Table of Contents
FLOWERS IN HER HAIR
All Rights Reserved.
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
Also by Liza Mitchell
About the Author
FLOWERS IN HER HAIR
DEEP DESIRES
Liza Mitchell
Published by Feather & Bleed Press, 2019.
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations used for review purposes.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book is intended for mature, adult audiences only. It contains extremely sexually explicit and graphic scenes and language that may be considered offensive by some readers. This book is strictly intended for those over the age of 18.
All sexually active characters in this work are 18 years of age or older. All acts of a sexual nature are completely consensual. No one is related in this book.
FLOWERS IN HER HAIR
Copyright © 2019 Liza Mitchell
Edited by Jennifer at Mistress Editing
Proofread by Paula Grundy
CHAPTER ONE
____________
IZZY
Izzy pushed off the balls of her feet and leaned back in her folding chair. The metal feet sunk treacherously deep into the soft soil, still wet with the morning dew. She paused, waiting to see if she was beyond the point of no return, her coffee mug clutched tightly to her chest. The chair tipped forward, ready to put all four feet safely back on the earth, but before the front legs could reach the grass, she pushed herself away from the ground again with just a little more force and held her breath.
She’d been sitting at the concierge table since six a.m., and not a damn soul had wandered over needing anything from her, which wasn’t surprising since the same thing had happened yesterday… and the day before that.
They called it the "concierge table," but really it was the "band bitch station." Not that she had much room to complain. She’d traded twenty-four hours of her time—Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from six a.m. to two p.m.—for a ticket to one of the biggest music festivals in the state. A weekend pass cost hundreds of dollars, so what did she care if she had to run around finding coffee, electrolyte drinks, bagels, or phone chargers?
Except, that’s not what it turned out to be at all. Well, that’s kind of what her job was, but the people she was doing it for were entitled, hungover, or still drunk—assholes. So even though the first few hours of her shift were boring as hell, once the beasts came to life, shit was going to become unbearable.
She pushed off the ground again, taking a sip from her coffee mug as she did so and came slamming back to the ground faster than she’d expected, spilling coffee down her chin. Fuck, fuck. She scanned the booth, looking for paper towels, but came up empty.
Kneeling on the ground, she set her mug on top of her guitar case and dug through her bag for something she wouldn’t be wearing again anytime soon. Who even knew when she’d get a chance to laundry again. Settle for something that will at least not show the coffee stain. Nomad 101. She found a dark shirt and dabbed her chin and neck before jamming it back into her bag.
Her elbow knocked into her coffee mug, spilling twelve ounces of flaming hot liquid all over her guitar case. “Shit! Fuck,” she yelled, panic washing over her as she gripped the handle and jerked the case vertical. The neck of the case crashed into her folding table, causing everything on it to jump and creating a rolling cascade of Polar Ice Freeze Blue-8 sports drinks. Izzy completely disregarded the chaos she’d created and put her guitar on the table and threw open the case. Please, please be dry.
She didn’t own much, and she traveled with even less. This guitar was her most prized possession. It wasn’t expensive. It wasn’t even particularly good. It fell out of tune regularly, but it had been her father’s, and it was irreplaceable.
She scanned the case and the instrument. She saw a few damp spots on the neck of the guitar and quickly picked it up and wrapped the shirt around the wood, gliding it up and down the neck to dry up anything that might cause damage. Her eyes wandered as she wiped the instrument, and she jumped when her gaze fell on a man quietly standing not five feet away from her.
“Is it always so eventful around here? You’re quite the gymnast,” he said with a grin.
“Can I help you?” she snapped. Who the hell sneaks up on someone like that? Not to mention, she’d just accidently had an audience to her fall and spill and other spill and chaos. Her cheeks burned.
“No, but you let me know if you want some guitar lessons. I think you might be confused about how to play one. Although, if be happy to give you something to play with like that.” He winked.
Motherfucker.
“Listen, asshole,” Izzy spat. “Is there a reason why you’re here, or are you just still drunk, looking around for the last desperate piece of ass who will fuck you?”
The stranger’s face darkened, and he answered briskly, “Yeah, I was looking for some coffee, and I’m guessing you can grab me a cup since you need a new one yourself.”
“It’s literally right there.” She pointed two feet to her right on the table behind her.
“But it’s, like, in your space, so I’m not just going to help myself.”
“I’m sure that’s never stopped you from taking something before. Have at it.” She bent her head and went back to cleaning up the spilled coffee off of her guitar case, hoping he would take a fucking hint and get his coffee and leave.
“You don’t even know me. I’ve worked damn hard, and we’re just talking about a fucking cup of coffee.”
