Star
I wake up with Josh’s arms wrapped around me, one hand between my legs rubbing my clit while I use his other arm as a pillow. He kisses the side of my neck and I see that he’s propped on his elbow so he can look down at my face. His fingertips slide around in my wetness and he strums my clit with his forefinger, making lazy circles.
“Were you watching me sleep?” I ask, my voice groggy from disuse.
“Maybe,” he says, his tone cheeky.
“Well, stop it.”
His hand stops moving.
“Don’t stop that!” I cry.
He laughs and restarts the small circles that already have me so turned on that my hips are rising to meet his rolling digits. “I like watching you sleep,” he says quietly.
I open my eyes. “Why?” I look into his deep, dark gaze and he doesn’t break contact with me. He doesn’t shrink away.
He half-shrugs. “You’re pretty, soft, and I know you don’t have panties on.”
My heart skips. “You think I’m pretty?” I ask, my voice high and anxious.
He snorts. “You know you’re pretty.”
“No,” I say, drawing the word out. “Sometimes I don’t feel very pretty.”
“Are you kidding? You have legions of fans who want you.”
I cover his hand with mine to stop its moving. “They want Star. They don’t want me.” I look up at him. “They don’t know my real name isn’t Star. They don’t know my favorite foods or my insecurities. And they don’t care if I know theirs. I can guarantee you they wouldn’t notice the color of my eyes or whether or not I have freckles on my ass. They would just want to fuck me. That’s it.”
“Star isn’t your real name?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“What is it?”
“Does it matter?”
He frowns. “Yes, it matters.” He lifts his hand from between my legs, and I’m afraid I just made a big mistake. I grab his hand and hold it over my heart. I don’t want to be disconnected from him. I’ve gotten used to intimacy with him. I don’t want to lose it.
“You sure you want to know?” My voice squeaks.
He wraps a lock of my hair around his finger and rolls it around. “I do.”
“My parents called me Jessica. Jess for short.” I don’t talk about my parents much.
“Star is a stage name?”
I shake my head. “No, it was a fresh start. Peck got a new name first, and we all wanted one. So we all picked bird names. I’m the Starling. Emilio said we could have whatever we wanted, as long as what we wanted didn’t include boys or drugs.” I giggle at the thought of it.
“You love him a lot, don’t you?”
I look up. “Melio?”
He nods.
“Yeah, he’s my dad. Don’t get me wrong. My real dad was great, but when he died, and Mom died with him, there was no one left.”
“I thought you had an aunt and uncle.”
An unattractive snort leaves my throat. “We did. But they only wanted Tag.”
“Is Tag short for something?”
“Our last name—Taggert. He was Ben Taggert Jr, but they called him Tag.”
“Are you going to talk to him when we go back?”
I heave a sigh. “I guess I’ll have to.”
“I think it’s nice that he wants to reconnect,” Josh says.
“I think he just wants money. I’m not sure. I have to find out.”
“I don’t think so,” he says. “He seemed pretty interested in you and Wren.”
“I used to write him letters. He never responded to a single one of them.”
“Are you sure he got them?”
“I don’t know. I always assumed he did.”
“Yeah, Lilly’s mom thought that, too. But I never got any.” He bumps my shoulder. “You should give him a chance.” He draws a finger down the bridge of my nose and lingers at the tip. “I’ll go with you if you want, when you see him. Or you could just invite him to my place. Neutral ground.”
“Maybe.” I scoot closer to him and tuck myself into his side. “Are you happy you came here?”
“Oh, yeah, definitely.” His hand lies flat on my belly, and I realize he’s under my shirt and that my mound is bare. I pull the shirt down to cover myself. “Don’t do that,” he says. “I like this.”
“Like what?”
His cheeks turn red. “I like having you in my bed with no panties on with your hair all mussed from sleeping on my arm. There. I said it. I like it. I like having my hand under your shirt and your pussy bare. I like the sweetness of it.” He looks embarrassed, so I don’t say anything. It’s almost like he just laid himself open to me for a second.
