The Complete Rock Stars, Surf and Second Chances Series, books 1-5

by Michelle Mankin

  “Morning, yeah.” His voice low, Diesel held my gaze. Just like it had then, if felt like we were the only two people in the world. “But the color of your eyes is like the moon rippling over the surface of the ocean. And now your hair’s an accessory to the theme.”

  “How’s that?” I whispered.

  “It’s the color of a moonbeam. Sexy as hell combo. Like a siren or some shit like that. Enough to wreck a guy, for sure.” He took a strand of my hair, skimming the skin of my shoulder before he lifted my hair and rubbed it between his fingers, making me shiver. “Always wanted to touch a moonbeam.”

  My scalp tingled, and other parts of me too. Maybe all of Diesel’s sexual bragging was true.

  “Let go of my hair,” I said huskily. He had barely touched me, yet I was panting for air. I also noticed my costar on the other side of Diesel was watching us, although the music pumped through the theater’s speakers drowned out our hushed conversation.

  “No.” Diesel brought the strand to his nose and sniffed it. “Strawberry. I wonder how the rest of you smells. Wonder how you taste.”

  “Stop flirting with me,” I hissed, trying to cover up how turned on I was, imagining Diesel’s lips on me.

  “No.” He treated me to his double-crescent smile, and it threw me for a loop. It seemed more potent in the dark.

  “You’ll end up linked to me in the tabloids.”

  “Don’t care.”

  “They’ll say we’re an item.”

  “Let them think whatever the fuck they want.”

  His attitude was refreshing. “That might be okay for you. But your world is vastly different from mine.”

  “Not so different.” His gaze was so intent on mine, I could see the flickering glow of the screen reflected in his eyes.

  “You’re antiestablishment. You revel in your reputation. Your conquests. I have an image I have to uphold.” That image seemed to be all I had.

  “Fuck ’em. Stop trying to please everyone and just be yourself. Your acting’s kickass and speaks for itself. Keep putting out quality work, and they’ll keep coming to watch you.”

  “How do you know my stuff’s good?” I narrowed my eyes. “You’re not paying a bit of attention to the movie.”

  “Seen it a hundred times. Had to in order to get the music right. Jacked off to you at least that many times watching this scene.”

  “Diesel, don’t.” My face flamed.

  “You’re turned on.” His fingers skimmed up my arm, leaving a shimmery sensation in their wake. “Stop denying it. Stop denying me.”

  Max’s face suddenly flashed in my mind. My bodyguard, not my boyfriend.

  What I was to him might be up in the air, but what he was to me wasn’t.

  “I’m not free. I’m with Max.”

  “The bodyguard?”

  I nodded.

  His tone turned icy. “Knew he would try to stake a claim on you.”

  Had Max claimed me? I certainly didn’t feel claimed at all.

  Diesel frowned. “You should’ve said something earlier.”

  I could feel the coolness of his displeasure. It extinguished the heated awareness between us.

  “I’m saying so now.” I lifted my chin.

  “Yeah, but I’m wondering why you didn’t say so before.” His gaze slid away, and he went silent.

  I tried to watch the film like he seemed to be doing, but his words joined all the other unsettled stuff rattling around inside me.

  “He must’ve not done it right.”

  “What . . . what do you mean?” I said, afraid I did know.

  Diesel turned his head and dipped it to rake his gaze over me. “If I had you in my bed, you wouldn’t want to ever get out of it. You wouldn’t tolerate another man’s touch. Wouldn’t react like you do right now to me.”

  “I didn’t react.”

  “Don’t know what game you’re playing, but that’s a definite lie.”

  “I don’t know why I even try to talk to you,” I huffed. “You don’t know me. You don’t know my mind.” I pressed my lips together and turned my attention back to the movie.

  “I don’t think you know your own mind,” he whispered.

  I stiffened when Diesel touched me again, a glide of the back of his hand down my arm all the way to my fingertips. Just a soft caress, but the warmth of his skin on mine made my pulse fly.

