1. Dylan

CHAPTER 1

DYLAN

It was a slow Saturday night at Tryst, but the man who just walked in the door looked like he had the potential to make my whole night. He was tall and tanned, with tousled brown hair and thick-rimmed black glasses, both doing their best to obscure his red-rimmed eyes. He looked like he’d either been crying or not sleeping. Maybe both. Lord knew I was familiar with the look. It was one I’d been wearing myself since my parents cut me off from their financial support and I’d been struggling to keep my head above water.

New York City was expensive, even more so without the cushy monthly deposits heading my way, but losing out on their money was my choice and mine alone. I was a trust fund kid, born of wealthy parents with a well-off lineage that traced back more generations than I’d ever cared to learn about. It didn’t matter, because my future was never going to be in banking and finance. I had no interest in taking over the family business. It was my parents’ fault, though. If they didn’t want me to fall in love with music, they shouldn’t have put such an emphasis on it when I was younger.

As an adult, I understood that the years of music and art lessons had only meant to make them look like they cared about me. The real intent of tapping into my musical talent was so I could make them look good to their friends. Dylan Michael Rivers—the savant, the concert pianist, the composer.

I was never meant to be Dylan Rivers—occasional bartender and dive bar guitarist. But writing my own songs, lyrics and all, had been the only thing about my childhood and teenage years that had ever felt special, that had ever been mine. Deciding to apply to Juilliard had caused the largest fight we’d ever had, but somehow my mom convinced my dad it wouldn’t hurt to entertain the idea.

”Let him study music,” she’d said. “He can learn the business after he graduates.”

It was an agreement my father wasn’t willing to make, but I applied to Juilliard anyway. I got accepted on my own merits, but the only chance I had at covering tuition was getting my parents total buy-in. It was, after all, their money. The day I delivered my acceptance letter to my dad was the second biggest argument we’d ever had.

It was a fight I didn’t win.

I had to walk away from Juilliard and into an internship with the top VP at the company. The concession was that I’d be allowed to try and make a go of music—on the side—while leaning the ins and outs of the job. If at any time it was reported back that I was slacking with what he demanded of me at work, my dad would cut me off. I had so much tied up with my parents’ money…the rent, the instruments, the living expenses, the spending money, the lifestyle. I had no choice but to agree and give in.

Juilliard was a pipe dream.

I tried my best to carry on both parts of my life for as long as I could, even though finance sucked the life out of me. It was the boring monotony and the bleary finance reports day in and day out that started to wear away at me first. But I swallowed it down and persevered, committed to getting though as many gigs as I could land and then figuring out how to tell my dad I was ready to walk away from my inheritance.

It didn’t take much time for the misery of the internship and the weight of that expectation to overwhelm me. Music turned from a passion to an escape to a reminder that I had no idea who I was or who I wanted to be. I realized there wasn’t room in my life for me to be Dylan Rivers the musician and Dylan Rivers, doting and responsible inheritor of the Lang empire.

Then came the third biggest fight, the termination of my internship and the freezing of my bank accounts.

My roommate—and best friend—Tate Barlowe wasn’t anything like me. He wasn’t from money and he barely had any. He worked over forty hours a week to make ends meet, and he worked hard. There was no way I could tell him what happened with my parents. I didn’t want him to lose his half of our apartment and I definitely didn’t want him to worry about overpaying to make my ends meet. But bartending shifts weren’t quite cutting it anymore and the gigs had dried up.

I was on the verge of crawling back to my parents to ask forgiveness when the answer to that month’s rent walked through the front doors of the bar where I worked most weekends. Sad Eyes took a seat at the bar, setting a black matte motorcycle helmet down beside him.

Oh, so he was dangerous.

I slid my way down the bar, pushing my hand through my own tangled hair and plastering on what I hoped was a flirty enough smile to get me sufficient tips to not have to overdraft my bank account again. He barely looked up at me, and my smile faltered. Maybe this was going to be harder than I’d initially thought, but if there was anything I’d learned since going broke, it was how to use my best assets to my advantage.

“Hey there.” I slid my hand toward his elbow, which caused him to look up at me, just like I’d intended.

I hadn’t planned for the dark intensity of his stare to take my breath away. I choked on air, which was very not sexy, then did my best to recover and give him another flirty smile.

“What can I get you?” I asked.

He cocked his head to the side, giving me a onceover so thorough it felt like his fingers had actually tugged at the hem of my shirt and the cuff s of my jeans to inspect what was beneath. Heat pooled low in my stomach, which was a relief. At least flirting with him the rest of the night would be easy.

“Dirty martini,” he said simply, holding my gaze and not looking away.

My breath caught again, and I gaped a little like a fish. Turning away from him was like fighting against a physical force field tying us together, but I managed it. I made his martini, dropped in a skewer of olives, and gave him another million dollar smile.

“I’m Dylan,” I told him. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

He poured the entire drink down his throat in one swallow, not even flinching.

“I need to get laid,” he said with a self-deprecating laugh, “but I don’t think you can help me there, so I’ll have another martini.”

I could help him there.

I would have helped him there, even if my boss, Marigold, wouldn’t have approved of it. She had one rule at Tryst, and it was don’t fuck customers. It had been an easy rule to maintain, but I’d also never had a customer look as fuckable as this one did.

“I’m sure you won’t have a hard time with that one,” I said.

The corner of his mouth quirked into a wry smirk that fell away as he shrugged at me, sliding the empty martini glass toward my side of the bar.

A group of young hipsters came in, blowing in the smells of smoke and smog behind them. They headed for the other side of the bar while I finished shaking up the second martini. When I set it on a napkin for him, he gave me a curt nod, but otherwise didn’t move. I assumed that meant he wasn’t going to drink it like a shot.

