“Shit, Devi,” I said in a small, parched voice. “He doesn’t even know who I am.”
“Should he?”
“Um, yeah? I thought he picked me. But he didn’t even know I was hired.”
“So? You were hired. I know you feel all weird about it because you’ve never done this before, but who the fuck cares? Trust me, babe. This is the kind of thing some girls, beautiful girls, bust their asses trying to get their whole careers and never do. This is Jesse Fucking Mayes.”
“Yeah. I’m aware.”
Both Devi and Google had filled me in on the extent of the man’s fame, informing me that Jesse Fucking Mayes was nothing less than a rock god, a sex god, and a total heartbreaker.
Not to mention that his current girlfriend was none other than Elle, the super hot female bass player of Dirty.
Even if I could muster the nerve to walk out there in this lingerie, I, Katie Bloom, was not built for that kind of pressure.
“You know we rep an actress who just shot a love scene with Leonardo?” Devi went on. “And an actual Victoria’s Secret model. They passed on all of them. They want you.”
“Uh-huh.” That part, to be honest, still didn’t compute. But it did make me feel more nauseous. “Why the hell did I agree to do this? You know I hate being in the spotlight.” I shut my eyes, fighting back the spins.
Devi fell silent. She knew, alright.
She’d been there, standing by my side at the altar while the minister looked on with grave sympathy and the minutes ticked by. While everyone stood looking at me in my white dress; everyone but the one person who was supposed to be there.
The one who’d just walked out.
I wanted to disappear then, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t escape that horrible moment that just stretched on and on.
I was still reliving it, almost two years later.
“And that’s exactly why you need to do this,” my best friend said.
“Why, exactly?”
“You know why. Look, Katie, I’ve been there with you. Through all of it. I’ve watched you mope around for the last two years of your life—”
“One year and ten months. Let’s not exaggerate.”
Someone knocked on the bathroom door. “Katie?”
It was Maggie, here to take me to shoot my scene. I pictured Jesse Mayes out there, waiting… Shit, would he be half-naked too?
“Just a minute!” I called as sweetly as I could, even as the bile rose up again. I tried to choke it down, but it was winning.
“Okay,” Devi pressed. “I’ve watched my best friend in the entire world feel bad about herself for a year and ten months, all over some asshole who didn’t deserve her anyway—”
“Devi—”
“Wait. He never deserved you in the first place, and we both know it. I know you know it, deep down, that he was a total dick and the way he hurt you was despicable.”
I threw up. Quietly.
Just a bit, in Jesse Mayes’ tattooed manager’s beautiful marble sink.
“But the fact that you’re still letting it run your life,” Devi said, oblivious to my vomiting, “…Katie, that’s on you.”
This.
This was exactly why Devi was, and would always be, my best friend.
She loved me when I needed love. And she tough loved me when I needed a kick in the ass. Unfailingly.
“You’re right,” I croaked. I swished some water around my mouth and spat in the sink, rinsing the vomit down the drain.
“You need to grab this moment by the balls. Take your fucking life back, babe.”
Devi was always trying to get me to grab something by the balls. Usually life. Sometimes a man.
I’d never been more grateful for it.
“Okay,” I said.
She was right, and I knew it.
I couldn’t let what happened to me almost two years ago on that shitty day, the day that was supposed to be the best day of my life but turned out to be the worst, ruin my life.
And if I didn’t take drastic action, that was exactly what was going to happen.
“I’m doing this.”
I dabbed at my mouth with a tissue, making sure there was no trace of vomit on my made-up face as I studied myself in the mirror.
“Fucking right.”
“And by the way,” I told her, “I love you.”
I hung up and rinsed my mouth with some of the mouthwash that had been left, thanks to some small miracle, on the little tray of guest toiletries.
Then I took a deep breath, opened the door, and went to make out with a rock star.
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Dirty Like Us (Dirty #0.5)
What happens in Vegas… better stay in Vegas.
