Every night, she stands offstage, watching rock star Xan Valentine and his band, Killer Valentine, set fire to the crowd with music until they would burn down the city for him. His music wraps her until her fingers dance, desperately wanting the piano, but her terrified legs could never walk onto a stage.
Most nights, when Xan Valentine strides off the stage, his dark eyes shift, blurring, and he becomes Alexandre de Valentinois again.
Sometimes, Xan won’t let go.
Some of the other band members, Rade and Grayson, are caught in a death spiral of booze, drugs, and groupies. The drummer, Tryp, is too infatuated with his new wife to do more than show up to play.
Xan is the only one who can compel them onto the stage. He’s holding Killer Valentine together with the force of his will.
This can’t go on.
Something has to break.
Wild Thing
(Billionaires in Disguise: Georgie / Rock Stars in Disguise: Xan)
Georgie rolled on the bed in the dark, touching Xan’s chest. “It’s freaky, you know, that you can write these beautiful love songs and not believe in love at all.”
“They’re just songs.”
“Who do you sing them to?”
“All the women out there.” He shifted on the bed, crossing his long legs at his ankles.
“But you’re not in love with them.”
He smirked and reached for the package of cigarettes on the nightstand again, but he didn’t pick it up. “No, but they’re in love with me. I say all the right things, and I’ll say them every time they want to hear them. All they have to do is touch their iPod, and I’ll whisper that I’ll love them forever or belt out that I’m longing for them. I never leave my socks under the coffee table or watch sports while they’re doing the housework. I never complain about their figures or that they’re always busy. They can love me like they love God: from afar, with all their hearts, and with no chance of disillusionment. I’m their perfect boyfriend.”
She laid her chin on her crossed arms. “You’re not my perfect boyfriend.”
“No, I’m your demon lover.” He curled a long strand of her hair around his hand. “I summon you to my bed, seduce you in depraved and debauched ways, and abandon you in the morning.”
Georgie grinned. “I take it back. You are my perfect boyfriend.”
What happens when a Rock Star in Disguise meets a Billionaire in hiding?
Georgie doesn’t know who she is dating.
At a high society wedding, Georgie Johnson is introduced to Alexandre de Valentinois, a hereditary duke of nothing who flies around the world on his private planes and describes himself as “one of those despicable, idle rich men.” Yet, when pressed, he sings at the wedding in a gorgeous, clear tenor that tugs at Georgie’s soul, and miraculously, he calms her paralyzing stage fright so she can accompany him on the piano, even though she thought she had left her classical music career behind when she went into hiding.
But Alexandre has a dark side. His name is Xan Valentine, and he’s the rock star front man for Killer Valentine. He’s famous, but his paparazzi-dogged lifestyle might expose Georgie and get her killed
In the elevator, Georgie stood against the back wall while Alex slid a keycard into a slot above the buttons, backed away from her, and stared at the flickering floor display the whole time, which just about drove her insane until she saw the black dome embedded in the ceiling.
Okay, Georgie didn’t want to end up immortalized as a GIF entitled #GetARoom, either. She twirled her purse dangling from her wrist to pass the long, drawn-out, agonizing seconds while the elevator ascended, the increased velocity dragging at her feet.
Far up in the hotel, the elevator doors parted, and Alex seized her hand again and tugged her out of the elevator. Three doors led off the short hallway, and Georgie realized they were up in the suites.
Alex said, “It’s small. The hotel was sold out. Flicka and her wedding party booked the better suites months ago, so I was only able to get a deluxe.”
Georgie’s heart jumped in her chest, and her hands felt empty because she wasn’t touching him. “Just get us in there.”
His grin bore a touch of desperation as he flung open the door and pulled her inside after him.
Georgie caught a glimpse of a blue and white living room and a dining room with a table for six, and the scent of the white rose bundles filled the rooms as Alex pulled her though the suite. In the bedroom, golden silk draped the bed, and a breeze fluttered the white curtains over the window that was open to a view over the skyline of Paris. She tossed her purse on a nightstand.
Alex grabbed her arms, whirling her around, and he pushed her against the closed door and kissed her. The scent of sweet champagne flooded her mouth, and she breathed deeply. His forearms were braced against the door around her head, almost caging her as he bent to her. Georgie wound her arms around his neck, her fingers sliding into his long hair at the back of his neck. Alex groaned against her lips and reared back, then dipped his head to run his teeth over her neck. He shrugged his suit coat off behind himself, the dark blue fabric falling on the carpeting.
She dropped her hand, caressing his side through his shirt. Bulges of muscle rippled under her fingers. Even while his hot mouth blew champagne-scented breath on her neck, Georgie explored his body with her hands. She grabbed fistfuls of his shirt, pulling the fine cloth out of his waistband, and she ducked her hand under his shirt and soft undershirt beneath.
