ROCK F*CK CLUB (Girls Ranking the Rock Stars Book 5)

by Michelle Mankin

  “It is, but I think the questions are as important as the answers a lot of the time.”

  He positioned and tapped the helmet down on my head. Dropping his gaze, he worked on the chin strap while I watched him. His thick brown hair slid forward, silky temptation that I longed to thread my fingers through.

  Fire flickered on my skin as he stroked it, seemingly inadvertently as he made necessary adjustments. His nails were bluntly trimmed, his fingers long, the pads rough from plucking the strings on his bass, and maybe from repeatedly gripping the handlebars on his motorcycle. Surely, he’d gripped them a lot during his eighteen-month sabbatical.

  What had he done during all that time? Everyone knew Gale Lafleur had taken off and crisscrossed the North American continent after losing his family. What important questions had he uncovered? Had he taken his bass with him? Listened to music? Been suffocated by the silence?

  Or had he left everything he’d known behind?

  That was what had happened to me. My past lay in ruins and ashes that I could never forget and never return to.

  “Feel good?” he asked.

  His gaze rose to my eyes. The pulsing connection between us intensified with him holding my chin in his hand and staring deeply into my eyes.

  “I . . . feel . . . something.” A stirring within the ruins and ashes.

  “That’s a good start,” he said, but he was wrong. It was an impossible start.

  “Shake your head.” He removed his fingers from my face. “Try it out. See how it feels.”

  The helmet remained in place, and so did I.

  Blinking up at him, I deadpanned, “It seems impervious to motion.”

  He grinned. “A poet and a wordsmith. How incredible you are. Where did you come from, Jo? I think we’re soul mates.”

  “Nowhere,” I said, and to myself, I added and headed to nowhere. “We’re not anything.” I shook my head again, my eyes wide inside the helmet.

  “I’m teasing you, sweet girl. No reason to get indignant or scared. I tease people I like. You’re not afraid, remember?”

  “I’m not afraid of you,” I said. But I was very frightened of the way he made me feel.

  He turned away and scooped the other helmet off the ground. I held my breath for a moment and then relaxed, thankful he wasn’t tuned in to my inner thoughts.

  The bend-and-snap maneuver to retrieve the protective headgear did amazing things for his ass. I bumped my gaze up quickly when he straightened, but not quickly enough. He grinned at me as he fastened the strap on his own helmet.

  “You were going to show me how the voice thingy works.” I arched a brow.

  “It’s working.” His sweet voice echoed all around me. “No showing necessary. I already flipped on the switch. You hear me, right?”

  “I hear you.” Dreamy dulcet tones rang clearly in my ears.

  “Good. Be interesting to see if a good reception straight into your ears will improve your ability to follow instructions.” He sauntered over, his hips lean. Legs flexing. Me notably impressed by all of him.

  “I’m not really a good follower.”

  “I’m not really looking for one.”

  “What are you looking for?” I asked.

  Gale stared at me a long moment, a pause that felt like how it was for me onstage when I was at my drums. My arms stretched above my head, my sticks pointed to the sky, and the expectations high from the audience and my bandmates, everyone waiting for the hard downbeat.

  “I think time will reveal that answer, maybe even the same one to both of us.”

  The ground shifted again beneath me. Or maybe it was just me trembling from the effect he had on me.

  I locked my muscles to resist and lifted my chin. “Are we going to ride or what?”

  “We’re riding. I’ll get on first. You can climb on afterward, if you can manage to follow those directions.”

  “I can manage it, you ass.”

  “That’s Sir Ass to you, my lady.” His gaze sparkled.

  “This all certainly better be something after all the buildup,” I grumbled from a few steps behind him.

  Busy, he didn’t respond to my quip. At the motorcycle, man and beast were engaged in the process of becoming one.

  Gale almost seemed to respectfully gesticulate before he reached for the handlebars, a ritual I imagined he’d repeated many times. Lean masculine fingers curled around the grips. He threw one of his long denim-clad legs over the leather seat. Shoulders, arms, legs, ass, and hips, his muscles flexed enticingly as he lowered himself onto the bike.

