Rock On: A Bully Romance (The Rockstars of Hollywood Hill)

by E. M. Moore

  He writes back, That’s my life.

  I send him back a sad emoji and am about to leave my room to meet the rest of the guys when a knock sounds on my door. I open it, still preoccupied with the texting conversation with Archer, but Ian’s on the other side, leaning his forearm against the doorjamb. “Hey,” I say, stepping back. There’s something about his presence that always does that to me. It’s like he’s bigger than life whether he’s singing or doing normal activities. Or maybe it’s because he always looks more the predator than the prey.

  He comes in and shuts the door behind him. He spends some time looking around my room, eyes stopping on things and then moving on. I’m not sure why since he’s already been in this room before the night that asshole touched me. Abruptly, he says, “I feel like I owe you an apology.”

  I cross my arms over my chest. The need to shield myself becomes stronger the more agitated he looks. “Really? You think you do? Or you know you do?”

  His face hardens. “I know I do, but you have no idea what it’s like to be us. Or maybe you do a little now, so hopefully you’ll get it, but we’re suspicious of new people.” He shrugs unapologetically, and I want to laugh at him for even saying that he thought I was owed one. He clearly doesn’t seem like the type to give them out freely. “I’m not apologizing for that. What I am apologizing for is saying your song was shit when I knew it wasn’t. I really liked the one I read in your notebook. And this one? The one we just recorded? It’s more than good. It’s…awesome.”

  I arch a brow at him. This is a lame ass apology, but a pretty big stroke of my ego. “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say, Ian? I’d rather you apologize for being a dick. I get that you have a lot of pressure on you guys and you don’t know who to trust, but…” I just shake my head. “It must be pretty sad to be you, I guess.”

  His light blue eyes were hard as I talked until I said the last sentence. Then, his face falls. “It is, actually.”

  “That still doesn’t give you the right to act that way. I didn’t deserve it.”

  He challenges me with a look, but I’m not backing down. I don’t care that he’s been nicer to me today. Or that something weird and amazing happened between us the other day. He’s not getting the green light to walk all over me ever again. He tried to get me fired. He tore me down any chance he got. I know I said last night that I was sorry for any bad thing I said about them, but I guess I’m not. I guess I want them to be sorry for what they did to me too. I’d like to think I’m a very forgiving person, but I can’t forgive unless I’m actually being apologized to.

  Ian moves into my space. My breath catches in my chest like it did the night he was in here. “Archer was right, you know. You aren’t cut out for this type of life. Sometimes you don’t get apologies. Sometimes you don’t even get any recognition or acknowledgment or pats on the back.”

  “That doesn’t mean it should change you guys,” I counter.

  “You’re too…innocent,” he says eventually.

  “Have I broken yet?”

  His head tilts, like he’s truly thinking about what I just asked. “No, I guess not,” he answers finally. His hot breath passes over my lips. He’s like an intoxication. My tongue darts out to run over the seam of my mouth, and Ian groans. “I bet you don’t even understand what you do to guys like us. You probably have no idea why we like you, do you?”

  My heart thumps wildly. “We?”

  His lips thin. “I feel like I’ve made that pretty obvious.”

  “Think again.” He truly looks lost. Normally I would laugh, but this isn’t the time for laughing. “What? Are you like the bully in school who pulls the girls’ hair he likes? You tease her and that’s somehow supposed to mean you like her? Sometimes a bully is just a bully.”

  His jaw clenches and a shadow passes over his face. “Sometimes a bully thinks he’s too angry to like someone. Did you ever think of that? They think they’re too dark. Too fucked up. They think they don’t deserve things like that.” He arches a brow challengingly. “Did you know my parents fucking hate me? They think I corrupt people. That piece of mail I got? It was my parents sending me their monthly letter telling me I’m going to hell. They don’t like my music, my tattoos, my attitude. They never have. They’ve basically disowned me. I bet you don’t know anything about that, do you, Aisley? You probably have the perfect family. Your parents love you. They support your songwriting career. They’re paying for your college even though you don’t even need it to do what you want to do, yet you’re going to tell me that maybe I’m just a bully. Maybe you haven’t gotten to know us as well as I thought.”

