Lovely Madness: A Players Rockstar Romance (Players, Book 4)

by Jaine Diamond

  “I think they should just blur together,” she said, meeting my eyes. “So I can touch you whenever I want to.”

  Sounded good to me. I stripped off my swim trunks, and she watched me do it.

  She tried to pretend like I wasn’t buck naked by not staring at my cock. “You can’t distract me that easily, though.” She set two shot glasses meaningfully next to the skull bottle.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Dan Aykroyd invented this vodka. He’s a Canadian treasure. How can it be wrong?”

  “You should return it,” I teased her.

  She cracked it open defiantly. “It’s made with grains from Ontario and water from Newfoundland…” I dove into the pool. She was still talking when my head reemerged. “… it’s gluten free and has no additives, baby. Just pure, boozy goodness.”

  “I don’t think that’s a selling point. Doesn’t Screech also come from Newfoundland?”

  “The dude at the store really sold me on it,” she went on, “but I mean, this bottle really sells itself.”

  “Of course he did. You were the hottest customer in the store, so he took his time.”

  “He really did.”

  I rested my arms on the side of the pool, watching her as she poured out our shots. Yeah, so I was jealous of Trey Jones today, and now I was jealous of some guy who worked in a liquor store, stocking shelves and operating a cash register for a living, for what, just above minimum wage? Because he got to talk to her in that liquor store, and possibly flirt with her while he sold her a bottle of vodka, while you couldn’t pay me enough to walk into a liquor store. Or any store.

  “You know, this was the official vodka of the Rolling Stones’ fiftieth anniversary tour,” she informed me. “Have I convinced you yet?”

  “We’ll see.”

  She handed me a shot and a pickle, looking happily undaunted.

  “This dude really saw you coming, huh?”

  “I mean, I may have been wearing several skulls.” She stood above me, lifting her shot and her pickle ceremoniously. “Wait. Do we do a Russian cheer or a Canadian cheer?”

  “I don’t speak Russian, so…”

  “What is that nosto-vitia thing Russian gangsters say in movies when they drink? Nosdro-vee-ah? Nos-do-via?”

  “I think that’s just in movies.”

  “You’re leaving me hanging here.”

  “Alright,” I said. “To your good health.”

  “Is drinking straight vodka healthy?”

  “The pickle adds nutrients. I think.” I tipped my shot glass at her, accidentally spilling a bit of my vodka. She gave me a dirty look like I was cheating on purpose. Then we sank our chilled shots.

  I bit into my pickle as the cold burn went down my throat.

  Taylor popped the end of her pickle in her mouth and sucked on it tentatively. Then she bit through the crunchy skin and ate off a chunk. We eyed each other, neither of us revealing a reaction.

  “Did you ever try that shot-of-rye-followed-by-a-shot-of-pickle-juice thing that went through Vancouver last year?” she asked me.

  “Nope. Sounds gross.”

  “You know, it really was.”

  “That was a thing?”

  “Yup. ‘Hipster’s delight’ or some shit.”

  I handed her my empty shot glass with a short laugh. “Really?”

  She grinned. “I have no idea what it was called. It was all the rage at parties. And by parties I mean hipster knitting circles, book clubs and baking exchanges.” Her eyes met mine, and maybe she realized as the words came out of her mouth that I wouldn’t know that, because I never went to parties, of any kind.

  “I didn’t know ladies at knitting circles drank liquor shots.”

  “They do when they’re twenty-nine.”

  “I had no idea you belonged to any of the aforementioned social happenings.”

  “I don’t. I have friends who tell me these things. I’m not a joiner.”

  “Me either,” I said humorlessly.

  She tipped her head, like, Why you gotta be self-deprecating like that?

  I really hoped she didn’t think she had to be antisocial, or pretend she was antisocial, on my account—as much as I was definitely jealous of her life outside this house. Even if it involved knitting circles.

  “Anyway, this is way better,” she added, picking up the vodka bottle and changing the subject. I could already tell she was getting protective of me that way. Steered us clear of topics that might make me feel bad. “I hate rye. Tastes like vomit to me. Maybe because I experienced so much of it in reverse while throwing it up in my teenage years?”

