But I still hadn’t done it.
Mainly because the girl was playing it that way. Every night when I came to bed, she was already asleep. And I never got another fucking chance.
The east coast was a mad cyclone of shows, interviews, appearances, signings. The tour was going fucking great and the album was selling better than I’d ever dreamed, but I could hardly keep my head straight. I was so booked up, half the time I didn’t even know what time it was or what town we were in or which fucking end was up. Jude and Mick were pretty much keeping my shit together. Dirty had a massive following out east and I wanted to see every fucking face of every fucking fan while I was here. That’s what I’d told Brody when the team set out to book this thing.
But somewhere around DC, I started regretting the frantic pace... right about the time it sunk through my hard skull that Katie was getting distant. For some reason, her head didn’t seem to be in the game anymore.
Her body was another thing. She did her job and she did it well. She played her part to a fucking T, and she looked amazing doing it. To all appearances she was still crazy about me, my devoted girlfriend, hanging out backstage, on my arm at every event, tongue wrestling me in every dark nightclub we hit up. Anytime I wanted it—in public—she was there, warm and ready. But she was holding something back… holding herself back, and I had no idea why.
The girl was doing everything I’d contracted her to do, and you’d think that would be enough for me. Apparently, it so fucking wasn’t.
I looked around the table, but my so-called girlfriend was nowhere to be seen.
Correction. She could definitely be seen. She could be seen by every person in the fucking place, standing up at the raised bar, her short skirt riding up her creamy white thighs as she leaned over to get the bartender’s attention. She was standing between Pepper, who was busy talking to some dude on his other side, and some random dipshit with a mohawk who was checking out her ass. As I watched, mohawk leaned in and accidentally-on-purpose bumped shoulders with her, struck up a conversation and bought her a drink.
I cranked back several fingers of bourbon, letting the liquor heat my blood.
I watched as haircut made some kind of brilliant fucking joke. I knew it was brilliant because Katie laughed. An honest-to-fuck Katie laugh, her head tipped back, her perfect little white teeth showing, her cheeks all rosy and her eyes sparkling in fucking delight. The guy was a goddamn comedian or some shit, because I hadn’t seen her laugh like that in days.
And I couldn’t fucking take it.
I didn’t absorb a word of what Mick or Raf or whoever was shouting on either side of me, or what anyone else at our table was saying, and our table was fucking loud. All I heard was that laugh. I heard it in my head, because I couldn’t actually hear it over the noise of the club and the heavy, bassed-out version of The Weeknd’s “Can’t Feel My Face” slamming against the walls and making Katie’s hips rock in that tiny skirt.
All I saw was Katie smiling up at that mohawked asshole while he smiled down at her thinking about how he was gonna get her on her back. And I could take him thinking he was gonna get her there. I could take him buying her a drink and hovering over her so close that his knuckles, wrapped around his beer, accidentally-but-fully-fucking-on-purpose brushed against her tit. I could even take it when he started introducing her to his friends like he knew her. Like he was here with her and I wasn’t.
But I couldn’t take that fucking laugh. That pure, unfettered Katie joy coming out of her perfect pink mouth.
He might as well have made her come right in front of me.
I slammed my glass down on the table, which Raf took to mean I needed a refill and sent another bourbon my way. I pounded it back and flexed my hand, taking a long look at the rings on my fist as Raf refilled me again.
Clearly, there were two moves I could make.
One, I could go over there and do something stupid like break this random asshole’s face with a fistful of metal. And see it all over the internet in about five seconds.
Two, I could sit here like a pussy and let Jude deal with it.
My best friend made the choice for me. Good thing, because I was about three seconds from making a major fucking scene I’d regret. But Jude, as always, had my back before I even knew I needed him to.
I watched him stroll over and insert his wide body into the narrow space between Katie and mohawk. Katie beamed her sweet smile right on up at Jude, but big fucking surprise, mohawk’s smile dropped right the fuck off his face like Jude had smacked it off. Then he backed the fuck out of there and turned his attention elsewhere. Not just a comedian, then; smart, too.
Jude ordered up some shots and Katie took the one he handed her. They toasted, shot back their booze, and headed back to our table, Katie apparently oblivious that some dude had just tried to get up her skirt and almost met with some broken teeth.
Jude deposited her in the chair next to me, where she’d barely spent five minutes in the hour since we’d arrived. Her smile vanished. A small frown appeared in its place when she looked at me, her eyebrows pinching together. She leaned in. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said, sipping my drink. “Not a thing. Just watching my girl get a drink.”
She stared at me a moment, the little frown twitching at the corners of her mouth. Then she leaned back, settling into her chair as she looked out over the dance floor, tapping her heels to the music.
I leaned closer to be sure she heard me. “That dude know you’re here with me?”
She turned to me again, the frown deepening. “What dude?”
“Dude with the fucking mohawk.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widened a bit. I didn’t know what the fuck that meant, but I didn’t like it. “He had this cool pattern up the side.” She made a swirly motion with her finger up the side of her head.
“Does he know you’re here with me?”
“I am here with you,” she said. Then she got up and wiggled her sexy ass onto the edge of my seat. She pressed up against me and peered at me over her shoulder. “See? Look at me, doing my job.”
