Wild Thing

by Blair Babylon

  A roar erupted in the arena as Xan Valentine ran into the crowd.

  Hands snaked at him, plucking at his shirt and jeans, grabbing.

  He scrambled backward, waving and shouting, “Thank you all for coming!”

  He backed into the barricade and hopped over it, running his hands through his hair. “Merde.”

  She skidded to a stop, wobbling. “I can’t believe you ran out there!”

  Alex grabbed her shoulders and dragged her against his body, asking, “Saw vah?”

  “I beg your pardon?” she asked.

  “Are you all right? Did they hurt you?” he asked.

  His hoarse voice wasn’t only ragged from singing for three hours. He was growling his Rs in his throat.

  She peered at him. His face didn’t have the hard edges of Xan, that sexy, eagle-like intensity of a predator, but he didn’t have the aristocratic thoughtfulness of Alex, either.

  His fingers trailed up her arm, a delicate whisper of a touch. His dark eyes searched hers.

  She said, “I’m fine. Just shaken up.”

  Warmth trickled on Georgie’s arm.

  She glanced down.

  Crimson blood drew a line down her arm from her elbow to his split knuckles.

  She cupped her hand under his, as if containing the blood would help somehow. “Jesus, Alexandre. Your hand.”

  Footsteps pounded down the hall. Adrien and Paul jogged to them.

  Adrien reached for Alexandre’s shoulder, about to tear him off her. He stopped when he saw Georgie was leaning into Alexandre’s chest.

  Georgie glared at them and forgot to be polite. “What the hell were you doing, grabbing Alex like that?”

  “Monsieur! Cohmow saw vah? Monsieur!” Adrien continued in a rapid stream of French.

  “Oui-oui,” Alexandre said, and he said something else.

  Adrien saw his hand and reached for his shoulder, saying something emphatic that ended with allon-zee.

  Georgie looked between them, regretting her foreign language electives.

  Alexandre said something else to them, something very calm, and the icy look in his dark eyes brought to mind the cold of dark space.

  He turned back to Georgie. “If you don’t want to perform, I understand.” He was still growling his Rs in his throat. “But you can’t leave.”

  She shook her head. “If you can just help me get to the plane, I’d appreciate it.”

  “They’ll find you. They’ll take you. Next time, I won’t be there. I won’t even have a way of knowing you’re in danger.” He said it like, dahn-zhure.

  “I’ll be fine. I’ve been fine for years. I’ll just disappear again.”

  “Non. You need to stay with me, where you’ll be safe, where I can protect you.”

  Tryp and Cadell ran up the hallway. Tryp was yelling, “Xan, what the fuck? You’re bleeding!”

  Cadell hollered over him, “That’s your fret hand!”

  Alexandre turned, ignoring them and waving them off with his other hand, which also dripped blood.

  “Your pick hand, too?” Cadell asked him, exasperated.

  Alexandre said something angry at him.

  Cadell stepped back, shock flashing on his face. “You speak French?”

  “Give us a minute,” Alexandre told him, brows lowered and turning away from him.

  “Okay, okay.” Cadell backed off. “Tryp, let’s go.”

  Adrien stepped forward, but Alexandre said something to him, too. He backed up a few steps to stand with Tryp and Cadell, but his eyes didn’t move from where Alexandre and Georgie stood.

  Alexandre turned, maneuvering her up against the wall and bracing his forearms against the plaster beside her for some semblance of privacy, and ducked his head to whisper near her ear.

  Still with that throaty French accent, he said, “I need you to be safe. I can’t stand it if I don’t know that you’re safe.” He blinked, and his face changed, taking on the sharper edges of Xan Valentine. “You know my music like no one else,” and his accent was working-class British, his teeth clenched on the words. “I need time to find another world-class keyboard player and get them up to speed. We’ve got three days off, but we’ve got to play the sheds this summer, here and in Europe. We’ve got gigs all summer long. I need you in the band.”

  Georgie shook her head. “I’m going back to college. I’m going to law school.”

  “And how are you planning to pay for all that?”

  The Devilhouse was far way across the country. “Loans. Grants. Other financial aid. I’ll get through somehow.”

  “I don’t think you understand how desperate I am. If you play through the summer for me,” and his accent had returned to his usual posh, upper-crust British, low and steady with round vowels, “I will pay for your undergraduate degree and barrister school.”

  If he paid for college and law school, she could start paying back the charities with her first paycheck. Hell, she could start paying them back now with her savings.

