Scorpio Sons 1: Colton (4 page)

CHAPTER THREE

One week later, LOS ANGELES

Alyssa walked out of the recording studio, exhausted but happy. The hours had been long and monotonously repetitive. Every riff had to be sung and played over and over again until it was pitch- perfect. Each verse had to blend with the next, so it sounded as if sung continuously as one song. The slightest variation and it would sound like what it was: a patchwork of sections sewn together by expert sound engineers.

But today they'd done well, finishing up the last of the songs for her first album, which would be released just before Christmas. Now she could go back to her hotel and prepare for her evening of practise for the semi-finals of
Star Quality
. She wished she could just drop out. The only reason she'd entered that damned competition was to get the record contract. Now she had it, standing up in front of those inane judges and listening to them tear her songs apart was not high on her list of favourite things to do.

None of the judges were song-writers. None of them knew what it was to create from the heart. They were entertainers; washed-up entertainers, who got paid to be as cutting and caustic as possible. The public loved their pound of flesh. It was the modern day version of the gladiatorial games. The audience got to hold their thumbs up or down to determine if the contestants lived or died.

Because, let's face it, for a musician, success
was
life. If they couldn't make a go of their career they would need to fall back on their "day job." And that was little better than death.

Alyssa's day job was supposed to have been law. She'd let her parents harangue her into going to college so she could be a lawyer like her father. Her music had been a pipe-dream, something she was allowed to indulge in only to give her a rounded personality. It was not supposed to be her career.

And she'd gone along with their logical arguments. She knew that few people cracked the big time. That it didn't matter how talented you were, unless you got the support of the right people, you didn't have a chance. And you had to be thick-skinned, tenacious, and willing to scramble over the backs of other talented artists to get to the top.

The girl she'd been when she'd enrolled for her freshman year at Clearmont College had been none of those things. So she'd settled in to do what was expected of her, what was the most sensible direction her life could take. But from almost the first moment she stepped across its threshold, Clearmont had done all in its power to convince her that she was not cut out for the life of college student or lawyer.

She'd met Jarrod during orientation. At the time she didn't know that he made a habit of using orientation as his own personal smorgasbord, picking from the collection of eager young things the freshman who would be his for the year.

Of course, she hadn't played her part the way it had been written for her. She'd refused to have sex with him, even after weeks of being treated like a princess. Why she'd refused, she didn't know at the time. Her virginity wasn't some precious commodity she was determined to keep safe for her husband. Had she felt like sleeping with Jarrod or any of her boyfriends in high school, she would have. It was just that she never wanted to.

Her friends had called her frigid. And at the time she'd thought that maybe she was.

Because of Jarrod, her time at Clearmont had been hell, culminating with the night of the attempted rape. That night had changed everything for her: How she saw herself, what she wanted in life, everything. She told people that it was an existential moment when she'd looked death in the face. Because her saviour had been right: Those guys would have left her there to freeze to death after they finished with her. And she probably would have let herself die, too shattered to even try to survive such a traumatic event.

But no, maybe that wasn't true, in light of what she discovered about herself that night.

It had taken a long time to sort through the pieces of the puzzle. The College and her parents had wanted her to process it with a therapist. But there were elements of that night that she couldn't
share, even in the confidence, with a paid professional.

So, yes, there was an existential element to what had happened. It had been a wake-up call to do something more with her life. From that moment on she no longer felt as if she had her whole life to get around to doing what she loved. She felt she might die tomorrow and all her talents and creativity would die with her. That made her realise that Law was her father's dream for her, not her own. He wanted to put her name up on his law practice plaque alongside his own. She had no such desire, no matter how much she loved him.

In fact, she had no desire to get a college education at all. She wanted to write music and perform it, letting it lead her where she needed to go so that her true self could be fully revealed.

Which led her to some interesting home-truths about that true self: That night, she'd fought those guys with everything she had in her. Up until then, if she'd considered it at all, she would have said that she couldn't hurt a fly, even in self-defence. That night she'd kicked, bitten and scratched, trying to get free. If she'd had a gun she would have used it.

That her hero had killed one of her attackers and badly injured the other two should have horrified her. It didn't. In fact, she hadn't been in a rush to call 911 after the attack, as she told her hero she wanted to do. She'd stood with him for as long as he remained, letting him excite her senses, while the bodies were scattered around them in the snow like discarded trash. She'd challenged him not to go, not so he could tell the police what had happened, but so he'd stay with her a little longer.

Which led her to the other major discovery about herself: She wasn't frigid. In those moments when he'd leaned in and sniffed her, growling words into her ear, she'd wanted him in the most primitive way possible. Maybe it was the violence, the danger, the brush with death, all of it, that left her primed for life and procreation.

Or maybe it was him.

Which led to the final piece in her life-changing puzzle: Him – the speed he'd used to take down that first guy; the power that had thrown the next one against a tree; and the strength it had taken to break the third one's jaw with one punch. The police said he was probably an ex-soldier, a SEAL or the like, with special skills in hand-to-hand combat. It probably just
looked
like super-human abilities to her uneducated eye.

The glowing, golden cat's eyes she'd seen? Well, that she kept to herself, because who would believe her anyway?

But she knew what she saw. And it wasn't quite human.