She glared at him. He actually didn’t look like he was fucked up. That made his early comments even more infuriating and dickish. The douche might have actually been running that morning in sweatpants, grubby tennis shoes, and a long-sleeve band T-shirt. “You came up to a complete stranger, made fun of her clumsiness, made a creepy joke, and then were like, ‘yeah, bitch, get me some coffee.’ You are just like every other self-important, entitled prick around here.
“Do you know how many times, yesterday, one of you said something about my tits? No? Neither do I because I lost count. And one dumbass had the gall to think no meant yes because my nipples were hard and that my ‘fuck you’ meant ‘please touch me again’ because I somehow purposely wore a sports bra that didn’t completely hide my tits from him.
“So, yeah, you starting this shit at six a.m. is not going to be received well.
“Get your own damn coffee, and leave me alone.”
By the time she was done, Izzy had planted both of her hands on the table, and she shook with rage from head to toe. Meanwhile, her victim just stood there with wide eyes, staring at her silently. Great, here comes some snide comment about women being insane…
“I am so sorry,” he said, stepping closer to her. “I just panicked. When I saw everything happen, I was going to turn around and pretend like nothing happened, then you looked at me, so I made a joke. And then a worse joke. And then you said what you said, and I said what said, and this is not… I’m not… I’m not them.” He stuck his hands into his pockets and shuffled his feet around. No one does that in real life. He’s just good at working t
he system and getting what he wants. If not by brute force then through manipulation.
“How do you like your coffee,” she asked flatly.
“Black.” He looked at her from under his brows, a slick grin spreading across his face. That smile probably got him a lot of things. Way more than a cup of coffee. Under any other circumstances that smile might have brought her to her knees. If the smile didn’t, the flecks of green in his hazel eyes would have. Or that strand of hair that persistently fell in front of his ears that he seemed to compulsively tuck away. Stop. It.
Izzy rolled her eyes. It was too early for this shit. “Coming right up,” she said with a saccharine grin.
CHAPTER TWO
____________
WILSON
Wilson’s palms were clammy and coated in sweat. He hadn’t been spoken to like that by a stranger in years. Most people recognized him instantly and either started kissing his ass or were stunned into speechlessness. He hated it.
His band had worked their ass off since high school to get the next big show, get recognized by an agent, and get a record deal. Finally, the right moment had hit, and Blue Heron became an overnight phenomenon on the folk pop wave. Their faces and songs were absolutely everywhere. They filled fucking stadiums now. They had a contract for their third studio album with more zeros behind it than he’d ever seen.
And now he just wished he could go back to driving around the country in an old VW bus with four of his best friends living off Cup-a-Soup and oranges—they’d been deeply concerned about scurvy. Now they traveled in a tour bus that cost more than some homes, and it seemed like every time he turned around, someone needed something from him. Whether it was his manager, the label, a woman who just wanted a famous cock, or the guy who’d sat next to him in tenth-grade American history who had a demo he just needed to listen to.
Wilson was becoming more and more jaded, and it was fucking depressing. Every day he woke up feeling emptier than he did the day before. It wasn’t about the music anymore. The guys of Blue Heron were business partners now instead of friends. The songs they wrote went through an industrial music machine and came out of the other end as a plastic shadow of the piece of art they’d created. Everyone else seemed to have exactly what they wanted, except him.
He’d thought coming back home to Night Fields would wake him up—ignite a spark inside of him again. Instead, the music festival just reminded him of everything that had changed over the years.
He’d grown up at this festival. His parents had started it on their unused farm and woodland when he was a toddler. Friends and locals came out and camped in the pastures and woods and gathered for evenings of music on a makeshift stage. As the years passed, the popularity grew; they sold tickets, booked bands, and slowly Night Fields became profitable. It took his parents twenty years to build this dream.
When Blue Heron exploded, so did Night Fields. There was no question that Wilson would headline the festival, and summer tickets sold out in record time, but instead of families creating memories, millennials came to black out. Or at least that’s what Wilson saw. No one else did. Even his mom told him he was being grim.
He’d come to accept that if returning home couldn’t break his slump, nothing could.
But this woman, handing him his ass on a plate, was one of the realest fucking moments he’d had in a long time. And he’d entirely deserved it. He wished he could say that he’d been a dick because he was having a bad day—or year—or some shit. But he’d been a dick without even thinking. Which was fucking frightening. What if he was that dude who made jokes about hand jobs to complete strangers?
Hot strangers. One hot stranger.
He wiped his hand on his pants and took the cardboard cup from her. “Thanks. I’m Wilson, by the way,” he said, holding out his hand.
“I know who you are. And I couldn’t care less,” she answered, placing her hand limply in his. Her eyes bore into his, silently challenging him. He knew his bandmates would have flipped their shit over a chick saying something like that to them. To Wilson, it sent a charge through his body.
He leaned toward her and whispered conspiratorially, “This is the part where you’re supposed to tell me your name.”
