STAR (A 44 Chapters Novel)

by BB Easton

  Hans’s mouth fell open in stunned silence.

  “I love you, Hans. I love you so fucking much that seeing this shit, knowing it’s happening, knowing nobody fucking thinks it’s a big deal but me, it’s too much. I can’t pretend like it’s not killing me anymore. I can’t pretend like I don’t lie awake at night, wondering how many other girls have kissed you since we’ve been together. How many other skanks have snuck into your green room. How much of you they get to touch when I’m not around to run them off.” My chin began to wobble as I shoved an angry finger in the direction of the venue. “I can’t do this shit anymore, Hans. I’m sorry. I’m just…too fucking jealous to be your girlfriend!”

  I spun around, ready to march back to my car, crank up the AC, lock the doors, and cry myself to death when two massive hands clamped around my midsection.

  Hans spun me back around to face him. He was kneeling in front of me now, holding my waist and looking up at me with glistening, kohl-lined eyes. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so fuckin’ sorry.” Sincerity squeezed his usually soft voice until it sounded like it might break. “That girl had a media pass and said she was with WATL. I was just gonna sit down and answer a few interview questions until you got there, but I guess she was just a fangirl who wanted an autograph.”

  “Oh, I think she wanted more than just an autograph,” I snapped.

  “I didn’t know, baby, I swear.” Hans shook his head back and forth in earnest. “I just thought she was gonna interview us.”

  I threw my hands up and tried to step away again, but Hans’s death grip wouldn’t allow it. “Ugh! This is exactly what I’m talking about. You’re so fucking naive! You don’t realize girls are hitting on you until they’re practically riding your cock! I can’t be around twenty-four/seven to fight them off, and you’re obviously not up to the job.” I was seething. I hissed my words at him with a venomous tongue even though, deep down, I knew he couldn’t help it.

  Hans was simply too sweet to see the bad in anyone. That was part of why I’d fallen in love with him.

  According to my Interpersonal Relationships class, there was a term for what Hans and I had—fatal attraction. It’s when the very qualities that attract you to someone eventually lead to the death of the relationship. I adored how kind and gentle and romantic Hans was. Whenever he wrapped those bulging tattooed arms around me, I felt as though I’d just shrugged on a fur coat made from live puppies that could sing “Lovesong” by The Cure a cappella. The only problem was, Hans made everybody feel that way.

  And this Cruella de Vil was not down with sharing her puppy trench.

  “Let me go, Hans. Your fans await.”

  As angry as I was, the look of despair on his face after that statement made me want to take back everything I’d just said. Hansel Oppenheimer was a unicorn. A myth. A fairy-tale prince. And what was I doing? Guilt-tripping him while he knelt in a bed of rusty screws and light bulb shards at my feet?

  He should be the one leaving me.

  I opened my mouth to retract my words, but the only sound that came out was a surprised gasp as Hans wrapped his arms all the way around my waist and buried his face in my belly.

  He turned his head sideways, just enough to speak, but kept a death grip around my midsection. “Please don’t leave, baby. Please. You can’t. I know you see the fans and the groupies, but I don’t. I swear. All I see are people who aren’t you, and you. That’s it. Everyone else is just a walking, talking hunk of flesh that I need to get around to get to you.”

  Hans’s grip tightened as his voice grew louder. More frantic. “You want to know why I don’t look at you anymore when I’m onstage? It’s because I fucking can’t. Because every time I do, I see some dickhead trying to buy you a drink at the bar or knock you down in the pit or press his dick into your ass when you’re in the front row. You think you’re the jealous one?”

  Hans lifted his head and pinned me with a crazed, angry gaze I’d never seen before. “The entire time I’m up there, all I want to do is leap into the crowd and smash some motherfucker’s teeth down his throat.” His voice was gravelly as he twisted my black cotton dress in his free hand. “It throws me off my game so bad, I can’t even look up anymore. It takes everything I have to just focus on the music and ignore it. All I want to do is protect you, and I’m fucking helpless up there.”

