Page 78 of Tame Me

I wanted to have fun. I wanted to drink.

I wanted to watch Mason play guitar.

And if all that went to plan, I wanted sex with Mason Cole again, too.

Ideas flipped across my brain as I went through the motions of checking the band members into three rooms. I handed over their room cards, and as Mason ran his tongue over his plum-colored lips, I pictured that tongue gliding over my nipples.

A blaze of heat flashed up my neck, and I smacked the vision away before I self-combusted.

As they moseyed to the elevator, with each of the women owning their man by wrapping their arms around their waist, I fixed my eyes on Mason. He was the obvious outsider, and not just because he didn’t have a woman hanging off him. His clothing was classier, his hair was professionally styled, but most of all, while the others had a cocky, you-can’t-touch-me attitude, Mason had a confident professionalism about him that implied he was going places.

The second they vanished into the elevator, I grabbed my phone to send Lolita a text.

Hey, you got plans for tonight?

Just Hawaiian pizza and a DVD with the kids

I giggled, knowing full well what the implications of the Hawaiian pizza meant.

Fancy a night out with Memphis?

Fuck yeah!

Mason, that guitarist I told you about, is back. They’re playing at Surfers. Want to go?

Only if I get to dress up like Memphis

The idea of the two of us doing the Memphis disguise thing made my head spin.

Haha, OK. Want to meet here? We can go to dinner first.

Luv it. I’ll be there at 7

Fabbo. C U then

Chapter Twenty-Two

I turned my attention to the computer and typed in Empire Angels. The first website to pop up was a group of technology start-ups in New York. I giggled as I wondered what they thought about a rock band sharing their name.

The second website was the one I clicked. It was plastered with pictures of the four original band members, and I was disappointed that Mason wasn’t featured in any of the photos. The older brother who’d offered to fill in for the original bass guitarist still wasn’t getting the attention he deserved.

I felt an uncharacteristic desire to defend him. Maybe tonight I’d get the chance.

One of the first decisions I’d made as manager was to re-jig the staff rostered hours. My main reason was to allow Marjorie to finish earlier so she could spend a bit more time with her kids before they went to bed, so I’d moved everyone’s shift forward an hour. This meant that although I started at five-thirty in the morning, I also finished at two o’clock.

Unlike Needledick, Marj always arrived at least fifteen minutes prior to her shift and every day this week, I’d been surprised when Marjorie had come bounding into the lobby; today was no different.

“Hey Marj, how are you?” I hugged her bony shoulders to me.

“Excellent. How’s your day?”

“I can’t believe my shift is over. The days go so quick.”

“That’s a good thing.” She was the happiest I’d seen her in ages, and I liked to think my decision to tweak the shifts was a contributor to that.

After going over my new handover checklist, during which we spent as much time completing the list as we did chatting about her kids, we said our goodbyes, and two minutes before my shift officially ended, I headed up to my apartment.

The last five days had been a struggle with my body clock, and the transition from sleeping during the day to sleeping at night hadn’t been as easy as I’d hoped. After ten minutes in my apartment, my eyes grew heavy, and by the time I’d eaten a cheese toasty, I could barely keep them open.

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