“I was thinking the same thing.”
He brushes my hair behind my ear.
I take a deep breath and then blurt out, “I like the intimacy of this weekend. I like you. Lots.” I take a breath when he starts to fidget. “I mean, I know you didn’t plan for this to be more than a weekend, and I’m okay with that. It’s just this, and that’s all it is. But I do like it.”
“This was just sex for you, right?”
Ouch. That hurt. But I rush to say, “Yes. Just sex. I get it. I shouldn’t have gone on and on about it. Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you think I wanted it to be more.”
“What if I said I do want it to be more?” He kisses my cheek, and his lips hover over me, waiting for me to say something.
But I have to catch my breath before I can speak. “You want it to be more?” I squeak. I clear my throat.
“What if I said I did? What would you say?”
I’d say yes. But the words that come out of my mouth are “I don’t know.”
“Oh.” He stiffens beside me. “So this was just pussy on a platter, and I got a free fuck while you explored whether or not the crippled guy could fuck you without scaring you.”
I sit up and turn to look down at him. Tears are burning the backs of my eyes and I blink them back furiously. “Is that what it was for you? Pussy on a platter?”
“Star, you have been offering me pussy since the night Sam and Peck’s baby was born.”
“I was drunk!”
“And the day after? And the day after that?”
He’s right. I did offer him sex over and over. And he didn’t take me up on it until he was hurting and wanted me to make him feel better. “You used me too,” I say.
He grimaces and nods. “I did.”
“So, where does that leave us?”
He rolls onto his back and looks up at the ceiling, his palms bracing the back of his neck.
I smack his shoulder. “Don’t ignore me!”
He flinches. “I’m not ignoring you. I’m thinking.”
“About what?” I cry, my voice full of indignation.
“About how fucked up this conversation has gotten. A minute ago, I had my hand on your pussy and you were telling me you like me.” His eyes narrow at me. “You still like me?”
“Not right this second,” I murmur.
“Jess,” he says. My eyes meet his and the tears I was holding back a minute ago can no longer be dammed.
“Nobody calls me that anymore,” I whisper.
“Jess,” he says again. “Let me get to know you.”
“But I’m just pussy on a fucking platter,” I mumble.
He laughs and hooks an arm around me. He pulls me down onto his chest. “You might have been, but you’re my pussy on a platter.”
“Yours?” I squeak.
“Mine.” He says it clearly and succinctly.
“Yours.” It’s not a question this time.
“Yes, mine. Okay with you?”
“We kind of just met.”
He picks up his phone. “Hang on,” he says, and he starts typing furiously. He waits a minute and then his phone dings. He smiles and shows it to me.
Josh: How long did you know Peck before you knew she was the one?
Sam: 30 seconds
He s
tarts to type again. His phone dings.
Josh: How long before you knew you couldn’t live without Reagan?
Pete: Immediately
He arches a brow at me. “How many Reeds do I need to talk to before I convince you that it does happen?”
A giggle bursts out of my throat. “That’s enough.” I play with a loose thread on his sleeve. “So, you want to keep this up when we go home?”
He shakes his head and my gut clenches. “I want more. I want you to be my girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend?” I snort. “We’re not twelve. We don’t need to label it.”
He sobers. “I need to label it.” He says it so succinctly that my breath stalls.
“You do?”
“Yeah, I do. I need a label. What am I to you? Just that guy you fuck? That guy whose bed you sleep in when you need to escape real life? Or am I that guy you want to spend time with? Can I be that guy you call on when you need help? When you need to talk? When you need to cry? When you need to get angry? When you’re lonely? When you’re hurting?” He growls low in his throat. “If you want to go home and pretend this didn’t happen, that’s going to be hard for me, because you kind of rocked my world this weekend. I don’t want to go back to being alone. I want to be with you.”
