Insatiable (Sex, Love, and Rock & Roll Book 3)

by Michelle Hazen

  The air seethes with the wild edge of possibility, and it reminds me of the held-breath feeling of having a new drug in my palm, no idea what will happen when I swallow it. “Absolutely.”

  I want to lay her naked on top of that dress, let my hands slick over her skin and the silk until it all whirls together in my head. The sharp red with the deep brown of her skin is the most beautiful combination I can imagine.

  Ava leads me down the hallway, her skirt brushing along the unforgiving cement with a sound like voices whispering somewhere in the space beyond. She opens the last door, and I can tell by the quality of the air that it’s a much bigger room than the one we’re in now.

  Ava hits the lights and I frown as weight benches are revealed, all different sizes of punching bags hanging from the rafters and three boxing rings running down the center of the huge space.

  “Not sure I’m dressed for Fight Club.” I glance down at my still-immaculate tuxedo.

  Ava turns back with a grin and flicks the shoulder of my jacket. “Guess you’re going to have to improvise, Mr. Sterling. I’ve got a locker here, so I’m going to go change. Wear whatever you don’t mind getting sweaty.”

  She darts away into a side room. I reach down and adjust my pants, blocking out images of her naked body stretched across one of the weight benches, or bent over against the ropes with the round curve of her ass cocked upward.

  “Not what she meant by getting sweaty,” I mutter to myself. I shrug out of my jacket and fold it over one of the bench press bars, unfastening my cufflinks and tucking them into my jacket pocket for safekeeping. I work over the tiny buttons of my shirt, then drape it over the bar, too.

  Looking up, I grimace at the sight of myself in a white undershirt and tuxedo pants. My shoulders look good—taut and round from trying to keep up with Jacob in our morning workouts. But it’s still trashy as shit to wear a wife beater with tuxedo pants. I pull it off, grunting through my teeth at the pain of the movement. Purple bruises sprawl across my damaged ribs, shading through the sharper, darker lines of my tattoos.

  I brush a thumb over the wild, tribal sweeps Danny used to ink the electric guitar on my forearm. How the fuck am I supposed to referee this thing with him and Ava? Not to mention that I have to play a show with him tomorrow. While remembering he can cover Britney Spears with aplomb. I mean, that’s not the kind of thing you can un-know about a dude.

  “Oh my God, Jax!”

  I turn to find Ava gaping at me.

  “What on earth happened to your ribs?”

  “My own kind of Fight Club.” No way am I telling her it was a fight over her. Too many ways she could take it the wrong way, and I don’t want to repeat what Danny said to spark me into throwing the first punch.

  She closes the distance between us and stretches out a trembling hand, her fingers settling over my bruises as if to hide them from view. Her touch is so soft that all I feel is a glowing warmth. With her eyes focused on me, I’m free to stare. At her tiny spandex shorts, the loose tee shirt that drapes elegantly from her narrow shoulders, reminding me of her pajamas. Her hair is still up, a couple of tiny red flowers blazing color amidst the black. It was straightened for the occasion, but I can still make out the ripple of its true texture in one of the dozens of stylized strands that weave together into an impossibly complex knot.

  “Does it hurt?” she breathes.

  I don’t want to speak for fear she’ll move her hand. No one has touched me like this in so long that I can’t even remember the last time. I would only have to lower my head a few inches for my lips to touch her forehead, or the bounce of one of the tiny curls she let escape. I close my eyes and remind myself of a hundred AA meetings in which I’ve told stories about my instincts leading me astray. How I’m drawn to a hint of danger, the kind of things that are too dynamic to possibly rest within the precarious balance I’ve only now started to build.

  I take a step back and Ava drops her hand, blushing. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have—sorry.”

  “No worries.” I give her a wry smile. “Though I might not be the best choice of sparring partner tonight. Want me to grab Dean?” Secretly, I’m relieved. I don’t want to look like a limp dick who doesn’t know how to fight, but there’s no way I would swing a real punch at her, gloves or no gloves.

  “What about training mitts?” She grabs a pair of the flat, padded gloves off the wall. “Would that be okay?”