  Tears and mascara and relief poured out of me as the implications of Hans’s words sank in. I grabbed his face with both hands and pulled him up to meet my salty, wet mouth. I kissed him with everything I had and realized in that moment that the real problem was never Hans. Clearly, he was even more perfect than I’d feared. The real problem was that I’d never truly felt worthy of him.

  Hans kissed me back like I was the last canteen in the Sahara, and I decided that my self-doubt and jealousy had to stop. He obviously loved me if he was willing to kneel in a bed of what looked like human teeth and used syringes just to keep me from leaving him. It was time for me to accept that love and get the fuck over myself.

  Hans broke away from our kiss and pressed his forehead to mine. “I want you to move in with me.”

  “What?”

  Hans pulled away a few inches, just enough to look directly into my stunned, blinking eyes. “You said you can’t do this anymore. That you’re too jealous. Well, so am I. I want you all to myself.” The lump in Hans’s throat bobbed up and down. “Ever since you moved back home, I’ve been losing my fucking mind. I want to fall asleep with you in my arms again. I want to wake up next to you every morning. I can’t wait any longer. I need you back.”

  Every square inch of my body tingled violently as the giddiness I was trying to contain leaked out through my pores. Even my eyeballs tingled as fresh tears sprang forth, blurring my vision. Without a word, I reached into my purse and handed Hans the red envelope he’d retrieved for me earlier, my bottom lip clamped between my teeth.

  “What’s this?” Hans asked, admiring his own name calligraphed on the front. When I didn’t answer, he tore open the flap and slid a homemade card out that said Happy Birthday on the front in matching calligraphy. “My birthday was a month ago,” Hans said, the V reappearing between his stormy eyes. “Why didn’t you—” His voice trailed off as he opened the card.

  I watched his face go through a myriad of emotions as he flipped through the contents—a brochure for the Midtown Village apartment complex, enough hundred-dollar bills to cover the deposit on a one-bedroom unit, and finally, the stupid fucking poem I’d written, back before Phantom Limb took over the airwaves. Back before I’d convinced myself that a rock star wouldn’t want a live-in girlfriend. Back before I’d taken a step back.

  I miss you when you’re gone,

  But I know you have to go.

  I miss you when you’re here,

  And I’m sleeping all alone.

  I miss you when we’re together,

  If you’re too many feet away.

  I missed you for seventeen long years,

  Before I found you, my soul mate.

  I want to be there in the morning

  When you rub your sleepy eyes.

  I don’t ever want to miss another

  Mundane Tuesday night.

  When I first woke up beside you,

  I knew that’s right where I should be.

  So, now that I’m finally old enough,

  Will you move in with me?

  As his eyes traveled down the page, Hans’s pierced eyebrow lifted, his mouth curved upward, and his scruffy cheeks dimpled adorably.

  “What’s all this?” he asked softly, his black-lined blue eyes lifting to meet mine.

  “It’s a yes.”

  Hans held my hand, his thumb tracing lazy circles on top of mine, as he walked me to my car. I’d parked about half a mile away, in a nearby neighborhood, but I wished it were farther. I wanted that walk to last forever.

  The humid air hugged us like a warm, thick blanket. My cells sang along with the crickets. My molecules buzzed to t
he hum of the streetlights. And my heart fluttered with every blink of Hans’s long black eyelashes whenever I caught him smiling down at me.

  Or should I say, LDH’s long black lashes. I couldn’t believe that my sweet Hans was the same tall, toned, tattooed badass that I’d just seen perform in front of a few thousand people at Variety Playhouse. He could have left with any girl he wanted that night, but he’d chased me down and knelt in broken glass just to get me to stay.

  As the taillights of my trusty black Mustang came into view, just as I began to mourn the end of our evening stroll, I felt myself being tugged away from the street and onto someone’s lawn.

  “Look,” Hans whispered as he led me deeper onto the property of a beautifully renovated antebellum home.

