The crowd was so thick outside of Boomer’s, I had a panic attack when the black car dropped us off.
I’d ridden with Vince, Jaxson, and Carter, and while all their eyes lit up with excitement at the multitude of people clamoring to party with them after their win, I’d shriveled into the corner of the car. I was cursing Livia under my breath for not agreeing to come out with us. She had clients early in the morning, so I understood, but I hated that I didn’t have her here.
It wasn’t that I had an issue with crowds. Hell, I’d been in one of thousands of people at the stadium without issue. But a sea of people clamoring to get a glimpse of who’s in this car, a sea of people who would be staring at me when I exited this thing?
My brow was sweating just thinking of it.
I was used to being behind the camera, and Vince must have picked up on that fact, because he frowned when he looked at me over his shoulder and saw what was no doubt my very hesitant expression.
“Hey,” he said. “Look at me.”
Screams ripped out when our car came to a stop, and security fought to keep people back, like the guys were rockstars instead of athletes. I supposed it was one and the same in this city.
A warm palm sliding over my knee called my attention away from the chaos, and I found Vince, his eyes set on mine as his hand squeezed.
His massive, talented hand, one that could score goals and mold art from clay. He smoothed his thumb over the skin just below the hemline of my skirt, and I swallowed, not daring to look down at where he touched me.
“You’re with us,” he reminded me. “And we’ve got you. Okay? We have a VIP area in there that’s completely roped off. You only have to be in the crowd for a few minutes while we make our way in.”
I nodded, a little embarrassed by my anxiety. “I’m sorry, I just…”
“Your phone.”
“What?”
“Pull out your phone. Pretend like you’re recording, or actually record it, we don’t care,” he added, and the guys nodded behind him.
“The seas will part for you, Maven. Everyone knows you.”
Those words from Carter made me blink.
Everyone knows you.
I hadn’t considered that, hadn’t thought about the fact that my social media accounts were the most watched in the city right now. I didn’t know if that made me feel better or worse.
With a final nod, I pulled a deep inhale through my nose to prepare me, and Jaxson opened the door for us to climb out.
The crowd cheered when we did, but it wasn’t the nonstop, high-pitched screams you’d hear for a rock band. It was loud and deep, a sea of grown men hollering their approval and respect for the team. Of course, there were some women in there, too. Plenty of them. But they didn’t crowd us when we got out like I thought they would.
Vince grabbed my hand, anyway.
I tried not to focus on that, on how small my hand was in his as he led us through the small opening they’d made for us to make our way into the bar. I tried not to let it impact my breathing, how confidently he held me, how proudly. He pulled me through that crowd like I belonged to him.
My free hand held my phone, and I clicked the button on the side to start the video as I followed Vince in.
“Maven! We love you!”
I followed the source of the chant, smiling a little when a group of three college-aged girls waved excitedly at me.
“Told you,” Vince whispered in my ear, tugging me close enough to do so. I felt his breath warm on the shell of my ear, and a shiver spread over my skin.
“Are you two dating?!”
“What’s it like, Maven?”
“Vince, let’s do pottery together!”
“Vince, let’s fuck,” someone else cheered louder, and that made everyone laugh.
Except me.
Vince took all of it like a champ, winking at the girl who’d offered herself up before we ducked inside the bar. It was even louder once inside, but the bouncers didn’t stop us for an ID check or anything else before ushering us to the back corner, and up a small set of stairs to the VIP area.
I felt like I could finally breathe once we were behind the ropes, and Vince dropped my hand, high-fiving one of his teammates with it a moment later while I tried to gather my bearings.
Boomer’s was more of a club than a bar, as the guys had made it sound. Strobe lights and lasers flashed in the foggy darkness, go-go dancers shaking their asses on the bar while patrons slipped dollar bills into their garters. A DJ was front and center, and he pointed back to the team’s VIP area before spinning right into their win song, which made the crowd roar and jump and dance wildly as the team celebrated from our little corner.
I couldn’t believe they were still letting people in. The place was already packed, and all I could think of was what the hell would happen should a fire break out.
