Midnight Blue

by L.J. Shen

  I walked to the door and swung it open. He stood in front of me, his white V-neck crumpled and wrinkled, his black skinny jeans and impossible height both familiar and imposing. He smelled of cigarettes and the fresh bite of the cool evening air. He looked sober, and miserable, and extremely huggable. I folded my arms over my chest to keep myself from reaching toward him, staring up into his amber eyes with the green and gold flakes that swam in circles, like a gold pond.

  I’m so happy I didn’t sleep with you. If I had, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from giving you everything you came here for tonight.

  “Can I come in?” His eyes looked wrecked. Bloodshot.

  I should say no. I knew he’d pour his heart out, and once he did, I wouldn’t deny him of anything in this world. He made me weak and exposed, and that alone should make me run for the hills. I stood there wordlessly, not quite ready to say no, but not stupid enough to say yes.

  “Please.” He saw the hesitation on my face, but his voice was hard and coarse. Leave it to Alex Winslow to ask for something nicely one time in his life and still make it sound like a demand. “I need to talk.”

  “Talk to someone else. You have plenty of friends.”

  He snorted, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. From that angle, I could see the dark circles under his eyes. “Some friends they are.”

  “Not my problem,” I said quietly, hating myself for every word. He’d been cruel to me, but that didn’t mean I had to be cruel back. There’s strength in choosing kindness even when you’re being dragged into the well of malice. I’d never been this way, and yet, I couldn’t stop myself. I was angry. Angrier than sympathetic. He knitted his brows and stared me down. I watched as his eyes turned in slow-motion from exasperated and sad to dark and interested.

  “The fuck happened to you?”

  “You happened to me. Unfortunately.” I was about to shut the door—he was sober, my job was done—but he slipped his arm through the crack and stopped me.

  I was about to slam it anyway when he said, “I’d reconsider if I were you. This arm is insured for twenty million dollars. If I can’t play my guitar, a lot of people will be upset. All of those people you don’t want to piss off.”

  Feeling lava bubbling in my chest, I kept the crack open, painfully aware of how his finger brushed the strap of my dress up my shoulder.

  “Why are you mad?” His thumb rode up to my neck, to my pulse that quickened by the nanosecond. The change in mood confused me, and that’s exactly how he liked me.

  “I’m not mad.” A chuckle died in my throat.

  He pushed the door open all the way and sauntered in like he owned the place, doing his usual inspection. Alex liked to look and examine everything, like I was hiding dozens of dead bodies in my room.

  “You are. You’re looking at me like I ran over your pet cockatoo.”

  “I don’t have a pet cockatoo.”

  “Yeah. Don’t. They’re a lot of work. Fallon had one.”

  Fallon. Her name on his lips sounded like a profanity.

  “I just don’t see why you’d even come here. You’re upset about Will and Fallon’s engagement. You should be dealing with it either by talking to them or with someone who can help you. I definitely can’t.”

  He walked toward me, making me walk backward to avoid his touch. He wasn’t slow or particularly predatory. Just…nonchalant. When my back hit the dresser behind me, I finally exhaled some of my rage. He just stood there and didn’t say anything. Needless to say, that annoyed me.

  “Say something,” I growled. His eyes tapered into slits.

  “You knew.” He meant the engagement.

  “I did,” I admitted, without missing a heartbeat. “Blake said you’d go on a bender if you found out. My job is to keep you sober. You are a job, Alex,” I reminded myself more than to him.

  He pondered my words, rolling a lock of icy-blue hair between his fingers. Any trace of his sadness was gone from his face now, replaced with quiet, burning desire. One that runs deep and doesn’t end in your lower stomach, but buzzes all the way down your toes, kissing every nerve in the process.

  “That is cold,” he said, his fingers sliding down my shoulder again—warm and rough and so callused—slipping the strap of my swing dress back down. “Especially for someone so warm. You really hate me, don’t you?”

  “I don’t hate you.” I swallowed. A truth for a truth. Would he give me one, too? “Do you care about me at all?”