  “Yeah,” I lie. “Totally.” I search for a subject change so she won’t ask more about my bruises. “So meditation and boxing are your drugs of choice?”

  “Yup.” She heads for the front counter and grabs a couple of hand wraps, hopping up to perch on the surface. “Meditation calms me down, and fighting kind of...wakes me up.” She starts to wrap the stretchy bandage around her hand with quick, practiced movements. I get the distinct feeling she’s using it as an excuse to avoid looking at me.

  “How exactly did you figure that out?” I join her, leaning against the counter. “You have a bar fight habit I don’t know about?”

  “One night when I was fifteen, my choreographer, Dirk, came to see me.” She divides each of her fingers with a loop of the bandage. “He told me I was beautiful, started touching me. At first, I didn’t think it was anything because he touched me all the time when we were working, blocking out my routines.” She flicks the wrap across the back of her wrist, crossing it firmly to support the tendons. “I kind of laughed him off, pushed him away. Then he got me on the couch and started taking down his zipper, and I realized, oh my God, this is really happening. He’s really going to do this.”

  Cold shocks across my skin, my body stiff like a building I’m standing inside. This is nothing like what I thought she was going to say, and I hope to God I’m not the first person she’s ever told.

  “I hit him with a plastic bowl, because it was the only thing I could reach.” She wraps three fast loops across the back of her hand. “I didn’t even have that good of a grip on it, but I can still remember how his lips smushed to the side, how the bowl ground them into his teeth. Once I got out from under him, I didn’t stop. I threw everything I could reach at him until he was calling for help.”

  Ava pauses and shakes off the last bit of bandage, re-wrapping it again a little looser before she fastens the end, finally looking up to meet my eyes. She’s a little pale, but she gives me a smile and I can tell this isn’t the first time she’s told this story. I take a breath. Thank fuck.

  “Everything felt different the next morning. I knew if I fought hard enough, I’d be okay. I felt huge, strong, and I wanted to show it to other girls. To teach them to reach past the soft parts of themselves that wanted to just give up.”

  “That’s why...” I have to stop and clear my throat. “The Girls Kick Ass self-defense classes you’re funding. And the date rape awareness PSAs, and the blue light crisis poles you put in for all those colleges. Jesus, Ava. I had no idea.” Could Kate find that choreographer with only his first name, if I asked her to?

  Ava’s eyes widen at my reaction. “Hey...” She reaches out and lays her unwrapped hand along my cheek. My jaw muscle twitches against her palm. “I’m okay, Jax, really. In some ways, that guy did me a favor. Curt was about to quit before that. I overheard him talking to my parents.” She lowers her voice in a poor imitation of his grouchy baritone. “‘Ava’s a nice girl with a pretty voice. The world’s full of those.’ Well, after Dirk, I wasn’t so much of a nice girl anymore.”

  Of course. Fifteen was when she traded in pop for rock. I frown. Seems like it wasn’t until she was nineteen that her lyrics got dark and bloody, though.

  “See?” She sits back on the counter, poking me with one bare toe. “You’re not the only one with the kind of secrets that belong in court.”

  I grimace. I don’t want her to have ugly secrets, or the kind of memories she has to hold deep and silent, like mine.

  “I told my dad what happened,” she says. “And he never left me alone again, not until
I was an adult and I forced him to. Part of that deal was keeping Curt on the payroll, because Dad wouldn’t go home unless he knew I had a management team he could trust.”

  “That asshole? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Curt may be a jerk, but he knows the music industry. And he knows me. My career hit a whole new level after Dirk, because that attack gave me an issue to fight for, and gave me something to do with all this fame that I don’t always appreciate the way I should. As little as he meant to, Danny’s done me the same favor on this tour.”

  “If you’re trying to make me feel better by comparing my bandmate to a rapist...” I chuckle and it comes out as dry and strained as it tastes.

  “I’m not, not at all. I was floundering coming into this tour, and he gave me something to push against.” She looks down and starts to wrap her other hand. “I’m not saying what he said didn’t hurt, a little. I spent long enough trying to gauge my image that I can see both sides of it. I think all my female fans out there kind of deserve to see the whole argument.” She looks up, her face earnest. “To hear you don’t have to expose your body, and if you want to, you should be safe to do that, too.”

