Dirty Boys: Bad Boy Rock Star Romance Box Set

by Jade C. Jamison

  “So maybe you could someday if you wanted to?”

  “Yeah, with the right doctor…and guy.” I looked up in his eyes. Holy shit. Was my brain thinking Scott really could be the one?

  Rather than dwell on it, I scooped the eggs on two plates, giving Scott the majority. My appetite was gone again, but I’d try to eat a little. Keeping one piece of toast for myself, I gave him the other two before we sat at the table. I didn’t even put many peaches on my plate, but Scott loaded up. Before taking a bite, he said, “We should probably keep using condoms just to be safe, though—since your doctor never figured it out for sure.”

  “Oh, yeah, of course. It’s a good habit.” And maybe I should look into getting on the pill, too. It wouldn’t hurt anything.

  We were quiet for a while. The silence was good for me, but I wondered what he was thinking. Maybe this was the end, and I didn’t even know it yet.

  Scott looked over at my plate. “Is that all you’re gonna eat?”

  “Yeah, I’m not too hungry.” Since my appetite was already shot, it was maybe time to delve into another delicate topic. I felt so much better about Jim in relation to Scott and me, but I didn’t quite understand their relationship. “If you don’t mind me asking, how long have you and Jim been friends?”

  Scott swallowed the bite in his mouth before answering. “A long time, Casey.” Sighing, he picked up his coffee cup. “I know it probably doesn’t make sense to you, but Jim’s more like a brother to me.”

  My heart started beating a little faster, as if I were a rabbit being chased by a famished coyote. “You’re right. I can’t see it. I know it’s none of my business, but I’d love for you to explain it to me.”

  Scott polished off the coffee in his mug. “Let’s just say…I didn’t have the best childhood. I had a mom who had a string of boyfriends she cared about more than she did me. And when I finally ran away, Child Protection was going to put me in a foster home—but Jim’s parents took me in. So he really is like a brother to me.”

  Suddenly, I felt chilled on that warm day. Now I knew why Scott didn’t talk about his family—and I also realized that maybe, just maybe, my own mother wasn’t so bad. Overbearing, nosy, pushy—but she loved me. I knew that.

  Poor Scott, though.

  But I knew he wouldn’t want pity.

  My voice was quiet as Scott got up to pour more coffee in his cup. “How long did you live with them?”

  “For a couple of years.”

  “Why didn’t you stay with David’s family?”

  The lopsided grin on his face said so much as he returned to the table. “I think I sometimes scared my aunt. I had a pretty violent temper as a kid, and I was this size back when I was in high school. She didn’t think she could handle me if I got out of control. But she at least had me over for holidays and stuff.”

  I felt bad that I’d asked but also touched that he’d shared that with me. Reaching over, I touched his hand. “I don’t ever want to come between you and Jim.”

  “I know he’s too much sometimes—but he promised to behave.” Scott put down his fork and gazed at me. “He knows how much you mean to me.”

  Goosebumps covered my arms and the hairs in my ears perked up. “What?”

  “I said he knows how much you mean to me.”

  The corners of my lips twitched. “I don’t think I know.”

  “That’s because I’m not very good at showing it. Casey, I don’t even know how to describe how you make me feel—but I’m starting to wonder if I’d be able to breathe anymore without you around.”

  Whoa. That was heavy.

  A little too heavy.

  Swallowing, I searched his eyes. My words sounded weak. “I think you’d do just fine, Scott Wardell. You were breathing just fine before I got here.”

  He squinted his eyes before looking at his plate to scoop up some eggs. Damn it. I always managed to ruin everything.

  I touched his hand. “Scott, that was…so…” I lowered my head, trying to find the words. “I’m really sorry. Maybe you didn’t notice, but I might as well just come out and say it. I’m a little, uh, gun shy. And a lot commitment-phobic. I don’t think that’ll last forever—but that’s what you’re dealing with.”

  And Scott was meant to be just a rebound—yet he was turning out to be way more, way too fast.

  “Why don’t you tell me why?”

