Kind of like my feelings for him.
Yes, I’d had a sexual bucket list. But I would’ve tossed the entire bucket out in a heartbeat for Jude.
Because I was in love with him.
I thought I was. It wasn’t like I had any other experience to guide me or compare the depth of my feelings to. I’d never been in love before.
I’d never known how far I could fall.
I really didn’t know how it would feel until it happened.
I also didn’t know how it would feel to be loved back.
For a few oddly painful days, I’d really thought he did love me back.
It turned out I was wrong, anyway. At least, about his feelings for me.
I made that mistake with Jude once and it was, in a word, devastating.
Was I really so willing to risk making the same mistake again?
Dirty had returned home from that first bus tour more or less in one piece.
Jesse’s ego seemed a little bigger, maybe. Zane was louder, if that was possible. Dylan was hotter, Elle had turquoise streaks in her platinum-blonde hair and Seth was… sketchier. He looked thinner and pretty baked when I saw him.
And as soon as they were back in town, Jessa vanished. Suddenly she was back hanging out with Seth ’til all hours of the night, going to parties and getting high and probably screwing his brains out.
The band was back in town for six days before I saw Jude.
I tried to run into him, dropping by the rehearsal space pretending I was looking for Jessa. That kind of thing.
No luck.
But then I found out there was going to be a party for Dirty, a family barbecue, at Dylan’s place. He still lived with his parents and two of his sisters and I’d never been to his house, but Jessa promised I could come to the party with her. She was so distracted all the time, she probably had no idea why I was so eager to go.
It wasn’t like I told her that I’d spent the last seven months basically pining over Jude Grayson and stalking him on Facebook. He had an account but he never posted anything, so that was kind of a dead end. But Dirty had a band page, which Brody mostly managed, and often there were photos posted from gigs, sometimes backstage, and sometimes Jude was in them.
And when I looked at those photos, which I did a lot… I knew.
I knew I’d fallen hard for Jude.
I messaged him, sometimes, sending him stupid little random thoughts and photos of me and Jessa and asking how the tour was going. He always answered, eventually.
But he never messaged me first.
I had no idea how front-of-mind I was with him, and yet he’d totally taken over my thoughts. I didn’t even see anyone else while he was away. I didn’t go on a single date. I barely flirted with anyone. I just didn’t care about anyone else.
I wanted him.
It was kinda like I was a virgin all over again, and I was saving myself for him. I just wanted him to be the one.
The only one.
I’d never felt that way before. Not about any guy I’d ever been with, or wanted to be with. Not about Piper, even when I’d weaved all kinds of fantasies about the two of us getting together and chased him for a year.
Only Jude.
When Jessa and I arrived at Dylan’s party, I hoped like hell for only three things. One, that Jude was there. Two, that he wasn’t there with some other girl. And three, that he wanted to see me.
I figured I could take the rest from there.
But when I got there, I didn’t see him. Maybe because the house and the yard were overrun with people—Dylan’s extended family, which turned out to be huge, the band and all kinds of people who knew the band. I saw some familiar faces and talked to a few people, keeping an eye out for Jude while I sipped my drink—a stupid fruit punch, of all things, which had been put out for the “kids” and Jesse had poured for both Jessa and me. She was seventeen, I was eighteen, and the legal drinking age was nineteen, but really.
“You know,” I told her, “your big brother the rock star really needs to loosen the hell up.”
“Don’t let him hear you say that,” she said, rolling her eyes. “He’s not a rock star yet.”
Then a pair of hands came down on my shoulders. Gently. A man’s hands, big and warm, fingers curling into me.
“Bratface,” Jude said, right behind me, in that low, rugged voice of his, and shivers prickled down my spine… and right between my legs.
Jessa rolled her eyes again; she’d been really crabby lately. “Jude.”
“Dolly’s here,” he said. “She’s lookin’ for you.” I sucked in a breath; his hands were still on my shoulders.
