Marooned with the Rock Star (A Crazily Sensual Rock Star Romance, with Humor)

by Dawn Steele

  OK, I think I’ve just lost my appetite for the next three days.

  The waiter turns to me. “And what would you be having, Miss?”

  “Uh, just a salad would do.”

  “On a diet, Miss?” The waiter’s eyebrows move mischievously.

  “Yes.”

  Kurt remarks, “You were always a little on the large side, Rebecca. Good to know you’re making an effort to thin down.”

  I glare at him. My fists bunch under the table.

  “What sort of salad would you like, Miss? We have a classic Caesar’s, with or without a choice of chicken, and an Asian salad with oranges and Thai sauce.”

  “Asian, please.”

  “Very good, Miss.”

  The waiter knowingly retreats.

  I am left alone with Kurt Taylor, who leans back in his chair and grins wolfishly at me.

  “So, Rebecca. What brings you this side of the world?”

  KURT

  To be honest, I’m really not that hungry. I’m a little queasy from the gently rocking motion of the ship. It’s a big ship, and so the waves must have been huge to rock us like that.

  But it’s so delicious to see Rebecca Hall being taken down a peg or two. She was getting too full of herself, telling me off like that. And she looks gorgeous tonight. She has always been on the heavier side in high school, as I used to remind her. But she was always pleasing to look at.

  Scratch that. She’s more than pleasing right now.

  In fact, she’s downright hot.

  My groin stirs uncomfortably underneath my dinner jacket. The jacket is not even mine. I didn’t bring anything nice to dine in during my incarceration here. I honestly didn’t think I would be invited to any tables, and I was hoping to keep the terms of my sentence as quiet as possible.

  So I borrowed the jacket, shirt and bowtie from Manny across my cabin. We are pretty much the same size. Manny works in engineering. He’s only too happy to lend me his stuff (“from my prom, just in case I get invited to chow with the Captain,” he tells me) for a signed autograph and a photo for his girlfriend.

  I have to loosen my bowtie a little as I am getting a little hot under the collar. Rebecca still is on the plump side, but her curves are very apparent. I’ve always liked women a little bigger anyway. There’s more to grab and grope. Could never go for the stick thin Kate Moss types who always look as if they are going to slip through the grating on the drains and fall into some subterranean sewerage tunnel.

  But why am I finding Rebecca Hall so damned attractive tonight?

  Am I delusional? Do I want to have a death wish? I think I would be safer in a pit of female praying mantises.

  I’m not even sure I know how to make small talk with her. How do you do anything ‘small’ where Rebecca is concerned?

  (OK, bad joke.)

  Because my balls are twitching uncomfortably within my pants, I have to be extra ruthless. When in the full flush of libido, go for the offensive.

  The waiter comes back with the Chateau Haut. Frankly, I haven’t the faintest clue about wines. I just selected the most expensive one on the menu. He offers me the cork.

  “What am I supposed to do about this?” I demand.

  Rebecca’s mouth curls into a slight smile.

  “Would you like a whiff of it, sir?”

  “A whiff?”

  “You’re supposed to sniff at it,” Rebecca says acidly.

  Oh, right. Forgive me if I haven’t been trained in the fine dining arts. I have been too busy making and raking in the moolah, and before this, I have been a small town hick.

  I wave my hand, feeling my cheeks heat up.

  “No need. I trust your taste, man,” I say to the waiter.

  “Very good, sir.”

  He pours a little wine into my glass for me to sip. At least I know how to do this, but Rebecca is watching me carefully, like a shark in the water, waiting for me to trip up and embarrass myself further. So I opt for an even further offensive.

  I hold up my wine glass, salute Rebecca, and down the fruity red liquid in one gulp.

  “To apologies,” I say, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

  She doesn’t say anything as the waiter pours her a full glass of wine.

  When the waiter has left, she says, “I suppose you’re enjoying yourself.”

  “A paid dinner with an old nemesis? What could be better?”