  It was only fair. We’d already tackled a lot of difficult topics. Why not one more? I took a deep breath, feeling like I really needed a smoke. “My marriage wasn’t a fairytale. I married him for the wrong reasons and stayed longer than I should have. And he never beat me…but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t abusive.”

  Scott sat up so slightly that if I hadn’t been paying attention, I might not have noticed it. “He hurt you?”

  I blinked, looking down at my hands, my breath coming harder than it should have. But I nodded.

  “But I left…so he can’t do it again.”

  Scott stroked my cheek with the back of his fingers. “I’ll never let him hurt you again.”

  I searched his eyes, knowing he meant those words. I rubbed my cheek against his knuckles before kissing them.

  Enough, though. If we kept talking this way, I was going to want to throw myself on my bed and cry my eyes out.

  “Eat your eggs before they get cold.”

  “Bossy.”

  After two soft breaths, I had to say it. “Thank you, Scott.”

  “For what?”

  I didn’t know exactly what I was thanking him for, but I was grateful just the same. “For everything.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  That July in Winchester had to have broken some temperature records. It was so fucking hot that not only did I buy a few fans for the house, but I even considered investing in a swamp cooler. Instead, I wound up spending lots of nights at Scott’s house, because they had central air.

  It made me never want to leave.

  Well, that wasn’t the only reason.

  One night after making love, we lay in his bed as he held me, stroking my arm. We’d had many evenings like it where we stayed up way too late, but between lovemaking and sharing things about ourselves, losing a little shuteye was worth it.

  “I sold another painting.”

  “No shit.”

  “Yeah. I feel so stupid that I didn’t ever try it before.”

  “Don’t, Case. You might not have had this chance in Denver.”

  “True.” I adjusted my head against his chest.

  “How are those tattoo drawings coming?”

  I turned so I could look him in the face, but his eyes were closed. “Oh, my God, Scott. The one I drew yesterday would look great on your back.”

  “You can’t stand that I don’t have anything there, huh?”

  “Rock stars have tats everywhere.”

  He snorted, but I could tell he was getting sleepy. “I’m hardly a rock star.”

  I kissed his chest. “Oh, but you could be.”

  “Nah.”

  “Seriously, Scott. You don’t really want to cook at Bob’s the rest of your life, do you?”

  “What’s so bad about it? I don’t think I could make as much as I do cooking anywhere else in town.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “I’m good at it. Is it my favorite thing to do? No. But it pays the bills. It’s better than some of the kids I graduated with—selling drugs or using. Or like another kid who left town to work in one of the mines at Copper Creek. He died in an explosion a year after graduation. So cooking’s not so bad.”

  “But…you love drumming, don’t you? And you like making music?”

  He shifted underneath me and rolled on his side so that both our heads were on the pillow, and we were looking each other in the eyes. “If I could do it without having people gawk at me, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

  Unlike Scott, I’d always loved attention—and the uncomfortable feeling disappeared after a while. “I promise you�
�d get used to it—and you’d love it so much, you wouldn’t care.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  I searched his dark green eyes, wishing I could infuse him with assurance. He was such a confident man in all other aspects of his life, and I wished he could just transfer that over to performing life on stage. “Did you play in band in high school?”

  “Marching band.”

  “And?”

  “I guess it wasn’t so bad. Drummers were at the back, so the applause died down by the time we passed people on parade routes.”

  “Was that the only time you performed?”

  He grinned. “I know what you’re doing.”

  I touched my nose to his. “Is that such a bad thing?”

  He rubbed my arm with his hand. “You make me want to try it.”

  “Try what?”

  “More. Doing what Lee and the guys want. I got nothin’ to lose, right?”

  “Nothing except what’s been holding you back.”

  He kissed me and, soon, I rolled over as we both fell asleep, barely before the wee hours of the morning. Drifting off, I once more felt safe and loved in his arms.