  “When you figure it out,” he said low, “come see me. And maybe, if I’m not otherwise engaged, I’ll give you what you want.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  * * *

  Max’s gaze practically scorched me as I circulated among the celebrities, media reps, and fans after the screening. He was never more than a couple of feet away, even though the event had its own security.

  I told myself his eyes burned so brightly because he took my protection seriously. But I noticed a definite rise in intensity from him whenever a man drew near me, however fraternal.

  It set me on edge, and when Olivia touched my arm to tell me it was time to go, I was relieved in more ways than one. I’d weathered a run-in with my stepfather, Carter Besille, and Diesel, all with my bodyguard at a distance when I really wanted him close.

  He and I really needed to talk.

  The exit from the theater was uneventful. The drive back to the condo was quiet and tense, not a single word beyond niceties until we were dropped off inside the parking garage.

  “Max . . .” I gave him a determined look as he took my outstretched hand to help me from the limo.

  “Not here.” He glared at me, his gaze more intense now than it had been with the men at the premiere after-party.

  “Why not here?” I tugged my hand free to gesture around wildly. “Who’s here to see? To know? To care but you and me?”

  “Not. Here,” he repeated in a low voice through gritted teeth, fastening his fingers around my upper arm and steering me toward the door to the elevators. “Cameras.”

  He lifted his chin to point to a spot above us before pulling the glass door open and gesturing for me to precede him inside.

  “Okay.” I frowned as he hit the call button, and we waited. “But I really don’t think those have sound on them.”

  “They do.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “It’s my job to know.” He sounded and looked irritated. “My job to take care of you.”

  “Yeah, you made that perfectly clear tonight in front of my stepfather what your role with me is.”

  Max’s fingers tightened around my upper arm as the elevator dinged and opened. Inside, they loosened a bit. By the time we reached our floor, I almost thought I felt him stroking my skin with the pad of his thumb. But when the door slid open and he grunted at me as if I were his underling, I decided I’d only imagined it.

  “Move.” He glared at me when I didn’t immediately get out.

  “You’re not the boss of me,” I grumbled, but went along with him nevertheless.

  “Yes, I think that fact got through to me this evening as I stood and watched every other guy make a move on you. Thank you very much.”

  “Now, wait a minute—”

  Get inside, Hollie.” He unlocked and pushed open the door. “Now!” he barked when I hesitated.

  “All right, you don’t have a right to be so irritable. You’re the one who decided to be the bodyguard tonight.”

  As I stepped inside, he closed the door and pulled me into him. My front to his front, I had to crane my neck to maintain eye contact. What I saw on his handsome face wasn’t irritation anymore, but desire.

  “How,” he muttered under his breath as he stared down at me. “How am I supposed to do this?”

  “Do what?” I licked my lips. They had suddenly gone dry from the way he looked at me.

  “Resist you, with you dressed like that and other guys throwing themselves at you right and left, and that asshole Diesel trying to seduce you away from me right under my nose.”

  “He didn’t. I mean, he could
n’t.”

  “He wants to fuck you, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes.” My cheeks flushed.

  Max reached up and stroked my blushed skin with his fingertips, and I melted from the tenderness of the gesture and the matching expression on his face. “He doesn’t even know who you are.”

  “Who am I?”

  “Not the type of girl you fuck. The kind you do right by. The kind you do your best to protect. The kind, if you do things right, you get to keep.”

  “Max.” I breathed out his name in an awe-filled whisper. “How did I get so lucky to have you in my life? I was afraid you’d changed your mind about me. That I had it wrong about what we were. What I want us to be, I mean.”

  “We want the same thing, shug.”

  “To be together?” There seemed to be nuances under the surface of everything he said that made it imperative to clarify.

  “Yes.”

  “But we’re not together.”

  “We are right here and right now.”