  He goes to turn away, but I grab his arm. I don’t know what I want to do, but the pain that seeped into his face when he talked about his parents was too much. Maybe I don’t have that kind of pain. Maybe I’ve never felt it or never will feel it, but I can understand it. I can feel it right alongside him. “That’s horrible,” I say.

  His lips curl up in disgust. “Empty words. I’m not into surface things, Aisley. I want real shit. I want raw emotion. For the first time, in your song, I thought I saw that. I saw it when that guy tried to touch you too. If you want to be a songwriter, you need all of that.”

  He’s making it almost impossible to feel sorry for him. My anger spikes again until I just want to push him against the wall. “You’re such an asshole.”

  “And that’ll never change.”

  “Fine.” I say, “But your parents are fucked up. That’s not how it’s supposed to work, and no, I’m not going to apologize for having two parents who love me regardless of what I do, but you were wrong on one thing. They don’t really support me on my songwriting. They want me to go to school to be a teacher. They’ve even suggested since I like music so much, I should be a band teacher. I’d rather live on the streets, eating shit out of garbage cans. Is that real enough for you?”

  Ian’s nostrils flare. “That’s not going to happen.”

  “We’ll just have to see,” I say, my gut twisting. A life without fulfilling my dream would truly be empty. “No one can predict the future.”

  “It’s not going to happen,” he repeats, this time with a hint more growl underlying his words. He’s in my space again, his eyes wild. “When people like me crave people like you, we don’t let shit happen to them. We don’t want their innocence lost or their bright eyes to fade. We’d do anything to stop it.”

  And then he kisses me.

  25

  His kiss takes me so much by surprise that I stumble back until my thighs hit the side of the bed. His tongue pushes past my lips, slipping inside me, an invasion that makes my toes curl. I’m infatuated with Ian. I love his voice, his music. He’s one of those guys your mom was supposed to warn you about when you were a little girl, but now that you’re grown up, you feel the tantalizing call of the dangerous side.

  Ian was wrong on one thing. He may want me because he thinks I’m too perfect, too sweet, but that’s not true. He said he wanted something raw, something emotional, and that’s all I crave too. How can you have something like that when your life has been too perfect? How can I write songs like him when I haven’t gone through anything? Maybe that’s what’s going on with us. We’re both searching for some semblance of normalcy. He thinks he’s too angry, and I’m too perfect, but maybe what we both want is to feel something real and good.

  I kiss him back. I wrap my hands around his neck and hold him there, giving as much as I’m getting. He growls in the back of his throat and pulls up on my thighs. I wrap my legs around him, squeezing him to my core as he rubs against me. “Oh fuck,” I say, breaking the kiss. He’s rock hard, jutting out of his jeans, filling me with a need I don’t think I can come back from.

  When he looks down, seeing me wrapped around him, his eyes widen in surprise. Like he wasn’t the one who put me there, and I’m not the one who went willingly. “Not quite as innocent as you thought,” I say, breath
less, staring up into his icy blue eyes.

  He doesn’t answer. He only leans me over the bed until my back hits the mattress. He comes with me, grinding his pelvis against me until the room fills with my breathy moans and his answering curses. By the sounds in the room, you’d think I’d fallen right into his Beauty and the Beast observation. I’m the innocent princess, too sweet for the beast who’s threatening to corrupt me, body and soul.

  A knock comes on the door as he moves my shirt up, exposing my stomach. He trails a scorching kiss up my skin as my heart beats in my ears. I move up onto my forearms, looking frantically at the door, but he yanks on my hands, making me fall back to the bed again. “Ten minutes,” he calls out.

  “Ten minutes?” I ask, breathlessly, glancing up at him.

  “I’d give it less, but you’re going to need time to clean up.”