  She glares at me. “I’m not the villain here. It’s you.”

  “Oh, so we’re talking heroes and villains now? How superhero-ish.”

  “You know what you did.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what I did, because I don’t think I did anything wrong.”

  I fold my arms across my chest and sit back.

  Yes, this is the matter between us. The elephant in the room. It sits there on the table like an omnipresent weight. The air between us is choked with tension.

  Rebecca is the first to speak. She raises her vivid green eyes to mine.

  “You left her,” she says flatly.

  REBECCA

  “I didn’t leave her,” he says hotly. “We agreed to part amicably. It wasn’t any of your business.”

  Yes.

  Adeline.

  The three of us. Best friends forever, or so we swore all those years ago.

  “It was my business, thank you very much,” I insist. “She was my best friend.”

  “Look, Rebecca, I know she was your best friend. But people change. People want different things.”

  I shake my head. “It wasn’t just the fact that you left her. It was why you left her.”

  His complexion mottles. He looks as guilty as hell.

  I press my advantage. “Oh yeah, Kurt. You know exactly why you left her. Everything changed, didn’t it? That night?”

  His face blanches.

  Oh yeah. We both know what happened that night all right.

  *

  We were the Three Musketeers, only two of us were female and one of us was fucking the other. Kurt Taylor and Adeline Frost were the golden couple. They were both beautiful, popular and destined for greater things.

  Or so we thought.

  Kurt and Adeline hooked up when they were both sophomores. Kurt was a natural athlete, the kind who was good at whatever sports he tried his hand in – which was basketball in his case. He was tall for his age and as nimble as someone much smaller. Adeline wasn’t a cheerleader but a basketball star herself. She was in the girls’ team. They were both good enough to have won basketball scholarships if they wanted to go to college.

  I was the token class geek. Well, I didn’t wear glasses or braces or anything, but I was on the large side and I mugged like crazy for my exams because I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere on a sports scholarship. The only hope I had was an academic one. Neither of my divorced parents had enough money to send me anywhere but a community college.

  But I wanted a lot more than community college. I wanted to do psychology, and that necessitated a move out of our little town.

  I knew our friendship wasn’t going to be as close-knit as it was forever. Each of us was going to move away to different colleges, different lives. Sometimes I envied Kurt and Adeline. They had each other, and I was kind of the odd one out. The lamp post. Adeline never made me feel that way when the three of us were together, but I got the feeling that sometimes Kurt wished he could have more time alone with Addy.

  But it wasn’t to be. Addy treasured our friendship above everything else, and she tried to get me involved in everything. It was as though we were a threesome, only we technically weren’t.

  Anyhow, it was the night of our final SATs. It was time to celebrate. Kurt’s grades were always mediocre, and so he wasn’t expecting too much. But Adeline thought she did very well for a change. Of course, she had me as a study partner.

  Adeline was driving the car. She was the only one of us with a halfway decent car. I didn’t have the money to get one, and Kurt had a banged-up number
that probably wasn’t worth as much as its weekly gas consumption.

  We were delirious with joy. With the SATs finally over, a burden was lifted off our shoulders. Our fates were in the wind.

  “The night is ours!” Adeline whooped. “Where do we want to go?”

  “I heard the Lasseters are having a party,” Kurt remarked.

  He was in the front passenger seat and he had his arm around Adeline’s headrest, as always. His incredibly long arms made for easy grabbing.

  I sat at the back, of course, watching their two heads turn to each other’s to gab. Adeline’s hair was a sleek, shiny silhouette while Kurt’s was a wavy shimmer. They were both so compatible it was stunning to watch, except that I always nursed this little kernel of jealousy in me.

  I never told anyone about it, of course.

  I wasn’t sure if I was jealous of Kurt being with Adeline, or Adeline being with Kurt. Kurt being with her took her time away from me. Time we used to spend doing stuff together – just the two of us. And the fact that she got a boyfriend before I did rankled deeply in me, although I never told her.

