held out the paper to me and sighed. “Sorry, Liv. No do-overs.”

  I didn’t understand the meaning of his words, but everyone else did, because they all moaned—or chuckled—at my misfortune. I’d never been in a battle of bands before. I took the paper and gave Rusty a confused look. “Is number eleven bad?”

  “Means you’re up next to last, sweet cheeks,” a guy with hair cut into a pink mohawk said.

  “Worst fuckin’ spot of the night,” a black guy with an afro the size of a medicine ball added. “I mean, other than twelve.”

  “Why? I don’t understand?” I realized I was holding out the slip of paper as if it were covered in anthrax. I willed the nervous tears from my eyes and looked at Rusty. “Rusty, what are they talking about?”

  He sighed and put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t let them get to you, Liv. They’re all just jealous because they know you’re gonna kick their dicks in the dirt.”

  “No, we’re not,” mohawk dude said, spit shooting from his lips. He tugged the note from my hand and held it out so I could see the number Rusty had scrawled on the paper. “You’re number fucking eleven. The higher your number, the lower your chances of winning.”

  I grabbed the paper from his hand and gave him a frown. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “It’s common sense, big tits,” he said, glancing at my breasts beneath the tight Rusty Nail T-shirt. “The fuckers who judge these things don’t even wanna be here. They’re here on the off chance that they might discover another Prince or Springsteen. So, they start drinking right away. They pay attention to the first few acts, but then, when the drinks start to kick in and the music all starts to sound the fucking same, they tune out. Any number above four or five is death. You might as well set fire to the fucking stage, because that’s what it’ll take to get their fucking attention.”

  “That’s enough,” Rusty snapped, giving the guy a shove to put him in his place. “Let’s get this done so we can start the show.”

  He shook the bag and held it out to Mohawk.

  “Okay, big mouth, let’s see what you get.”

  Mohawk stuck his skinny fingers into the bag and pulled out a folded slip of paper and handed it to Rusty.

  Rusty unfolded the paper, looked at the number, and smiled.

&n
bsp; “Proof that God doesn’t like assholes,” Rusty said, holding out the paper to Mohawk. “You’re number twelve.”

  CHAPTER FOUR: Cain

  I was sitting in the back of the limo checking my email when the reporter from Rolling Stone who had interviewed me the day before called Drew’s cell with a follow-up question. It was nearly nine and we were headed downtown to the Rusty Nail for the battle of the bands, or as Drew had dubbed it: the battle of the bads.

  I listened as Drew talked to the reporter. “No, I’m afraid Mr. Bohannon is indisposed at the moment,” he said, adding in a long sigh for effect. “If you’d like to give me the question, I’ll… Ah, okay… I’ll pass that question along. No, I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of a Cain Bohannon fuck list… That’s right… Okay, thanks for calling.”

  “Let me guess what that call was about,” I said, simultaneously shaking my head and rolling my eyes.

  “Your fucking fuck list, of course,” he said, picking up his glass of champagne from the minibar set into the back of the driver’s seat. He lifted the glass to his lips and sighed into it.

  “Honestly, I wish I’d never leaked that little goodie to that gorgeous reporter from TMZ. I swear, I was just trying to get into his pants. I had no idea he’d make such a big deal of it online. That’s a blow job that’s come back to haunt me.”

  “One of many, I would suppose,” I huffed. “And I’m the one who’s constantly haunted by your inability to keep your mouth shut.”

  “Oh. My. God. How many times must I apologize?” he asked dramatically.

  I held up my phone, where the list was stored, and wiggled it at him. “Do you know that every interview I do, the first question they ask is, ‘Cain, do you really have a fuck list?’ From Barbara Walters to Ryan Seacrest to Charlie Rose. It’s the first fucking question they ask.”

  “I know,” he said, exhaling the words.

  “Well, did you know that Donald Trump asked me about the list the last time we met? I’m writing the guy a hundred-thousand-dollar campaign contribution check and all he wants to know is, do I really have a fuck list.”

  “Did you show it to him?” Drew asked, making his “no way” face.

  “Of course I didn’t show it to him,” I said with a dismissive wave.

  Drew gave me a devilish grin with the glass at his lips. “He would shit if he knew his wife and daughter were on the list.”

  “Probably so.” I smiled and tucked my phone inside my jacket. “Then again, knowing Donald as I do, he’d probably be even more pissed off if they weren’t.

  Some days I wished I’d never started the fuck list, because I got so tired of being asked about its existence. The fuck list had started innocently enough; I mean, as innocently as a list of women I wanted to fuck could start.

  I was a young record exec busting my ass to make a name for myself in the cutthroat music world. I wanted to start my own label, and was willing to fight, fuck, and claw my way to the top.

  It helped that I was six foot two, muscular, and blessed with good looks and a long cock. Word got around pretty quickly among the female higher-ups in the business that I was willing to fuck for favors, and the bitches just started lining up.

  One night, as I had a Riza Records VP bent over her desk, banging her from behind, she told me I had been on her fuck list for months, ahead of Justin Bieber but behind John Mayer, for Pete’s sake. I didn’t even know what a fuck list was then. When she explained that her fuck list was the list of young guys in the business she wanted to fuck, I started a list of my own.

  Only my list had far more stringent rules.

  To get on my fuck list, the girl had to already be famous to some degree so she wasn’t just fucking me to get ahead.

  Or just fucking me because I was more famous than she was.

  Or because she was a gold digger looking for handouts.

