After Irene Beckham accidentally discovers rock star Ace Hendrix’s big secret, she wakes up in his bedroom without any memory of how she got there. As flashes of her memory of the night before return, Ace makes her an offer. Let him suck her blood, and he’ll make her a wealthy woman if she can stay quiet about it. Ace even proves to her he didn’t take advantage of her the night before.
When the press gets wind of Ace’s new fling, Irene decides she’s not the right woman for him, but Ace knows they’re meant to be together. He doesn’t care what the paparazzi says, he has to have her in his life no matter the cost.
EXCERPT:
Irene opened her eyes and rolled her neck. A stab of pain struck her throat. She sat up and pushed her hair back. Her fingers hit her glasses. She pulled them off and found they had been fixed. “What the hell?”
Glancing around, she discovered she’d woken up in a room not her own. Dark blue walls were hung with pictures of the ocean and cliffside vistas. One was so huge it made it seem like she looked out a window. And yet she couldn’t find any windows. A bed large enough to sleep four people took up most of the room. What the fuck happened? She took off her glasses and inspected them to make sure they were hers. She ran her hands over the wall, looking for any crack that could be a door. After going over the whole room, she knocked on the walls to hear if any were hollow. With nothing but hurting knuckles, she slammed her fist on a bare spot on the wall.
“Let me out of here,” she screamed.
“Enough with the yelling. I have a headache as it is,” a male voice came over a speaker.
“Who are you and what are you going to do with me?” Irene scanned the room looking for a speaker.
Something clicked and a portion of the wall popped out. Someone hovered in the hallway. “Come on. We have a few things to discuss before you can go.” She recognized Ace’s voice.
Irene followed the rocker. Posters of old concerts from Buddy Holly, Jimmy Hendrix, The Doors, Madonna, all from different eras of music and mixed with framed golden records lined the hallway. As she ran after him, all she could stare at was his ass in those leather pants. “Mr. Hendrix, how did I end up here?”
He turned down the hall and Irene rushed to catch up with him. He turned another corner. She found him as he grabbed a bottle of water from a fridge that blended in with the cabinets around it. He flung himself down onto a sofa and gestured for her to take a seat across from him.
Irene sank down into the couch. Records, CDs, cassette tapes, anything music-related lined the bookshelves around the room. “You have quite a music collection.”
His gaze roamed around the room and a slight smile came on his face. “Thanks. I’ve been collecting for a long time. Music’s always been my escape. Would you like some water?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
He tossed the bottle of water at her. It hit the back of the couch next to her and bounced onto the seat. “Sorry. Like I said I’m getting over the hangover from last night.”
“About last night. How did I get here? Back at your house? Where’s my friend?”
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
She squeezed the bridge of her nose, trying to recall what happened. Her head pounded as she tried to draw forth the memories after she waited in line with Bev for Ace. “My glasses got knocked off and trampled. You picked them up and your assistant gave me and Bev backstage passes.” A spear of pain sliced her temple. She tried to pull up more. It remained out of her reach. “I don’t know.” She ran her fingers over her jeans as a thought passed through her head. “We didn’t… ahh…”
“Fuck?” he asked.
Her cheeks burned at his language. “Yeah.”
“No, we didn’t. After you wandered into my dressing room, you fainted. Nicole, my assistant, brought in my doctor. He said you’d passed out from having too much to drink. I thought it best to have you brought back here to sleep it off where no one’d bother you. We put you in the guestroom to sleep it off. I can have my car take you wherever you need to go.”
Irene sipped the water and thought back to being with Bev before the show. “I didn’t have anything to drink.”
“You sure? Maybe your friend slipped you something. It’d account for you thinking your glasses were broken.”
“They were. You picked them up for me.”
“You stumbled and dropped them right in front of me, but they weren’t broken.”
Nothing of what he said made any sense to her. Irene tried to rack her mind at what happened the night before. The ache hit her temple again. She winced. “No… I…”
“Look, you’re awake. You seem fine to me. Now, I have a life to get back to. It was very nice to meet you. I’ll have my driver take you home. Come on.”
Ace got up and walked out of the room. Irene sat trying to make sense of what he’d said. This doesn’t sound right. If I passed out, then Bev would’ve wormed her way into coming with me, playing at being nursemaid. She squeezed her eyes shut and recalled clearly her glasses had been broken. They went backstage with Nicole, and then she had tried to find the restroom. And then… she walked into Ace’s dressing room, but he was…
“What the hell was he doing?” Irene whispered.
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Crymsyn Hart - Paranormal and Horror Author 