Putting a hand to my nose, I jog my way across the snowy parking lot and climb into my car, slamming the door closed and trying not to gawk at the massive pile of snow that's collected on my windshield in such a short time.
“What the fuck just happened in there,” I mumble as I turn the key in the ignition and … hear an awful sputtering sound instead of the engine turning over.
Oh no.
No. No, no, no. This is not happening, not here, not now … I'm miles from the nearest town on the snowiest day of the year, a blizzard incoming, with nowhere to sit and wait for the tow truck except in my freezing ass car or a public men's room that reeks of stale urine.
A knock on the door startles me and I glance up to find Crispin's face in the ice and snow crusted window, the white powder stuck to the edges making it look as if the man's handsome mug is stuck in the center of one of my father's holiday themed picture frames.
“Want me to take a look?” he asks, dog tags hanging low, wearing nothing but a gray wifebeater and a denim jacket. Like, he has to be freezing his perfectly sculpted little ass off out there and yet, he's smiling at me. No, grinning is more like it.
Before I can even think to respond, Crispin is yanking the door open, prying it loose from the crusted ice and flooding my senses with his smell. I can almost taste it on the back of my tongue, this musky sweetness, like amber and apples. I want to scoop it up with a spoon and eat it over ice cream.
“You know about cars?” I say skeptically, looking at the man in the holey denim pants and boots like he's full of shit. He's a freaking pop star. The fuck does he know about cars?
“A little,” he says, leaning in toward me, so close I swear for a second there that he's about to kiss me on the mouth. Swallowing hard, I meet his brown eyes, their color rich and their depths endless. Like, fucking seriously, just staring at them for a second, I can see all sorts of gradations and different colors in his irises, like God spent a little extra time with a tiny detail brush to get this man just right. “Gotta pop the hood,” he says, grabbing the small switch near my left knee and tugging on it.
He retreats from the car, taking his long sandy brown hair and perfect ass with him, and opens the hood.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Frost Manderach growls, storming over to us and staring at me with his evergreen eyes, crossing his arms over his white t-shirt and looking at me like I'm the Antichrist. “We need to go. Concert in Saint Paul, remember?”
“Eh, that's days away and this little lady's got a dead battery," Crispin says, leaning up from his position inside the hood. “So get the jumper cables from the bus and let's give her our juices.”
Our juices?
My brain—whose switch was totally flicked by Crispin, remember?—starts fantasizing about him riding me from behind, coming inside, and making me scream my favorite Christmas carols.
Okay, wow.
Clearly, staying up all night to wrap Christmas gifts was not a good idea. The lack of sleep is playing tricks on my brain and making me feel even weirder than usual. It's not like I'm a nympho or a sex addict or anything—despite what Frost Manderach might think of those threesome photos.
“Juices?” Frost asks, his dark hair tousled and beautiful against the snowy white backdrop. He hadn't done the whole dye-your-hair-for donations thing, and instead offered to take the most generous donor on a private date—you know, private except for the fact that the whole thing was televised online … “You're seriously deranged, bro.”
“Whatever, dude,” Crispin says, imitating his bandmate's distinctive West Coast accent. “Just get the jumper cables so we can get this sweet slice of cherry pie on her way now.”
“I don't know why the battery would be dead,” I choke out, climbing from the car and waddling over to Crispin in my two hundred layers of winter clothing. Dragging my purse along with me, I dig out some wet wipes and start cleaning the blood from my face.
My nose hurts and I figure it'll probably be bigger and brighter than Rudolph's by the time I get to my parents' place. Won't my sisters and brothers have a field day with this one … They've been teasing me mercilessly since the day I was born, and I have a feeling things aren't about to change. They might have families of their own now, but that doesn't stop them all from acting like pricks.
“Here, let me get that,” Crispin says, leaning over and taking the wipe from my hand before I can protest. He slides it across my lips first thing, taking that sex switch in my brain and amping it up by a hundred degrees. My nipples, already hard from the cold, pebble into peaks of diamond. Add water and I could cut granite. “Poor thing. Donner's a bitch; she owes you a serious apology.”