  And yet, her heart hurt. Being with Xan Valentine and seeing him choose music over her at every show was more than she could bear.

  She shook her head. “That’s too generous, Alex.”

  “I’ll include a stipend. I’ll give you a credit card during those years, all those years, and my accounting staff will pay the bills.” He pressed his cheek to hers. “My personal accountants.”

  Every show, he would choose the band over her, every night. “That’s a recipe for abuse.”

  “I’m desperate. The band’s ultimate success is a chain of events. Eventually, we’ll have some tolerance, but not yet. Any broken link will destroy us. I need a virtuosa on those keyboards, and I need someone I can trust. I will give you anything.”

  “The problem is that you’ve already done too much. You used our relationship—and I kind of thought it was something special, at least it was to me—to get yourself a keyboard player tonight.”

  “I don’t deny it.” His voice cracked.

  “You chose music.”

  “I did.” His weak voice sounded like someone had punched him in the gut.

  “Then you already made your choice.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Georgie was going to be a lawyer, and when she got mad, she fought. “You chose music over me, over us.”

  “Forgive me,” he whispered.

  She couldn’t forgive him.

  And that was the key.

  She set her hands on his strong chest and pushed him back, looking at his face. The cool logic in his dark eyes looked like Alex, calculating her and music.

  If he chose between music and her every night, and if she lost him every night, she would despise herself and him. It would break her into a million pieces.

  Unless he didn’t have to choose.

  “I’ll play with Killer Valentine,” she said.

  “You will?” His dark eyes widened.

  “But just for the summer, until July thirty-first, and I’ll be a band member, and that’s all. I’ll sleep in my own hotel room, alone, like any other band member. I’ll eat with whomever I want and sit on the bus with whomever I want, and it won’t be with you. And then I will leave. And then we’ll be done with each other. Done.”

  He closed his eyes, and they creased at the corners. “Mon Dieu. Non.”

  “I’m not your girlfriend. I’m not your lover. I’m not your friend with benefits. I’m just a keyboard player. I am a fucking musician, and I’m not your anything.”

  He didn’t open his eyes. “If I say no, you’ll leave tonight?”

  “Yes. I’ll walk out right now.”

  He was breathing hard, almost panting, far more so than right after he had beaten the shit out of two men and sprinted down the hall. “If you leave, I won’t know if you’re all right. I won’t know even if you’re still alive.”

  “If they kill me on the road in Greenwich, Connecticut in a mob hit, it’ll probably make the news.” Her mother would probably sell th
e front gate surveillance video to a news organization for the right price.

  He had both hands braced on the wall, his arms straight, like he was holding it from collapsing on them, and he stared at the ground between their feet. “All right.”

  “All right, what?”

  He looked at her, his eyes rimmed with red. “All right. You’re a bandmate. We’ll use the standard contract, which has an air-tight fraternization clause. I’ll find a replacement keyboardist, and we’ll get them ready by July thirty-first. In return, I will pay for your undergrad and law school, for everything.”

  He had chosen music over any possibility of a relationship with her again.

  Her eyes burned. “Okay.”

  “One more thing. I want one more thing.”

  “What’s that?” It came out squeaky because her throat snapped shut.

  “The songs. I need your help with songwriting.”

  They never had found words for the song that Xan called “Scrambled Eggs.”

  She said, “You don’t need my help with your songs. You’re just telling your millions of girlfriends what they want to hear. You don’t mean any of it.”

  “I need you with me to write. We must finish these songs and be ready to make demos before you leave.”

  Fine. It was worth a free ride for undergrad and law school. Hell, maybe she’d apply to Harvard and Yale if he was going to pay for it. “Deal.”

  “And I accept.”

  “Okay, then,” she said. “We’re done.”

  “D’accord.” His voice broke when he said it just like when he had been singing “Alwaysland” for Rade, but when she looked up, his eyes were closed, and he was inhaling hard through his nose.

  Xan pushed off the wall behind her and walked away. He called down the hallway, “Tryp, Cadell!”

  The four men down there, the two band members plus Paul and Adrien, all looked up.

  Xan told them, in his ragged, hoarse voice, “She’s agreed to tour with us through the summer. Let’s have a drink to celebrate.”

  He ducked his head as he was walking with the guys and wrapped his arms around himself. “I’ll meet you in the green room. I need to warm down. I don’t want to bother you while I hum scales. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  “Xan?” Georgie called and pushed off the wall to go after him,

  He hunched as he walked, his arms tight around his chest, already shivering.

  “Xan!” she yelled.