She sipped her drink, her eyes never leaving mine, and there it was again. The distance, even though she was pressed so tight against me I could feel the heat of her bare thigh through my jeans.
I put my arm around her. She relaxed against me, her body wedged into my side, where she stayed for the rest of the night.
* * *
“The fuck is this?”
I tossed Katie’s sketchbook at her feet. She’d just come out of the bathroom wrapped in a hotel bathrobe, her hair all glossy and wet. I stood there in my underwear, staring at her, half-hard at the mere smell of her all warm and moist from the shower.
She stared at the sketchbook, open to the most recent sketch—a dude with a mohawk and some twirly pattern shaved up the side of his head.
Then she looked at me, scanning me from head to toe with her big blue-green eyes, apparently unimpressed as shit with whatever she was seeing.
I was drunk. Pretty much because I was pissed off, for no real reason, and I was tired, and annoyed and fucking jealous, which was not a feeling I was well-acquainted with or fucking thrilled to be feeling at all. And yes, I fucking knew that drunk was not the way to approach a conversation that was sure to go down all wrong, unless I wanted to make it worse.
I didn’t want to make it worse. But I did want to fight. Or fuck.
No. Actually, I really, really, really wanted to fuck.
I wanted to fuck Katie Bloom.
Instead I’d just snooped through her sketchbook, which she’d left out and had obviously been sketching in. While I took my shower. Alone. With the image of Katie laughing in my head… standing there at the bar talking to some stranger with a dumbass mohawk and smiling like I hadn’t seen her smile in my direction in days.
Fuck.
If anyone could’ve seen it.
Rock star Jesse Mayes jerks off in the shower, again, because he promised a ch
ick he’s not even sleeping with that he wouldn’t fuck anyone else.
Fucking idiot.
“That’s my sketchbook,” Katie said, still staring at me.
I flicked my chin at the dude on the page. “That guy know you’re my girlfriend?”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. She was getting mad, I was pretty sure, which only made me fucking madder. “I’m not your girlfriend,” she said.
“Wrong answer.” I stalked over to her and got close, looking her in the eye. She looked annoyed, and worse, fucking concerned, like she was worried I’d trip in my drunk-ass state and break my head open. “The deal is you’re fucking mine for the next four weeks. That means your ass belongs to me. That means you don’t flirt with dudes in bars when my back is turned.”
She looked taken aback, and worst thing yet: hurt.
“You’re drunk, Jesse. Let’s talk in the morning.”
“Is this about me walking in on you getting busy with your little pink friend?”
She blinked at me, looking embarrassed all over again. “What the hell does this have to do with that?”
“That’s what I’m asking. You’ve barely smiled at me since.”
“Well, I’m sorry that I haven’t smiled at you enough. I didn’t know there was a daily quota I was supposed to hit.”
“So are you pissed because we didn’t fuck, or because we almost fucked?”
“What?”
“You told me to stop. What did you want me to do, keep going?”
“No,” she huffed, but that looked like one hell of a lie.
“Well, something’s been bothering you. You ever gonna tell me what it is?” I leaned closer, until my nose almost bumped hers. “Or is it because you were about to lose the bet?”
“That’s not true.”
“No? You weren’t about to lose your shit if Raf hadn’t knocked on the door?”
Her little nostrils flared, her cheeks turning pink for an entirely different reason than the one I usually liked. “You were the one who was about to lose your shit. I was in control.”
“Right.”
“You were the one who started flirting with me at dinner. I was more than happy to go back to the hotel alone and finish myself off with my little pink friend. You were the one who stalked me there and tongue-fucked my face in the elevator.”
“Tongue-fucked you?” I laughed. “Sweetheart, I tongue-fuck you, I’m not doing it to your face.”
She stared at me.
Then she took a deep breath and let it out through her teeth, slowly, like she was resisting the urge to strangle me. “I didn’t flirt with that guy intentionally,” she said calmly. “He was funny. I laughed.”
“He wanted to fuck you.”
Now she looked pissed again. “So? Half the women in the room wanted to fuck you. And the other half wanted to blow you when their boyfriends weren’t looking. And it’s like that in every room we’re in.”
I stood back, all thought grinding to a halt. Complete fucking traffic jam in my head.
I rubbed my hand through my hair, feeling really fucking tired. “That bother you?”
She wrapped her robed arms around herself. “Um, yeah, Jesse. It kinda makes me look like a chump.”
“How?”
“Because you eat it up. You flirt, you hug, you sign breasts. And I just stand there.”
I stared at her. She stared back, her mouth curved in an angry pout.
“Well… maybe I need to pay more attention.” I blinked at those plump pink lips, feeling like a complete dick with a side of drunken asshole.
“Maybe you do.”
She stared at me.
I stared back.
Then she turned and stalked back into the bathroom.
I kicked her sketchbook across the room, then slumped down on the bed. I stripped off my underwear, burrowed under the sheet, and waited for her to come back as I fought the spinning sensation, the waves of sleep and the echoes of “Can’t Feel My Face” throbbing through my skull in an endless loop.
