Screw Up (Hard Rock Roots Book 10)

by C. M. Stunich

  Still, I don't think either of us can deny our attraction to each other. It burns like fucking wildfire, and I feel like it's eating me up inside. I wonder if Netty can see how badly she affects me?

  “I suppose,” she says cautiously and then there's a brief moment of reprieve when the waiter comes to take our orders. “You know,” Netty continues as soon as he walks away. “My sister's flying in tomorrow. I asked Naomi to pick her up since Jessop doesn't care about her one way or another. I feel like I'd be putting her at unnecessary risk if I were to go.”

  “She's got Mr. Pussy Lips with her, right?” I ask and Netty narrows her eyes at me. I smirk at her annoyed expression and poke her leg under the table with my black and white striped loafers. That's my idea of dressing up—adding a partially buttoned black dress shirt to a red tie and jeans. This particular steakhouse has a dress code, but they decided to just let the denim go as long as I wore a loaner jacket. I guess they're just not willing to piss me off—that's how big our band's become. I feel like a fucking god half the time I'm in public. Back in the day, I couldn't afford the gas to drive to this place let alone an expensive steak dinner.

  “His name is Mr. Pussy Willow, you jackass. The first place I lived after leaving Price Canyon had pussy willows in the yard. I'd never seen them before and I thought they were beautiful. It's a completely innocent monicker.”

  “It just shows how dirty you really are underneath,” I say and Netty purses her lips, kicking me under the table next. She ends up spilling a glass of water everywhere, but that seems to be pretty par for the course with this chick.

  After we get it all cleaned up, she finally takes a sip of her wine, closing her eyes against the taste. She admitted to me that she likes having a drink or two with dinner, almost guiltily, like that somehow makes her a bad person. I told her I used to get piss-ass, blackout drunk at least five days a week and that seemed to help her put things in perspective.

  “Do you think we could go to the beach after this?” she asks, surprising me.

  “You're not afraid of Jessop?” I ask, watching as her nostrils flare with a deep breath.

  “With your security team, with … you,” she adds softly, “I feel like I can handle him if I need to.”

  My mouth curves into a smile that's in no way a smirk.

  Inside, my heart flutters in a way I'll never admit to anyone.

  I think I might have a crush on my own wife.

  How fucking weird is that?

  After dinner, Netty and I head to Huntington Beach in my convertible and I swear, my eyes are glued to that chick's dark hair whipping around her face. At one stoplight, I end up reaching over and scooping some of it away from her lips. The way her mouth parts as she looks over at me … it's goddamn magical.

  Dude, you are so losing it, I tell myself as we accelerate and Netty leans her head back, lifting her arms up and letting the warm rush over her with this look on her face that comes pretty close to ecstasy. I'd like to see if I could push her all the way, make her lips part and her eyes widen with pleasure.

  From what I can gather, it doesn't seem like she's had a whole lot of experience with sex.

  I pull into an easy space near some outdoor showers and shut the ignition off, the liquid gold of the sunset bathing the entire landscape in color. The white sand looks brighter, the water bluer. It's either that or I'm swoonin', and I just … don't want to know how hard Turner might rip me apart if he finds out I'm going through the motions like a teenage boy with his first girlfriend.

  I hop out without opening the door, and Netty climbs out all slow and proper, her dress the color of red wine, the lace on the hem playing around her pale white calves in the wind.

  “It's so beautiful,” she says softly, standing on the sidewalk and looking out over the railing, studying the crashing waves and the bleeding sky with a reverence that I wish I had. This girl's not naïve or anything, but she appreciates the world in a way I never did, not even as a kid. By the time I was a conscious, thinking being, I was also already a disillusioned and apathetic asshole. “The first time I saw the ocean, I was twelve years old, already a married woman …” Netty sighs as I scoot onto the hood of the car and she sits down next to me.

  “Did you have a foster family or something?” I ask, getting out a pack of cigarettes and lighting up.

