“Come on in,” he said, stepping backward and gesturing her inside.

“No, thanks,” she answered, proud of the fact that she’d managed to untie the knots in her tongue and actually speak in something that resembled English. She wasn’t interested, but she was female, and she’d be lying if she said he hadn’t had an impact on her. “I’m looking for Shaken Dirty.”

“What do you want with them? I promise, we’re a lot more fun.” A chorus of laughter sounded behind him, seeming to underscore his point.

“I’m sure you are, but Jared—”

“Forget Jared. I’m better in bed—and out of it, too.”

What the hell? She tried to picture Ryder or Jared saying something so douchey but couldn’t manage it. Maybe she was more naïve than she thought.

Or maybe Max Casey was just a really big sleaze. Disgust replacing some of her involuntary excitement at meeting him, Jamison took a couple of steps backward. “If you could just point me in the right direction…”

A flicker of anger crossed his face but was gone so quickly that she decided she had imagined it. Especially when he said, “I can do better than that. If you really want to see Jared, I’ll take you there. Things can get pretty confusing back here.”

That was an understatement. Still she hesitated as, behind him, two girls called his name in pouty voices. “I don’t want to take you away from who you were doing.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she wanted to take them back. Talk about a Freudian slip. “What! I meant what you were doing.”

But Max just laughed and pulled the door closed behind him. “They’ll keep.” He stepped closer, put a hand on the small of her back as he guided her farther down the hallway.

Jamison stiffened at the proprietary touch, and the bitter scent of scotch that clung to him. But when she tried to move away, he wrapped his hand around her waist and pulled her into his side.

“Seriously,” she told him as alarm bells went off in her head. “Jared’s my brother. If you’ll just point me towards his dressing room—”

“Lighten up. I told you I’d take you there and I will.” The hand around her waist grew tighter and that’s when she went from being slightly alarmed to seriously starting to freak out.

Still, she couldn’t imagine that she had anything to worry about from Max freakin’ Casey. Especially not when a bunch of people were only about thirty feet away. At the same time, though, she was a big proponent of better safe than sorry.

“Really. I’ve got it.” She moved away, this time shoving at his restraining hand until he was forced to let her go. Then she pulled out her phone. “Jared just texted me,” she lied. “I know where I’m going now.”

“You don’t need to run off so quickly. Stay and talk to me for a few minutes.”

“Jared’s expecting me.” Which wasn’t exactly true, but it wasn’t like she planned to hang around and argue with Max. Not after getting her first good glimpse of his eyes. He was high on a lot more than scotch—and it didn’t look like a particularly nice high, at that.“Thanks for the help,” she told him, starting down the hallway at a fast clip. She’d only gone a few steps when he grabbed her from behind.

Pushed her face-first up against the wall.

Covered her body with his own.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, feeling once again like she was trapped in an alternate reality.

“You’re going the wrong way.” He leaned forward and pressed his mouth to the back of her neck.

She hunched up her shoulders, tried to squirm away. But he was a lot stronger than he looked and it only took a few moments for her to realize she wasn’t going anywhere if he didn’t want her to.

“Come on, Max, let go!” She tried to cajole her freedom out of him, but the pounding rhythms had once again begun to roll off stage and she was reduced to shouting at him.

He just laughed, then put his mouth next to her ear and said, “Don’t worry. You’ll get to Jared soon enough. I just want a taste, to see if you’re as nice and sweet as they all say you are.”

“Let me go!” she screamed, struggling in earnest now that it had begun to sink in that Max didn’t plan to take no for an answer. He was too high or too conceited to understand that she really didn’t want him. That she wasn’t playing hard to get.

Or maybe he just didn’t care. She didn’t know, and it didn’t matter anyway. All that mattered now was getting out of there before she got the full Max Casey treatment. She couldn’t believe she’d ever thought he was attractive.

“Don’t you know who I am?” he demanded as he pressed even closer. “I’m Max Casey. Nobody says no to me.” He sounded so baffled that she might have felt sorry for him if she wasn’t desperately terrified that he was going to rape her right there in the hallway, thirty feet away from dozens of people who couldn’t hear her cries for help.

“No!” she shouted. “No! No! No!” She brought her foot up, tried to catch his shin with her spiked heel—the stupid things should be good for something—but he only moved closer, so that his body was flush against hers and she had no wiggle room. She nearly gagged when she felt him pressed against her.

“Stop it, Max!” she said, jerking from side to side as hard as she could. But he was holding her so tightly she couldn’t get much traction. “Stop it!” she begged. “Please, please, stop!”

He wasn’t listening or maybe he was just too high to listen. Either way, her stomach turned as he trailed his wet mouth over her shoulder.

“Come on, baby,” he muttered, jerking her head back so he could press a sloppy kiss to her mouth. “Just let it happen.”

She bit him then, clamping her teeth down on his lower lip as hard as she could. It was his turn to scream, to shove at her. He pulled back a hand to hit her and she braced herself for the impact. She’d take a beating over rape any day.

But his hand never connected. Instead, he was pulled off of her and slammed into the opposite wall so hard she heard the thud even over the roar of the music. She went with him part of the way, until he finally managed to untangle his hand from her hair and raise it in a misguided effort to defend himself.

Even then it took Jamison a second to realize what was happening, to realize that she was free. When she did, she scrambled several feet down the hallway, desperate to simply get away. But as she prepared to run, she got a glimpse of her rescuer’s face as he pinned Max to the wall.

Ryder.

It was Ryder who had found her, Ryder who had saved her. And Ryder who was currently shouting obscenities as he beat the hell out of the other singer.

“Are you out of your fucking mind, Max?” Ryder landed a blow straight to the other man’s nose as fury raced through him like a freight train. “Are you really so fucking high you think you can fucking rape a girl?” A one-two combo straight to Max’s stomach. “Who the fuck do you think you are?” He gave up punching him—Max wasn’t putting up much of a fight—and started slamming him repeatedly against the wall. “Who. The. Fuck. Do. You. Think. You. Are?”

Max gurgled completely unintelligible reply. A warning went off in his head, told him to stop, but the blinding rage ripping through him made it impossible for him to listen. When he’d walked out of his dressing room and seen Max forcing himself on that girl, all he’d been able to think about was Carrie. About what some asshole in their local Battle of the Bands challenge had done to her. And how she’d never recovered. How she’d always blamed him for not being there for her. How he’d always blamed himself.

Pulling his fist back, he plunged it into Max’s face again. The guy was a total douche. This wasn’t the first time Ryder had thought he overstepped his bounds with a woman, but it was the first time it had been blatant enough that he could do something besides making a comment about it. The first time, that he’d ever seen, that Max had actually laid hands on an unwilling woman. The thought that this might have happened before and he just hadn’t seen it, had bile churning in his gut. He channeled it, continued whaling on Max. By the time he was done with him, the other singer would think three or four times before he ever put his hands on another unwilling woman.