The next thing I registered was Katie, standing next to the bed in her bathrobe looking down at me, silhouetted in the light from the bathroom, which was way too fucking bright.
“Katie,” I heard myself say.
My eyes were shut when she got into bed. I felt her warmth and smelled her cherry-vanilla smell. She laid her head on the pillow next to me and sighed.
And even in the dark, in the ringing silence, I felt the distance.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
* * *
Katie
My fake boyfriend was hungover.
It was actually kind of cute. It also took the edge off my frustration over what happened last night.
I watched him drag his sexy ass out of bed, naked, and weave his way to the bathroom, stretching out his sculpted body as he went. I’d never seen him like this before, all groggy and stumbly. He tripped a little, mumbled and slammed the door and I just grinned. It was the first time since the start of the tour that I was out of bed before him.
He emerged a few minutes later. “Room service.” He looked at me with one eye open, the other one squeezed shut like the light was killing him. “Omelet,” he croaked. “Juice.”
I gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I’m on it. Take a shower and don’t break anything.” Then I added sunnily, “You’ve got a show tonight.”
Confused, he struggled to open the other eye and focus on me.
“Just kidding!”
He groaned and tried to grope me but I dodged the clumsy attempt. He grumbled and disappeared into the bathroom.
After his shower he looked a hell of a lot better. At least he had both eyes open and he managed to get dressed. He didn’t say much. He ate half his omelet, then Jude showed up and to my surprise, they went to the gym.
Which left me some time to evaluate as I finished my breakfast. In the morning light, things looked a little clearer than they had last night.
Despite my recent Sahara-sized romantic dry spell, I wasn’t totally clueless. I knew Jesse had to be on edge over our, um… fucked-up situation. It couldn’t be easy on a guy making out with a girl every night, then sleeping alone, or worse yet, right next to that same girl, and not being able to fuck her. Especially for a guy who wasn’t used to having to wait—as he put it, for any fucking girl. It probably felt like he was being punished, when he hadn’t even done anything wrong.
I kept using the excuse that I was tired from the crazy pace of life on the road so I could go to sleep before he got any ideas about groping me. Which was kind of true—I was always ready to fall into bed by the end of the night, but I was definitely avoiding another steamy make out in private, because there was no way in hell I could stop him if the man started licking my nipples again.
So far he’d been a gentleman about it, keeping his hands on his side of the bed and letting me sleep, which was just kind of making it worse. Maybe this would be easier if he got pushy and gave me a reason to tell him to fuck off. Then I’d have a convenient excuse to run away and avoid the whole problem.
I was pretty good at avoiding things. It was kind of my go-to survival mechanism.
But I didn’t want to run away from Jesse. I wanted to stay, even though I was on the verge of going batshit with desire. He was totally right; I was upset that he hadn’t fucked me yet. I was upset that if I gave in and fucked him, I’d regret it. I was upset that this couldn’t just be easy, and I was upset with myself for making it so hard. I was annoyed as fuck that he was still getting his flirt on with his groupies night and day, right in front of me. I had epic blue clit, I had no idea how the guy felt about me other than, apparently, finding me fuckable, and I was terrified of letting myself get carried away over the man’s awesomeness and ending up with my heart smashed all to hell.
And now he was upset because some dude in a bar bought me a drink?
Seriously. I couldn’t even begin to get a read on the man. Though I could admit to myself that seeing him all bent ou
t of shape about it did give me a little glimmer of hope that he actually liked having me around, and not just because of whatever I was doing for his career.
The problem was I still didn’t know what he wanted, other than for me to do my job, and maybe do him on the side.
Was he thinking that through, though? Like what was going to happen after he fucked me?
And after the tour ended?
Shit.
I pushed my unfinished plate away. I couldn’t even eat when I fast-forwarded to that. Because the truth was I had no idea how I was going to say goodbye to Jesse Mayes.
* * *
I spent the rest of the day shopping and sketching while Jesse went to a couple of interviews. I had dinner with some of the guys at the hotel, then everyone piled onto the buses and we spent the evening on the road. We were headed to Florida for a couple of shows, and things between Jesse and I seemed okay. He was pretty quiet, a little reserved, but he sat next to me and kept giving me his smoldering fuck-me eyes, so I was pretty sure things were about as normal as ever between us, if not still a little tense.
By now I’d realized that things were always going to be a little tense, unless we tore off each other’s clothes and fucked for about a day and a half. Which I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about doing. And every time Jesse did something remotely nice, like passed me a bottle of water or asked if I wanted something to eat or told Pepper to shut up when I was trying to get a word in, I wanted him just a little more.
Was it possible to overdose on desire? Like some kind of hormonal overload that makes you pass out or something? Because every time I thought I’d reached that place where I wanted Jesse Mayes more than it was possible to want anyone or anything, he managed to turn my crank just a little more.
What a lovely, fucked up kind of torture.
I texted Devi to tell her, My vagina is in love, and we haven’t even done it yet.
And my best friend texted back, That’s one stupid vagina.
Which made me laugh so hard I almost cried, and everyone looked at me and wanted to know what was so fucking funny. Especially Jesse.
Rock Star Romance Ultimate Volume 2 Page 47