  I cocked an eyebrow.

  “Too much information?” she asked, as she poured us out more shots.

  “Nope. I prefer you uncensored.”

  “That’s good. Because when have I ever censored myself while we’ve had a conversation?” She handed me my next shot and a pickle.

  “The first several times we had a conversation.”

  “Well, what was I supposed to say?” She raised her shot glass, holding my gaze. “You’re strange, but you’re hot and more interesting than anyone I’ve ever met. Please hire me, I want to see what you do all day and maybe stare at you a bit.”

  “You’re strange,” I replied, shot glass in the air, “and gorgeous, and sexier than anyone I’ve ever met. Please work for me and move into my poolhouse so I can make you hang out with me all day and maybe stare at you a lot.”

  Eyes still locked, we drank to that like it was a toast or something.

  Then a smile crept over her face like she couldn’t help it. She broke eye contact as she collected my shot glass again. I watched as she poured out another shot. “How many of these are we drinking?”

  “I mean, might as well while it’s ice-cold, right? They go down easier. When it gets too warm, we’ll stop.”

  “So… you did this tradition with Gabe?”

  “Yup. We all did it together, the guys in Alive. After shows, special occasions… whenever Gabe rolled it out.”

  “Interesting,” she said, pausing to munch on her pickle.

  “Bring that shit over here and get in the pool with me.”

  She handed me my shot, then got the skull bottle, the bowl of pickles, the platter of bread chunks, and laid them out poolside, within my reach. Then she went around to the shallow end of the pool, shrugged off her see-through pink thing, and walked herself slowly down the stairs into the water like some bikini babe in a video. While eating the last of her pickle and trying not to spill her shot. She sank into the water up to her chest and glided over to me, vodka held carefully above the water.

  “So, what’s the bread for?” she asked, as I handed her a chunk.

  “I dunno. Same as the pickle? It’s uncouth to drink straight liquor without eating something?”

  “Really?”

  “Honestly, this came from an actual drunk who wasn’t even Russian, so who knows.”

  She laughed a little. “Gabe’s vodka guzzling uncle wasn’t Russian?”

  “Ukrainian.”

  “Hmm.” We tapped shot glasses and tossed the cold vodka back. Then we both helped ourselves to a pickle from the bowl. “So, why are we doing this again?”

  “Because a drinking tradition is just like music. It’s personal. Imprints on you. Even if it makes no sense. It’s why you listen to certain music even if your friends hate it and you’re supposed to, too. And it’s why you drink straight vodka with a pickle and bread. Memories.”

  “Ah. Well. I have no memories with this.”

  “Guess we’ll have to make some.”

  She just looked at me with the reflection of the water shimmering in her shipwreck eyes.

  “So, what do you think of the vodka you chose?” I asked her. “How do the waters of Newfoundland taste?”

  She licked her lip. “I confess, I’ve never drank straight vodka before, much less with a pickle chaser. I have no idea what it’s supposed to taste like. You?”

&
nbsp; “No idea.” I handed her another piece of bread; I didn’t want her getting sick tonight. “Eat that.”

  She gaped at me. “What? I thought you did this all the time.”

  “Yeah, when I did this, I was already hammered. You think I’m drinking straight vodka sober?”

  “But you said—”

  “I had to say something. You asked me what I drink in the studio. I couldn’t say nothing and burst your bubble. Guy sitting around staring at the ceiling, writing music by himself, no cigarettes, no drinks, no drugs, it’s not the romantic vision you had in mind.”

  She was gazing at me dreamily with those ocean-bottom eyes of hers. “It looks pretty romantic to me.”

  “You look like a siren.”

  “Huh?” She laughed a little, then frowned. “Siren,” she said, like she was searching her mental database for the word through the vodka buzz. “What is a siren, exactly? Is that one of those vague sexual compliments-slash-insults that men make up for women?”

  “No,” I said, pouring us another shot, “it’s an actual thing from mythology. Enchantress who lures sailors with music, so they wreck their ships on the rocks.”

  “Wow. Savage.”

  I handed her a shot. “Not your style?”