  When I woke up the next morning, Scott wasn’t in bed. I sat up and stretched before getting into his t-shirt drawer and pulling one over my head. Then I looked around the house. No one was there, neither Scott nor David, and I wondered if one or both of them had gone to work. I didn’t see a note anywhere but saw the coffee on. I drank half a cup while I smoked a cigarette on their back porch, deciding to take a shower before going home.

  Once upstairs, I went into the bathroom and brushed my teeth before stripping and jumping in the shower. The tub was wet, telling me someone had already been in there this morning, making me again think the guys had gone to work. But usually Scott warned me so I’d lock the door behind me when I left. Maybe he’d just forgotten.

  I got in, shutting the frosted glass doors on the shower. The warm water felt soothing against my skin, and I just enjoyed the sensation for a moment or so. But I hadn’t even been in the shower for a minute when I spied someone standing in the bathroom doorway—just standing, not saying anything. When I saw him, I gasped but knew he couldn’t hear me over the streaming water.

  But then I realized I shouldn’t panic. It had to be Scott—David’s build was so much different from his, and I could tell that much from the shape of the person there. Besides, David wouldn’t just stand in the bathroom doorway and watch me showering, and even if he’d brought Gerald over with him this morning, Gerald wouldn’t either. They weren’t into girls, so there would be no reason to just stand and watch me. If, for some reason, they’d needed something, they would have said something.

  And that was what the person in the doorway was doing…just watching, not saying a word.

  So…it had to be Scott, reappearing from wherever he’d been, just watching me shower. It only took me a second to think that was fucking hot. This was another foreplay moment, like when I’d been rubbing his chest with oil a couple of months ago. And, hell…we’d wound up in the shower then, too. I decided to have fun with it. If watching me shower got him all hot and bothered, I was going to make quite a show of it.

  I pretended not to see him. Even if he knew I knew, I figured sex after would be hotter if he felt voyeuristic. I decided to do everything I needed to in the shower while making it as sexy as possible. So when I shampooed my hair, I arched my back while I rubbed it in my scalp and rinsed it out. I didn’t know how much he could see, but the frosted window in the wall of the shower backlit my frame with sunlight, so I figured he could see a lot. I supposed if I could make out his shape from my vantage point and figure out it was him, he could see a lot as well, and what he couldn’t quite make out, his imagination could run with.

  So when I took the bar of soap, I ran it over my arms first, just gliding a hand up and down, but I had lots of fun washing my breasts and tummy. If watching me touch my breasts had the effect on him I thought it would, he would be getting pretty hot about now. I know I was. So I extended one leg next, placing my foot on the edge of the tub, sliding the bar of soap up slowly before repeating it with the other leg.

  But the fact that Scott still hadn’t said or done anything by this point started making this feel almost creepy. He wasn’t even moving. By this point, he should have stripped off his clothes and hopped in the shower with me. So I finished up and rinsed off, ready to jump his bones instead. I couldn’t wait to see the look on his face when I got out, so I shut off the water and slid the door open.

  Except I freaked when I stepped out, because the figure staring at me from the doorway wasn’t Scott.

  It was Jim.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Fear gripped me as I grabbed the towel I’d laid out earlier. I covered myself, even though my hair was dripping. “Get the hell out of here!”

  Instead, he took a step closer. “Quite a show you put on, Casey. No wonder Scott’s got such a hard-on for you. Cute titties, too.”

  “You pig. Get the fuck out of here. Now!”

  But he grabbed my arms, his fingers digging into my flesh, reminiscent of the time he’d manhandled me at the bar. I knew he’d bruise my skin again, but black-and-blue marks were the least of my worries. “I don’t think so.”

  A chill running through my veins caused goosebumps to raise on my arms as I tried to resist but realized I didn’t have the strength. Pushing back got me nowhere. I wasn’t strong enough. “What about Julie?”

  His eyes were dark, the pupils melding with his irises so that I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. “What about her?” With a sneer, he added, “You don’t think she approves?” I searched his eyes, looking for some humanity, anything I could appeal to. “Julie and I are partners, honey. I scout out the fresh flesh and she indulges with me.” He laughed but there was no humor to it, and a chill caused my arms and torso to shiver against my will. “Well, most of the time. Sometimes I have to sample the wares first—or just share them with my friend…who really should have invited me to the party long before this.”

