Maybe it was both?
“Point taken,” I murmured, and I took another drag.
“Do you have any idea at all?” she asked me. “I mean… you could be someone’s Jesse Mayes.”
“Huh?” I blinked at her. “The fuck does that mean?”
I liked Jesse well enough. He and I would never be best bros; we just didn’t have that kind of chemistry. But we were cool.
Didn’t mean I wanted to be compared to him in the relationship department. Not in Elle’s mind.
“It means, do you even know how many hearts you’ve broken?”
“Do you?” I countered.
She didn’t answer that. She didn’t seem to like the thought of it, but no fucking way Elle Delacroix, platinum princess, hadn’t broken a heart or two over the years. Or a hundred.
“All this talk of broken hearts is getting me down,” I told her, taking another hit off my joint. Between the hot water and the weed and Elle, I was relaxed, buzzing, and decently content. But I was also hard as fuck, my cock throbbing to the point of distraction. “Let’s turn this night the fuck around already.”
“And how would we do that?”
“We could fuck,” I said bluntly.
“Excuse me?”
As if she hadn’t heard me.
“However you want,” I told her, and maybe it was the pot loosening my tongue, but I fucking meant it. “Right now. Or whenever you want. It doesn’t even have to mean anything. It can if you want it to. Or it can just be a friends thing.”
She shook her head, looking kinda stunned, but she shouldn’t have been. She knew I was hard up for her, right? “A ‘friends’ thing?”
“You know. Friends with benefits.”
Even as I said it, I knew I was hoping for more. That I wanted more.
If I could get it.
But with her, I’d probably take anything I could get.
It’s not that I was in love with Elle. She hadn’t let me get close enough to fall in love with her. Yes, we were friends. But I’d never really gotten behind the veil she wore to shroud herself from the rest of the world. With me, she was Elle, the musician. The famous girl. The rock star. She’d never let me get near the real Elle—the girl inside all that other shit.
Every time I so much as tried to look at her that way, really look at her, really see her, she got conveniently scarce.
But the thing was, I knew I could probably fall for her if she let me.
Maybe that’s what she was so afraid of.
I could just as easily enjoy the sex and walk away, if she really wanted me to.
Maybe.
Hard to know for sure when we hadn’t even gone there yet.
“You want to get over Jesse, right?” I said. “So use me to get over him.”
She was silent, so I went on.
“You can use my body. I don’t mind being used. Whatever you like, I’m game.”
She was staring at me, guarded, but she’d gone really still. Not-breathing still. And not just because she was scared.
Because she was thinking about my offer. I knew it when she drew a shuddery breath.
“That’s a bad idea, Ash,” she said softly.
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes,” she said, her tone hardening.
“But how do you know unless you try?”
“It’s a bad, bad idea, Ashley,” she said emphatically.
“Or maybe it’s not.”
“It is,” she insisted. “Completely. Actually, in the history of bad ideas, that may go down as the most—”
“Alright, alright.” I raised my hands in mock surrender and blew it off. “You win. I was fucking kidding anyway.”
But we both knew I wasn’t.
“Right…”
“Serious. You’re too skinny and too blonde for me,” I told her. “And too gorgeous.” I smashed out my roach on a rock and tossed it into the bush. Then I looked her in the eyes, my face carefully blank. “Who likes skinny blondes anyway?”
“Uh-huh,” she said, sipping her beer. “We are really going out of style.”
“Exactly. You probably couldn’t get my dick up if you tried.”
At that, her eyes flared. But I couldn’t really read them in the dark. Had no idea if she thought that was hilarious, ridiculous, or insulting. Or if she knew it was a lie.
If she had any idea how hard I already was, just flirting with her.
She swallowed her beer and said, with a bit of bite, “That’s good. Because I wouldn’t want your dick up. You’re way too tall, dark and egotistical for me, Ash.”
But we both knew that wasn’t true, either.
Chapter 4
Elle
“Am I?” he said, and he gave me such a smoldering, Let’s fuck right now look, my pussy clenched in response.
It had been a long, long time since a man looked at me like that.
Or since I noticed a man looking at me like that.
But what the hell was I saying? My words were loaded with flirtation. With challenge. And you didn’t challenge a guy like Ashley Player to fuck you.
Unless you wanted to get fucked.
He knew as well as I did that “tall, dark and egotistical” was kind of my happy place. Despite my best intentions, it was totally my happy place. Exhibit A, Jesse Mayes.
Fuck accountants.
I might as well have just spread my legs and told him to put it in.
This was the first time I’d full-on flirted back with Ash, ever, but I wasn’t really prepared for the result of that flirting: his hand, slipping onto my thigh under the water as his blue-eyed gaze darkened and he ran his pierced tongue over his lip.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted, “I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m just kind of depressed tonight. Or something…”
His hand froze, mid-thigh.
Then he withdrew the hand and I just sat looking at him, feeling like an ass, trying to figure out what to say that didn’t make me sound like a total bitch. A messed-up bitch who was so tired of apologizing for her shitty moods.
“I shouldn’t have said that, Ash.”
“It’s okay,” he said lightly.