  He held out one arm behind him, his palm and spread fingers signaling that he was pushing her away.

  “Do you need anything?” she asked.

  “No.” He lurched into his dressing room, slamming the door behind him.

  Georgie leaned her head back against the wall, her chest gripped with pain.

  The next month and a half wouldn’t kill her. She would survive, and then she would fly away and set herself up to eke out an existence and pay back all the people her father had swindled.

  Georgie could do it.

  She was the Ice Princess.

  LAY YOUR HANDS ON ME

  Xan Valentine, the rock star that Rolling Stone called “sex incarnate,” stands in the spotlight every night and sings love songs to the women in the audience.

  They swoon. They scream. They believe him.

  They don’t know him like Georgie does.

  They’ve never seen him nearly beat two men to death until someone pulled him away. They’ve never seen the coldness in his dark eyes when he sat across a table, negotiating a contract that broke their hearts.

  He’s never stolen into their bedroom at night, slid into their bed, and made love to them until dawn, and he’s never treated them like it never happened and the bitemarks on their backs and thighs weren’t there.

  If Georgie leaves the protection of the band and Xan Valentine, the Russian mafia will kidnap and kill her. If she stays and plays in his band for just a few more weeks, Xan will pay for her college and law school.

  If her heart can survive him.

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  Lay Your Hands On Me

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  Want to read more about Xan Valentine right now?

  Two years ago….

  Xan Valentine, the frontman for the emerging rock band Killer Valentine, is exhausted from his oppressive touring schedule and trying to maintain a relationship with his girlfriend, Natasha Howard, a virtuoso classical cellist. When a few concerts are cancelled, Xan finds himself with two days of freedom and an engagement ring. Can he convince Natasha that she belongs on the road with him?

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  “Alwaysland”

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  ~~~~~

  The first book in the Rock Stars in Disguise series is

  What A Girl Wants

  Rock Stars in Disguise: Rhiannon

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  ROCK STARS IN DISGUISE:

  RHIANNON

  When Rhiannon is hired as a back-up singer for Killer Valentine, the hottest breakout rock band on the planet, her contract includes an iron-clad no-fraternization clause. However, it doesn’t take her long to figure out that Killer Valentine is falling apart from the stresses of touring and promotion. The band’s manager Jonas Rees, a green-eyed starmaker, is frantically trying to prevent them from self-destructing during their grueling tour and right before their first major-label record deal, but neither Jonas nor Rhiannon can deny the attraction that flares between them. When the band’s problems threaten to derail the tour and Jonas slips and reveals their relationship, the lead singer demands that Rhiannon choose between music and love.

  ~~~~~

  See Blair Babylon’s Romance Books at Kobo

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  OTHER BOOKS BY BLAIR BABYLON

  Someone to Love (Rock Stars in Disguise: Tryp)

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  Billionaires in Disguise: Rae, Complete Omnibus Edition

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  Coming Soon by Blair Babylon:

  The First Godslayer (Urban Fantasy) - Summer, 2015

  Rock Stars in Disguise: Cadell - Fall, 2015

  Billionaires in Disguise: Flicka – - Winter, 2015

  ~~~~~

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for reading Wild Thing (Billionaires in Disguise: Georgie and Rock Stars in Disguise: Xan). Make sure that you don’t miss the next book in the series coming soon!

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  SPECIAL SNEAK PEEK OF SOMEONE TO LOVE (ROCK STARS IN DIS
GUISE: TRYP)

  Tryp Areleous’s arm lay heavy on Elfie’s shoulders, and he stumbled beside her as she half-led, half-carried him down the hotel hallway. His long legs tangled as he walked, and he nearly tripped and fell. His other arm flopped by his side as she read the numbers on the doors, 506, 508, and hoped that 514 was right around the corner. His drunken flopping was going to knock her into one of the too-close walls.

  “How old are you, Elfie?” Tryp slurred. He was bent nearly in half, resting his forehead on her shoulder. His black curls—big, soft curls—brushed her cheek and tickled her nose, making her want to sneeze.

  “I just turned nineteen,” Elfie said. Her broad Texas twang made it sound like she said Ah.

  “You’ve been on the road with us for two years.”

  “I have a good fake I.D.” She adjusted his arm, which was surprisingly burly considering how rarely he exercised at the hotel gyms or did any honest work. He never got up before the radio stations called to interview, and then the shows were soon after. Maybe he was still benefitting from the effects of the Utah shock gym that the lead singer had checked them into before that Rolling Stone cover shoot where the band was all naked to the waist and ripped.