Warm, long fingertips wrapped around my hip, nearly encompassing the whole of me as Vince pulled me into him from behind.
“Drink?” he asked in my ear.
My eyes fluttered shut, but I forced them open again, turning more to break contact than anything else.
“Please,” I said over the music.
Vince nodded toward one of the tables in the back of our secluded area, each piled high with bottles. He poured ice into a tumbler and topped it with mostly Grey Goose, and a small splash of pineapple juice before handing it to me.
I downed the whole thing.
I was still grimacing when Vince took my glass and refilled it on a laugh. “You can hang out back here if you want to be out of the mayhem.” He nodded toward some cushioned booths in the back. One was empty. The other had two hockey players with a girl in each of their laps.
“What about you?” I asked.
A slow, lazy grin spread on his beautiful mouth. “I am the mayhem.”
I didn’t have Vince long before he was being pulled away by his teammates, and I took his offer, curling into the smallest form of myself I could on a booth in the back. I watched from afar as the team partied in a way I hadn’t witnessed since college. They took shot after shot, dancing and horsing around as they raged into the night. Smoke swirled from vapes and cigars alike, mixing with the lights to create a heavy, neon fog.
But even as I tried to make myself invisible, the guys wouldn’t let me.
Carter came back to grab me at one point, pulling me to the front to meet his brother who was in town for the game. I’d no sooner sat back down before Jaxson was sitting beside me. He’d brought two girls and a couple other teammates with him, and he made me part of the conversation, making sure I felt comfortable.
And I did.
I felt like I belonged there with them, like no one was judging me for being the lowly reporter, even though they knew I was in a different class than they were.
At one point, I noticed Vince saying something to one of his teammates. The next moment, that teammate was walking over to introduce himself to me, to sit and talk and make sure I wasn’t left alone.
I wondered if he’d done that all night, if he was the reason I hadn’t had a spare moment to feel out of place.
It made my chest hurt in a way I wasn’t familiar with, to think he cared about me, that he wanted to make sure I had a good time.
But it also put all my defenses up.
I hated that. I hated that even when someone was doing something nice for me, I had this devil in the back of my mind telling me it was all a farce. I couldn’t trust Vince, or anyone who I felt was bred from a different cloth.
James had done that to me.
I wondered if that damage could ever be undone.
But then I remembered what my therapist had said — that trauma response was good for us. It kept us safe. It kept us from repeating a mistake, and thus the pain that came with it. It showed us red flags when we used to ignore them or make excuses for them.
I was glad I had my guard up. It was a sure-fire way not to get hurt again.
The night went on.
Every now and then, one of the guys from the team would invite women from the crowd behind the ropes. They danced with some of them, pulling their barely covered asses into their laps as they swayed to the beat. Others, they tugged into a corner to make out with, wasting no time.
I took photos and videos from my corner when the moment felt right, mostly when Vince was goofing around and smiling that megawatt smile of his. But as the night dragged on, I felt less and less inclined to stay — especially when the heavy bass of the music seemed to thrum like a heartbeat between the players and the girls who were desperate for their attention.
“Dance with me.”
I was in a daze when the request came, and I glanced up, finding Vince smiling a drunken smile down at me. His hair fell into his view a moment before he ran a hand back through it, styling the messy waves with just that motion. His pouty lips were curled slightly at the corners, his eyes glazed and dangerously inviting.
He held out a hand for mine.
“Oh… I’m okay,” I said.
He cocked a brow. “You’ve been sitting there all night. Come on,” he said, wiggling his fingers. “Dance with me.”
There was a dare in his eyes, and if I gave in to the way my heart raced at the way he watched me, I would have slid my hand into his and let him lead me onto the floor.
But where this was a night out celebrating for him, it was a job for me.
Things were going better than I’d ever imagined. Reya and Camilla were ready to hand me anything I wanted if I continued to pull this off. And nothing mattered more to me than remaining professional — which dancing with the devil disguised as Vince Tanev would make very difficult to do.
“I’m really okay,” I said again, offering a small smile.