  Of course she would get a boyfriend before I did. She was prettier, slimmer, better than me at everything except schoolwork. But I was hoping against hope that she wouldn’t get a boyfriend until she went off to college.

  Though, of course, she did.

  And Kurt was the kind of boyfriend I simultaneously despised and desired. I know. It was a dichotomy.

  He was a long-haired jock, as stereotypically dumb as stereotypical jocks could get. He was callously handsome, carelessly popular without even trying. The type of guy who seemed to coast through life on his good looks and devil-may-care attitude. He was as bad as bad boys came. And before he arrived on the scene with Adeline, he had an honor’s roll call with girls as long as his arm.

  Kurt had quite a reputation all right. Maybe it was bigger than he deserved, but he was rumored to have slept with dozens of girls and with some of their sisters and mothers too.

  But when he met Adeline, she touched him in some way that he wasn’t touched before. There were girls who were prettier and smarter, but somehow, a spark developed between him and Adeline that neither of them had experienced before. It was as if the cosmos collided and conspired for them to be together.

  Maybe that was what I was jealous of. I was jealous of my best friend having that kind of connection with someone who wasn’t me.

  And I was jealous that Kurt didn’t find me attractive.

  I was kind of competitive against Adeline that way.

  I said to the two of them, “The Lasseter brothers always do coke. There could be a raid.”

  “That’s what makes it hot,” Kurt said. His profile was grinning in the dark as he half-turned to me.

  “Suit yourself,” I retorted. “But I don’t want to be hauled out of jail by my parents so close to graduation.”

  “Me neither,” Adeline said. Her looks were a contrast to mine. Where I was redheaded and green-eyed, she was dark-haired and dark-eyed. She had gypsy blood and a touch of the exotic.

  “So where do we go?” Kurt said. “Maybe we can stop at a Seven-Eleven and get a couple of beer cartons and have our own party.”

  “A couple of beer cartons?” Adeline laughed. “I don’t think we can go through that much between the three of us.”

  “OK. One beer carton. A six-pack.” Kurt reached down to pull up his T-shirt. He jerked a thumb to his abdomen. “These . . . are an eight-pack.”

  “Show-off,” I immediately said.

  We all laughed.

  “OK, but I’m the designated driver,” Adeline said.

  “You have no choice since you won’t let anyone else touch your father’s old junk,” Kurt shot back.

  “Excuse me? My father won’t let you near his cars with a ten-foot pole since you crashed your own car fender into a fire hydrant.”

  “Which flooded the town square,” I crowed.

  “You didn’t have to tell him about it,” Kurt complained.

  “Tell him about it? Everyone knew about it. It was the front page news,” Adeline said.

  “Yeah, in our town, a cat getting rescued from a roof makes the front page news,” he deadpanned.

  Anyhow, we ended up in a Seven-Eleven (yes, there was actually one in our one main street town, could you believe it?). Adeline parked and skipped down to get the six-pack.

  “Stay here,” she said to the two of us. “I’m the only one who has the ID.”

  She was right. She had just turned eighteen.

  “I’m sure I pass for eighteen,” Kurt said.

  He was right too. He looked older than his age. It was that height and the fact he cut quite an imposing figure with his huge frame.

  “Uh uh, Kurt, everyone knows you. I’ll be a while, guys. I have to use the little ladies’.”

  She slammed her car door on us and jauntily walked towards the direction of the brightly lit Seven-Eleven. She had her red jacket on. The wind blew her dark hair backwards. She was a whip of a figure – a pretty young woman perched on anything she could have in the world.

  There was an uncomfortable silence between me and Kurt, as there always was whenever Adeline left the room and sucked out all the camaraderie with her.

  Kurt turned around. His face was in half-shadow, lighted up by the distant fluorescent glow from the Seven-Eleven entrance. He was remarkably beautiful, like a sculptured piece of flesh. His longish hair brushed his shoulders, which were clad in brown leather. Underneath his jacket, he wore a plaid shirt.