“No,” I say but the word is breathy and sweet and all I really want to say is yes, yes to whatever this man wants to do with me. God, am I that desperate? I tamp down on my hormones which are raging completely out of control and try to pretend like standing in front of the bassist of my favorite band isn't doing shit to my body. Like, my sex isn't swollen between my legs, and my heart isn't beating a million miles an hour inside my chest … “It was an accident. The whole situation in the bathroom was an accident …”
“Well, regardless, we'll get your car runnin' and get you on your way, okay?”
“Sure,” I say, but I'm mesmerized by Crispin's face, the strong, slightly stubbled line of his jaw, his full lips, the length of his lashes. “Thank you.”
Crispin finishes wiping the blood from my face and steps back, flicking his tongue across his lower lip and shivering briefly. So he is cold, standing out amongst all this snow with little to no clothing on. He does make a pretty sight though, so at least there's that.
“Did you find the cables?” he asks, and I glance over my shoulder to see Frost striding through the snow in black suede snow boots and black jeans. He looks irritated as fuck, and he's definitely not holding anything in his hands.
Uh-oh.
“There are no cables,” he says with a long, tired sigh. Donner says we don't have any.
“Did you ask Magda?” Crispin says, and I wonder who that might be. Some lucky girl who gets to hang out on their bus? A groupie? Oh, god, I bet she's a groupie!
“Magda says no, too, so let's call this girl a tow truck and get the fuck out of here.” Frost glares at me, hot as hell in his big puffy jacket, unzipped and showing off the tight white t-shirt underneath, his nipples as pebbled and hard as my own.
Crispin closes the hood and steps back, pulling his cell from his pocket and wiggling it at me.
“A real man never leaves a lady in distress,” he says and then winks. I find him as charming as I find Frost annoying. “Lemme make a call and we'll get this taken care of.”
Twenty minutes later … I'm climbing up the stairs to their bus.
CHAPTER TWO
I'm sitting on a couch covered in Christmas pillows and sipping a mug of hot cocoa, the awkward silence settling over me like the blizzard's settled over the landscape outside. It's cold and white, the snow endless and unbroken, a virgin landscape of nothing. Every once in a while, I catch a glimpse of a house or two, Christmas lights bright against their quiet, white yards. But for the most part, it's just us and the icy road.
“So,” I say, as all four boys from the band sit around and twiddle their thumbs, “you guys are going to the concert in Saint Paul?”
Every year, the Xcel Energy Center hosts one of the largest Christmas concerts in the country, just as big and well-known as Mariah Carey's yearly All I Want For Christmas tour. At least two dozen artists are participating this year in an over-the-top holiday performance, culminating in Inked Pages' pop/rock/hip-hop hybrid versions of all the most popular Christmas classics—Jingle Bells, O Holy Night, and O Tannenbaum.
Nobody answers right away, so I just nervously blurt out, “And what do you think of Minnesota so far?”
“It's a desolate nightmare with crazy girls hiding in bathroom stalls,” Aspen says, lying on his back on a nearby couch, a cold compress over hi
s eyes, his ankle boots and toilet water jeans traded out for a pair of … green and red striped flannel pajama pants?
Okay then.
He looks hot, even in the ridiculous kitschy Christmas wear … and despite the fact that he clearly hates me.
“You need to calm your ass down,” Crispin says, sitting close enough to me that our thighs touch. To be fair, there aren't a lot of places to sit in this bus. The far back holds a decently sized bathroom with a shower and toilet, and then along one wall, there're bunks stacked two high. The wall opposite them has a long bench seat with storage underneath which bleeds into a galley style kitchen. We're sitting across from the boiling tea kettle, its surface painted with smiling reindeer.
Wow, my dad would freak all the way out over this, I think as I take in the blinking multi-colored lights, timed to twinkle along with Inked Pages' newest Christmas song, Frost My Heart, Baby, the one that played on my phone when my mom called earlier.
I should really call my parents back … I know my dad's probably waiting anxiously by his cell, fretting over what that asshole Aspen Carver said to my mom.