  “Hmm. The guys on the ship are stranded with me now, right?”

  “I guess so.” I clinked my glass to hers and we threw back the vodka.

  She shivered and sucked on her pickle. “Do some of them survive the wreckage? Like the cute ones?”

  I plucked her shot glass from her hand. “It’s your fantasy, sweetheart.”

  “Do I have somewhere to collect them? Is there vegetation on this island so I can feed them and keep them alive? I’m on an island, right? So I don’t have to share the cute guys I shipwrecked?”

  “You may be putting too much thought into this.”

  She was still thinking as she munched on her pickle. “Can I have a mermaid tail, though?”

  “How are all these sailors you’re collecting gonna fuck you if you’re a mermaid?”

  “Mermaid’s don’t fuck?”

  “Think about that,” I said, as I tried to pour us shots without wasting vodka. My aim was already getting a little dubious.

  “Holy shit,” she said, her eyes wide. “Check out this mindfuck, Cary Clarke. Why have men fantasized about mermaids for centuries if they can’t fuck?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Is it because they have boobs?”

  “Maybe it’s the seashell bras.” I handed her a shot.

  “Huh. Do you think they give really good blowjobs or something?”

  “How about when I meet an actual mermaid, I’ll let you know.”

  She gave me a dirty look, but laughed. We clinked shots and drank.

  “Come on,” I said, eating a pickle. “I don’t get a free pass for a mermaid?”

  “Okay, fine. You meet a mermaid, you get a blowjob. But I get to watch.”

  “Fine by me.” I took the empty shot glass from her and set it aside. How many shots was that now? The pickles were making them go down weirdly easy.

  “And I’m making a video of it,” she went on. “’Cause then I’m selling that shit, and we’re gonna be rich as hell.”

  “You’d use me and my dick like that?”

  “It’s not about your dick. Duh. It’s about the mermaid.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “You come on a mermaid’s face, that’s the money shot of the millennium. I wonder if her skin would be slimy…”

  “You have a vivid imagination, Taylor Lawson.”

  “I know. And it’s vividly dirty.” She rested her head back against the side of the pool. “How do mermaids make babies? Do you think some guy fucked a fish long ago and that’s how the first mermaid came about?”

  “You know mermaids aren’t real, right?” I slid over in front of her, kinda trapping her against the wall of the pool. I smoothed the wet ends of her hair back off her shoulders. “Also, pretty sure fish don’t fuck.”

  “Maybe mermaids drop eggs, like fish,” she mused.

  “Sexy.”

  She slid her arms around my shoulders, gazing up at me. “What if I dropped eggs right now? And then I made you come in the water and then we had little fish babies living in the pool?”

  “I knew you were strange when I met you.”

  “We could charge admission.”

  “Is this another of your get-rich schemes?”

  “Hey, you started it by calling me a mermaid.”

  “I called you a siren.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, like she’d forgotten how this whole conversation started. “What do sirens have between their legs?”

  I slid a hand between her legs and stroked her through her bikini. “This, I imagine.”

  “Oh…” Her eyes softened.

  “So you can see why those poor fuckers crashed their ships,” I said, my voice getting husky.

  She melted, holding onto my shoulders as I ran my fingertip back and forth against her slit. “Yeah?” she breathed. “You’d cross the ocean for that?”

  “Uh-huh. Few oceans.”

  “Hmm. Easy to say when you can just hire a private jet.”

  “Hey, don’t let the mode of transportation kill the compliment.” I brushed my lips along her jaw, my mouth drifting closer to hers. “It’s not my fault it’s the twenty-first century.”

  She pushed me away a little, smiling. “Pour me another one of those vodka shots.”

  I poured us both another one. We clinked and shot it back.

  “You know, it grows on you,” she said, as I plucked the shot glass from her hand and set it aside.

  “Mmm.”

  “My chest is warm.”

  “Mm-hmm,” I said, pressing in closer. “My balls are warm.”

  “Is that the vodka talking?”

  I kissed her instead of answering that. I pressed my body, naked, against hers, sliding her soft, vodka-soaked lips open and plunging my tongue inside. She tasted like booze and dill and salt and sweet and I could’ve eaten her all night.

