Sometimes, that meant protecting them from themselves.
“Five minutes,” I told my guys, when we let a dozen or so carefully chosen fans backstage to meet the band just before we started shooting. It was good for the shoot to dole out a few passes, let a few people back to talk to the band and get excited about it, bring that energy back out into the crowd. But I was selective as fuck.
Picked a handful of girls and guys who actually looked like they might be decent conversationalists, not just groupies who’d be begging Zane to bend them over.
Even Zane was getting weary of that shit these days.
Just before the band hit the stage to start shooting, I was hanging with Jesse backstage when he asked me, “So, you meet someone or what?”
“What?”
“You’ve been sending guys to fill in for you a lot lately, at night. Every time I ask you to come down, someone else shows up. I’d say I miss you, but even when you’re around lately, you’re shit for conversation anyway.”
Really?
“Yeah,” I said, because what was I gonna do, lie to Jesse’s face about it? “Met someone.”
“Yeah?” He gave me his brilliant, superstar smile, and I actually felt kinda bad for being so secretive about it. “When do I get to meet her?”
“I’ll let you know if it becomes important.”
His smile dropped a few watts; maybe he was really that jazzed that I was seeing someone? Probably wanting me to do date nights with him and Katie.
Yeah… really didn’t think Roni would be up for that anytime soon.
“Alright, brother,” he said.
I clapped him on the shoulder and went to check on everyone else. But even after I’d said those words and walked away, they tasted bad in my mouth.
If it became important.
Like Roni wasn’t important to me?
Then, out of nowhere, Brody got up my ass.
“So what’s going on with you and Roni?”
When I glanced at him, his blue eyes narrowed at me, and I knew he knew… something. Maybe this was payback for me giving him a hard time for being such a ragey bitch when Jessa first came back to town. Or maybe Jessa had told him how I’d showed up at that teahouse with flowers for Roni.
I had no idea.
So I just evaded the question.
“Roni? Yeah, Roni’s hot,” I said, distractedly, like maybe I hadn’t even noticed before, or I hadn’t heard him all that well. Then I made myself busy talking to Seth.
It wasn’t like that was a lie, either.
Roni was hot.
If she happened to be my fuck buddy, whose business was that?
Just because my friends were nosy as shit, didn’t mean I had to tell them anything.
Thank fuck Liv called the band out to the stage like two seconds later, and Brody got busy out front.
I hung out by the side of the stage, and as soon as they started rolling, I texted Roni. Plans tonight?
Because I planned to be her plan for tonight, if I had any say in it.
For the last week-and-a-half, we’d been fucking like maniacs. Almost every night I was at her place. Usually late, after we’d both done all the other shit we had to do. We fucked, then I went home.
Other than the night when we’d fucked on my Harley instead, parked in the dark of an empty parking lot, halfway back to her place from some bar I’d picked her up at. Was cold as shit out, but she’d insisted; something about a fantasy she’d had for years. Who was I to kill her dreams?
And, other than the night she’d replied to my fuck request to tell me she was on her “moon time.” I didn’t even know what the fuck she was talking about for about five minutes.
When I’d figured it out, I texted her back to tell her, Doesn’t bother me.
She’d texted me back, I’ll be in my jammies by 6:00.
And I’d texted back, Perfect.
When she didn’t reply, I called her and she told me, “I’m emotional. I don’t see men when I’m emotional.”
To which I replied, “You’re kiddin’ me.”
And she basically hung up on me.
That night, I’d arrived at her place around nine-thirty—uninvited—to find her in her jammies, looking surly. I walked right in anyway and managed to get her on the couch under a blanket, where we cuddled up and watched a movie. I kept my hands to myself, and I even let her pick what we watched. She chose the latest Thor movie, which I was pretty impressed with until she informed me she’d chosen it “because Chris Hemsworth.”
Before the end of the movie, she was asleep. I watched until the end, then slipped out.
Then I left her alone for a couple of days, because that seemed to be what she wanted.
The next time I saw her, we were both at Brody and Jessa’s engagement party, but not together. Apparently Jessa had proposed and they’d already set a wedding date—next summer, during a scheduled break in the tour. Everyone was happy for them, including me. Brody was pretty much glowing.
The whole night, I’d managed to be a gentleman and not put my hand on Roni’s ass or something that might’ve pissed her off, since we were just fuck buddies and all.
Then I took her back to her place and fucked her on her dining room table. And in the shower.
And I wondered how long we were gonna keep this up.
I’d been wondering that a lot.
Over the next few weeks, I’d be prepping my security crew and working with Maggie to get all the details set for the tour. There was a lot of paperwork for my guys and bullshit that Maggie helped me take care of, and I liked to map out a whole plan of who was doing what and where and when, even if it sometimes fell to shit once we got on the road.
I liked to be prepared, as much as possible; when it came to security for the band, I didn’t like surprises.
Which meant I also needed to prepare a whole alternate plan—one that laid out what was gonna happen if I wasn’t on the tour. Minor problem with that was I still wasn’t sure who I’d have lead my crew in my place.