  “A few. Because of all the publicity surrounding the case with Rigby, and the threat of retribution from the congregation, I moved around a lot. But you know what? I got lucky. Every single place I lived after leaving the compound was better than where I'd been.”

  “Did you wear prairie dresses and grow your hair out and all that?” I ask, wondering if I'm being insensitive. But I want to know more about Netty. Shit, I want to know everything and I don't know why. She's just interesting, I guess, completely unlike anyone I've ever met.

  “Actually, yes, Treyjan, I did.”

  “When you were married—” I start and then I have no idea what to say after that. “Did you live with your husband? Or stay with your parents?”

  “I attacked him on my wedding night and escaped,” she explains, looking down at her lap with a long, deep sigh. “I never had to actually live with him as a husband.”

  I swallow hard and cross one arm over my chest, ashing my cigarette into the breeze.

  “Did …” Again, another insensitive question dies on my lips and decide to just the shut the fuck up.

  “Did he rape me?” she asks, and I cringe. “No. He tried though. He forced himself on me, held me down, he …” Netty's nostrils flare as she takes in another deep breath, the thin shoulder strap of her dress sliding down her arm. I reach out and lift it back up with a single, hooked finger. “I fought him off and ran away. But that doesn't mean he didn't do it to other girls. He had a fifteen year old wife that was already pregnant. And I know for a fact that when one of his wives tried to run, Jessop and his men dragged her back and raped her while Rigby watched. He called them 'seed bearers', and said it was important for prominent men in the church to procreate, that it was God's will.”

  “The fuck?” I ask, trying to hide the horror on my face. Pretty sure that's the last thing Netty needs from me right now. But when she glances over and sees me gaping at her, she smiles softly.

  “It sounds like a fiction novel, doesn't it? Now that I'm away from that environment, I can barely think about it without that helpless, hopeless feeling crashing over me. In the last few years, I've read my share of crime thrillers and horror novels. Most of the time they don't come close to matching the horrors we put up with in Price Canyon.”

  “Did you have a hard time transitioning to life out here?” I ask, but Netty's already shaking her head.

  “No. No, not at all. In my heart, I always knew I didn't belong there. To tell you the truth, I think the only people that are happy there are the seed bearers, the prophet, and those in his inner circle. Everyone else is expendable. By the time I was married, I'd already lost three brothers. They just put them in the back of pickup trucks and drive them off the compound to dump them. The older men can't handle having young men around to compete for wives.”

  “Netty,” I say, and my voice is surprisingly soft and weird. I glance back to see if my bodyguards are within hearing distance. Fortunately, it looks like one of the guys is still in the van, the other leaning against the fence down the sidewalk pretending to play with his phone. Or shit, maybe he really is playing with his phone? “At least it looks like you managed to get your shit together.”

  “I did,” she says, smiling again. And that look on her face, it makes me feel guilty for even being interested in her. Who the hell am I to corrupt this chick? My world is sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. And Netty, she's so clean and straitlaced. She knows what she wants in life and she works her ass off to get it. I'd probably fuck her up if I tried to date her. “And you know what? You're the first almost-boyfriend I've ever had.”

  “Almost-boyfriend?” I ask, leaning down to scrape m
y cigarette against the sandy pavement.

  “When I turned eighteen, I just … I think I wanted to prove to myself that I really was in control of everything—my life, my future, my body. I met a guy at the library and—”

  “You picked up a dude at a library?” I asked, standing back up and turning to face Netty, leaning my hip against the car as I stare at her with a raised brow. “You really are a good girl, aren't you?”

  “Maybe that's not what I want to be right now,” she says, and I swear, I get chills down my spine as she stares at me. “I've only had sex twice—and I can't remember the night we did it. So …”

  “Are you saying you want to be a bad girl?” I ask, swiping some more hair away from Netty's face. I can't seem to stop myself from touching her.

  “That's an awful pickup line, Mr. Charell,” she tells me as I stand up and reach out to take her hand. Netty considers me for a moment and then places her hand in mine. I thank the fucking gods that there aren't any paparazzi—or religious fanatics—around to screw with this moment. “It was a really shitty line.”