  And she had to be a fucking fifteen on a scale of one to ten.

  I didn’t give a shit how famous a bitch was if she wasn’t smoking hot.

  I wasn’t gonna shove my cock into anything less than prime USDA, TMZ-level-famous, smoking-hot pussy.

  So, the Cain Bohannon fuck list was born.

  It started with the top ten girls I wanted to fuck most.

  Then quickly grew to twenty, thirty, forty…

  The list that was on my phone now held one hundred names.

  The list evolved as conquests were made or new women hit my radar, which happened pretty often these days.

  Famous bitches were always asking if they were on the fuck list. “If you are on the list, can I fuck you right now?” had become my standard answer. More often than not, we’d end up fucking like little rabbits in the back of a limo or in the bathroom at a red-carpet event.

  If I said sorry, they’re not on the list, they’d act all pouty and ask what they had to do to get on the list.

  It was like the old adage: If you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it. Only it’s: If you have to ask how to get on the list, you’re probably never going to be on it.

  “What about hot girls who are not famous enough to be on your list?” a reporter once asked, even though I’d refused to confirm the existence of the list. He was asking the question based on rumors that I was not going to confirm or deny.

  I didn’t answer the question.

  If I had, I would have told him that I only fucked smoking hot, famous bitches. I might take a blow job or a hand job from a hot chick like Faleen, who was one of the most beautiful women on the planet but sadly un-famous.

  Sometimes I thought about making her famous just so I could fuck her. Could she be famous for giving me morning wake-up head? I wondered. But there were no loopholes when it came to the fuck list. Cain Bohannon’s famous cock only went into equally famous pussy.

  End of story. Period.

  “We’re here,” Drew announced as the limo pulled up to the curb in front of the Rusty Nail. The sidewalk all up and down the block was packed with people waiting to get inside. They’d probably have a long wait, because I was sure the club had been packed full for hours. That was one thing about these battles of the bads—I mean, bands: They usually brought the millennials out in droves. And the millennials, as annoying as they could be, were my bread and butter.

  Drew looked at me and flexed his perfectly manicured eyebrows. “Ready to be entertained?”

  “Remind me to fire everyone in talent acquisition on Monday,” I said with a sigh. I waited for the driver to open the door. Then I took a deep breath and forced myself out of the car.

  CHAPTER FIVE: Olivia

  “There he is,” Mona said as we stood at the bar waiting for the bartender to fill our customers’ drink orders. Her usually apathetic tone suddenly had a panicky ring to it.

  I turned to find her pointing at a proverbial tall, dark, and handsome man who was following Rusty to the VIP table on the upper level. A tall blond man with an effeminate air followed close behind. I had seen Cain Bohannon’s pictures online, but they did not do the real thing justice.

  He looked like a Greek god striding through the crowd, which parted to let him pass. He was wearing a dark designer suit that fit him like a glove and crisp white shirt that contrasted with his dark skin and jet black hair. He exuded poise and confidence and sex appeal. He walked with his shoulders back and his chin up, like he was king of the world. I almost expected him to extend his hands to the crowd so they could kiss his rings as he passed them by.

  “You’re up,” Sherry said, bumping me with her elbow. Sherry had agreed to let me take BEG’s table in exchange for whatever tips they left. She reached for the tray of drinks the bartender had ready for my regular table. “I’ll take this order to your table. You get up there and see what he’d like.” She grinned at Mona and then back at me. “Stick out those big boobs and shake that bubble butt, honey. I hear he likes that.”

  “Hey, speaking of big boobs,” Mona said, reaching behind the bar to pull out a pair of scissors. �
�Hold still.” Before I even knew what she was doing, she tugged the collar of my T-shirt away from my neck and used the scissors to cut a slit down the center of the shirt, from the collar to just below my breasts, exposing the front of the black lacy bra I’d packed my round cleavage into.

  “What the fuck, Mona?” I asked in horror.

  “Just hold still,” she said, doing two more cuts. I was horrified as I felt the cold metal of the flat side of the scissors slide over my skin.

  She took a step back to survey her handiwork. I looked down to see that she had cut a large V from the front of my T-shirt so my cleavage and a good portion of my breasts would show.

  She then tucked up the tail of the shirt and knotted it under my breasts so the T-shirt now looked like a homemade halter top. Thank god my tummy was toned (more from not eating than exercising), or else I would have been totally embarrassed.

  I was already wearing a black leather miniskirt and thigh-high boots. When I caught her eyeing the miniskirt with the scissors still in hand, I took a step back.

  “That’s enough, Vera Wang,” I said, holding out my hands.

  “Much better,” Mona said with a satisfied sigh.

  “Totally,” Sherry agreed, taking my tray of drinks and handing me an empty one. “Now get up there and take his order.”

  * * *

  Cain Bohannon was sitting at the VIP table with the blond guy who had followed him in and three other men who I assumed were also from BEG. I kept an eye on them as I made it up the steps to the upper level. I paused for a moment, taking a deep breath to calm my nerves, and then strode over to the table with as much cleavage and confidence as I could muster.

  “Good evening,” I said formally, standing with the big round tray clutched to my breasts. I glanced down and remembered that I was supposed to be sexy. Or was it slutty? I couldn’t remember. Anyway, I lowered the tray so my big boobs would show and asked what I could bring them to drink.

  As the others ordered, Cain Bohannon sat with his head down, focusing on his cell phone. He didn’t look up until Blondie bumped him with his elbow and asked what he wanted to drink.