Maggie Omura has never been a gambling woman. As assistant manager of Dirty, the hottest rock band on the planet, she brings order to the lives of four crazy-ass rock stars.
But when the band lands in Vegas, a streak of bad luck lands Maggie in a bind—and in the penthouse suite, with the last man she’d ever want for a roommate.
Zane Traynor, lead singer of Dirty. Rock god. Sex god.
Total nightmare for women.
And the only man who’d make Maggie a proposal so insane it just might work.
A night of chance.
An irresistible gamble…
It’s time for Zane and Maggie to go all in.
DIRTY LIKE US
PROLOGUE
Maggie
The red carpet was worn beneath our feet. The altar was a single step, also carpeted in red, on which we stood, along with the officiant.
The officiant wore a black leather motorcycle jacket, a faded Steppenwolf T-shirt, ratty jeans and biker boots. A black leather bible decorated with silver studs lay open on his hands.
I wore a pink dress.
The room was small, and there were no windows. The ceiling was arched and the walls were black, strewn with neon beer signs and replica platinum albums.
There was a row of eight gunmetal chairs, four to the right of the aisle and four to the left, two of which were occupied. A woman I didn’t know stood at the back of the room with a polite smile on her face. A man with a gun stood guard at the door.
Outside, traffic rumbled by, occasionally vibrating the kitschy junk on the walls.
In the next room, an awful song played faintly on repeat. A cheesy, sleazy rock song about a schoolgirl.
Near me, someone was talking.
But all I could hear was that old Steppenwolf song, “Magic Carpet Ride,” playing in my head. I heard it the way Zane once sang it, as we sat around a campfire drinking Jäger from a bottle someone passed around, his voice so raw and smoky and beautiful it gave me goosebumps. I heard it the way my mom used to play it, loud, on her wonky old turntable, as she danced in the kitchen in one of her flowy blouses and a pair of cut-offs.
I could see her now, dancing in her bare feet, and looking so, so young.
And I wished she was here.
I was holding hands with him, and my knees were quivering. I could feel his heartbeat in his fingers wrapped tight around mine. His thumb smoothed back and forth across my knuckles, over the new ring on my finger, as I breathed, shallow and slow.
He was looking at me. I knew he was. I could feel the heat of his gaze moving over my face.
“Maggie.”
I took a breath and felt his heartbeat, once… twice… Then I looked up into that gorgeous face. His arctic blue eyes held mine. He squeezed my hands slightly.
Zane.
Me.
Holding hands at the altar.
Holy shit.
“That’s your cue, babe,” Zane said, and I realized the man in the leather jacket had been the one speaking. To me. Everyone was looking at me and waiting.
/> And I just stared at Zane.
The corners of his eyes twitched. He smiled slightly and I couldn’t stop myself. I never could, when it came to him.
I smiled back.
“Yeah,” I said, in response to the man’s question, but the word cracked and came out a whisper. I cleared my throat and found my voice. “I do.”
CHAPTER ONE
Maggie
Two hours earlier…
I stood in the middle of the massive, glittering bathroom, trying not to imagine how much this hotel suite would’ve cost if we had to pay for it. And trying not to think about why we didn’t.
I’d told Coop to go ahead and help himself to the complimentary champagne, because no way I was drinking it. Instead I grabbed one of the little glasses by the sink and fixed myself a vodka cran, pouring from the bottle of Stoli I’d paid for myself. Then I lay my travel case open on the floor and took a breath.
The last hour of my life had been a total gong show, the conversation with my father pretty much the furthest thing from an aphrodisiac. I just needed a few minutes to get my head together and switch gears.
I took a swig of my drink and assessed myself in the mirrored wall. I was still wearing the jeans and midriff-baring jacket I’d worn to dinner with the crew, but I’d already decided the occasion called for something a lot sexier.