  “Yes. But what about out there?” I inclined my head toward the door. “I didn’t like being separate tonight. I don’t like pretending there’s nothing between us.” I gave it to him raw and real, exactly like I felt after everything that had happened tonight.

  “You pretend for a living.”

  “On film. In front of a camera. Not with you. Not with something so important.”

  Was Max having doubts too? I searched his gaze as he continued to stare at me with a hunger and possessiveness that was a little frightening.

  “I told you how I feel.” He raked a hand through his hair. “What more do you want from me?”

  “I want to know where I stand.”

  “You have me in all the ways that matter.”

  “But not that anybody knows.”

  “Give me some time on that, shug. All right? Just a little more time.”

  I nodded, though I was afraid of myself and how little I was willing to accept when it came to him.

  “Good girl. Beautiful girl. My girl.” He pressed soft dewdrop kisses on my forehead, the tip of my nose, and eventually my lips, where he lingered. “Let me in.”

  He urged against my mouth, and I opened it, grabbing hold of the lapels of his jacket as his tongue swept inside.

  Deepening the kiss, he ran his large hands down my back, stopping at my ass. His fingers dug in, lifting both globes and pressing my aching center into his cock.

  He was so hard and hot. I could feel him through my dress and his trousers.

  Desire rolling through me, my legs weakened. My back arched. My nipples pebbled. I longed to be joined with him again. It seemed ages since I had.

  “Max.” I ripped my mouth from his.

  He continued his passionate assault, firing potent missile strikes of heat along my jawline and then down the column of my neck.

  I moaned, and my grip tightened on his lapels. “I want—”

  “I know.”

  “You naked. Us back in the bed.”

  “I’ll get you there. But I have to do something first.”

  He lashed the strained tendon of my neck with his ruthless tongue. Wet heat rushed to my core. He lifted his head, his eyes lit up like blue torches.

  “Watching you put on this dress was a tease. I know every single item missing from underneath it. And the shape and feel of all that the dress barely conceals.”

  He reached for the clasp at my nape, and when he released it, the strips of satin with built-in support fell to my waist. The cool room air barely registered before his hands were on me. His skin was warm, his caresses wickedly right. He lifted my breasts in his capable hands, and I buried my fingers in his silky hair as he dropped his head to lick and suck one nipple and then the other.

  I moaned each time his tongue grazed the tips. They were so taut, even the contrast between the warm wetness of his mouth and the cooler temperature of the room air as he took turns between them increased my desire.

  “You’re so beautiful.” He groaned and nipped at me.

  “Enough, Max,” I warned as more wet heat pierced my core.

  “Never enough.”

  Abandoning my breasts, he lowered himself to the floor, his hands shaping my curves as he went. Kneeling before me, he slipped his hands into the long slit in the dress. Finding my calves and lifting the skirt as he slowly slid his way upward, he exposed and caressed my wobbly knees, then my quivering thighs, until he found the wet, pulsing center of me.

  “I can’t remain upright if you do that,” I whispered when he lowered his head, his lips so close, I could feel the warmth of his breath on me.

  “You can,” he said, staring up at me with eyes that were no longer blue, but as black as his dark intentions. “If I had to endure the torture of knowing you were walking around all evening with nothing under this dress, you can give me this.”

  He dropped his head, sliding his nose softly across the smooth skin over my aching pussy. Then he ran his parted mouth over it.

  I grabbed fistfuls of his hair. It was cool to my touch, his lips firm and warm, and his tongue was wet. He made me nearly incoherent as he swirled it around my clit.

  “Oh, Max.” I moaned. “Yes.”

  He was so skillful with his slippery tongue. Circling, sliding, gliding, he increased my need while I praised him. I gave him the praise, but he was the one who made me feel worshipped.

  I tugged on his hair, and he held me in place, gripping my hips and forcing me to succumb. His fingers telegraphed urgency like his mouth did, biting into my flesh while he made deep groaning noises over my pussy as if the taste of me drove him wild, as if he were ravenous, as if he couldn’t get enough of me.