“Labeled.”
“Yes, labeled.” He stares into my eyes. “Label it, Star. Call it what it is.”
“When we came here, I just wanted to try it out.” I squeeze my eyes shut tightly. “But now that we tried it out, I’m not sure I want to go back.”
He looks confused. “You don’t want to go back home?”
“No, I don’t want to go back to being nothing. I want to be something. With you. Me and you. Something. But I don’t know how to define it.” I flail my hands in the air for lack of anything better to do with them.
“Hey, Star,” Josh says quietly.
“Hey, Josh,” I whisper back.
“You want to be my girlfriend?”
“Do I still get to fuck you? Or does that mean I have to be respectable?”
He laughs. “I like option one.”
He pulls me on top of him and cups the back of my head, pulling my lips down to his. He kisses me softly and sweetly. I pull back, but he doesn’t let me go.
“Wait,” he says. “I haven’t kissed my girlfriend enough.”
I giggle, emotion bubbling within me. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“You don’t have on panties,” he tells me.
I straddle his lap and press my naked lower parts against him. He growls against my lips. “I want to fuck my boyfriend.”
“That sounds like the best idea I have ever heard.” He reaches down and shoves his boxers below his hips. His length strokes my slit as I move my hips and it notches against my clit. “We need a condom,” he says.
“Where are they?” I ask against his lips.
“Front pocket of the cooler Paul and Friday gave us.”
I get off of him for a minute and he sits up on his elbows while he watches me. “I think you should do that naked,” he says with a laugh.
I pull the T-shirt over my head and rummage around in the bag until I find what I want. “This one says it’s bumpy.”
“A bumpy penis,” he says. “Every girl’s dream.”
“Your penis is my dream, bumpy or not.”
He covers his heart with his hand. “You know how to make a guy get all melty.”
I walk back over to him. “I’ll make you get melty,” I tell him. His dick lies against his stomach and he has a shiny circle of pre-come on his belly. I lift his manhood and roll a condom down its length quickly.
“You’re getting really good at that.”
“I’ll keep practicing.”
“My trainer was telling me about these special sex chairs for paraplegics,” he says. “Would you want to try something like that?”
He suddenly looks worried and uncomfortable. “I’ll try a special sex chair,” I tell him. I straddle him and notch his dick at my opening, and then I sink down on him slowly, taking almost every inch of him inside me. “Wait,” I say. I climb off of him and he complains. “I want to try something.”
I pick up a pillow and motion for him to roll himself over. “I want to put this under your hips.”
He looks uncertain. “Why?”
“So you can go deeper,” I say. It just seems to me like it would lift him up a little. I could be wrong. My cheeks heat. “Sorry, it was a stupid idea.” I toss the pillow to the side.
“No, no, it’s not stupid.” He grins at me and grabs the pillow. He rolls over and adjusts himself so that his hips are slightly elevated by the pillow. His dick bobs up taller than before. “I think he’s ready for you,” he says with an evil grin.
“I’m ready for him, too,” I say, and I sink down on top of him, taking all of him inside me. “You feel huge like this.” I’m a little sore, but it’s still a good feeling.
“I think I like having a girlfriend,” Josh says, holding my face as I sit above him, looking into my eyes.
“Me too,” I whisper, and then I start to ride him. His hand steals into my curls and he rubs my clit with one hand while his other tugs on my nipples, first one and then the other. “God, you feel so good.”
He stares into my eyes while I ride him and I have to close my eyes to hold back the orgasm. “Look at me,” he says.
“I can’t.”
“Look at me, Jess.”
“You can’t call me that in public,” I tell him.
“Open your eyes and you’ll see we don’t have an audience.”
A grin tugs at my lips and I finally open my eyes. What I find surprises me. His face is harsh and soft at the same time.
“I’m waiting for you,” he says. “Give it to me, Jess. Come on my cock.”
