Rush

Jasminta pulls a cigarette out of her clutch and lights it. She draws on the cigarette, making the tip glow red, and then exhales a cloud of smoke. “Is Rush Osman trying to fuck you?”

I give a barking sort of laugh, but her question isn’t funny. The words Rush Osman and fuck together in a sentence have suddenly brought to mind the alluring image of my nails in his naked back with my legs tightly around his hips. My eyes dart around the smoking area, trying to dispel the image.

“Don’t be stupid.”

Jasminta gives me a shrewd look. “People fuck, and that’s fine. If you want to sleep with him, whatever. I just want to know if he’s an asshole who won’t back off if you tell him no.” She exhales a cloud of smoke, looking at me narrowly. “Is he? You probably already know if he’s that sort of asshole. They drop hints with their body language that they’re going to be bad news. Touching you. Testing what you’ll put up with.”

I know all about that sort of asshole. I wasn’t in his company five minutes before Striker started putting his hands on me. My shoulders. My lower back. Stroking my arms like I was his pet. Striker wasn’t interested in me like that, he was just seeing what he could get away with because he was Mr. Famous. I absolutely hated it and yet I said nothing.

Rush hasn’t done anything like that, but damn, the way he just tried to get me up to the VIP section was such a rock cliché. Maybe he’s just like Striker after all.

Disappointment crashes through me, and I realize I was hoping that he wasn’t like Striker. Not one little bit. The two men don’t look anything alike. Rush is big, silver-blond and well-developed where Striker is dark-haired and skinny, but maybe the differences are on the outside only.

All the way back from Shropshire, I couldn’t get him out of my head. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had sexual fantasies about a man I’ve met in the flesh. I vividly imagined his hand around my throat while he threatened to choke me out. There’s something about a man who knows how to be mean. Utterly devastating. Heat kept darting between my legs as I imagined him devastating me.

Jasminta studies my face. “Is he going to be a problem for you? Because if he is, I will go up there and twist his balls until he begs for mercy. I don’t care if you’ve signed a contract or whatever. I’ll rip it up myself.”

“No contract,” I tell her, resettling my necklace around my neck. “I’m not signing anything until I’m sure it’s safe.”

After what just happened and my constant vivid fantasies about him, it’s not safe, is it? I didn’t think Rush was the sort of man who’d send one of his entourage to pick me up for him. I hope that Rush is drunk and didn’t realize how his invitation would seem. The rock star inviting lucky, lucky me up to the VIP area.

“Good.” Jasminta flicks her cigarette. “I can’t tell if you’re annoyed or flattered by what just happened.”

She’s too shrewd for her own good. I try to laugh it off. “It’s just funny, the fact that he thought I needed him to get into the VIP section when I’m with you.”

The deflection works, and Jasminta laughs. “That is pretty funny. I wonder when the last time was that a woman didn’t fangirl over him. You probably did him some good. Promise me you’ll chew Mr. Famous the hell out if he ever does anything like that asshole did to you.”

“I will. Now you have to promise me something. Promise me that you won’t let all this fame go to your head?”

She rolls her eyes, stabs out her cigarette, and pushes me back into the club. “As if, and I’m not even that famous. Now come on, let’s get another round and go back and dance.”

I catch her arm. “I’ll get the drinks. You go back to the dancefloor. I want to chill for a second anyway.”

She studies me carefully. “If you’re sure you’ll be okay?”

“Yes, mama hen, I’ll be fine.”

“Okay, but if anyone needs their balls twisting, you come and find me.”

I laugh and promise I will. As I move through the bar area, someone steps into my path. I move around them, but he steps in front of me again, and I look up into a grinning face of a man.

A lean, bohemian and handsome man in a silk magenta shirt and skin-tight jeans. My heart plummets through to the earth’s core and then rebounds back up to lodge in my throat.

The nightmare in pink smirks. “Hello, darlin’. Been ages. How you doin’?”

I’d forgotten the exact pitch of his nasally London accent. He always accentuates it in public, to make himself sound East End working class, but the truth is he’s from farther out in the wealthy part of Essex. A private prep boy who had everything he ever wanted, but sings songs about getting high because he’s broke and he wants to forget the pain and disappointment of life. If you go looking online, you can find photos of fifteen-year-old Striker, or Chris, as he was then, on Swiss skiing holidays with his family and posing in the Porsche Boxster his mum and dad gave him. I suspect he called me “darlin” because he can’t remember my name even though he ruined my life.