  “Max,” I cried.

  I couldn’t get enough of him either. I pressed myself into his face, rocking and mewing as pleasure seized me, stretching my skin tight over its frame and lighting a blazing fire in my blood. Again and again, he scorched my throbbing clit with the fine edge of his sharp tongue.

  “Yes, oh yes,” I gasped.

  He groaned, the vibrations sinking deep within me. He sucked harder, and I unraveled.

  Springing to his feet, he lifted me in his arms and had me inside the bedroom and then flat on my back in the bed so fast, my head spun. Then somehow, his pants were down, his cock was sheathed, and he was inside me. The swift, hard heat of his possession robbed me of breath, even while all that he was flooded my senses.

  My dress pushed up to my waist, my shoes still on, I wrapped my legs around his narrow hips and took everything he gave me.

  Stroke by masterful stroke, Max stoked the fire inside me again. I’d barely come down from the previous pleasure, and already I rose again on fiery wings, this time with him.

  Groaning, he pierced me deeply with his strokes. His pleasure was my pleasure. My stilettos spiked into the tight skin over his ass. His cock was a rod, filling me so perfectly.

  I held on tight, arching my back off the mattress, then lifting my hips into each decadent thrust, riding him as he rode me. And like lightning, it struck both of us, hot and hard, wet and wild.

  • • •

  But afterward, long after we were cleaned up and back in bed together, Max drifted off, and I stayed awake.

  Why wouldn’t he acknowledge me? Us? Exactly how long would the time he said he needed take?

  Too long, and the lie we told in public would likely become the truth in private.

  Samuel had dismissed my mother over and over again. It had destroyed her love for him, and his for her, if he ever had any. He must have loved her at one time, or else my mother never would have loved him in the first place, never perpetuated the lie that I was his daughter.

  I punched my pillow and flipped over, turning away from Max.

  Acknowledgment was important. Pride in my being his. Those were beautiful words he had spoken to me about my worth. But weren’t they just meaningless words without anyone aside from the two of us to witness it?

  Chapter Forty-Three
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  * * *

  “Where are you going?” Max reached for me as I tried to slip from the bed without him noticing.

  “I was trying to let you sleep a little longer. I have to run through my lines and get ready for work.” I covered his hand with mine, prying his fingers from my skin and trying to ignore the twinge inside my chest I felt from having to leave the bed where everything with us seemed to be the way I wanted it to be.

  “It’s still dark outside.”

  “Yes, I know.” I sighed. “But we start filming on location today.”

  “In the dark?” He sounded less sleepy and a lot suspicious.

  “Makeup. Wardrobe fitting. By the time we get started, it’ll be five a.m., which is typical for filming on location. The lighting’s best early.”

  “Oh, I didn’t realize.” Max sat up, and when the covers slid to his waist, I got an eyeful.

  Wide shoulders. Solid chest. Ridges of solid muscle. Lots of strength. Tons of warmth. So compelling, all I wanted and needed. But I had to get going.

  Turning away, I climbed out of the bed. The floor was cold, and I cringed. “If you want to shower first, I’ll get the coffee going. Then while you drink it, I’ll shower. We’ll both be ready to go at the same time.”

  “Is this an all-day shoot?” he asked.

  “Yes. Why?” I stopped in the doorway and turned back to look at him.

  “I made plans today.”

  “What kind of plans?” All those in-the-dark doubts I’d decided to set aside crept back in.

  “Swimming, and stuff I’ve put off that I need to take care of.”

  “I thought we decided that Thursdays were your day off.”

  “They are. I mean, they were, but I thought I’d switch it this week.”

  “Does this have something to do with the phone calls you made the other night?”

  “Yes.”

  I kept my eyes on his, though it was difficult, as vulnerable and insecure as I suddenly felt. “Do you want to talk about it? I’m a pretty good listener. And if it’s something that’s bothering you, I might be able to help.”