Jessa’s “bratface” softened. “I’ll go find her.”
She took off, leaving me alone with Jude and my cup of fruit punch. Which, as I turned to face him, spilled all over him.
It wasn’t totally my fault. His hands dropped from my shoulders as I turned, he probably didn’t know I had the cup in my hand, and there was an awkward mid-air collision of his knuckles and my cup… which resulted in punch all down the front of his shirt.
“Oh. My. Shit,” I stammered, horrified.
The fruit punch was bright red. Luckily, Jude was wearing black.
“I guess that means you’re happy to see me?”
When I peered up into his face, he was smiling a bit. His dimples flickered and my knees went rubbery.
“Crap. I’m really sorry.”
“No worries. I’ll find another shirt.”
“Oh… good.” I stood there awkwardly, not sure what to do or say as he stared at me, that hint of a smile on his face.
Then he grabbed my hand, lacing his fingers through mine, and pulled me toward the house. My heart swelled, like in some cartoon, and I hurried to follow him into the kitchen where Dylan’s mom and a bunch of aunts were prepping food for the barbecue. When she saw Jude, Mrs. Cope immediately pointed us in the direction of Dylan’s bedroom and told him to find a clean shirt.
Jude kept hold of my hand as he led me down the basement stairs and into a bedroom where it looked like a small bomb had gone off, long ago, and no one had bothered cleaning up, so the disarray had just kind of feasted on itself.
Jude let go of my hand and I waited while he fished a clean T-shirt out of Dylan’s closet. I watched him slip his leather jacket off. He glanced at me, and I did my best to look absorbed in perusing the posters on the walls. Dylan had weird taste in music, though. I didn’t even know who or what Thin Lizzy was, but they had horrible fashion sense.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jude strip off his shirt and pull on the clean one.
I looked at him again when he’d pulled his jacket back on.
Then we both just stood there, with Dylan’s giant unmade bed between us. It wasn’t exactly awkward, but it was… something.
“Sorry about your shirt,” I said, again.
“It’s kinda in my jeans, too.”
I glanced down at the front of his jeans. They were black, and I really couldn’t tell if they were wet, but I could definitely see the bulge of his man parts, and my stomach got all fluttery.
I met his dark eyes, which were fixed on mine.
“Sorry.”
“I’ll live with it.” His dimples flashed again.
I smiled a bit.
“So…”
“So.”
“I missed you.” He said it at the exact same moment that I said it.
I grinned slowly, unable to stop myself. “You missed me?”
“Yeah. Imagine that.” He was staring at me and, as usual, I couldn’t totally tell if he was teasing me, flirting with me, or just giving me tough-guy attitude.
I shrugged, feigning indifference. “I mean, you’re okay to have around.”
He kept staring at me. His eyes flicked down over my shirt; it was black and off-the-shoulder on one side. Then they drifted down over my jeans, before meeting my eyes again. Heat crept through my body as he looked at me that way.
Go
d, the shit I wanted to do with this guy… naked and right now.
“What’re you doing after this?”
I glanced around Dylan’s room. “After… this?”
“After the barbecue.”
“Oh. I… uh… drove Jessa here. So…”
“So, we’ll drive her home.”
I stared at him.
“Then I can take you for that ride on my bike.”
I wasn’t smiling anymore. I was very careful not to smile, to hold onto some dignity about this, when all I really wanted to do was jump up and down. And jump on him. “What ride on your bike?”
“One you asked me for, forever ago.”
“You said no.”
His dark eyes held mine. “Changed my mind.”
That night, after Jude followed me across the city on his bike and I dropped Jessa at home, then dropped off my mom’s car at my place, I got on his bike. He had an extra helmet in his saddlebag that fit me well, but I didn’t really want to think that he kept it there for all the random chicks he took on his bike. Instead I let myself believe he put it there that day because he wanted to take me for a ride that night.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been on the back of a guy’s motorcycle while we ripped through the city… but it was the best time. My chest pressed to his back, my thighs snug around his hips, my arms wrapped tight around his waist as the bike rumbled beneath us. A few times, when we stopped at a red light, he put his gloved hand on my thigh, his thumb stroking back and forth… and that small caress made my heart race faster than the rush of racing down the street on his Harley in the night.