  “It wasn't a line, just a question,” I say quietly, leading her into the sand and then yanking her down to sit next to me. I pull off my boots and then after a slight second of hesitation decide to take my jeans off, too. My boxers look enough like shorts, right? “So, you want to be bad with me, Netty Forester?”

  “Does taking off my flats and splashing around in the water with a rockstar in boxers make me bad? Because if so, then I suppose I could say yes to that question.”

  I shove my jeans aside and then turn toward her, leaning in when she leans back and putting a palm down on the sand.

  “Being bad might mean going to be with your husband. Are you game, Mrs. Charell?”

  “Naomi Knox kept her name,” Netty tells me seriously, “and I've seen the marriage property game at work. You may call me Ms. Forester.”

  “Damn, but you're such a little shit,” I say, licking my lower lip. Netty's eyes follow the motion, her hand sliding up my arm to my neck, fingers tangling in my hair. She pulls a little too hard, but I could give two shits less. All I want to do right now is kiss her fucking mouth off.

  Closing the distance between us, I crush our lips together and slide my tongue into her mouth. The sound of pleasure I get in response makes it so worth it. Netty melts into me, letting me work her with slow, sensual flicks of my tongue. I taste every inch of her mouth, mark it with my tongue, the sweet flavor of the dessert wine we had at dinner lingering on my taste buds.

  She yanks my hair even harder, bringing her other hand up to curl her nails into my neck. Together, we move forward so that she's laying back and I'm on top of her, cradling my body between her hips and feeling the hot warmth of her core against the thin fabric of my boxers. I grind against her and the sensation of my body on hers gets Netty to open her thighs to me, wrap her legs around my body.

  I take a fistful of her silky, dark hair in my hand and tug it, matching the intensity of her grip on mine. For the first few minutes, Netty lets me kiss her, lets me nibble her lips, slide my tongue across her teeth, kiss her like she's fucking precious as hell. But then it's like she just comes alive, taking over, kissing me. It's so hot, I decide to roll over and really let her take charge. Our bodies naturally change positions until she's straddling me, sweeping her own hair off her face so she can kiss me with a ferocity that should be surprising but just kind of … isn't. I mean, fuck, Netty is quiet and clean and reserved, but she's also sort of a badass. Like I said, a fighter.

  When Netty pulls back, her pupils are dilated and her lips are red and shiny. I know she can feel me hard and ready beneath her, pressing right up against her opening. Between the two of us, we have the thin fabric of my boxers and her panties separating us. That's it.

  “Wow. Maybe that's why we decided to get married?” she asks, and I grin, watching as she pulls away and stands up, holding out a hand for me.

  “I have a feeling there was another, even better reason.”

  “You think we had sex before we hit that chapel?” she asks, and her cheeks color with pink. “Where?”

  I shrug my shoulders as I start to back away, toward the distant whisper of the sea. It's getting darker by the minute, the red-orange light dipping into the water and leaving us with a navy sky.

  Netty follows after me and I pause, leaning toward her to whisper in her ear.

  “Where-the-fuck-ever,” I say, pressing my lips to her earlobe. “We could do it here if we wanted. When you're really into someone, you can make it work wherever you need it to.”

  “Here? I don't think so,” she says, but she doesn't sound entirely sure of herself.

  I grab Netty's hand and tug her into the waves with me.

  Water rushes around my legs, frothing against my calves and trying to remember the last time I came to the beach, stood in the ocean, did something with a girl other than party and fuck.

  Not a lot of memories coming to mind here. It's definitely been a while.

  And now I'm wondering what the hell I've been doing with my life? Because if it wasn't this, then what was the point?

  When Netty—kind of fucking inevitably—trips and falls in the water, I scoop her up into my warms and feel her heartbeat against my chest. She looks at me for a long, calculating moment and then leans forward to kiss me on the lips.

  It's almost an inevitability that we end up in my convertible that night.