  “So, Ms. Smarty-Pants. Decided which college you want to apply to yet?” he said casually.

  “Don’t call me that. You know I don’t like that.”

  He shrugged. There was always that electrical spark between us. I didn’t know if he felt it too, or it was only one-sided on my fuse. He was a boy I found very attractive despite me not liking his ‘type’. By nature of my friendship with his girlfriend, we found ourselves getting to know each other a lot more than our ‘types’ usually allowed.

  “You’re smart. There’s no two ways about it,” he declared. “So you don’t have to pretend anymore, you know. SATs are over. It’s either make or break or repeat them. Out of the three of us, you have the best chance of making it out of this town.”

  That was the best compliment he had ever paid me. I softened.

  “I don’t know, Kurt. It’s a long shot to think I can get an academic scholarship.”

  He shrugged again, a graceful contortion of his shoulders. “Can’t get one if you don’t try. Send the applications out to a dozen universities. Send them to a hundred. One of them will bite, if not more.”

  His eyes rose to meet mine. I felt a frisson of desire flower within my groin.

  There had been many nights alone in my own bed that I had fantasized about how it must have been like with Kurt. Adeline described in detail a couple of their encounters, of course.

  I could feel his body pressing onto mine as if he was there himself. His cock poised at my entrance, quivering, his breath and chest heaving against my tits. The forceful thrust as his cock entered my virgin pussy.

  Ohhhhhhh!

  I told myself it wasn’t Kurt I fantasized about, but the actual fantasy of being fucked, of course. He just happened to be there. He had a romance book cover model face. He was convenient.

  Oh, how our minds lie to us.

  “Sure, one of them will bite. That’s what I keep telling myself.” I had to fight this attraction. I had no choice. It was a good thing that we were all going our separate paths. This way, I didn’t have to ever see him again and be reminded of all the things I don’t want to be.

  I said, “What about you, Kurt? Where are you going?”

  He turned away pensively. “There have been a couple of talent scouts, but I’m a white boy trying to make it in a mostly black game. I think they want to see how I perform on the big game next Saturday against Loyola.”

  The upcoming home game aga
inst Loyola was an important one. A season decider. It made sense that any talent scout would want to see Kurt perform under tremendous pressure.

  “Anyway,” he added, “I don’t think I want to go to college.”

  I couldn’t think of anyone who didn’t want to go to college.

  “Why ever not?”

  He took a deep breath. “It’s too confining for me. I go to college, and then what? I don’t know what I want to do. I don’t know what I want to be.”

  “It isn’t important that you know it yet, only that you get an education,” I explained. “That will broaden your mind. Help you know what you want to do later.”

  “Maybe.” He looked out of the window. His voice was pensive and his profile was like a Michelangelo sculpture. “But Adeline and I are likely to go to different colleges, you know. She’s smarter than I am. So I guess these are going to be our last months together.”

  I knew that, of course. What I didn’t know was that he would be so affected by it, or that he would even have an internal struggle with it.

  It touched me – the fact that Kurt Taylor, high school jock, had so many layers. A deep warmth spreaded through me, nourishing me with emotions I didn’t know I had.

  Fight it. You’ve got to fight it!

  I said, “I guess that’s part of growing up. Leaving people behind. My Dad says it will happen to all of us. And that we shouldn’t form attachments that are too strong because then our decisions to go to college or our choice of colleges might be clouded by them.”

  He was silent for a while.

  Then he said, “I guess you’re right.”

  I touched his shoulder gently. “Are you sad to be leaving Adeline?”

  He smiled in the dark. His hand rose to clasp mine upon his shoulder. A jolt went through me. His hand was very warm and very rough from handling basketballs. And there was many a time I imagined those hands on my own flesh, caressing my breasts and stomach and curves.

  His fingers stroked the back of my hand. My crotch contracted, sending a spasm of florid pleasure throughout my groin.

  “We all have to chart our own stars, I guess,” he said in a soft voice.