  “Not certain of much anymore, Jo.” He stared at me again, mesmerizing and frightening me with the seriousness of his tone. “Life’s knocked the certainty right out of me. You too, I’m guessing.” He swallowed hard.

  Watching his Adam’s apple move in his throat, I nodded. Tears burned in my eyes from the huge ball of pain trapped inside me, but I also saw and responded to the similar pain I saw in him that he didn’t even try to hide from me.

  “But I do know one thing,” he said softly.

  “What’s that?” I whispered. It was that kind of moment. A hushed one.

  I tiptoed toward him, my feet seeming to move of their own accord.

  “Once you finally get on . . .” Gale’s eyes sparkled brighter, a silver lure baited with an irresistible something I hadn’t identified. “I’ll give you the best ride of your life.”

  I RAN INTO SEVERAL PROBLEMS, one after another, as soon as I climbed on the BMW with Gale.

  The overarching difficulty?

  How insane it was to slide into position and put my arms around him.

  I’d done the drill a couple of times with Tyler on his Harley. Besides the growl between my legs from the pipes and the wind in my hair, I didn’t really understand what all the fuss was about with motorcycles.

  But now I had a different opinion.

  All the parts of me that went wild whenever they were in Gale’s proximity went even crazier. My breasts swelled as if to demand his attention. The nipples were so hard, he could probably feel the tips poking at his back, even through the cotton of my top and his. Cradling his sexy backside, my legs trembled from my thighs to my calves, just like the rest of me.

  I was spread open, and he was facing the wrong direction for what my pussy wanted. Frustrated, I had to fight the urge to remedy the logistics.

  I ached. I needed. I wanted to see if the reality would rival the fantasy.

  And we hadn’t even started moving yet.

  “You’re pretty quiet all of a sudden,” he said, sitting patiently in front of me. The bike remained stationary, still, waiting—much like him. “Everything okay back there?”

  When Gale turned his head slightly, wisps of his silky brown hair peeked out of his helmet, taunting me to touch his hair to see if it was as silky as it looked. And that cologne of his? I didn’t know what it was, but it was doing a fucking number on me. A blend of freshly sliced citrus, mesquite wood, and spicy saffron, it brought to mind a wide-open desert plain with a canopy of twinkling stars, like the ones he’d mentioned, stars I now longed to see.

  In my daydream, there would be a roaring campfire. I could almost hear the crackle from the flames consuming the wood. Our naked bodies would be pressed together inside a sleeping bag. The air would be crisp outside but not too cold, just cool enough for me to have an excuse to cling to him and allow his virility to warm me.

  The fact that none of my daydream was real and that I was actually sitting down as I experienced my fantasy didn’t make me any less dizzy or the longing any less potent. And then Gale made it worse, grasping my hands and bringing them together over his abdomen.

  His very warm, very hard abdomen.

  “Your abs are like steel,” I blurted, expanding my fingers a little when he released my hands so I could test the extent of his abs’ firmness. “What the hell? You’re a lead singer. Your hobby is riding your bike, right? What kind of exercise makes them hard like that?”


  I wanted to rub my hands all over them. Count the individual ridges. Discover if his skin was smooth or lightly dusted like the sand in my imagined desert scene, or maybe he was thickly matted with body hair.

  “Riding isn’t my only hobby,” he said, turning his head slightly toward me. “I have other unofficial ones.”

  I could hear the teasing in his voice. In his helmet-framed profile, I watched his lips curve, and my stomach flipped.

  “I don’t want to know. Don’t tell me.” My imagination didn’t need any more fuel. It had banked enough inspiration to last a lifetime.

  “I read. I write songs,” he said, telling me anyway. “I used to write songs. I work out some.”

  I scoffed. “Working out some doesn’t give you abs like that.”

  “Push-ups and sit-ups. Every day.”