  I was about to try to steer my distractible boyfriend back on course when I caught my first glimpse of the ethereal wonderland he was dragging me toward. The backyard of the estate had been wrapped, swathed, and wallpapered in thousands upon thousands of tiny white Christmas lights—in the middle of July.

  They must have hosted a party or a wedding there earlier, some grand celebration, but by the time we found it, there was no evidence of life anywhere. The backyard sloped downhill to a swimming pool, which was as still as a pane of glass, reflecting the twinkling lights coiled tightly around every tall pine tree surrounding it. The back of the plantation-style house, all three stories of it, was dark. In fact, the only movement at all came from the ceiling fans quietly spinning on the patio under the main deck.

  I couldn’t even process all the beauty at once. The way my attention was flitting from one shiny object to the next must have been what Hans’s brain felt like all the time. As my head swiveled and my eyes darted around that sparkly, glowing jewelry box of a backyard, I failed to notice that Hans was pulling me farther and farther onto this obviously very private property.

  It wasn’t until my body fell onto Hans’s lap that I realized he had escorted me all the way down to the patio, and we were sitting on one of the cushy lounge chairs under the deck. I froze, highly aware that these people had a stupid amount of money and probably owned a state-of-the-art security system with invisible lasers and paralysis-inducing mist. Not that it mattered. Between Hans’s strong arms around my waist, the secluded coziness of the covered patio, and the majesty of a hundred thousand tiny lights dancing in the trees and on the water before me, I was already paralyzed.

  Hans and I sat in silence, enjoying the view. The fiery tree branches flickered in sync with the sounds of crickets and cicadas and air conditioners in the distance, creating a concert of white light and white noise that was playing just for us. As we watched the show, tucked into and around each other, Hans and I had an entire conversation telepathically, one that was full of promises and shiny rings and I dos and baby names.

  When Hans began trailing featherlight kisses from my shoulder up to my neck, I tilted my head and bit my lip to keep from humming out loud.

  When he repeated his delicate assault on the other side, he surprised me by biting down on the haphazard bow holding my halter dress up and yanking it loose. Within seconds, the black fabric covering my chest was replaced by warm, damp air.

  My first instinct was to snatch my dress back up and scurry off before the owners had a chance to loose the hounds, but when Hans took both of my pierced nipples between his fingertips and tugged gently, I was a goner.

  My head rolled back onto his shoulder, my back arched involuntarily, and I surrendered to his impulsive will.

  “You are so beautiful,” Hans whispered, his teeth grazing my shoulder.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and tried not to whimper, his words giving me as much pleasure as his expert hands. Then, he stood up and came around to the foot of the lounge chair and knelt before me. It was reminiscent of our postures from just minutes ago in the parking lot. Only now, everything had changed. Hans’s shy, one-dimpled smile had returned to its rightful place, and I was ready to book a flight to Las Vegas instead of booking it to my car to cry.

  After gazing at me for a moment, his eyes soft and loving yet dark and daring, Hans grabbed the hem of my dress with both hands and slipped it off over my head. Before I had time to process the fact that I was almost completely naked on the patio of a complete stranger, Hans bent down and captured my left nipple ring between his lips. He swirled his tongue around and around the sensitive pink flesh as he laid me flat on the overstuffed chaise lounge cushions.

  Hans then turned his attention to my other breast, fondling and sucking, while I desperately tore at his sweat-soaked tank top. As I peeled the cotton off his torso, Hans made his way down mine, planting a trail of torturously unhurried kisses along the way. I stared at the ceiling fan overhead, its breeze causing all the wet places Hans had left behind to tingle, as his mouth hit the apex of my very wet panties. The feel of his tongue probing me through that thin piece of fabric was glorious, electric agony.

  My hips began to thrust involuntarily, begging him to end the torture, when I felt a thick finger hook the sopping wet fabric between my legs and pull it to one side.