  “Yes,” he admitted evenly without blinking, no trace of emotion on his voice. “I care about you.”

  “Then let me go. Let me work here and stop this…this…” What were we? What the hell were we? It felt like more than a fling but less than dating. “This thing between us. You’re in love with someone else.”

  “No,” he said, in the exact level tone, his body crowding mine further and further until the handles of the dresser dug into my lower back. Our limbs were entwined, but other than that, I had no excuse to the way my body reacted. Like it wanted to dance and fling itself off a cliff.

  “Why?” I breathed.

  “You need this. We need this. Today wasn’t about Fallon. The engagement came as a surprise, sure, but it wasn’t what made me lose my shit. My mates taking every ounce of power and freedom from me did.” Pause. Beat. Swallow. “I accidentally broke Tania.”

  My stomach flipped, a shiver running down my spine. He killed Tania. His turtle’s back. Tania inspired him, protected him, was there for him. My mouth fell open.

  “How…”

  “I went mental on Blake for leaking those dick photos. For hiding so much from me. I didn’t even realize what I’d done. I just grabbed the first thing in reach and swung it his way. It hit the door. Remember this next sentence, Stardust, for it’s important, and a rare fucking truth: I’m not upset about Fallon. Granted, I’m not happy about it either, but today wasn’t about her. It was about my fucked-up life and my fucked-up mates and the fucked-up way I mixed business and pleasure like a rookie. I no longer know who’s there for the money and who’s there because they care. And it gets worse—if I could know, I’d still choose not to. Because it’d hurt like a bitch. The stupid, overrated truth.”

  Something moved between us. Some kind of silent understanding. Alex was a liar because he hated his truth. But he was there, in front of me, his face so naked and raw, and at that moment, I didn’t care that he’d break me just the way he had Tania.

  We needed each other. Now. On this tour. Like air, and oxygen, and the pulse beneath our flesh. For once, I understood what he’d meant about being above gravity. There was a world outside, I knew it. But there was a smaller asteroid on which we lived, and that was the only place I wanted to be in that moment.

  Silence.

  Silence.

  Silence.

  Music.

  It came from somewhere downstairs. A street party, I think. As soon as it started, our lips crashed together, and we wrestled each other out of our clothes. The soft thuds of fabric hitting the hard carpeted floors filled my ears even with the festive music on, and Alex hoisted me up to curl my legs around his waist, his signature move, and walked me around the room. He always opted for the Jacuzzi, the balcony, or while I was bent over the kitchen alcove. He liked it awkward and savage. The un-photoshopped version, as he’d called it.

  Alex dumped me onto the cold sheets of the bed, and I arched my back, the sheer surprise of him wanting to do it in bed startling me. He dragged his teeth along my skin, and I wrapped his hair around my fingers, giving him better access to everything. When he kissed his path down my stomach, I started feeling the butterflies swirling around my belly, my sex tightening around nothing in anticipation. He was always so smug, like he had the world at his feet—and he really did. That was, perhaps, the entire irony of it all—but never when we were in bed together. When it was just us, his lips hovering over mine, his thick cock grinding into my body, he looked humble, and grateful, and pained.

  His mo
uth found my sensitive bud, and he started playing with it as I let go, forgetting about my family and my heartbreak and the discarded plate of French fries that made the room smell funny. It was just me and him. Me, him, and the pleasure.

  “I need to fuck you,” he murmured, his voice vibrating and tickling my inside. “I need to be inside you the way you’re inside me. So deep I want to peel my skin off just to get rid of you. I need to get rid of you,” he repeated, and my heart dropped, my breath catching in my throat, as my clit began to throb, my lower lip shaking with an impending orgasm that had threatened to ripple through me like a storm. He loved to suck on my clit so hard my vision dotted with thick, white clouds.

  “No.” My voice quivered, my pelvis rocking into his mouth as he began to thrust his tongue into me over and over. He was relentless. Dirty and shameless. Like the way he spread his fingers under the back of my thighs and pushed me back and forth to make his tongue go deeper and deeper into me. Or the way he pressed his cock to my thigh until his zipper tore at my leggings from grinding me so roughly.