  “A lot of those.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wait a second.” One of those hobbies surprised me. “Back up a bit. You read every now and then, or you read every chance you get?”

  “Every spare moment. I usually have several books going at the same time.”

  “You’re a bookworm.” That hadn’t been in his bio. I would have remembered. “I didn’t know that.”

  “I prefer to read actual physical books. Not electronic shit on my phone, if I don’t have to. That creates a problem when I’m out on the road on my bike. Most of the time, there are more paperbacks in my luggage cases than practical things like tools.”

  “Books are useful.” Books and music had been my only escape for almost two years. Two long lonely court appointed years.

  “I believe so. My bandmates? Not so much. But I keep telling them books are the questions and the answers. The key to unlock learning. What I read, I combine with my own life experiences, and those are the inspiration behind Anthem’s music.”

  His hands squeezed mine casually, as if he hadn’t just revealed something critically important about himself.

  “You ready? I’m going to kick up the stand so we can go.”

  “Do it.” I tightened my hold on him, anticipating the excitement as he started the bike, letting it roar.

  The glide of his body rising and then dropping back into the saddle was more foreplay, like his ass in his jeans and all the rest of him that I didn’t need. Because it wasn’t just my skin that was like dry kindling for his touch, it was all of me. All the broken bits and pieces stirred within the scattered rubble. The girl I’d once been would have chosen someone exactly like him.

  But the woman I was now? She knew Gale was more than just dangerous. He would be a certain disaster. And I couldn’t survive another one.

  Yet, as I pressed my cheek into his muscular back and held on tight, I felt his rumble of pleasure. He wasn’t unaffected by me. There was something significant here, but he didn’t say anything that I picked up on the headset. Maybe he knew deep down like I did that it was better and safer to ignore the significant things.

  For today, though, for the four hours and however many stops, we had our agreement, and I had an excuse.

  The wind increased as he picked up speed and exited the large parking lot. It lifted the long black strands that escaped my helmet, waving them around like the tentacles of an octopus. I was tempted to throw my arms into the air to try to catch the exhilarating rush of air inside my palms. Why should my hair have all the fun?

  But I stopped myself. That would be too unrestrained. The actions of the girl I once was, not the woman I was now.

  As the chill of that realization slammed into me—I’d been unwise because of a man before—I leaned away from Gale. He’d increased the speed of the BMW to match the posted limits on the two-lane divided highway he’d entered. The wind dove under my cropped T-shirt and whipped it straight up to my nose. I was chilled now, well and truly.

  “What’s wrong?”

  His concern echoed inside my helmet while flashes from the past played out inside my head. Ghost voices cackled of people I once knew. Court-appointed ones, friends not so true, and a boy I thought had been a man. Feeling their desertion and betrayal all over again, I allowed the memory of their insults to sweep over me, but I didn’t fight the crash of the wave or the ripping currents of my deserved misfortune.

  “You have to stop.” Leaning back, I gripped his arms. If it would have helped, I would have released him to hold my hands over my ears to stop the chaos inside my head. But even that wouldn’t stop it.

  “Why?”

  “I’m about to lose my shit . . . my shirt,” I said as the loose hem of my cropped top fluttered up to my neck, exposing me. Both were in jeopardy. But I focused on the fixable problem.

  A coping mechanism, some of the advice by the therapists, had sunk in. I had to concentrate on the things within my control. With Gale likely to be a witness, I hoped this time it would work.

  “THANK YOU,” I SAID into the headset, yanking down the hem of my top to cover my tits as soon as Gale parked the BMW at the pullover.

  “You’re welcome.” His boots dropped to the pavement and he swiveled at the waist to glance at me. “But, shit, looks like I missed the show.”

  “Yeah,” I said, my voice gruff, my eyes a flash of wet emotion. “But I need a minute.”

  “All right.” He shook his head, giving me a puzzled look as I removed the helmet with jerky movements and trembling hands.