She mimicked him and came close, bringing her face just inches from his. She smelled like campfire and clover fields and patchouli, like a wild woman. She looked like a wild woman too—her hair hung to her waist in messy, careless waves, and strands of white flowers, picked from the field, were woven throughout her curls. There wasn’t a stitch of makeup on her face, and her wrists were layered with bracelets that clinked as she moved.
Her breath rolled across his cheeks in gentle puffs. “This is the part where you learn the tough life lesson that you don’t always get what you want.”
Oh fuck, did he want her. Maybe he was an entitled asshole who only wanted what he couldn’t have. Or maybe she was the first person in a long time to say no. He loved a challenge. When was that last time he actually had to fucking seduce a girl? He couldn’t even remember.
He reached out and twirled a piece of her hair around his finger, watching it glow in the warm morning sun. “Please?” he asked in a deep, throaty voice.
Her tongue flicked along the inside of her lip. She shook her head slightly. “No,” she said breathlessly. Her lips forming a perfect "o" at the end.
“All right, I’ll be seeing you around.” He flashed a smile.
She rolled her eyes and turned around. He had to shove his hand in his pocket to hide the hard-on he was sporting in his sweats. All from a woman treating him like an average fucking Joe.
CHAPTER THREE
____________
IZZY
She sat in the semidarkness plucking lazily at her guitar. In the distance, the last act of the night played on the stage, and the muffled sounds of the bass and a synth carried through the forest. The crowd was losing their minds, but she’d decided to return to the peace of her campsite at the far edge of the woods.
She’d spent the summer as a nomad working festivals and odd jobs. Camping on festival grounds or bartering for room and board. She’d been having the time of her fucking life, but by the end of most days, she was ready to just be alone.
Night Fields allowed for all festival goers to camp on the property, so Izzy had been forced to travel to the very edge of the woods to gain some peace and quiet away from the late-night parties fueled by drugs and alcohol. She wasn’t straight edge or anything like that. She was a lone woman in a strange place… and also had to wake up at five a.m.
Her fingers slid over the strings, mindlessly playing as she watched lights twinkle through the leaves. Paths through the woods were illuminated by millions of Christmas lights woven through the branches and stretched across walkways. Meanwhile, campers hung their own lights, tapestries, and decorations, creating a fairyland hidden miles outside of civilization. It was hypnotizing.
As she strummed, she saw a dark shape moving through the woods, blocking out more lights with every step he took. She tensed slightly but continued playing. In all her travels, she’d never encountered any danger, but that didn’t mean she was going to let her guard down. The figure kept ambling closer and closer. Growing more alert, she sat up a bit straighter. She could be his only destination—there weren’t any other campsites anywhere near her.
“Hey, there,” she called out, letting the intruder know he did not go unnoticed.
“Hey,” came a familiar voice.
Fuck, he’d actually managed to find her. She took a deep breath. He’s an asshole. And he’s not that hot. And he’s just here for a piece of ass.
“What are you playing?” Wilson asked.
“Nothing, anything. What are you doing here?” she snapped, throwing up her guard.
“I came to apologize,” he said, holding out his hand.
She didn’t move. His face was completely in shadow, but she had the angles of his jaw and those bright sparks of green in his eyes burned into her memo
ry.
“Please,” he asked softly.
That sent a wave of warmth through her. His please, this morning, had done the same fucking thing. It sent heat surging through her body, melting her resolve, making her pliable. If he were any other man, she’d have easily said yes.
“Come with me, please,” he repeated.
“Why?”
“I’m sorry. I made a horrible joke. You didn’t deserve it. Let me make it up to you.”
Maybe he was just a man. And going on a walk didn’t mean anything. He just wanted to talk. Apologize.
“Okay,” she said, putting her guitar down and taking his hand.
His hand was warm and strong, and the pads of his fingers were deeply callused from years of playing. Rough hands on her nipples, dragging down her stomach toward her… She shivered. Maybe she didn’t want to just talk.
“This way,” he said, pulling her toward a gap in the trees.
CHAPTER FOUR
____________
WILSON
His heart pounded in his chest as he led her through the woods. He’d spent the whole day asking every volunteer and coordinator about the woman at the concierge tent. About fifty people later, after desperation had set in, he’d finally found someone who not only knew her, but knew where her isolated campsite was.
“Where are we going?” she asked, slightly out of breath.
“We’re almost there,” he said with a smile as they broke through the trees.
She gasped next to him the instant they reached the top of the hill. The festival was spread out below them, a sea of multicolor flashing lights. The stage erupted in an elaborate light show while the night’s headliner played, and the crowd looked like thousands of dancing neon sparks bouncing around it.
“How do you know about this place?” she asked in awe.
Flowers in Her Hair (Deep Desires) Page 1