  “I told you, I’m never going to sleep with you,” I said under my breath.

  But it was a lie, and we both knew that. There was no difference between sleeping with him and letting him eat me out every night. Finger me at public dinners and play with my nipples while he was talking on the phone with Jenna, yelling at her about some appearance he’d never agreed to do.

  He chuckled into my warm flesh. “But I’ll break you.”

  You already did. Today. I said nothing to that. My thighs began to shake uncontrollably and my mouth dropped into an O as I clutched tighter into his hair. I was sure it was painful for him, but he didn’t complain. He never complained. For all the jackass things he did outside of the bedroom, once the clothes were off, he made me feel comfortable. Comfortable to scream, to moan, and to demand. Comfortable to hungrily suck on his shaft and wipe the drool with the back of my hand at how incredibly aroused he’d made me by simply looking at me the way he had. Like touching each other would take all our troubles away.

  I came hard on his tongue. He flipped me over, and before I had the chance to protest, mounted me, burying his cock between my ass cheeks—completely bare—and sliding up and down.

  “Oh, fuck,” he said.

  He loved doing things to me from behind. I think it was because he knew I could see everything on his face when we were together. The worry, and sadness, and fear. We weren’t having sex, not technically, but boy, was it getting harder and harder to tell myself I had red lines with this guy. I needed to just give in to him already. Give in to myself. Ask him to put a condom on and have sex with me. But not putting out made me feel like I was in control, and I craved that no less than I craved his body.

  His cock pulsated between my cheeks, and I felt the warm pre-cum gathering at my tailbone. I didn’t know why I found it so stupid hot to have him masturbate on me this way, but I quickly pushed against him, taunting him, prompting him to smash into me from behind. I didn’t know what I was doing. Not fully. I was too delirious with lust and relieved at his reason for heartbreak. I shouldn’t have taken pleasure in knowing he was devastated about Tania breaking, but at least it wasn’t about Fallon.

  “Why do you taunt me?” He fisted my hair and pulled me up, making me arch my back. Once my stomach rose from the mattress, he used his other hand to play with one of my tits, pinching my nipple on a hiss. “Why do you take so much pleasure in driving me mad?”

  My skin prickled with goose bumps at his menacing tone.

  “To get even.” My voice was hoarse, suffocated by the position we were in, my neck fully extended as he rubbed himself harder and harder into my ass, his thrusts almost punishing—both to him and to me—for not being able to penetrate me. “Just returning the favor, Mr. Rock Star.”

  “I think we’re on a first-name basis now, Stardust.” His dick started twitching along my skin, and I knew he was about to burst. His teeth dragged over my neck. “Seeing as next time we do this, I’m going to be so balls deep inside you, I’ll be able to tickle your fucking lungs.”

  With that, he came on my back. I felt the ribbons of hot cum on my skin. He then collapsed on the bed, disconnecting from me like I was nothing but a container to put his sperm in. My face was still buried inside the pillow, which was for the best, with the way I blushed.

  I lay there, in the same position, waiting for him to say something. To clean me up, seeing as I couldn’t do it myself. Not unless I got into the shower.

  I waited for many things, but a few minutes later, I heard the door open and shut, and knew he’d left me there, like the disposable fuck doll he’d wanted me to feel like.

  Because when Alex was hurting, he wanted the entire world to hurt with him.

  And in that moment in time, I was his world.

  I should have felt disgusted by what he’d done. I should have wrapped myself up in a towel, stormed after him, and given him a piece of my mind.

  But all I did was smile into the pillow like the stupid, lust-struck girl I was.

  My Alex.

  My little prince.

  My fallen star in the dark, dark skies.

  Excitement is like a contagious disease. It catches like fire, spreads, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t tame excitement, or piss on someone else’s parade when they’re truly enthusiastic about something. Which was why I was extra bitter when the cab picked us up from Heathrow Airport and drove us through London, up to Watford.