  I pick through the boxing gloves hanging beside the counter and choose a bright pink pair that seem like they’ll fit her, picking the laces open. “That’s a pretty incredible reaction to being called a slut.” I hold up the glove and she punches her hand inside.

  “That’s what we do, isn’t it? Take the best parts of ourselves and shine them up for the cameras.” She peeks up at me with a small smile as I turn her hand over to lace her glove tight. “There’s always someone filming. You can bitch about what they catch, or you can be something you’re proud for the public to see.”

  I hold up her other glove. She’s right, but it’s a little sideways of how I’ve always thought about it. I like the man I am in interviews, in the pages of photo shoots. A hell of a lot more than I like the me I am the rest of the time. Not that there hasn’t been some nasty shit written about me, too. Unfortunately, most of it was true. “Is that why you don’t drink?” I ask her as she wiggles her hand into the glove. “That’s smart.”

  “It’s not because I’m smart. It’s because I’m scared.” She hops off the counter and knocks her gloves together, sending me a brilliant grin. “Suit up, coach. Have you ever used those before?”

  I slide my hands into the coaching mitts. “Usually on the other side of them.”

  Boxing’s great cardio, but it makes me sweaty as hell and twice as horny. Probably not the best choice for tonight.

  Ava lines us up in front of the mirrors and leads me through a shadow-boxing warm up. It’s one I’ve done before, but I keep flubbing the footwork because I’m watching her in the mirror: pink boxing gloves and a huge grin, tight curls bouncing free at the edges of her formal updo, loose tee shirt tied in a knot at her back so I get just the hint of deep brown skin and slender waist. But even with the spandex shorts teasing her glorious ass, it’s her bare feet that get me. She’s got tiny toes, the second one just the smallest bit crooked. She bounces weightlessly as if it’s not nearly sunrise, practicing ducking in and out of punching range.

  “Okay.” She turns to me. “Jab, jab, cross. Starting right.”

  She calls the drills and I throw the mitts to meet her punches, tightening my arms and abs to absorb the increasing fury of her hits. Every single one jars my ribs, but I don’t care. My blood heats, rising into a steady burn of pain and exertion, lit by the focus in her dark eyes as she nails my mitts dead center. Her form is fantastic, elbows tight and every thrust carrying the full strength of her shoulder, the slight twist of her hip bringing her body weight along for the ride.

  “If Danny knew you could fight like this, he’d never have dared step into that Speedo.”

  Ava snorts and throws her next combination. “Please. What’s a slut even mean? Somebody who has sex for fun?” She laughs breathlessly, ducking her shoulder against her forehead to try to wipe away the sweat, then bounding back up onto the balls of her toes. “I am such a slut.”

  Watching her, I forget to raise the training mitts for the next round and Ava’s cross skitters off the edge of my left and backhands into my bruised jaw. I jerk back, breath coughing out in a spurt as all my teeth jangle a painful protest.

  “Oh shit!” Ava’s hands leap up to her mouth, and she forgets the bulk of her oversized gloves and smacks herself squarely in the face.

  I start to laugh, my abused ribs clamping tightly around my lungs, and my whole face throbs. “Ah fuck, that hurts.” I try to swallow back my laughter, but it’s hard when I look up at Ava to find her trying to rub her chin with the back of one fat pink glove. “You didn’t have to punch yourself to make me feel better.”

  She scowls at me, the corners of her lips struggling to push away a smile. “I’m glad it made you so happy.” She snaps her eye closed suddenly, flinching. “Ah! Ow, ow, ow.” Sweat drips past her eyelid, and I wince as I realize she must have gotten some in her eye. I clamp one coaching mitt under my arm and pull it off, snagging a clean towel from the basket on top of the counter.

  “Don’t move.” I press the towel cautiously to her eye, letting it absorb the moisture and then pulling it away to let her blink the rest out. She reaches up to do it herself, but only bumps my hand with her clumsy glove. She drops her hands and lets them hang as I dab gently at her forehead, the curve of her cheek. Her eyeliner is beginning to run a bit and for some reason I love it: the smudge of black and the drop of sweat caught in the curl at her temple. I pull off the second coaching mitt and let it fall, brushing her hair away from her face. Ava’s breathing is the only sound in the huge room. Fast, and rough.