After we’d driven over one of the bridges into Richmond and down a bunch of the empty roads between the farms that bled right into the city, and then back over the water into Vancouver, he pulled over and asked me, “Should I take you home?”
It was getting late, probably near midnight. I had to work tomorrow. But I said, “No.”
So he took me to his place instead; the apartment he still shared with Jesse, Brody and Zane.
“The guys are probably still at Dylan’s,” he said as he held the door open for me and we stepped into the dark apartment.
“You kept this place while you were on the road?” I knew they had; Jessa told me they’d sublet it to some guys they knew, and reclaimed it as soon as they came back.
“Yeah,” he said, dropping his jacket and keys on a table. “Just seemed easier than having to find a new one and store all our shit somewhere. The rent’s decent.” He turned on a lamp in the living room. There was a pair of panties on the lampshade, and he tore them off and whipped them at Zane’s bed. “Fuck.” He threw me an apologetic look.
I just slipped off my jacket and dropped it next to his.
Then he went to wash his hands, which was both cute and probably a good idea.
“Sorry it’s not much,” he said, when he rejoined me in the living room.
“I don’t care.” I didn’t. If he only knew what my house looked like… It was barely a step up from the dumpy trailer we’d lived in until I was sixteen and we’d moved into the city. “It’s got good energy.”
He chuckled as he cleared some clothes off his futon. “What, like the smell of dudes and the ghosts of old takeout boxes?”
“No. Like good male energy.” I looked at him; he was staring at me and I just shrugged. “I like it.”
He gathered some takeout containers off the coffee table and dropped them in the kitchen. “This shit is Zane’s and Jesse’s. I’m really not this much of a pig.”
“I know.” I could see that much.
Where Zane’s corner of the living room was pretty chaotic, his blankets tossed on the floor, pictures of naked women torn out of magazines tacked to the wall, his bedside table crowded with baggies of weed, dirty ashtrays, a giant bong and some empty beer bottles, Jude’s was much neater and cleaner. No naked girls on the wall, just a Harley-Davidson poster featuring a gleaming motorcycle. He’d even made his bed, sort of, the blanket laid hastily overtop.
“You still into Good Charlotte?” he asked as he went over to the stereo. The tone of his voice told me there was no way in hell he had any.
“You still into Rage Against the Machine?” I replied.
He glanced at me. “Meet somewhere in the middle?”
“Sure.” I sat down on his futon, glancing at the band posters on the opposite wall, in the little dining room area that was crowded with music equipment. “Just no Pink Floyd. It makes me sleepy.”
He smiled as he thumbed through a row of CDs on the bookcase.
“Hey. You have any White Stripes?”
“How do they make you feel?” he asked.
“Incredibly warm and fuzzy, actually. Especially if you’ve got ‘Little Cream Soda’.”
He glanced at me and I grinned. He popped in a CD and “Little Cream Soda” started thumping through the speakers.
“Love this album,” I gushed. “Best album of last year.” I sank back into the futon. It was folded up like a couch and I leaned against the back, pulling my knees up in front of me.
Jude was looking around, poking through some stuff on the bookcase. “We have candles somewhere…”
I smiled at him. “Are you trying to romance me?”
I could’ve sworn he looked kinda self-conscious as his eyes met mine. “I might be.”
“I like candles,” I said quickly.
He dug through a closet in the front hall while I enjoyed the music. Eventually, he produced some little green votives that had obviously never been used. “Christmas gift from Dolly,” he explained. “Pretty sure it was a hint after Zane brought her over and she saw his mountain of dirty laundry. They’re scented. ‘Key Lime Pie.’”