“It’s not. I mean, you are tall, dark, and…” I trailed off. “I shouldn’t be flirting with you. I’m not trying to lead you on.”
“Okay.”
“It’s just been a rough night.”
“I know.”
“Are we good?”
“We’re good,” he said. “We’ll always be good.”
But I wasn’t so sure.
Silence fell between us. Silence filled with the sounds of the night, the rushing water of the cove lapping against the rocks and peeling away again, the babbling of the hot springs, the occasional chirp of an animal or insect in the woods. The sky was lightening over the trees; the sun would be coming up soon. And it seemed so grossly wrong, so unfair, that this day, the first day after Jesse’s wedding, would start off with my heart still such a mess.
But I did not know what to say, or do, to make it better.
“You know what we need?” I looked over to find Ash watching me. “Music,” he answered himself.
Then he stood up, water sluicing off his surfer’s body—his lean, toned body. His sun-darkened skin… the tattoos that ran down both arms and across one pec, down the side of his torso, and down one hip, disappearing into his underwear. My gaze dropped to his package, clearly defined as the wet black fabric clung to him like a second skin.
I almost choked on my intake of breath.
He was hard.
And it was beyond obscene.
He might as well have been naked. I could see everything. Even the outline of the smooth, hard stud where he was pierced, at the head of his—
I dropped my gaze, which now landed on the inside of his thigh. Maybe I was hoping for a glimpse of that flower tattoo that said Danny 4Ever…
No luck.
It
must’ve been really high up there. His briefs were definitely… brief.
I sipped my now-warm beer and averted my gaze as he climbed out of the water. It was really no big deal. I’d seen Ash’s dick before. Not on purpose, but sometimes parties got wild, guys got drunk, and wearing clothes became low on their priority list.
But I’d never actually looked at it that way.
Mostly because even when I’d seen it, it had been hot on the tail of someone else. Namely Summer, or any number of people he’d hooked up with since they broke up.
But I was definitely looking at it—at him—that way now, as he bent over to dig something from inside his leather jacket and his sculpted bod shone all wet and sleek and hard in the moonlight. He fiddled around with his phone a bit, and I felt kinda guilty gawking.
I tore my eyes away again and took another sip of warm beer, my heart beating faster than it should in my chest.
He came back to the water holding a small, portable speaker in the palm of one hand. He flicked it on, and some kind of sexy dance song filled the air. I didn’t know the song, but I recognized the style of the DJ and the voice; it was Calvin Harris.
Yeah. Sexy…
He set the speaker on a rock and used his sweater to dry himself off a bit as he shivered. His cock was still in my line of sight, though it was looking a little less-enthused in the frigid night air. He started to put his clothes on.
And I felt kinda… disappointed.
Fully dressed, he reached for my hand. “Come on,” he said.
When I hesitated, he rolled his eyes and turned his head away.
“I won’t look. Just do it fast or you’re gonna freeze.”
“I’m gonna freeze regardless. I was kinda hoping to stay in here until the sun at least came up.”
“Still gonna freeze,” he said. “That’s why we’re gonna dance.”
Just then, the beat of the song kicked in. Ash looked down at me out of the corner of his eye and smirked.
“Welcome to your breakup party.”
Okay. That got me.
I had to smile back. I totally grinned, actually.
“Always wanted one of those,” I said.
I took his hand and let him haul me up out of the water. He was polite enough to make a show of looking away, though when I slipped on the rocks and bumped up against him, naked, his jaw clenched. Then I got dressed, as fast as I could, shivering all the way. I didn’t look at him as I did it, so for all I knew he was helping himself to the show. But honestly, I was too cold to care.
I used the towel I’d brought to dry off, hastily, but I was still so damp that my tight jeans stuck to me and I couldn’t get them all the way up over my hips to zip them. I didn’t care about that either. I’d barely gotten everything on and my jacket zipped up when Ash grabbed me—and started spinning me around.
“Come on, you’re gonna freeze,” he urged.
“Already frozen,” I complained.
But I went with it.
Mostly because Ash was a good dancer. He had a serious musician’s rhythm and an athlete’s body. He danced like a rock guy, which meant more jumping up and down than anything, but that worked for me. It worked for the song. It had a great, heavy, driving beat. Within seconds we had a two-person dance party going.
It felt good. Kinda freeing.
Tension-relieving.
Who needed sex?
My best guess of the song title was, “You Used To Hold Me.” At least that’s what I gathered from the repeated chorus line. As I moshed around in the near-dark with Ash, he sung along to it, kinda serenading me, and kept grabbing my hips to twirl me around… and I felt fucking giddy.
Before I knew it I was skipping around like an idiot.
I was fucking giggling.
Had I drank that much tonight?
I loved to dance, and I loved dance music. Summer—also known as DJ Summer—had worked on my solo album with me; it was mostly electronic rock with a few straight-up dance songs. Which was probably why Ash was playing this for me. He’d never struck me as much of a dance music lover.
But why the hell was I skipping and giggling in the woods in the middle of the night, with Ash?
He kept serenading me, with increasingly dramatic emphasis, like some super-hot Broadway actor, swinging me around… then dipping me low over his arm.
And I felt a rush of… something.