And if I did go on the tour… I didn’t even want to think about who was gonna take my place here—with Roni.
Being her fuck buddy and the one guy she’d let near her when she was feeling “emotional”? Those were roles I wasn’t thrilled about handing off to anyone else.
Late that night, once the video shoot had wrapped, instead of heading over to Roni’s place for sex, I picked her up where she was—at a bar with some friends—and I took her to my place.
It was the first time I’d ever brought her to my place, and as we walked into the house, I saw it more or less through her eyes.
The general lack of furniture. The giant TV and leather couch that pretty much dominated the living room. The dining room that had no table. The huge black-and-white photo on canvas of me and my brother as kids, with our dad and one of his motorcycles—the only decoration on any wall.
The house was old, plain, in decent repair, but it really wasn’t all that much to look at.
Roni still looked, carefully, as I gave her the incredibly brief tour.
As she looked around, maybe it should’ve made me uneasy. Her condo by the water in Olympic Village was much newer, and like her, it was beautiful, stylish and inviting.
But it didn’t make me uncomfortable.
I knew why I never brought women here. Because this was my private space. My sanctuary. My one escape from both the MC and the band.
I had a lot of love for a lot of people, but at the end of the day my introverted ass needed to shut it all down and turn off that fucking ticking clock or I’d go insane.
There were pretty much four things I needed in life, in order to maintain my sanity.
My routines.
My workouts.
Keeping my diet as clean as I could, even on the road.
And my space.
The best places to get the space I needed were on my bike, and in my home—a place that was mine alone, where I checked all the drama at t
he door.
I’d only had this place since coming home from the last Dirty tour. Pretty much every tour, I gave up whatever rental I’d been living in, and when the tour ended I just found another one. If I didn’t count the six-week tour for Jesse’s solo album last year, I hadn’t been on tour for almost two years; it was the longest gap we’d ever had between Dirty tours.
And in these last two years, being more or less home from the road, it wasn’t like there’d been any woman in my life who I’d wanted to bring into my sanctuary.
Just Roni.
I wasn’t even sure why it suddenly felt so important to me to bring her here, except that I felt the need to do it. So here we were.
“Your dad,” she said, as she gazed up at the photo on the wall of the empty dining room. “He died, a few years back.” She glanced over her shoulder at me. “I heard about it. Still run into people from the club, from time to time.”
“Yeah. I was away on tour when it happened. Dirty’s second world tour. We were in Australia. Almost didn’t make it back for the funeral in time. Jesse flew back with me, had to miss a couple of shows.”
“I know,” she said. “I was there.” She looked up at the photo again. “I came to the burial. But there were a lot of people.”
She was there?
That stunned me; that she’d cared to be there.
Yeah, there were a lot of people at the funeral. But I couldn’t believe I’d missed her.
“You should’ve come over,” I told her. “Said hello.”
“No. You were grieving. I didn’t think you’d want to see me, anyway.” She glanced at me, then wandered right on into my bedroom.
I followed her, watching as she looked around.
“No visible signs of other women… Check.” She turned in a slow circle. “Unmade bed, but the sheets look clean… Okay. No Star Wars posters… Check.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“I’ll stay.” She dropped her purse on the floor and shed her jacket.
“You find that in the bedrooms of other men?” I asked her, genuinely fucking curious. “Star Wars posters and signs of other women?”
“Not all men are as classy as you, Jude Grayson.”
“That’s true.”
I walked over to her and spun her around by her hips. Then I unzipped her sexy little black dress and slipped it down to the floor. I slid my hand up her back, over the tattoo on the back of her right shoulder; it was the only one on her body. A girly, swirly pattern of leaves and flowers. Pretty, like the rest of her.
I pushed her forward, so she was bent over my bed, and tore her panties down her thighs.
“I’m not always classy,” I informed her.
Then I licked two fingers and shoved them into her pussy.
She gasped. “Replace that with your dick… and I won’t be so classy, either.”
I was already undoing my jeans, and fumbled around for a condom in the drawer by the bed. Took me a while to find one. I stopped finger-fucking her long enough to roll the condom on, then gripped her hips and slammed into her.
She cried out, a raw, animal sound, followed by a string of curses and encouragements, and for the next however long we fucked like feral monkeys.
After a while, she started to squirm like she was restless or something, so I moved myself onto the bed and pulled her with me, peeling off her panties and bra as we went and shedding my own clothes.
Then I pulled her on top and watched as she fucked me. I held her wrists tight behind her, making her back arch and her tits thrust out.
I pulled her forward so I could take her nipples in my mouth and tease her. One thing I knew about Roni: she hated being teased and touched in any gentle way during sex.
But that was only because she loved it.
“Jude… augh,” she complained-moaned, as I suckled one nipple, then the other. I licked and nibbled as she rode me, her nipples slipping in and out of my mouth as she bobbed up and down.
Then I just watched her for a while, her black hair falling around her shoulders, her head tipped back, her mouth open. I listened to the sexy sounds she made, how she moaned and swore the hotter she got. How her body started to shake as she bore down on my dick.