  Treyjan and I head back to the convertible and spend a few minutes wiping sand off our feet. He says he doesn't care if we get it all over his fancy car, but I need something to do to that gives me a moment to think. Who knew deciding whether or not to have sex with one's husband could present a girl with such a conundrum?

  His mouth though, his mouth, his fucking mouth.

  Kissing Treyjan is like listening to rock 'n' roll and eating dark chocolate at the same time. It's like lighting a fire inside a cold hearth and watching it roar to life. It's … beyond any metaphor my addled brain can come up with in the moment.

  “You okay over there?” Trey asks me, his voice huskier, thicker than usual. I did basically admit that I wanted to have sex with him again, of course he's excited. He's been a (sort of snarky, dickish) gentleman all week, but he's clearly interested.

  “Just fine,” I tell him from my position on the hood of the car. Trey's sitting in the passenger seat, swiping a few last grains of sand from the bottom of his foot. He pauses to look up at me, his crazy brown hair tousled by the wind—and my fingers, of course. “Other than the fact that I'm wet.”

  That statement sends Trey's brows soaring up his forehead, his mouth parting slightly in shock.

  Shit.

  “Not like that,” I say, taking a handful of my wet skirts and shaking them at him. His mouth twists into a sensual looking grin anyway.

  “You really are a bad girl, aren't you?” he asks, reaching out to take my hand. Trey pulls me onto his lap. That's all it takes, really, to set me off completely. My heart rate goes through the roof, and that wetness I just accidentally referenced, soaks warm and hot between my thighs.

  “Treyjan,” I say, but I feel like I'm being swept away by the ocean, taken out to sea.

  Trey slides back into the seat and takes me with him, shutting the door behind us. The passenger seat is pretty roomy, but with me sitting on his lap like this there isn't a whole lot of room between us.

  “Although I have no clue if we used one of these last time …” he starts, holding up a condom with his band's logo on it—a goat's head with a lolling tongue and X's for eyes—and handing it to me. But I have no freaking clue what to do with it. I mean, intellectually I understand, but … my hands are trembling again and I can't seem to make them stop. “We should probably use it this time, don't you think?”

  “I have no desire to have children,” I tell him, and I mean it. One day, I might change my mind but after seeing my mother and her fellow sister wives turn into factory breeding machines,
I'm not particularly keen on procreating myself. I should probably get a test. Stands to reason if I got married without knowing it, I might have made some poor choices with my body, too.

  “Me neither,” Trey says, settling his hands on my hips and scooting me back just far enough that he can reach down and push his boxers down. The sight of his hard cock curving out of his shorts is … intriguing. Immediately, I reach my hand out to touch it and Trey grabs my wrist. “You're not going to do your, like, clumsy/awkward thing to me, are you? Because I don't think my poor dick can handle getting sucker-punched.”

  “The word is clumsawkwardy, Treyjan,” I say calmly, the wind teasing my hair, the sound of the waves crashing behind us. Night's fallen over the city, leaving the distant twinkle of lights as a strange modern mimicry of stars. “And if you want to have sex with me, you have to let me touch it, don't you?”

  “Fuck, wife,” he whispers, and for the first time in forever, the w-word actually doesn't make me feel sick to my stomach. It sounds almost sexy on the rockstar's full, ripe lips. “Go for it then,” he says, lifting his hands up, palms out like he's surrendering. I like that, the idea of Treyjan giving into me.

  I drop my right hand to his shaft and curl my fingers around it, surprised at how soft the skin is yet how firm it is at the same time. When I squeeze him, Treyjan sucks in a sharp breath and I can see quite clearly that I really do have complete control over him right now.

  “How many girls have you been with?” I ask, and he just gives me this look, like please don't make me answer that.

  “None as weird as you,” is how he decides to answer me.

  I smile and lean in, but Trey's way ahead of me, cupping the back of my head and pulling me in for a long, hot kiss, swirling his tongue in my mouth as I do the same to his shaft, twisting my hand around the length of him. I must be doing something right because he groans against my lips and raises his hips up, jostling my body on his lap.