My legs start to tremble, and I brace myself on his chest with my palms.
“Come on,” he growls. He grows even bigger inside me. “I love the way you ride me. Your pussy is so tight and so hot. It feels so good inside you. But I want to feel you come apart.”
I spread my legs a little wider and suddenly my orgasm washes over me. Josh holds my hips, taking over for me when I can’t move anymore, when the tremors have stopped and I’m so sensitive I can barely move. He lifts and lowers me and then he says in my ear, “God, I love coming in you.” Then he tenses and grunts and he releases inside the condom, inside me.
I relax onto his chest. My arms and legs feel like limp noodles. He holds me close. My boyfriend holds me close.
I try not to freak out about the label, mainly because this is nice. This is good. I can deal with this. Can’t I?
His chest rumbles under me. “Your favorite food is pizza. You’re insecure about your past and the way you interact with people because of it. You have one freckle on your ass, and I want to bite it every time I see it. Your eyes are the color of mahogany and I want to fuck you just as much as your fans do. But I want a lot more.”
I don’t look up, because if I did, he would see the tears that I’m blinking back. He would see how vulnerable he makes me and I simply cannot have that.
He pulls the pillow from beneath his ass and adjusts his legs so that I can slide my knee between them. I lay my head on his chest and snuggle into his side.
What he doesn’t know is that this part scares me just as much as the sex does.
Josh
I drop Star off at my apartment building when we get back to the city. She smiles at me, grabs her bag, and goes inside. She shakes her ass at me as she goes in through the front door and I laugh and wonder about the woman she is.
We had a really good time this weekend and I think I got past quite a few of her barriers, but I didn’t get by all of them. I know that and it gives me something to work for. She’s worth it. I know I need to earn her trust and I also know that it’s going to take time. That’s okay with me. I’d be suspicious if she fell in love with me after knowing me for just a few days. But I think we’re
well on the way toward something permanent. Something wonderful.
I go to the tattoo shop because I just remembered that Pete made an appointment for me tonight. It’s just a small piece that a woman wanted on her forearm. Probably something really girly and pink.
I park outside the tattoo shop and swipe my card in the meter. When I get myself settled, I need to look into getting my own car. I have this one until tomorrow. Until now, I haven’t had enough money to do anything like that, and I still don’t. Not really. But I have the potential.
Star has millions of dollars, I’m sure. And I’m trying to figure out if I can afford a three hundred dollar a month car payment. I snort to myself as I go into the tattoo shop. Catcalls ring out as I go in the door, and I hear clapping and shouts. I look up to find all five of the Reed brothers there, giving me a standing ovation.
“I need to go away more often,” I tell them.
Pete comes over and gives me a high-five, but I have no idea what that’s for. “What’s up?” I ask.
Paul shoves Pete’s shoulder. “Leave him alone, Pete,” he says. He glares at him.
Pete rubs his hands together like he’s warming them in front of a fire and he’s grinning like crazy. “So, we heard you got lucky,” he says.
Heat creeps up my cheeks.
“How was it?” he asks. “You’re not sore, are you?”
“Shut up,” I murmur.
But he’s still grinning. Sam steps up beside him, and I swear the twins look so much alike that you can sometimes only tell them apart by their ink, unless you get to know them.
“So your girlfriend called my wife to complain about the size of your dick,” he says. He chuckles and I push past him.
“Shut up, Sam,” I tell him. “I am not talking to you about the size of my dick.”
“Oh, you don’t need to,” he sings out. “Star already told them all about it.”
Paul shoves him. “Knock it off,” he growls. “How was your weekend?” he asks me, keeping a straight face unlike the rest of them.
“It was good,” I tell him.
“Everything okay back home?” Matt asks.
“It’s better than it was,” I tell him.
“Good.” Matt smiles and it’s full of kindness and warmth. Then he grins. “I won’t ask about the other stuff, since Star already told everybody.”
Good Girl Gone Page 12