  Her hands slid onto my shoulders. Then she pushed herself up while shoving my shoulders down—and shoved me underwater with all her drunken strength. She was already scrambling away when I reached for her, and when I popped back to the surface, she was splashing and screaming, kicking at me while I tried to grab her slippery feet.

  I grabbed an ankle and hauled her back toward me. I yanked her into my arms. Then I kissed her again, holding her locked against me as she wriggled, laughing into our sloppy-drunk kiss. The strings at the back of her bikini top drifted over my hands and I grabbed hold, tugging gently.

  Then she wrenched her lips away from mine.

  “Wait! Turn it up!” she shouted, to no one in particular. Metallica had come on, “Don’t Tread On Me.” “Aughh, song orgasm,” she moaned, pawing at me, trying to push out of my arms. “You can’t have a song like this come on and not turn it UP.” She squirmed away from me, swim-walking over to the side of the pool where her phone lay on a towel.

  I sent a couple of small waves sloshing over her.

  “Stop it! Phone! NO WATER!” I stopped splashing and she turned up Metallica. Then she hauled herself quickly out of the pool, slipping away from me.

  “You know, I have neighbors,” I informed her dryly.

  “Well, they should be enjoying their backyards right now. I’ve kindly provided them with music.” She smiled, pleased with herself, and walked out to the end of the diving board. She plucked her swimsuit fabric out of her ass crack, which was somehow sexy when she did it.

  Then she hopped up in the air and did an impressive cannonball into the pool that slapped me in the face with water.

  I wiped water from my eyes, kinda laughing. When she surfaced, she sputtered, “Shit,” her head spinning around like she was looking for something.

  “You okay?”

  Then a piece of black fabric surfaced in-between us.

&nbs
p; Her eyes met mine. I grabbed it before she could, holding it up. It was her bikini top.

  “So, that’s what happens when you do a cannonball in a string bikini after I loosen the string, huh?”

  She grabbed at it, grinning. “Gimme that.”

  “Nope.” I flung the bikini top into the bushes and her jaw dropped. “Didn’t you get the memo that this is a naked pool party?”

  “Your assistant must’ve failed to send that memo out.”

  “Guess I’ll have to fire her.”

  She grabbed my shoulders and hopped up, clamping her thighs around my waist. I caught her ass and held her there. “You can’t fire me,” she said, wrapping her arms around my neck so her bare breasts pressed against my chest and her lips hovered close to mine. “You like me too much.”

  “Guilty,” I mumbled against her lips as I drove her back against the wall of the pool. I held her there, brushing my lips over hers.

  “I like you,” she said abruptly, and I paused before kissing her more deeply. “I want to keep you.” Her turquoise eyes, wide open, looked into mine. “And I don’t want your money.”

  I just looked at her.

  “I mean… I like your pool and everything. But I like you more. I like working for you. But I don’t need your riches. I can make my own money. I just want you to know that isn’t why I’m here. I’m here letting you smush me up against the wall of your pool with barely any clothes on because I like you. And if you lost your entire fortune tomorrow, I’d make sure we survived on chip sandwiches and Coke. My treat. Because I like you.”

  Wow. That was a lot of likes in one paragraph. If she’d sent that to me in an email, it would’ve been peppered with heart-eyed smiley faces and thumbs-up emojis.

  I smoothed the wet hair out of her face. “You don’t know me very well, Taylor.”

  “I know I like how I feel when I’m with you. What more is there?”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I said nothing. I was hardly gonna give her a list of things she shouldn’t like about me.

  “I think two people are what they are at the moment they meet,” she said. “You shouldn’t change for each other. You either like each other or you don’t. Or maybe you hate each other, but you’re still drawn to each other. That part is chemical. And spiritual. I think the idea of getting to know each other and then having feelings develop is bullshit. It’s either there or it’s not. Everything else is just time. And time means nothing. It’s just a construct invented by man, to try to control things we can’t control. You choose what you do in every moment, but moments are fleeting. Underneath that is who you are and at the core, that doesn’t change, even when you grow.”