Vince looked a little disappointed as he dropped his hand, but it lasted only a moment before he shrugged. He refreshed his drink and sucked half of it down with his eyes still on me.
“Suit yourself,” he said.
He disappeared back into the crowd just as easily as he’d popped out of it, and I watched him go, checking the time on my watch as I blew out a breath.
It was almost three in the morning.
I looked around at the crowd, which despite the hour, only seemed to be thickening. I slid my purse onto my shoulder and decided I would make my way back to the condo to get some much-needed sleep.
But when I looked for Vince to tell him I was heading out, I found him just in time to watch him pluck two women from the crowd dancing outside the ropes.
He pulled them in, security fastening the barrier back in place as soon as they were at his side. One of the girls was tan and tall and lean, with platinum blonde hair and a perfect heart-shaped ass. The other was tall, too, but was a creamy pale, shaped like an hourglass, with short brown hair and a mouth like Angelina Jolie.
The women encircled Vince once they were behind the ropes, sandwiching him between them, and all three of them began to move to the beat of the music thumping through the club. The women draped their arms over him like he was theirs — not even a hint of hesitation, or a single thought that he wouldn’t want them to.
My heart stopped in my chest, and then kicked back hard, racing faster and faster as I watched them.
I watched the blonde trail her nail up Vince’s arm, over his neck, until she dragged it along his chin and guided his mouth toward hers. She didn’t kiss him, just held him there, where he had no choice but to look at her as she stared back at him and moved her body against him.
Her body that he moved his hands to hold, to feel as she rolled to the music.
The brunette danced to the other side of him, straddling his leg with her thighs as she tugged at the collar of his shirt for his attention. When the blonde kept it, the brunette licked his neck before biting down.
Even from across the room, I saw Vince hiss, saw a smile curl on his lips as he turned to face her, and she grinned at the victory.
I was rooted in place.
Like a masochist, I watched it all unfold with my stomach bottoming out.
A front-row show to Boomer Bunnies in action.
And when both women started kissing on his neck, Vince looked up at the sky on a curse.
Then, he looked directly at me.
His eyes were dark and mischievous, locked on mine as the girls battled with each other for who could make him unravel the quickest. But he wasn’t smiling anymore, and he wasn’t giving either of them what they wanted.
He was too busy staring at me.
I sucked in a stiff breath, blinking repeatedly before I finally tore my gaze away and adjusted my purse on my shoulder. I muttered unheard excuse me’s as I pushed through the team and the lucky girls who’d been selected to join them. I pushed farther, out of the ropes and through the crowd until I burst out into the humid night air. It was so hard to breathe, I gasped, trying and failing to fill my lungs.
I didn’t see the car we’d come in, didn’t even give myself time to think of calling one. I just started walking in the direction of the skyscraper holding me prison for the month I was doing this job, squeezing my eyes shut hard to try to clear what I’d just seen before I opened them again and put one foot in front of the other.
I hadn’t made it twenty steps before I was spun in a circle, Vince sliding his hand into the crook of my elbow and pulling me to a stop.
“You’re leaving?”
I blinked at him, eyes catching where he had lipstick smeared on his neck.
A harsh laugh burst from my chest.
“I’m surprised you noticed,” I snapped, and then I ripped away from him and started off in the direction I’d been walking before he stopped me.
“Let me get you a car.”
“I can walk, it’s not far.”
“You’re in heels. And it’s three o’clock in the morning.”
“I’m fine.”
Vince jogged around to stand in front of me, blocking my path. “What’s going on? Why are you mad?”
“I’m not.”
“So you breathe like an angry dragon and storm around town because you’re having a grand time?”
I scoffed, skirting past him. “Go back inside, Vince. I’m sure your fans are missing you.”
He didn’t follow for the next several steps, but then he jogged to catch up to me, blocking my path once more. I noted that he had been texting something on his phone, but he slipped it into his pocket when he caught up to me.
Probably telling his little groupies to meet him back at his place.
“Maven,” he said. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.”