And, whatever he was, called to something deeply buried inside her; something feral; something untamed and dangerous. Was it any wonder she'd never been overly attracted to any man before him?

At the time she'd denied it. At the time she'd been horrified by her body's arousal. How could she want to have sex when she'd nearly been raped and three men lay injured or dead around her?

No matter how reprehensible it was, she knew that if he'd made one move towards her, she would have given him everything. Not because he was the best looking man she'd ever seen, because he wasn't. Not because she liked him as a person, because she didn’t even know him. Not even out of gratitude for what he'd saved her from. No, it was none of that. She would have given him everything because she was his.

And didn't that go against every one of the women's lib beliefs her mother had drummed into her.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, instead of taking what she unknowingly offered, he'd walked away, leaving her to deal with the blowback alone. For a while the police had even thought she was the killer. Only when the crime scene investigators proved that there was another man on the scene was she allowed to go home. It took more than another week before either of the two survivors from that night could corroborate her story.

By then Jarrod Hastings was dead, a suspected suicide following his part in her attack. Of course, they didn't know Jarrod the way she did. A man with no conscience would have felt no guilt for his part in that night. No, Jarrod died by the same hand that had saved her. Her hero had asked about those messages and knew the name of the man who sent them.

And that was another thing she didn't tell the police. Because she was glad Jarrod was dead and didn't want her hero blamed.

Did that make her an evil person?

Did that make the man who killed two men for her an evil person?

The Alyssa from before that night would have thought so. The Alyssa after it? Not so much.

Did that mean she thought vigilantes were heroes? No. But they weren't evil. There were all shades of grey between right and wrong.

So everything had changed that night. As soon as the police cleared her of any wrong-doing she'd packed her bags and gone home to Portland. After licking her wounds, she'd made the announcement that she was moving to Los Angeles to follow a music career. Her parents had pleaded and begged with her to wait a little while longer before making such a decision. She wasn't thinking straight, they explained patiently.

But she
was
thinking straight; straighter than she'd ever done in her life. So, with their financial help, she took a small apartment in downtown Los Angeles and began her slow and torturous climb to the top.

And finally, after four years, she was there. The world, as the saying went, was her oyster. People loved her music, loved her songs, and loved her.

But she wasn't foolish enough to think that kind of love was permanent. She'd be an idiot to believe the hype that had been generated about her. Even the attention of the charismatic and powerful Alzhir Akaman wasn't real or lasting. In many ways he reminded her of Jarrod, although he hadn't cancelled her record deal just because she refused to sleep with him. But there was something predatory about the man, and she trusted him and his declarations of love about as far as she could throw him, especially with the things she knew about him.

She barely noticed her bodyguards as they stepped in on either side of her and shepherded her into the stretch limo awaiting her at the curb. They came with the territory. If those men were attractive she hadn't noticed. She rarely noticed if men were attractive since that night four years ago.

The difference between Alyssa, pre and post-attack? She was still celibate, but at least she knew she wasn't frigid or gay.

No, she just belonged to a man she would probably never see again. Thank God her music was her life. Because otherwise she'd be weighed down by the loss of him and it would likely have destroyed her.

"Good session, Miss Aimes?" asked her driver politely as he started up the car.

"Very productive, thank you. What was the weather like out here in the real world?" Being in a studio most of the day under artificial lights, air conditioning and surrounded by soundproofed walls made her feel disconnected from the world. It had become her habit to ask about the weather and news highlights when she left that cocoon, as a way to ground herself in what was real for others.

He gave a little laugh. "It's California, Miss Aimes. The sun always shines here."

Compared to Portland, that was certainly the truth. But she still missed home. Los Angeles just didn't feel quite real to her, even after four years.

One of her bodyguards sat up front with the driver and the other sat at her side. She'd attempted polite conversation with them during their first few days on the job, but their stony expressions and lack of focus on anything but potential danger, made for poor conversations. So now she ignored them as the limo glided effortlessly out into the early afternoon traffic.

And she continued to ignore them, until the limo suddenly swerved sharply to the right and the brakes started screaming. Then, she glanced anxiously from one stony face to the other, trying to determine what was happening.

As they came to a jolting standstill, the bodyguard next to her drew his gun and opened the door.

"What's going on?" she asked in a scared little voice she hadn't heard since the night of her attack.

"Stay in the car, Miss. The limo was cut off intentionally."

Cut off? Why? Maybe there was an accident ahead? Maybe there was a good reason they'd been cut off?

But as she heard gunshots erupt and the windshield shatter, she knew that there was no good reason for them being cut off. They were under attack.
She
was under attack. But why? It was way too organised for a crazed fan, even if she had any of those.

"Get down!" ordered the driver, who'd followed his own suggestion by flattening himself across the front seat at the first burst of gunfire.

Before she had a chance to do as she was told, the back door flew open and a face she never expected to see again peered in at her. He was crouching low, shoulders hunched protectively, as he offered her his hand. But for all his huddled posture, to her he looked like the most heroic man she'd ever seen.

If he'd said, "Come with me if you want to live," she couldn't have been more entranced.

"Come on. Your guards are down. It's not safe here," he growled urgently at her instead, looking and sounding so much better than Reece from
Terminator 1
.