  God—it wasn’t even ten in the morning and yet the smell of alcohol hung on his breath like the stench of a wet dog sitting in front of a fire. I had no way to determine if it was from the night before or this morning.

  Desperate, I tried another tactic. “I’ll tell Scott.”

  “Scott. Yeah, you tell Scott. See what he says.” Lowering his voice, he brought his face closer to mine, so close that I could feel the heat of his breath on my cheek. “You might not know this, but I’m much better in bed than Scott.” I screwed up my mouth and tried to knee him in the crotch, but I missed when he blocked my attempt with his leg. “Cute. Don’t fuck with me, you little tramp.” Pulling me closer, he started kissing my neck. My flesh crawled. If it could have, it would have jumped off my bones in an attempt to avoid his lips.

  Then he pulled the towel down off me, and I started pummeling him with my free fist, but to no avail. It was like he didn’t even feel it. Maybe he was so drunk, he really didn’t. But he threw me on the bathroom floor, causing my back to hit the side of the tub and I yelled in pain. In seconds, he was on top of me. “Get off!” My voice was weak as I strained with nothing to show for my efforts. I swallowed hard, trying to reconcile myself with the fact that I was about to be raped. I tried to shut off my brain, but I couldn’t, and the tears started to fall against my will.

  I squirmed and writhed and pummeled every chance I got, but it was as if my fists were covered in pillows. Then he held both my arms above my head with one hand and started to unzip his pants with the other. I prepared myself for pain, struggling in a last-ditch effort, but it only increased the ache of his hand digging into my wrists. I started yelling again for him to get off me. Soon, though, the yells turned to sobs. He didn’t care. In fact, it seemed to make him more excited.

  Finally, I squeezed my eyes shut and managed to find a quiet dark place in my mind and I tried to escape there as Jim
shoved my legs apart.

  Suddenly, his weight lifted off me as his hands let go of my wrists. I opened my eyes to see Scott holding Jim by the neck of his shirt.

  “What the fuck is going on?”

  I couldn’t say a word. Instead, I felt myself curling into a fetal position, wondering why no tears were coming out of my eyes.

  “She wanted it, man.” I could feel my body start to shudder as I held my knees to my chest and, finally, a few tears began to fall. “She was begging me to fuck her hard.”

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  “She wanted my dick in her, givin’ it to her.”

  “Look at her—does she look like she wanted it?”

  Jim turned back around, pleading with Scott. “She needs it. She’s obviously not getting enough from you. You know it’s happened—”

  Before Jim could finish his sentence, Scott grabbed the front of Jim’s shirt, punching him in the face not once but twice. I could barely hear his guttural voice when he said, “Get the fuck out of here before I kill you.”

  Jim ran out of the room, his feet pounding the stairs as he dashed down to the ground floor. I buried my head in my arms, the nightmare over. Scott squatted down beside me, touching my arm gently with his warm hand. “You okay?”

  “No,” I answered between sobs.

  “Did he—”

  “No. Almost. If you hadn’t gotten here when you had—” My voice trailed off.

  “Do you want to get up?” When I nodded, he helped me stand and grabbed a fresh towel to wrap around my body. Then he led me to his room, letting me sit on the edge of the bed. Handing me one of his clean t-shirts from his dresser drawer, he then sat next to me. I pulled the shirt over my head as my sobs slowed.

  Soon, he held me close. “I’m so sorry, Casey. I ran to the store to get donuts. Jim has a key, but I didn’t expect him to…”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell him that, right now, I didn’t want to be touched at all. Even though Jim hadn’t penetrated, I felt violated, especially emotionally, and I needed time to sort through everything swirling around in my head. At the same time, I was so grateful that Scott had been the knight in shining armor I didn’t think I wanted—but that I needed. When he asked if I wanted a cup of coffee, I accepted.