I rolled us over, taking her under me. I fucked her hard, then slowed right down, teasing her. I kissed her sweet, cocksucking mouth as her hands moved over my back and her nails dug into my ass. And I could feel her want for me, so strong.
Then my head went to a strange place.
I started burning up with fucking jealousy…
Star Wars posters.
Signs of other women.
Other mens’ bedrooms…
I pulled out, leaving my cockhead just nudging her slit.
“You want this, babe?”
“Yeah. Yeah…” she moaned, clutching at me.
But I held it back, just out of reach.
“Then no other dick.”
Her gaze snapped to focus, meeting mine. “What?” she gasped.
“You want this dick,” I said, sliding back into her, “no one else.”
“Uh…” She seemed to be scraping her thoughts together. “You… you want me to be… uh… exclusive with you? Like… exclusively fucking you?”
“Yeah, that.”
“Oh…”
Didn’t love that response. I pulled out again, almost all the way. “That a problem?”
“No… No. I haven’t been… anyway…”
Good girl.
I slammed back into her.
“Fuck, Jude…”
“No one else?”
“No one else,” she breathed. “Since we became…”
“Good.” I took her hands, pushed them into the pillows above her head, and increased the power of my thrusts. The bullshit on my back had fully healed by now, and I was planning on making up for any previous lack in performance. “You feel that?”
“Yeah…”
“Get used to it. ’Cause that’s what you’re gettin’ from now on…”
And that’s what she got, until she came beneath me, screaming.
Then I slowed it down and built it right back up until she came again.
Then I did it a few more times, because witnessing Roni Webber losing it like that was a thing of fucking beauty.
So beautiful… she finally took me down with her.
I was gradually getting the feeling back in my extremities as I laid back on the bed, sweat-drenched and pretty much panting, watching her gather her lingerie off the floor and slide it back on.
Then I realized what time it was.
“Shit…” How did this girl always make me lose track of time? It was like every clock in the world—including the one in my head—ceased ticking the moment I was in a room with her.
“What?” Roni stood in the middle of my bedroom in her panties and bra, doing up the bra behind her back, her hair falling over one shoulder. Black hair, pale skin, black lingerie.
Fucking perfection.
I sighed. “It’s four am. I’ve gotta be up in like three hours. You mind if I get Bishop to drive you home? He’s not far from here.”
“Bishop?” she said. “Won’t he be sleeping? I can just call a cab.”
“Like fuck.” I was already on my phone, texting Bishop. “Bishop’s already getting paid. Let the man earn his keep.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“He’s on call, twenty-four-seven.”
“For Jessa,” she protested.
I gave her a look. “For me.”
She just shook her head as she plucked her dress off the floor. “What if he’s not available?”
“He’s available if I say he’s available.”
“Oh, yeah?” She cocked her sexy eyebrow. “And what if he’s getting laid?”
“Too bad for him.”
She narrowed her gorgeous eyes at me. “So that’s it? Everyone in your life is just at your beck and call, huh?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“What a charmed life you lead, Jude Grayson,” she mused, as she shimmied back into her sexy dress.
Twenty minutes later, when I walked her out to the driveway and put her in Bishop’s car, I asked her, “You wanna hook up with this exclusive dick tomorrow?”
“I’m working with Talia tomorrow night. I might not have time for your dick, too.”
Huh?
I searched her face but she appeared to be totally fucking serious about that. After the string of orgasms I’d just given her.
Clearly, she wasn’t gonna be at my “beck and call.”
“Yeah?” I challenged. “You gonna make time?”
“Maybe,” she said, then she gave me a goodbye kiss that made my cock stand right the fuck back up. “Call me and find out.”
Chapter Seventeen
Roni
Two nights later, I was out at a brew pub for beers and girl talk with Jessa, Katie and her BFF, Devi, and Dylan’s girlfriend, Amber. And of course baby Nick, who was sleeping in his carrier on the booth seat next to Jessa while we talked.
Because it was the number one thing they had in common, Katie, Amber and Jessa got talking about their men, and before long, Katie turned to me. She’d invited me to this girls’ night herself, and when she asked me, “How’s your boyfriend, Roni?” with her big, blue-green, ultra-innocent eyes, I knew why.
Obviously she was dying to know why her husband’s best friend had walked into that teahouse with flowers for me and asked me to dinner—when the last she’d heard, yes, I had a boyfriend.
I glanced at Jessa. Clearly, she hadn’t spread the news.
“We broke up.”
“Oh?” Katie said.
“Yeah, you know, right before the flowers-in-the-teahouse incident.”
“Oh.”
“What flowers-in-the-teahouse incident?” Amber asked.
“Jude showed up at a teahouse where we were having a lady lunch, with flowers," Devi filled her in. “For Roni.”
Amber looked at me and I could tell she was trying hard not to appear, well, stunned. “Jude?”
“Mmm,” I said noncommittally, and sipped my microbrew.
Dirty Like Jude: A Dirty Rockstar Romance (Dirty, Book 5) Page 20