His eyes were lazy and glazed. He looked so sleepy and sexy and confident, and he watched me like he already knew the answer.
I glowered. “Oh, I don’t know. I guess I just wanted you to surprise me again, and found myself dreadfully disappointed.”
That beautiful, scarred brow lifted into his hairline. “How so?”
“You’re just like every other rich, professional athlete that the rules don’t apply to,” I said, shaking my head. “And it’s just so unoriginal.”
Vince frowned at that, almost laughing like he was confused. “The rules?”
But then the laughter faded, and something like recognition washed over him, smoothing out every feature of that beautiful, stupid face.
“You’re jealous.”
My eyebrows shot up into my hairline, indignation swirling with something akin to being stripped naked and put on display for the world to dissect. I swallowed all of it down, guard firmly in place.
“Wow.” I pushed past him, shaking my head, but he rounded me before I could take two more steps.
“You are, aren’t you?”
“Get a grip, Tanny Boy,” I shot at him, lifting my chin and standing even higher on my heels. “You couldn’t make me jealous if you tried.”
“Is that right?”
“It is.”
“Huh,” he mused, and before I could decide what to do next, he grabbed me by the hips, backing me into the brick wall of the building I’d been storming past.
I hit it with enough force to make me gasp, and Vince smiled down at me, blocking me in, surrounding me like a predator about to devour his first meal in days.
“So you don’t want me to take you up to my condo right now?” he asked, his voice low and seductive in the space between us.
He pressed into me harder when I didn’t answer, eliciting another gasp I wished I could keep inside. His thick thigh slid between mine, spreading me for him so much my skirt raked up six inches.
“You don’t want me to touch you the way I was touching them?”
He didn’t have to clarify who them was as his hand wrapped around my throat, my pulse thumping against his palm. He lifted my chin even more, forcing me to look at him.
“You don’t want me to haul this sweet ass over my shoulder and carry you inside,” he asked, running the tip of his nose along the bridge of mine. I tasted his breath when he finished his question. “To pin you against my window, hike this skirt up over your hips, and fuck you for the whole city to watch?”
My chest heaved against his, and he drove that thigh a little higher, taking my skirt with it as my eyelids fluttered shut.
His grip on my hips tightened, just a fraction, just enough to break me.
And I kissed him.
All it took was me pressing up onto my toes a centimeter more to press my lips to his, and I sucked in a breath when he groaned at the contact, his hand moving from my throat to the back of my neck and holding me to him for a long, ravenous kiss. His lips were so big, so firm as they demanded mine. I opened for him, moaning and squeezing my legs together when he dipped his tongue inside to taste me.
But as quickly as the kiss had come, he pulled it away, along with the rest of him.
My body convulsed at the loss of heat, at how the humid air suddenly felt cool when it washed over my exposed thighs from where my skirt had ridden up.
And Vince Tanev, that cocky motherfucker, wiped the corner of his mouth with his thumb while a wicked smile spread on his lips.
“Sorry, pet,” he said, tucking his hands in his pockets. “You’ll have to admit you want it before I give it to you.”
I gaped at him.
And then, I growled out a scream, righting my skirt and shoving him so hard in the chest that he stumbled backward.
“I am not your pet,” I seethed.
He barked out a laugh that made me shove him again.
“God, you are such a bastard. I hate you!”
“Sure you do.”
His hand shot up in the air, waving at a black car as it pulled up to the curb. It was the same one from the beginning of the night, and the driver dipped his head at Vince in acknowledgement as he put the car in park.
“What is this?”
“Your ride,” he said, pulling the back door open. He all but tossed me inside before shutting it again. The window was rolled down, and he braced his hands on the edge of it, leaning down so he could see me. “Goodnight, Maven. See you in the morning.”
Vince winked, standing and thumping on the roof of the car before he backed up a few steps. He wore a cocky smile like I’d just handed him the winning lottery numbers, and I’d never felt more betrayed by my body than I did in that moment — my chest heaving, head dizzy from our kiss, panties wet under my skirt.
The car sped off before I could tell him to go fuck himself.