  I slide the towel around the back of her neck. It would be such a small movement to tip her head into my chest, to hug her against me like she was my girl. She’s barefoot and tiny again, her heels abandoned along with that fairytale of a dress in a side room. She’d fit perfectly under my chin, the span of her shoulders tucking just inside mine, her toned leg barely half as wide as one of my thick quadriceps. But women don’t turn to me for comfort.

  I swallow. “Thirsty?” My voice is as raw as her breathing.

  She nods, her curls bobbing, and her eyes follow me to the water cooler at the wall. I pull a cup off the stack and fill it, air bubbling loudly up through the water jug. This, at least, is something I can do for her without crossing any lines.

  I come back to Ava and she smiles self-consciously, dashing fresh sweat off her forehead with her forearm. “Really wish I knew where Chuck hides the switch for the A/C in here.”

  I hold the cup over her head, tilting it threateningly. “I can fix that for you.”

  She jumps back, raising her gloves. “Don’t you dare!”

  “Hey!” I hold up the cup. “There is no way you’re getting this water if there’s any chance I’m going to get cock-punched for it.”

  She narrows her eyes. “No tricks?”

  “Depends. Do you trust me?” I smile, but the teasing in it wavers when she takes one small step closer, her gloves hugged tight in front of her, her eyes following my hand. I stop moving. Ava takes another step, hesitantly letting her hands fall to her sides. Her breasts press against the thin material of her tee shirt when she takes a breath and tilts her head up a bit.

  I touch the rim of the cup to her full lower lip, tipping in just a taste of water. She swallows and waits for more. My mouth is suddenly, drastically dry. I feed her another sip and her delicate throat works as she swallows. I can’t stop watching. Her lips, her neck, even the fine bones in her jaw. The head of my dick pushes against my belt more firmly with every heavy heartbeat. It stings, and kind of feels good at the same time.

  The cup has gone empty, and I reluctantly lower my hand. My shaft thickens as I register exactly how close we’re standing. I turn away to put the cup on the counter, adjusting my pants subtly before I face her again.

  “Jeez, it’s hot in here. Humid.” Ava
glances at the walls. “I was only half-joking about that A/C.” She reaches behind her to bat at the knot in her shirt, which only serves to press her breasts forward. “A little help?”

  My dick surges, using up all the extra space I just made for it in my pants.

  Don’t be such a fucking douchebag, Sterling. Her bodyguard is in the other room, and half the girls in gyms work out in sports bras. Taking her shoulders, I turn her away from me and undo the knot in the back of her shirt.

  “You want it all the way off?”

  “God, yes.”

  “No cock-punch promise still stands,” I remind her. Plus, if she hits me in this state of arousal, the thing’s likely to just plain break off. I can’t remember the last time I had to hold on to wood for this long without doing anything about it. I hold my breath, dipping my hands under the hem of her shirt and pulling it up and over her head, careful not to wreck her hair. Her boxing gloves catch in the sleeves and I spin her around, starting a tug of war for the shirt. She giggles, leaning her weight away from me, and stumbles when the shirt finally comes loose. I toss it toward the counter and bend to sweep up my coaching mitts again. All her bare skin drowns my peripheral vision as I focus on her face, raising the mitts.

  “Four-beat combination. Jab, cross, hook, uppercut.”

  She whistles. “Well, aren’t you the gentleman.” She dances forward, and every beat of her fists is echoed in the taut lines of her abs.

  God help me.

  But warmth suffused my whole body when she called me a gentleman. I stand a little straighter and keep my eyes high.

  “You’re one point behind, Mr. Sterling.” She winks, then hits me with a flash-quick combination. Onetwothreefour. “I believe you owe me a truth, or a dare.” One, two, three, four. She bounces away and grins. “I want a good one, one nobody else knows.”

  I groan, tightening my muscles just in time as she dances back for another combination. “Nobody? Not fair. Have you met my band? Danny’s three-quarters psychic and Jera’s nosy as shit.”