It took me fifteen minutes to get through the drink order for the new group of guests, and when I made it back to the depressed motorcycle guy, he hadn’t even touched his drink. He had eaten the olives, though, and the toothpick hung out of his mouth looking far sexier than it had any right to do.

“Any of those girls suit your fancy?” I asked, coming to check in on him. We both turned toward the group I’d just served. “I’m happy to put in a good word for you.”

“They’re not my type,” he said simply. “Can I have more olives?”

The heat in my stomach swirled up the base of my spine, and I skewered him three more olives.

“What’s your type?” I asked.

“Sturdier,” he said, giving me another long look. “Less feminine.”

“There’s men in the group.” My voice cracked.

“There is,” he agreed, licking his lips. Slowly, he took the empty toothpick out of his mouth and chomped down on a fresh olive, chewing it thoughtfully. He swallowed, throat working, and I tried my best not to look, but it was impossible to not.

The man was gorgeous.

“Not your type?” I asked.

“I have…” He trailed off and sighed. “Dating isn’t my scene.”

“Hookups only?”

He looked up at the ceiling, sliding another olive into this mouth. I followed his stare upward, even though I’d seen the painted black ceiling more times than I could count. Sometimes it was clear, sometimes it was a mess obscured by barely restrained tears when I’d had a shitty tip night.

The man took a healthy swallow of his drink and smacked his lips, leaning back on the stool like he’d just made up his mind about something.

“I think it’s time to seek out a professional.”

“Pardon?”

He took another drink and reached into his front pocket, pulling out an absolutely-stacked money clip. Throwing a fifty down on the table, he stood up and stretched, revealing a muscled strip of skin above his waistline. His belt was Gucci.

“Watch my helmet?” he asked. “I need to use the restroom.”

“Right.”

I grabbed the crisp fifty, the only imperfection was the fold down the middle from where it had bent in his money clip. Shoving the bill into my pocket, I watched quietly as he slid the helmet from the empty seat beside him to the one he’d been sitting at. He didn’t even give me a second glance, taking my word as my promise or something.

He walked away and I tried to not stare at the way the muscles of his back stretched and pulled at the material of his t-shirt, but even in the dim light of the bar, it was impossible to not notice the musculature or the strength of him. I blinked slowly, giving myself five seconds to imagine him naked before I went to check on the other group at the end of the bar. But as soon as I closed my eyes and pictured him sprawled naked on a bed, one arm bent behind his head and his legs spread, other hand stroking up what I conveniently imagined to be a thick and long cock, his voice rang through my head.

“I think it’s time to seek out a professional,” he’d said.

Three things happened after that, almost at the same time.

The new group of customers finished their drinks and stood up. One of the girls dropped a wad of cash on the bar, and the whole lot of them walked out. Marigold hated when people did that, but she was generally a go with the flow kind of boss—and bartender—so I didn’t try to stop them. I waited until they were gone, then grabbed the cash from the bar. It was dirtier and stickier than the fifty I’d just pocketed, and after I counted it out, I tallied up the drinks on the till and found they’d paid the amount to the dime.

Not a tip in sight.

I screwed my eyes shut, stabbing my fingertips against my eyelids to try and push back the tears that threatened to spill. The fifty from the hot and sad man at the other end of the bar was not going to be enough to cover my rent, and while I knew he would pay well, I still didn’t trust it.

I bussed the empty glasses from the stingy group, my earlier thought stopping me in my tracks.

I knew he would pay well.

I knew he would pay well.

He wanted to fuck and I would have done it for free, Marigold’s rules be damned at this point, but he’d also said…

“I think it’s time to seek out a professional.”

He was still in the restroom, so I made a split-second decision that was going to change the rest of my life. I didn’t want to think too hard about it. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and reactivated the hookup app that I’d only installed to try and help Tate find hookups in the first place. He and I had spent plenty of time on the app and we’d both become familiar with the abbreviations and the codes people used to explain what they wanted and what they were looking for.

I’d been hours away from crawling back to my parents and telling them they were right, that I couldn’t cut it as a musician after all. But instead, with shaking fingers, I typed out a new bio and slid my phone back into my pocket.

The rich man I’d been waiting on returned to his seat, sliding the helmet back to the side so he could sit down. His ass had barely hit the stool when his phone pinged with a recognizable alert tone.

I dropped my phone by the cash register, glancing at him in time to see his eyes go wide at the sound. He must not have realized the ringer had been on, which made me laugh, so I turned away from him, not able to bear the sight of his face when he saw my profile come up in his radius. I hadn’t thought my plan through at all, but I was in need of money and if he was willing to pay, sleeping with him wouldn’t be a hardship. I could get my rent paid and hopefully I’d get an orgasm out of it.

He looked like he knew how to fuck.

Minutes passed, and I finally had to head down toward his end of the bar. His second martini was empty and his money clip was sitting on the bar top. He drummed his fingertips against the monogrammed silver metal, head cocked to the side as I approached.

“Did you want another drink?” I asked, voice hoarse.

He pulled six bills out of the stack, all of them hundreds.

“I’m good,” he said, standing up and collecting his things. “Keep the change.”

I pocketed the money, disappointed that he hadn’t taken me up on the offer, but not let down that he’d paid me over six hundred dollars for less than forty dollars’ worth of drinks. I took everything to the cash register to ring the tab in just in time to see my phone screen flash and go dark.

I swiped the screen open, an unread message alert in the corner of my screen. His profile picture was a zoomed-in crop, showing not much more besides his hand around a glass of whiskey and a muscular forearm that I’d already spent half the night drooling over. I turned quickly, looking back at the door, but he was long gone. Outside, I heard a motorcycle engine roar to life, and I tapped his avatar, loading the message on my screen.

It was two simple words that were enough to change everything.

“I’ll host.”