  His smirk makes me narrow my eyes at him, but in the next moment, I don’t remember what I was even mad about because he unclasps the button on my jeans and pulls them down.

  “Lace panties. I fucking knew it,” he says, trailing his tongue along the top band, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. I squeeze my legs together to lessen the ache, but he pries me open, forcing my knees to the bed until I’m wipe open for him. “What we said the other night still goes,” he says, locking eyes with me suddenly. “If either one of us says stop…”

  My back arches off the bed. There’s no fucking way in hell I’m saying stop. Right now, all I can think about is Ian’s tongue on me.

  When I don’t say anything, he gives me a smile. “Take your shirt off.”

  I do as he says, sitting up and peeling it off me, throwing it off to the side where I don’t care where the hell it lands as long as it doesn’t impede my view of Ian.

  “Now your bra,” he says, his thumbs swirling on the insides of my knee.

  He waits until I sit back up, unclasping the back before he starts kissing me again, pulling my panties down inch by inch until he’s kissing a trail down the curve of where my leg meets my torso. When I lie back down, my bra cast aside, he looks up once more. The pure need there makes me arch into him. “Fuck, Aisley,” he says, reaching his fingertips up over my stomach to my breasts. He palms me, then trails his fingers over the lower curve until he brushes his hands over my nipples.

  “Ian, please,” I say. I feel like my body is hanging over the edge, just waiting for the moment Ian decides to give me what I need, but the suspension is killing me.

  “Sweet Aisley,” he murmurs, pulling my panties all the way down and off. His hands slide under my ass, propping me up like a feast that’s only for him.

  We both groan, mine so much louder than his. It fills the air, and if I was in my right mind, I’d probably be self-conscious about what the person on the other side of the door can hear, but Ian doesn’t give me time to think. His tongue passes over my clit in pulses that drive my hips higher and higher. My hands dive into his hair, tugging him toward me until I realize I must look like a crazed person, so I let up a little, curling my fingers into his hair, trying not to force him against me.

  “You are sweet,” he murmurs. “Addicting.”

  I throw my head back when his tongue flicks back and forth over my clit. “Ian, yes.”

  He stays there while I lose it. He tortures me until the world splinters in front of me, and I come for him, my insides clenching rapidly. I have to pull his mouth away from me as I come down because he’s just too much. He rests his head against my belly as my hands let up slightly on his hair, then curl into his strands again, stroking him.

  When he sits up, finally, I still see the dick that I met the first day, but I understand him more. I understand what makes him tick. I don’t excuse his behavior, but I see it from his point of view. His face softens the more he looks at me. Then, he gets up, coming to his feet before going into the bathroom. I take a deep breath and run my hands through my hair while I sit up. He comes out with a damp washcloth, which I take from him before he can get any closer. He looks at me, sitting there, and adjusts himself. “I’m using your shower. Be right back.” Then, louder, he says, “A few more minutes.” I know that last part wasn’t for me. It was for whoever is still outside the door, if anyone.

  “Yeah,” Finnick says on the other side, answering that question.

  Once Ian is in the other room, I hurry and clean myself off and then get dressed. Part of me wants to text Heather right away to tell her I just had the most amazing almost sex of my life, but instead, I tiptoe to the door and pull it open.

  Finnick and Sean, who were waiting with their backs pressed against the other wall, look up. “That sounded like fun,” Sean says, grinning at me like he can’t wait to try the same thing.

  My face flames in embarrassment, but it’s Finnick who comes forward, kissing me solidly on the lips. He wraps his arms around me, his tongue searching for more, which I gladly give to him. When he pulls away, he rests his forehead against mine. “You are…” He cuts himself off and gives a quick shake of the head. “He needs someone like you.”

  “You don’t care?” I ask, looking first up at Finnick and then at Sean.

  Sean shrugs. “It was inevitable. I’m just surprised Ian didn’t get you first. Ian always gets what he wants first.”