  As soon as Hans’s mouth made contact with my aching flesh, I felt my entire body contract. It was too much. I was spread-eagled, practically naked on a stranger’s chaise lounge, with my breasts exposed to the steamy night air. Fingers that had just skillfully shredded a bass guitar in front of thousands of people were stroking my G-spot, and the playfully wicked black-rimmed eyes of a rock star were gazing up at me from between my thighs where his expert tongue was flicking and teasing the barbell piercing my clit.

  Just as a tidal wave of an orgasm began to build, I heard the sound of Hans undoing his belt and fly.

  Oh, thank God!

  Hans shimmied out of his baggy pants and Adidas with ease and scooped me up into his arms. I wrapped my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck, hoping he would take me against the wall of the house so that we wouldn’t have to worry about any unexpected squeaks from the patio furniture.

  As Hans carried me, the feel of his callused hands gripping my ass and his thick, firm cock grazing the inside of my thigh had me writhing in need. I thrust my hands into his sweaty hair and sucked at his swollen, tart lips. My senses were so overwhelmed with desire that I didn’t even notice how far we’d traveled until I felt lukewarm water sloshing into my boots.

  My eyes shot open as the water continued to rise up my legs.

  Hans had carried me into…the motherfucking…pool!

  Before I could yelp or thrash in protest, Hans thrust his tongue into my mouth and the head of his rock-hard cock into my aching pussy.

  My awareness dived below the surface of the water to where our bodies were now joined. Hans was all I could feel. There was simply no room in my consciousness to process anxiety, fear, wet, dry, hot, cold, past, future. Every sensation was flooded with him.

  Once we were completely submerged, Hans pressed my back against the cool tiled wall of the pool and filled me completely. With his lust, with his loyalty, with his love, with himself. Every achingly slow withdrawal felt as though it was peeling away another layer of separation between us until we were no longer two people in a pool. We were the pool.

  We were the unending, undulating sea.

  Hans broke our kiss just long enough to whisper into my neck, “I love you.”

  Tears stung my eyes. Hans had said those three words to me a thousand times before, but that was the first time I’d truly allowed myself to hear them. To believe them. To hope against hope that the fairy tale might actually come true.

  I grasped his beautiful face with both hands and urged him to look at me. When he finally complied, tiny white lights from the trees around us danced across the shiny surface of his eyes, giving me the sense that, through those black holes of eyeliner and dark lashes, I could see directly into the heavens.

  I smoothed the worried V between his brows with one thumb and whispered back, never breaking eye contact, “I love you too, baby.”

&n
bsp; Hans tightened his grip on my ass and buried himself into me as far as he could go, pressing his forehead into mine. “I love you.”

  Hans’s words were forceful. Resolute. They echoed through me, bouncing into and out of all the hollow places they’d never managed to reach before, leaving a satisfying vibration in their wake.

  After a moment of reverie, Hans slowly withdrew and then plunged into me harder than before. I moaned unintentionally. His next thrust was harder still.

  I grabbed a handful of his messy black hair and hissed into his mouth, “I love you.”

  My sentiment was immediately rewarded with a pounding so forceful that water sloshed over the edge of the pool.

  Kissing me just below my ear, Hans growled as he ground his hips into mine, “I love you.”

  Abruptly, Hans tightened the grip he had on my ass and stood upright, exposing both of our naked torsos to the warm night air. I reached behind me and propped myself up with my arms on the ledge of the pool, baring my breasts to the rock star before me and my soul to the sensitive artist within. Hans responded to my submission by taking my left nipple ring between his teeth and thrusting fully into me just as he bit down.

  Fire.

  I might have been submerged in water, but my loins and heart and lungs were ablaze with pleasure. My eyes rolled back, and my body erupted in a volcano of curse words and whimpers and I love yous and tears as Hans withdrew and attacked, harder and faster. The once-mirrorlike body of water around us had become an uncontainable riptide of waves and lust spilling over the edges of the pool and crisscrossing through the cracks between the surrounding terra-cotta tiles.

  Hans slid two wet fingertips into my mouth to silence me and growled with every advance, “God…I…fucking…love you,” before he stilled, pouring the last ounce of himself into me.