“Yum.” I watched him light a few and put them out on the coffee table. Then he turned off the lamp and we were left in the flickering light of the tiny flames.
He sat down next to me on his futon, just as the song switched. The CD must’ve been on random, because “Conquest” started playing next. I looked at him. He looked at me as Jack White sang the opening lines about, well, a conquest. Of the sexual variety.
“Jesus,” he said, his dark eyes widening a bit.
I almost laughed, he looked so stricken.
“Is this over the top? I’m not tryin’ to get in your pants, Roni. I just wanted to hang out.”
I was grinning. “Okay.”
He chuckled again. I loved that guarded, reluctant laugh of his. I’d rarely heard him laugh out loud, and only around the guys. It was a tiny, delicious thrill to me that I could make him chuckle. “Want me to change the song?”
“I really don’t care. I’m not here for the music.”
He stared at me. He picked up the remote and turned the music down. Then an awkward silence stretched between us.
I’d been in guys’ apartments before, in their bedrooms. When I wanted to be. I knew when they were making moves on me, and I was pretty comfortable with it.
I was far more uncomfortable with Jude’s lack of making a move.
“You really missed me?” he asked.
“Yup. You missed me?”
“Yeah. Don’t go diggin’ for compliments, though.”
I rolled my eyes. “I figured there’d be so many girls on your rock star tour, by the time you got back, you wouldn’t even remember my name.”
“I’m not a rock star,” he said.
“You look like a rock star.”
He stared at me a bit more, as my heart drummed in my chest.
Then he leaned back against the futon, right next to me. He was still wearing Dylan’s Pearl Drums T-shirt and his bare arm pressed to mine. He had tattoos all down his arm and he felt warm and firm, muscular. And his skin was so, so soft.
“Ver-o-ni-ca,” he said, slow, drawing out the syllables with that low voice of his and that slight, soft drawl. I wasn’t sure if it was because they’d grown up in some tiny town in the interior, but both he and Piper had it. The dropping
of some g’s and the soft a’s. “How could I forget a name like Veronica?”
I smiled at that. “It’s just a name.”
“No,” he said. “It’s just like you. Pretty. Sexy. Unforgettable.”
I quirked an eyebrow. “Are these the lines that usually get you into girls’ pants?”
“Told you,” he said. “I’m not tryin’ to get in your pants.”
“Oh. Right. I forgot.”
“If I was tryin’ to get in your pants, I’d be in your pants.”
I laughed, loud. “Wow. You are… confident.”
“It’s got nothing to do with confidence. I just know.”
“Know what?”
“That if I tried, you’d be okay with it.”
I was so floored by that, in so many different directions, I didn’t even know what to do with it. “I can’t even figure out if I should be offended by that.”
His eyebrows went up. “Didn’t mean to offend you. Just meant, I can tell.”
“How?”
He seemed to be thinking about how to answer that. His eyes looked like black lava in the candlelight, and I felt the heat of his gaze all the way to my deepest depths; like he could see right into me. It almost made me want to hide. “It’s the way you look at me,” he said. “The way you smile at me.”
My heart thumped harder in my chest as his gaze slid over my face. “Is that so?”
“Yeah. It’s so.” His eyes searched mine. “You used to smile at me differently. Like I was just a guy. One of a million guys you could tempt and toss away. You don’t look at me like that anymore.”
I felt the slight smile on my face gradually fading.
“I think you like me, Roni Webber.”
Well, fuck. Now it felt like he had the upper hand, and I didn’t like that at all.
“I think if you tried to get in my pants right now, I’d smack you silly.”
He grinned, dimples and all. “That a challenge, darlin’?”
“Nope. Just warning you. I’ve got a mean right hook.”
“Yeah? Where’d you get that from?”
Dirty Like Jude: A Dirty Rockstar Romance (Dirty, Book 5) Page 15