Page 2 of Naughty Dreams
“Fuck you. You’re an asshole.”
“Yeah. Still not wrong.” DJ looked at Moss. “I’m not feeling good about this.”
Moss put on the determined look he’d had since he first insisted thiswasa good idea. Moss respected the band’s decisions, but when he dug in, there was usually a good reason. DJ knew it, but it didn’t mean he wouldn’t keep testing it. “He’s the best in his business. And you promised you’d at least meet with him.”
DJ curled a lip, but shrugged. Okay, he’d meet with the guy. If it still didn’t feel right, he’d tell Moss he wanted to stick with Henry’s security people and leave it at that.
Roy Bloodwell could choose his own clients, but that door went both ways. This client would damn well decide if he was choosing Roy.
If Roy had walked in here cold, no clue as to who anyone was, the guitarist would have been his guess for the band front man, and Roy’s primary concern. But his client wasn’t Steve Lewandowski.
Nor Tal, the drummer. If it had been, Roy would have turned the job down flat. Tal Gooding had a problem showing up notstoned. While his bandmates weren’t happy about it, Roy had initially assumed they tolerated it because Tal was in the top ten of drummers active in the current music scene.
But after reviewing copious amounts of background material collected by his team, and confirming what he’d read by watching a few minutes of their interactions below, he knew it wasn’t that.
Roy was looking at a family.
Three of the four bandmates had shared the same foster home as teens. Tal was also a foster kid, and that factor, as much as his talent, had likely brought him into the band.
The quiet kid sitting cross-legged at the far end of the stage, picking out notes and off in his own world, was the one Roy was being hired to protect.
Dorian “DJ” James had eight million followers on social media, a 24/7 scroll of adulation to buffer him whenever his ego took the slightest hit.
His personality was hard to pin down through entertainment news sources, who flopped back and forth on it like gasping fish on a river bank.
Demon or angel. Bad boy or choir boy. Sensitive artist or unrestrained partier. Smart about his business, or frivolous spender his manager despaired of keeping in check.
Roy had learned that Moss planted wrong information to keep everyone guessing—and interested.
On his latest album cover, DJ had been wearing an altar boy’s robes while a hulking demon spread barbed wings behind him. Blood dripped from his fangs onto the white cloth. A clawed talon rested on DJ’s shoulder.
DJ had his hands in a prayer pose, and stared into the soul of the viewer with maple-tinged dark brown eyes. The band flanked the demon, Steve with his guitar in an aggressive jut upward, Pete with a closed fist on his shoulder, while he gavethe peace sign with the other hand. Tal was on the opposite side, whipping his sticks against the demon’s beefy arm.
Critics had deemed it typically irreverent, stoking the anti-everything rebellion of his teen demographic.Comfortable In My Own Sinwas the name of the album, and the name of one of the songs on it.
But Survival had a wider fanbase than just the teen crowd. The music, which had the mass appeal of rock, but mixed in some of the attitude of punk, the precision and power of metal, and the grounding musicality of blues, spoke to a variety of ages, their fears and worries, their triumphs and pleasures. One influencer laid it out in his review of the latest album, which was predicted to go platinum, just like the previous two.
“Survival’s lyrics tear us open to make us see what’s really inside, no matter how or where we hide. The music makes me want to jump on a winged dragon and go battle evil, screaming my defiance of the darkness.”
Survival’s first album cover had shown DJ as an eyeliner-wearing, sloe-eyed poet, proving that the covers changed as often as the stories about him did. But the jut to his chin hinted at stubbornness, while the spark in his eyes and tilt of his lips suggested a huge helping of wiseass.
Roy suspected that early image came closer to who the kid really was. Though Roy didn’t mix business with pleasure, he’d objectively recognized the flint of that look, sparking against the solid rock of his Dominant fantasies.
Seeing him in person wasn’t changing the potential for fire. An experienced Dom could recognize submissive traits, and the ones from DJ were strobe-level strong.
DJ folded over the guitar to scribble in a notebook. He was slender, but had wide shoulders for his frame. He wore only jeans, so bent forward like that, Roy saw his rib cage, and the bumps of his spine. Someone standing close could follow thecurve of his back to the tantalizing dip between his buttocks. He probably wasn’t wearing underwear.
His curly mop of thick brown hair framed a sharp face with sloped cheekbones, the stubborn chin, and wide, thin lips. It wasn’t a classically pretty mouth, yet Roy still thought of tracing a finger along it. Stretching his lips with his cock. Staring down into the maple brown eyes, which would show the tantalizing uncertainty a submissive felt when Roy was pushing him, making him serve.
A lot of celebrities had submissive streaks, wanting to surrender control in their private moments, needing to find a haven they could trust.
While the strength of the pull on his Master side surprised him, Roy wasn’t worried about it. He channeled his protective Dom inclinations into the job, but kept his actual play separate.
If he wanted to get off with a submissive, there were plenty of places he could do it. His income allowed him to enjoy top end BDSM clubs when he wanted to unwind.
Other than that, money didn’t much matter to him, except as a barometer of how well he did his job. And its ability to help him take care of his mother’s needs.
DJ’s gaze lifted. It was hard to tell if he was seeing what was in front of him or what was going through his mind, but then his head turned and stopped. He’d found Roy.