  Everybody was just so jolly about seeing their families.

  Blake was staying with his parents down the road from me. Alfie was crashing at a mate’s house in Kentish Town, and Lucas was going back to his perfect family in their perfect converted barn. Kent, not Watford. They’d moved somewhere with sheep and fresher air and inbred, posh neighbors when the eldest Rafferty graduated from university. All of Lucas’ siblings were already married to horsey-looking partners with great jobs. I’d once told him his family put the “promise” in “compromise.”

  Maybe that’s why he dedicates his life to ruining yours, arsehole.

  I had two rooms booked at a London hotel, close to my family, but not too close that I actually had to see them. The rooms were for Indie and me, though I’d asked Hudson to cancel the extra room so she and I would finally sleep in the same bed. I wasn’t even entirely sure what my feelings toward her were. I just knew she made some of the bullshit go away, and that was enough to pacify me.

  I missed Tania.

  I felt naked, moving around the world without her on my back. I’d purchased another acoustic guitar, but she didn’t feel the same. She was rough—not soft-wooded like Tania—the strings too tight. She felt weird on my lap, like an average-looking fangirl begging to be fucked. Every time I tried playing it on the plane, Stardust shot me a look of pity, which made everything so much worse somehow.

  If there was, indeed, one good thing about the entire Fallon and Will engagement ordeal, it was that now I had fewer restrictions. I wasn’t talking to any of the lads—just to Indie, and not too much—but I could go on the Internet and watch whatever the hell I wanted. I knew Stardust had been privy to the engagement and the dick pics ordeal, but her betrayal wasn’t as soul-crushing. She wasn’t my childhood friend. She owed me nothing. In fact, she hadn’t even asked to be employed by me, which made everything about the revelation that she knew less stinging.

  “Ready to go home?” Blake sniffed, staring out the window at the gray London landscape.

  I didn’t answer. The constant drizzle reminded me why I loved my city. It was so unapologetically shitty. Rainy with a chance of a very public meltdown. People came here to survive, not to live. But surviving made you feel so much more alive.

  “Would I be able to get a day off? I want to check the London Eye and the Dungeon. The House of Parliament, too,” Indie muttered, her eyes glued to the window. I didn’t know why it’d surprised me so much. Like I didn’t expect her to make any pla
ns other than riding my cock and my face. She always seemed like an open book, eager to be stained by ink in different colors. Everywhere we went, she always wanted to bike around the main streets and eat the local food. Other men might find it cute, her lust for life, but I just found it depressing. She was so much happier than I was, and I had so much more than her.

  “I’m sure we can sort something out. Right, mate?” Blake elbowed me, his whole body angled toward me. He’d been working hard on being less of a micromanaging cunt since the loss of Tania.

  I chose not to answer Blake—again—and flung my arm over Stardust’s shoulder, eyeing Lucas, who was looking at me like I’d stabbed him in the soul.

  “Sounds good. Let’s go there together and make some memories,” I gritted out.

  Her head popped up, her skeptical gaze sliding along my face, my jaw, my eyes, my lips. An inventory she knew all too well, which was why pink spread over her cheeks and neck, cluing me in that she absolutely thought about all the things we could do while sightseeing. Grinding into her from behind in the London Eye in front of horrified Japanese tourists or cornering her in a dark spot at the London Dungeon sounded like paradise. Half the fun was watching her get flustered and annoyed with the way her body reacted to me in public.

  “Whatever happened to you being sexually harassed by people? I thought you didn’t do public appearances,” she teased.

  I shrugged. “I might have to punch a teenager or two. It’ll be on your conscience.”

  Indie couldn’t help herself. She shook her head and laughed. “You’re so weird.”

  “Normal is grossly overrated,” I muttered, hating that I cared if she thought it was good-weird or bad-weird.

  And I didn’t want to break her. Not at that moment.

  It should have been an alarm bell, but I chose to ignore it.

  By the time I figured out how to call it, it was too late.