Great.
Now they'll either think I'm a) being kidnapped, b) screwing strangers in bathroom stalls, or c) bringing a man home for the holidays.
Oddly enough, I was bringing home four of them, and I didn't even know it yet.
“Cyan's already explained that what happened in the bathroom was an accident and here you are, acting like a rabid dog on a chain. Try to act like a gentleman every once in a while. Ain't gonna kill ya.”
“No, but it sure as fuck hurts,” Aspen says, gesturing at the cold compress on his face.
“To be fair,” I say, holding my red hot chocolate with green marshmallows close—it's kind of weird looking but at least it tastes good, “you were not in any way shape or form acting like a gentleman. You climbed into my stall, took my phone, and said rude shit to my mom.”
“I didn't say rude shit,” Aspen says, still lying there with the wet compress over his eyes. “Implying that we were doing it was a favor to you.”
“Oh, it was a favor?” I say, cocking a brow and resisting the urge to throw my hot cocoa in his face. Wonder how that'd feel, red hot cocoa on top of the Peppermint Rage spray? I sit there and glare at him while Frost glares at me. I can't decide who I hate more—Frost or Aspen. The former is giving me the closed-off/pompous vibe and the latter the entitled/too big for his britches vibe.
Gross.
I'm going to have a seriously hard time listening to their music after this.
Oh, and also, I want to find out who their publicist is and hire them for my own life because every interview I've ever read from Inked Pages makes each guy out to be an adorable little sweetheart wrapped in hard pecs and too many abs to count.
In reality, only one of them is nice.
“Sorry, but I think scaring the fucking crap out of my parents and making them think I've been kidnapped by some sex trafficking group is a little messed up.” I glare at Aspen as I sip my cocoa and try not to think about the fact that my father's probably called the Minnesota State Patrol to go look for me at the rest stop. Aspen might think his joke is cute and funny, but my dad certainly won't think so.
“Wait, what?” Aspen asks, sitting up and blinking reddened eyes at me. “There's no way that's their first thought?”
“Wouldn't be the first time,” I say as Crispin clicks his tongue and gives his bandmate a look.
“Now you see what you done gone and did, you asshole?”
“I didn't … fuck, I'm sorry,” Aspen says, surprising the crap out of me. He stares at me with his now blue and red eyes, squinting and sniffling against the lingering burn of the spray. “I didn't realize it'd come across like that.”
“You need to learn to think before you speak,” Vale says, his voice warm but spicy, like mulled cider. Just the sound of it's enough to make me shiver. He's sitting on the opposite side of the couch, tucked into the corner between the two bench portions of the sofa, his gold eyes half-lidded. He has this lazy, easy vibe to him, like a well-fed house cat. Vale's quiet and unassuming, but I have a feeling he might have claws between the sheets.
“You talk enough for the both of ya,” Crispin says flinging his hand out toward Vale and Aspen. “Two assholes worth o' jaw flappin'.” He runs his fingers through his wavy brown-blonde hair and casts a look my way that's casual … but curious. As I watch, his gaze trails down the side of my neck, past the shooting star tattoo, and over my bare shoulder.
I find myself swallowing hard, wanting to lick my lips and toss my hair. Crispin is a beautiful, beautiful man. In fact, he reminds me of Chris Hemsworth a lot. Oh god, he's a good-looking son of a bitch …
“So tell us about the threesome?” Frost says, piping up all of a sudden from his place next to Crispin. Hm. Okay, actually I'm changing my mind. I hate Frost more than Aspen for sure. I glance over my shoulder toward the front, where a small window separates us from the front portion of the rig.
The band's manager, driver, and assistant are all siting up there in two rows of bucket seats. The bodyguard—Ana Donner is her name apparently—is currently occupying a special single seat near the door.
I can feel her eyes on me, even though she doesn't speak, sitting there in a green and red jumper with a smiling Christmas tree on the front of it. It's so goddamn ugly that I can't help but stare. Looking at it, it soothes some of the random lust I'm feeling toward Crispin Fox.
