“Got to talk to the press.” Syon dropped a kiss on her temple before letting Cid’s crew pull him away. The paparazzi were out in good number, snapping pictures of Drake and Taz as they made their way through the huge entrance doors of the hotel. Fans squealed and stretched out to touch them, some of the girls lifting their tops.

Drake stopped and smiled at one. Taz considered him for a minute, judging him sober enough to look out for himself. The girl smiled knowingly, boldly licking her lower lip. Drake offered her his hand, and the security guys let her slide through the barricade.

Kate followed behind them, but not too quickly. The high from the concert was still buzzing her. She didn’t want to be separated from Syon.

But a glance over her shoulder showed him facing several cameras. Their overly bright lights were blinding, the soundmen holding up their huge fur-covered microphones.

She needed a shower.

It was a flimsy excuse, but enough to get her through the doors. The roar was dimmer inside. The hotel security was doing a good job of making sure the fans stayed outside. She flashed her key card at one suited man and started toward the elevators.

“You’ll listen to me, and listen well.”

There was a middle-aged woman tearing into Ramsey. Next to her stood an older man and several other people, two of them actually holding Bibles.

The woman had her finger out and was shaking it at him. “I brought you into this world. It’s a disgrace and a shame the way you act. You are coming home with us tonight. You are going to get right with the Lord. Is that clear?”

Kate should have kept out of it. Kept her mouth shut. It wasn’t like Ramsey couldn’t take care of himself or summon some of Cid’s goons with a flick of his wrist.

But he stood there, letting the group converge on him. They were all talking at once, actually shaking their Bibles at him as they closed in like a pack of wolves.

Only Ramsey was like a panther, more than able to take them out.

And he stood there. Taking it.

Damned if Kate didn’t feel her respect for him rising. Ramsey was quick to cut down anyone who got in his face, but he was holding his tongue with his family. That made him a decent fellow. Someone with a sense of honor.

The connection between him and Syon was making more and more sense. They only had each other. And not only did they only have each other, but also the rest of the world could be as vicious as it was welcoming to them. The crowd around Ramsey was working itself into a fever.

“Ramsey, don’t forget I need your wardrobe checked in.”

He snapped his head around. Her heart twisted when she caught sight of his face.

He was in hell. That unique sort of torment that could only come from seeing people you cared about turn on you.

For a moment, she thought she was going to get the brunt of his temper, or at the least, a middle-finger salute.

“And who is she?” the people standing in front of him demanded.

“Costume coordinator,” he informed them. “I do follow some rules. Been nice. Bye. Hold the elevator, Kate.”

He started toward her at a run. But his expression was one step short of devastated. He slammed into the car as Kate hit the button to close the door. He braced his hands on the hand bar, facing the back wall as the car started to pull them upward.

“Sorry if I overstepped.”

He drew in a deep breath and shook his head. “Better that you did. I was about to say something…disrespectful.”

“But true?”

He choked a little and turned around to lean against the handrail. He offered her a half grin that really lifted only one corner of his mouth. “True to my way of thinking. Which isn’t what my parents want.”

“How’d they get past Cid’s guys?”

Ramsey shrugged. “They’re my parents. I’d be a real asshole if I left instructions for them to be kept out.”

His quick exit after the concert suddenly made sense. As did his brush by Cid outside the entrance.

His lack of company did too.

“You’re okay, you know that?” she said.

He tossed his head as the doors opened. “No, I’m not.” He stopped next to her, leaning down so his breath teased her lips. “I’m the guy your mother warned you about.”

He was crowding her, trying to intimidate her, building a wall around himself.

But she saw it for what it was.

He was trying to burn off his frustration by taking refuge in his badass persona. She smiled back at him and tapped the center of his chest with the tip of her index finger.

“Don’t take it personally. My mom is a lesbian. She warned me about all guys, just on the basis of gender.”

Shock registered on his face as Kate slipped out of the elevator.

“What?”

She was on her way down the hallway and felt him watching her. He lost the battle to let it go, and she felt the vibration of his steps as he ran to keep up.

“Kate? What do you mean by that?” She slid her key card into the door, and he pushed it in. “I really gotta know. Is your mom a lesbian? How are you here?”

His eyes were bright with the promise of a distraction. She smiled in invitation. He walked in, and she pulled one of the beers from the minibar, offering it to him before taking one for herself. She took a sip before shooting him a grin. Ramsey was sitting cross-legged on the floor, nursing his beer. He made a “get going” motion with his hand.

Kate sat her beer down.

“Okay, story time. Once upon a time, at a college far from here, my mom had one too many beers and was talking to a young graduate student who challenged her to question whether or not she really didn’t like dick, seeing as she had admitted to having never tried it. Being a lesbian, my mom wasn’t on the pill or any other form of birth control and didn’t have a condom on hand…”

* * *

Ramsey could be a kitten sometimes. He snorted at her from where he was sitting on the floor of Syon’s suite.

“Your mom seriously discussed the merits of clitoral orgasm verses G-spot climax with you?”

“Honest truth,” Kate said. “Look, mister, I’ve been dealing with my mom’s attempts to set me up with her girlfriends’ daughters for years. She’s devastated by my strictly dick sexuality. Blames my dad.”

Ramsey rolled back, ending up on his back, and snickered. He was staring at the ceiling as he chortled.

Syon opened the door, his face shiny from the hot lights of the press cameras. He looked at Ramsey and raised an eyebrow.

“Did you skin him and make a throw rug out of him?”

Ramsey rolled over and flipped him the bird. But he had a smile on his lips. “Have you worked out the bridge on the new song yet?”

Syon grabbed a beer from the minibar and nodded as he twisted the cap free. Ramsey swung his leg up and over his torso so he rolled all the way over and onto his feet. It was the sort of thing she expected of him—powerful, over the top.

He moved over to the laptop and tapped the screen. Syon flashed her a smile before he joined him. They both peered at the screen, lost in the notes, taking solace in what they were, musicians. Kate watched for a moment, struck by how much they needed each other because the people who should have had their backs didn’t.

There was a beauty in the way they hadn’t let it stop them.

A beauty that touched her heart.

She showered to the sound of them working sections of the song, and fell asleep to Taz and Drake joining in. Sometime in the early hours, Syon crawled into bed with her, stroking her and bringing her body to life. She stretched, caught between sleep and the need churning inside her. Too far gone in slumber, there was no way to resist. She welcomed him, urging him between her thighs as she arched to take his thrusts.

He drove into her in the same rhythm she’d fallen asleep to, building up to the crescendo and hammering her through the climax. He ended up flopped onto the bed next to her, both of them gasping for breath. Kate hadn’t quite caught hers when he scooped her up and settled her on his chest.