I dug through my stuff, unearthing the new lingerie and snapping off the tags. Then I went over my mental checklist as I got undressed.
The band was all settled into the hotel, finished with the promotional interviews I’d set up for them earlier in the day, and they were officially set loose for the night. In Las Vegas. The last I’d seen of each of them, they were off in various directions in search of sex (Zane), booze (Dylan), and/or solitude (Jesse and Elle). Tomorrow night was the final show of the tour and everyone was jacked up on a hazardous cocktail of anticipation, adrenaline and hormones. Not the kind of hazard I could do much about, other than stay out of the way and be on hand for cleanup later. My boss, Brody, and I were band management, which meant we booked gigs, made sure everyone got paid, and generally kept the money flowing in. But it also meant we took it upon ourselves to make sure everyone stayed relatively sane, so the reality was, if anything fell apart between now and tomorrow’s show, my phone was gonna blow up like the Freemont Street light show, and not like I could ignore it.
Story of my life, but at least everything was as it should be on that front.
Security, crew, and gear were all accounted for and everything was set for Dirty, hottest rock band on the planet and my kickass employers—fuck, yeah—to rock the hell out of the new arena on the Vegas Strip. And while I was excited about tomorrow’s show in that bittersweet way that marked the end of each tour, I was really looking forward to a momentary diversion from the madness.
A diversion of the sexual variety. Because the Penny Pushers were also in town for the show, and that meant I was hooking up.
I slipped into the skimpy lace babydoll and matching thong, both a vibrant lime-green that looked amazing against my complexion. Thanks to my mom, I had flawless light-brown skin, which I’d always considered my best feature. Admittedly, because it made me look less like my dad.
Usually when people found out who he was, they assumed I’d want to be associated with him. He was rich and famous, after all.
But those were the people who’d never met him.
I took a couple more swigs of my drink, hiked up my cleavage with the stiff demi cups of the babydoll, and touched up my makeup, letting the liquor and the bizarre, hyper-reality of this moment soak in.
I, Maggie Omura, was about to fuck a rock star.
What would you think of that one, Mom?
She’d laugh, I figured. Hard. Since this went completely against The Rule.
I’d made up The Rule myself when I first came to work for Dirty six years ago. Actually, I’d made up many rules. What the hell did I know? I was a nerdy, idealistic nineteen-year-old with stars in my eyes. But as I’d discovered, in the total shit storm of rock ’n’ roll chaos that soon became my life, there was only one rule that warranted keeping.
No Screwing The Talent.
When I first met Dirty, their debut album had just incinerated the charts and they were coming off their first world tour. I was naive and inexperienced, but I had a head for business and all I’d ever wanted to do was work in the music industry. I managed to get an incredibly tenuous foot in the door merely because of a lucky-horseshoe-up-the-ass situation—I happened to have a class with Dirty guitarist Jesse Mayes’s sister in college, and she and I had become friends. I also had the hugest, stupidest puppy-love crush on Zane Traynor, blond bad boy and lunatic lead singer… and when he set his ice-blue eyes on me, I knew the only way I wouldn’t fuck everything up was by eating, sleeping and breathing The Rule.
Over the years, The Rule had kept me out of trouble. A lot of trouble. However. Sometimes rules became outdated. Needed a little revising. Or strategic bending.
And since I wasn’t about to screw a member of the band I worked for, it didn’t totally count, right?
“Maggie?” Coop tapped on the frosted-glass bathroom door, amusement and a touch of concern in his voice. “You ever coming out?” He also sounded horny, his voice low and a little huskier than usual.
Perfect.
I stood back to check my work and felt ridiculously sexy for about five seconds, knowing he was gonna love it… until it really dawned on me that I’d bought the lingerie for that reason. Because Andy Cooper had mentioned, months ago, that I looked hot in this color. Which meant… yeah. I was putting way too much effort into this.
Kinda like I did with every-fucking-thing.
But this was weird, right? Crossing a line?