“That threesome,” I say, as I glance back at Frost, his dark hair and gorgeous green eyes the perfect complement to his pale skin, an artful amount of stubble on his cheeks and chin, his arms crossed over his wide chest just bulging with glorious muscles. He has tattoos on both arms, too, these sweeping displays of frosty arctic tundras, dotted with wolves, polar bears, seals. It's an interesting concept, nothing like I've ever seen before. According to all the online articles I've read, he grew up in a very remote part of Alaska. Apparently, his mother is a local with Inuit heritage, and his father was an Irishman that died in an accident when he was young. “Is none of your business.”
“You just don't seem like the type to even know what a threesome is,” he continues, and I swear, I almost throw my hot chocolate in his face next. Fucker.
“You mean because you've known me for all of two minutes?” I ask with a raised brow.
“An hour and thirty-eight, actually,” he says, lifting his phone up and smiling wickedly as he shows me the timer he has going. “I'm counting.”
“Because each moment with me is so amazing it feels like a million years?” I hedge, leaning back and crossing my legs at the knee. Yeah, so, I'm a little awkward and gangly with legs that're too long and yet, I'm a shortie, too. But I can sit and flirt with the best of them. I can recline back into the sea of snowflakes and snowmen and Baby Jesus pillows like a sex goddess.
“Because each moment is torture,” Frost says, smiling tightly at me, his green eyes narrowed in a penetrating glare.
“Torturous because your cock is rock-solid and you think I'm a fox?”
“Torturous because looking at you makes my cock retreat so far up inside my body that I have a vagina.”
“Lucky you—women have more nerve endings in their genitals, and it's a scientifically proven fact that our orgasms release like ten times as many feel-good pheromones as a man's.”
“Good thing because it takes you ten times as long to have one.”
“Only when I'm with someone that performs as poorly as you,” I say, setting my hot chocolate aside and trying to ignore the painfully hardened nubs of my nipples, and the swollen heat of my cunt. “Because you're right—when it takes a man thirty seconds to come, it's a little hard to get off in five minutes.”
I stand up. Not really sure why, but I do.
“You can make yourself come in five minutes?" he scoffs, shaking his head and ruffling up his dark hair with his fingers. If he wasn't such a prick, I'd wonder if he wasn't getting flustered.
“You wouldn't find that so hard to believe if you were as good a lover as you say you are,” I reply, straightening my white tank with the gold glittery stars across it. It's part of some hoity-toity designer's Christmas collection. My dad sent it along with a bunch of other overpriced clothing items in a not-so-subtle bid to get me to dress nice for his myriad of holiday parties this week. “Excuse me,” I say, coughing into my hand, watching as Frost's eyes follow me around the small coffee table and down the narrow hall.
“I bet I could make it happen in three,” he says, and I feel a sweep of desire crawl up my spine. Oh my god … His voice is low and even, tinged with a dark edge. I get the impression that Frost Manderach isn't a pretend bad boy. He's a complete and total asshole.
“I'd like to see you try,” I mutter, my skin prickling with goose bumps as I move down to the bathroom, open the door and slip inside.
I don't lock it, wringing my hands and wondering what the fuck I'm doing in here in the first place.
It isn't because I have to piss. Remember—toilet seat, butt cheeks frozen to the porcelain throne?
No, I just booty called Frost Manderach, the guitarist for a pop rock band that my father listens to. Oh god, the holidays always drive me out of my damn mind, but this is … an interesting development, even for me.
That threesome? That was a spur of the moment thing two weeks ago with these guys that worked in the bookstore I ran. They were bisexual lovers in a committed relationship and on occasion … they liked to bring in a girl into the mix.
So … I'd volunteered.
And fucked my employees; I was a terrible boss.
Just as I'm starting to question whether I imagined the strong sexual tension between Frost and me, he's opening the door and slipping inside.
Uh.
Slipping inside the room, that is. Inside the room. Not me. Not yet.
Billionaires, Boarders, and Bastards: A Limited-Time Collection of Reverse Harem Romance Novellas Page 2