  Inside the bathroom, there’s a loud grunt that even the running shower can’t mute. All three of us look over. The back of my neck is suddenly itchy, but the other guys don’t seem to pay it any notice other than just casual observation. When Finnick looks back, he kisses my forehead. “Yeah, things are different with you.”

  I don’t ask him what he means, but I thread my fingers through his and we all wait until Ian comes out of the bathroom fully clothed. “Ready to eat?” he asks like it’s just any other day.

  His gaze finds mine, so I nod.

  “That wasn’t ten minutes,” Sean says.

  “I didn’t account for me,” Ian deadpans, and a slight flush inches up his neck.

  Sean claps him on the back. “I get it. The one night I had on the beach with Aisley, I went back to my room and—”

  “Oh my God,” I say, cutting him off even though we all know what he was going to say. I swear I’m not a prude, but I’m not used to openly talking about this stuff. Having a relationship with three guys? That’s brand new territory.

  “That right there,” Finnick says, pointing at my red cheeks. “That’s why.”

  “I told her,” Ian says, glancing back at me as we walk down the hall. “The darkness needs light. I don’t think she gets it yet, but she will.”

  I replay those words in my head, looking around me as we walk out the front door of the house, down the curved steps, and out the driveway. The guys talk about the album while my hands are still clasped in Finnick’s. His thumb runs over my skin, sending warm thoughts through me, almost the exact opposite of the feelings I had with Ian. One isn’t better than the other. Finnick is like a slow burn. He gives me jittery feelings, reminding me of when I was in middle school and had my first kiss. Ian gives me the “I need it now” feelings. The all-consuming burn I just want to take, take, take. Sean? He’s somewhere in the middle. A mix of both that makes me want to explore the connection more.

  The three of them, together, they fill me. My cell phone in my pocket is a reminder that not all of us are here though. I got used to having Archer around, and now that he’s not, it doesn’t feel the same. I know I have three others here to keep me occupied, plus the whole album thing, but it’s different. It’s him. The differences in him compared to the others that make him up. I can tell he’s missing, and that’s saying something. “Do you guys spend a lot of time apart?”

  The guys look over as the breeze trickles through my hair. The sun is setting, so it’s not quite as hot as it would be, but the walk to the restaurant isn’t exactly a walk in the park either.

  “Not really,” Sean says.

  “It must be hard for Archer to not be here. What are we going to do if Nolan finds out he
left?”

  Ian shakes his head. “He shouldn’t find out, but if he does, fuck him. It’s not like we’ve lost any steam because of it. Archer knows that when he gets back, he has to catch up, and he’ll do it.”

  “Are you worried about your job?” Finnick asks.

  My forehead wrinkles as I look over at him. Then it dawns on me that the last time I kept something from Nolan he told me there wouldn’t be any more chances with Big City. Oddly, I haven’t considered this a job in a while. Especially the last couple of days. “No,” I say quickly. “I was just trying to game plan.”

  “I don’t like plans,” Ian says.

  “Shocking,” I deadpan.

  The old Ian would’ve looked at me with dangerous eyes, and even though he does still a little, there’s a hint of sexy undertones that threaten to turn me inside out right here in front of all of them.

  Sean chuckles, watching the two of us. “This’ll be fun.”

  Despite that, when we get to the restaurant, we actually have an enjoyable evening with laughter and stories and learning more about one another. The guys ask me a lot of questions because they already know a lot about each other. I’m the outsider. But that doesn’t stop me from asking about them too. I want to know everything I haven’t figured out yet. I want to know what makes them tick. What keeps them breathing beyond music, and the more I get out of them, the more I find I love what I hear.

  26

  My phone rings in the middle of the night, and I jolt awake. I blink, my eyes heavy until I look over to see my screen. Archer? Shit.

  I fumble with my phone until I swipe the screen to answer it. “Hello?”

  There’s a beat of silence. My mind races until a soft voice finally says, “We found her.”

  I let out a deep breath. “That’s great, Archer.”

  He’s silent again for a few beats. “She was passed out in an alley. She’d been there for days.”