  “I’ll be right back.” I thrust it at him. He took it, and I scrambled off the motorcycle.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “There’s a Civil War marker.” I came up with a quick excuse, spotting one up ahead, but it was only a plaque.

  There were no other facilities. No bathroom to hide in. No trees to duck behind. Just a large open field ahead, where a battle had probably taken place, and the shadow of a mesa standing guard over it in the distance.

  “I’m going to have a look.”

  I kept walking fast. My chin was ducked, my hair hanging around my face. I had one goal in mind—putting space between me and Gale.

  “If you didn’t want to be embarrassed by your top coming up, you should’ve worn the layers I suggested.” His voice too close, he caught me. His fingers firm on my upper arm, he spun me around.

  “I remember you giving me orders, not suggestions.” I snapped out the words at him, blinking away my tears and lashing out in embarrassment. Not for my clothing, but for being weak.

  “I think you’re the type of person who needs concrete directives.” He swept his gaze over me. “But then, this isn’t about the shirt, is it?”

  One assessing glance at my bright eyes and trembling lips, and he knew.

  “What is it, Jo?” He used his low, soft voice on me, and I crumpled. “You can tell me.”

  Hanging my head, I said, “It just hits me sometimes.”

  Without thinking, I peeled back one of my protective layers because he was being kind and caring—two things I’d had very little of in my life, outside of Dolly and the twins.

  “It usually happens that way, right out of the blue. I don’t plan it. I think I’m doing okay, but then something reminds me of the past. I remember that he’s gone and he’s never coming back, and then suddenly I’m not okay anymore. It’s like—”

  “Like you’re right back at the beginning, to the moment when the police arrived at your door.”

  “Yes.” I nodded. Only my world descending into hell had gone a little differently than his.

  “I understand.” His brows slanted lower over the silver vortex beneath them. “How it feels to have your whole world destroyed in a single blow.”

  “The days are so dark. The sadness suffocates you. The hurt isolates you. And the nights—”

  “Are fucking misery.”

  “I try not to sleep at night,” I murmured, another layer peeled away, another truth revealed.

  “Your loss came at night. That’s why you don’t like night driving?”

  I nodded.

  “But weren’t you
sleeping this morning?” he asked.

  “Morning?” My pierced brow rose. “Is that what you call the time before the sun is even up? You have your own unique way of looking at a lot of things.”

  His lips twitched in response to my sarcasm, and I felt that stirring of the embers of attraction again.

  “I had a migraine last night.” Another admission . . . one after another, they slipped from my lips. “They come and go since the accident. If I’m lucky, I can take pain relievers and sleep them off.”

  “What if you’re not lucky?”

  “I suffer.” And I deserved every bit of it.

  “Who did you lose, Josephine?” Gale whispered, his expression sad and his gaze steady.

  The direct question was unusual. Most shied away from asking. They didn’t want to know, really, and I didn’t want to tell them. But I wanted to tell him.

  “My brother. The one who taught me everything worth knowing about life and music.”

  Actually, my brother was my rock. My foundation. The only one who knew what it was like growing up in an environment like we did, with an absentee father, and a mother who would do anything for her man and very little for her children.

  “I’m sorry. That’s a terrible loss.”

  “The world is less without him.” I acknowledged Gale’s empathy and returned it. “I know about your wife and son. I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine pain that horrible.”

  He nodded and then released me. His normally nonthreatening hands curled into futile fists at his sides. “It could have been prevented. If—”

  “You can’t blame yourself. If you were with them in the car, you might have all died.”

  He gave me a dark look.

  Understanding completely, I said softly, “I wish that for myself too, sometimes.”

  I dropped my chin at that telling admission. Swallowing hard, I willed the tears not to come. He would comfort me again if I let him, and I couldn’t allow that.

  Gale shoved his hands in his jeans pockets, his gaze distant. “I mostly blame the man who thought it was okay to have six beers and then drive.”

  “He’s the one you should blame.” My eyes burned with the sting of that truth. “He did a horrible, reprehensible thing. He should have died that night. Not them.”