When he pulled me back up, plastering me—on purpose—against his chest, I told him, “You’re an idiot.” But I was grinning like a fool.
I couldn’t remember when I’d felt this relaxed or this good about anything.
It had been that long.
Too long.
“I know,” he said.
Then he kissed me.
Actually, he smashed, mouth-first, against me. And I saw it coming. It wasn’t like I didn’t know the instant it was about to happen. The darkening of his eyes, the lowering of his eyelids, the fading of his smile right before he did it.
But I let him do it.
I let him smear his lips over mine, hot and wet and tasting of sweet-smoky pot. I let him shove me open and slide his tongue, hot and strong, against mine.
I felt the smooth ball of his tongue piercing, and as it ran over my tongue, heat tore down my spine.
Then he started walking me up the rocky path toward the boardwalk.
And I let him.
He wrapped his arms around me, his hands wandering all over me, and he made out with me like he’d wanted this for a very long time.
And it was totally getting me hot…
Any fear I’d ever had about whether or not it would be worth crossing the line with Ash was allayed. Because no question, the man knew exactly what to do with his tongue.
I could only imagine he knew what to do with the rest of him.
And I’d seen the size of his hard-on.
Oh, yeah… This was happening.
When we reached the boardwalk, he pulled away, breathing deeply in the dark, his smoldering gaze locked on me. “You gonna let me fuck you?” he said, his voice rough with lust. “Or should I stop now?”
“Don’t stop,” I said, pulling him to me by his jacket. “Well… unless you don’t have a condom?”
“I have a condom,” he murmured, then he kissed me again, thoroughly. He kissed my face. He kissed my neck, sucking and licking, dragging the ball of his stud up my throat.
And I just let him, savoring the feeling of being kissed.
“How do you want it? Back up at my cabin, in front of the fire…?” He was kissing his way down my chest, unzipping my jacket as he went, fumbling with my sweater. “On the fucking floor…?” He was walking me backwards now, along the boardwalk, as he kissed and pawed at me.
And I felt fucking high off of all of it.
It was that reckless, This-is-probably-a-mistake feeling all mixed up with Fuck-if-I-care, and the strange thrill of knowing Jesse was up there in his cabin, right now, with Katie… and Fuck him. He wasn’t the only one who could get laid tonight.
I grabbed Ash and stopped dead in the middle of the boardwalk.
“Here,” I said.
“Here?”
“Yeah.” I tugged him against me, and as our bodies connected and I felt him, hard for me, it felt so fucking good.
I was rapidly forgetting that this was a bad, bad idea.
The worst idea.
Friends with benefits?
Did that ever really work?
No. No, I didn’t believe it ever really did.
And yet… the words kept coming out of my mouth.
“This is how I want it,” I told him. “Right here.”
Then I kissed him back, hard.
I fucking devoured him.
I sucked on his tongue, working mine over his, stroking his piercing… rubbing all up on it, on him, as he shoved up my sweater and slid his hand inside my bra. He felt warm in the cold night, his fingers rough with callouses as he squeezed my breast, and I moaned into
his mouth. The tingle and the tightening in my nipples was the first rush of true, head-spinning arousal I’d felt in a long, long time.
Then he was working my jeans down over my hips, and my panties, and shoving his hand between my legs.
“You want it slow, Elle?” he asked as he massaged my pussy, slowly, with the palm of his hand, teasing my opening with his fingertips, just lightly. “You want it tender?” He licked his lip. “You want it rough?” Then he delved that magic tongue of his into my mouth again.
The heat and need sparked between my legs, catching fire, and I ground myself into his hand.
“Rough,” I choked out between kisses.
Then he pushed me back against the railing. He spread me open and rammed a couple of fingers into me.
I gasped in shock, but I loved it.
“Like this…?” he asked, his voice low with hunger as I undid his jeans and took his cock out. He felt hot and silky in my cold hands.
“Yeah,” I gasped, as he fucked me with his fingers, twisting them as he went. He rubbed his thumb over my clit. And it felt so good…
Desire was building in me, sharp and quick.
It had been way too fucking long…
I squeezed his dick; it was hard and hot. As I worked him in long, tight strokes, I felt the smooth steel ball in the head against my palm. He groaned, and I really didn’t care if he came in thirty seconds flat, so long as he got me off.
I wanted it, and I wanted it hard and fast.
“Have you ever… fucked a guy… with a pierced cock?” he asked between kisses, panting for breath.
“No.”
He got a wicked smile at that, a very male ego sort of smile. Then he spun me around by my hips. He pushed me forward, bending me over the railing. I heard him rip open the condom packet and felt him roll it onto his dick, his knuckles brushing against me. He held my hips in place with one hand as he lined up his cock with my opening, and I clung to the railing to steady myself.
“Fair warning. It’s gonna hit your G-spot and blow your mind.”
Yes, please.
But he didn’t enter me.
“You good with that?” he asked.
Like any girl wouldn’t be good with that?
“Hurry up,” I forced out, bracing myself. I’d asked for it rough, and “rough” was probably subjective. “I want it fast.”
A Dirty Wedding Night_A Dirty Rockstar Romance Page 14