Ridges of muscle met her palm. He panted against her shoulder as she ran her palms and fingers into the furrows between his abdominals and up to the lean bulges of his pecs.
His hands smoothed over her hips, reaching for the zipper down her backside.
This felt tawdry, a quick fuck at a wedding with the guy she had performed a song with, and that was fantastic. Long-term relationships and even repeat sex weren’t on her agenda. Alex probably lived in Europe, and if they ever ran into each other again, they could be amicable and polite, and he would be just another guy that she used to fuck.
What happens when a Rock Star in Disguise meets a Billionaire in hiding?
Georgie doesn’t know who she is dating.
At a high society wedding, Georgie Johnson is introduced to Alexandre de Valentinois, a hereditary duke of nothing who flies around the world on his private planes and describes himself as “one of those despicable, idle rich men.” Yet, when pressed, he sings at the wedding in a gorgeous, clear tenor that tugs at Georgie’s soul, and miraculously, he calms her paralyzing stage fright so she can accompany him on the piano, even though she thought she had left her classical music career behind when she went into hiding.
But Alexandre has a dark side. His name is Xan Valentine, and he’s the rock star front man for Killer Valentine. He’s famous, but his paparazzi-dogged lifestyle might expose Georgie and get her killed.
Her hands stretched over the keys, and she tried to push them down to play even a major chord, but as soon as a key neared the break point, just when the hammer inside the piano was poised to strike the string, something in her mind shouted Don’t! and she couldn’t press it.
Alex asked gently, “Does Flicka know you’re worse?”
“I don’t see how she would. We’ve been out of touch for a few years.”
“But she knows that you’ve got—” he paused, obviously considering whether to say the terrible words, “a problem with this.”
“She must have forgotten about it,” rather than that Flicka had decided to punish Georgie in a spectacularly cruel way.
Maybe Georgie deserved to try to face her fears, melt into an incoherent puddle on the floor, and have everyone from her childhood and current best friends laugh at her failure.
It would serve her right.
But she would never be able to walk as far as the piano in front of all those people, so Flicka couldn’t have her poetic justice.
“Anyway,” she said, “I can’t do it.”
“I can help you,” Alex said.
“And how could you do that? Hypnotize me? Doesn’t work. Psychoanalysis? There’s nothing there.”
“Of course not, but I don’t want you to play for them.” He leaned across the piano again, and his hair slid from behind his shoulder and hung, reflected in the black gloss of the piano’s lacquer. “I want you to play for me.”
Georgie stared down at her spidery hands hanging over the black and white piano keys. “I can’t.”
He walked around the piano and stood beside her, his slim hip right beside her cheek. A faint, masculine scent wafted from his clothes, a cologne, something soothing like green herbs. She was acutely aware that she could lean about six inches over and unzip his fly with her teeth.
Alex said, in a low, soft voice, “Play the middle C.”
She laid her thumb on the white key right in front of her waist and held it there, but she didn’t push down.
Alex stroked her arm from her elbow to her wrist with the back of his hand, soothing her. “Play it.”
She told her finger to push down, and she let the weight of her arm fall on her finger that was curled above the keys.
Her finger collapsed and wouldn’t press the key.
Alex shook his head, and his long hair swished over his shoulders. He turned his hand over so that his palm was on her wrist, and then he slid his hand over hers, covering her fingers on the keys with his own. Calluses on pads of his fingers were hard on the tops of her fingers.
He stepped behind her, still not moving his fingers over hers. Warmth from his body drifted out of his suit jacket that opened around them, spreading over her bare back, and his cologne filled her nose like she was walking in the fields around Tanglewood.
He leaned over her, stretching his arms on both sides of her, caging her.
His whisper brushed the skin on her neck. “I’m not forcing you to do something you don’t want to. I’m letting you have what you want most, what you crave, but you dare not admit, even to yourself.”
“I’m afraid,” Georgie admitted, her voice breathy from fear at pressing that note and from his body so close to hers.
“Everyone is, in the beginning,” he said. “It can be terrifying to have an experience so desired, so primal, that you lose yourself. You have to trust me to take you through the place that terrifies you, to keep you safe, and to hold you until you emerge on the other side.”
Georgie couldn’t seem to catch her breath or move away from him. “We’re still talking about the piano here?”
Alex chuckled.
“Just the piano,” she said, but she leaned back, almost imperceptibly, maybe an inch, so that his mouth was so near her skin that his breath was a hot circle on her bare shoulder, and the scent of champagne in his mouth rolled down her skin.
“Let me do it for you, first,” he whispered.
Georgie closed her eyes, and the weight of his finger forced hers down.
A single note, a C, rang out of the piano and jarred against her skin.