Coop was just a hookup, and no sane woman bought hot, expensive lingerie just for some guy she was hooking up with unless she was looking to turn that hookup sex into hang-out-afterward-and-do-it-again sex, followed by wake-up-together-the-next-morning-and-do-it-yet-again sex.
And I definitely wasn’t looking for that.
Was I?
I smoothed my long, dark hair and chewed my lip at my reflection. Hot. But yeah, weird.
“Maggie?” Coop knocked again.
I pounded back the rest of my drink. “Coming.”
Lingerie or no? I could take it off, walk out there naked.
Veto.
Put the jeans back on?
I made an executive decision to go with the lingerie, took a deep breath, and opened the door. Despite the fact that I didn’t feel quite as special about Coop as the lingerie implied, my night had just gone to hell and I really needed this distraction.
I just hoped he had time to help me blow off all this steam; it could take a while.
Coop stood back, his eyebrows raising as he drank me in. He wore a vintage Sex Pistols T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, showing off his incredibly decent arms, with gray jeans and a studded belt. His blond hair was tousled to shit, like it always was, and an impish smile broke out on his face. “Whoa. Maggie… shit.” He scrubbed his hand through his hair. “I feel kinda underdressed.”
“Then let’s get you undressed,” I said, letting my inner slut take over as I grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him over to the giant bed. I’d claimed the smaller of the two bedrooms in the penthouse suite, yet the bed was king size, which made me wonder what was in the master bedroom. Harem size?
Fitting, given who’d be sleeping in it.
Don’t even go there.
I yanked Coop against me and we came together in a hungry, slightly awkward kiss. He pushed me back onto the bed, his warm weight settling over me. Despite the offer of free champagne, he tasted vaguely like beer, which reminded me of finding him in the hotel bar half an hour ago… which reminded me of running into Zane about half an hour before that—
Do. NOT. Go. There.
Coop’s body was lean and hard as he ground himself against me, his hips dragging over mine, t
he hard ridge of the unmistakable erection in his jeans setting off sparks of pleasure between my legs, and I gasped.
Oh, hell yes… this was exactly what I needed.
He kissed his way down my neck and I groaned, arching my back, getting into it as he sucked on my throat—
Holy. Shit. I stiffened as joyful screaming and laughter erupted in the room next door—the main room of the penthouse suite.
The voices of multiple women.
Coop didn’t seem to notice. Or care. He just ground his hard dick against me and kissed me again. I shut my eyes as his weight pressed me down, his hips moving faster against me, his body heating up. He grabbed my breast, squeezing hard, and sank his tongue deep in my mouth.
Then I heard it. I heard him. My “roommate” for the night. His smoky voice so close outside the bedroom door I cringed.
My eyes flew open. I ripped away, stopping Coop with a hand on his chest, so suddenly I startled us both.
He looked down at my hand as I panted beneath him. “You okay?” he asked, disoriented. “Did I hurt you?”
“No,” I managed to choke out, clearing my throat.
Fuck. Me.
My head was spinning, and I could still hear his voice in the other room. I couldn’t tell what he was saying, but I knew that cocky timber. I knew the sound of Zane Traynor working his magic on a bunch of women.
“Just… don’t…” I gasped out, shaking my head, “… don’t stop.” Then I grabbed Coop by his neck and smashed my mouth to his as a ridiculous wave of guilt crashed through me.
I didn’t feel guilty about breaking The Rule. I’d been breaking it with Coop on a casual but semi-regular basis for a while now.
I felt guilty I wasn’t breaking it with him.
Yeah. That was the messed-up truth of it. Because I’d always secretly fantasized that if I was ever going to break The Rule I’d do it balls to the wall, in a total blaze of glory, me and the ice-blue-eyed reigning god of rock—and cock—swinging from chandeliers and breaking furniture.
Dirty Like Seth: A Dirty Rockstar Romance (Dirty, Book 3) Page 34