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

by Michelle Hazen

  “Jax,” Ava says. “I brought you here now because I’m proud of you.”

  As if the “parents” bomb wasn’t enough, this brings my brain to a grinding halt.

  “I know you don’t see your mom much, and I know you think the rest of your friends are going to fade away if you lose Danny.” She ducks her head, her eyes locked on mine. “I think you’re wrong about that, but I want you to know that no matter what, you don’t have to be without family.”

  I bark out a quick, wild laugh. “Ave, I’d be happy if your dad didn’t break my arm for all the domestic violence and sexcapade rumors going around about us, not to mention that whole ‘appropriate costuming’ debate Danny dragged you into. I’m pretty sure your parents aren’t going to adopt me for punching holes in your walls and playing in a band with a guy who criticized your skirt length.”

  She laughs, the sound rough and lovely in the small rental car. “You’re the kindest, most considerate man I’ve ever met. You care about how you affect everyone around you. You never even think I’m high-maintenance when I’m trying to get everything just right for the show. Instead, you stay up all night designing me a better system than I ever would have thought of on my own. I want my family to know you, too. Jax, I—” She takes my hand, her skin warm on mine, callouses on her fingertips from the acoustic guitar she plays to relax when she’s alone.

  She looks at me, and I know. It sends a quaver all the way through me, the things in her eyes she’s not saying.

  “Ave...”

  She lifts a finger and presses it, lightening-quick, to my mouth. “Don’t. I know you’re going to try and talk me out of what I feel and I don’t want to hear it.”

  I want to get down on my knees, put my head in her lap and cry. I want to spend about a thousand more hours in a gym and a million more with a therapist and come back in the world’s most expensive suit. I want her to hang out with my band in Jera’s garage. To get to know my friends before they’re gone, or changed, forever.

  I swallow. “I wanted better for you than me.”

  It’s the stupidest, least selfish thing I’ve ever said.

  Ava leans forward, still smiling against my lips when she kisses me. I thread my fingers into her ponytail, and devour her. For a second, I don’t even care if her father comes out on the porch and sees the longhaired rocker idiot who is head over heels for his daughter. I want everyone to see how I feel about this girl, this crazy amazing girl who has taught me so much in such a short time.

  “You are the definition of better,” Ava whispers. She kisses me once on the tip of my nose before she pulls back, turning off the car and opening the door before I have a chance to protest again.

  I get out, slamming the door quickly to make room for a car rumbling over the cobblestones of this miniature street. I whisper over the roof of the rental, “You could have at least warned me so I dressed better.” My tee shirt cost two hundred dollars, but most dads are still more reassured by buttons.

  Somewhere nearby, power tools rev, and music in a foreign language pours from unseen speakers. The air drifts heavy with humidity, scented with the azaleas that pile over the fence around the yellow house.

  Ava pops her elastic band between her teeth and combs her hair back into a fresh ponytail, rolling her eyes. “If you showed up in a suit, he’d eat you alive.”

  I come around the car and snatch the rubber band from her. “I need that more than you do.” Quickly, I scrape my chin-length hair back into a tight ball. It’s not much more respectable, but it’s a touch more clean cut. Ava unlocks the door set at the side of the house, which leads straight onto the bottom porch instead of into the house.

  “Papa!” Ava calls. The sounds of construction cease as her ankle boots click along the porch planks.

  A man emerges from the garden, his tee shirt clinging with sweat and his deep brown arms dusted with sawdust. His face explodes into a smile when he sees us, and he takes the porch steps two at a time and pulls Ava into a hug as she squeals and tries to push him back.

  “Ugh! Papa, voce és grossa!”

  He lets her go, only to deliberately brush some of the sawdust off him and onto her soft, cream-colored tank top. She shoves him, not holding back her wiry strength the way she normally does. They wrestle for a minute that ends up with her clasped back against his chest, both of them grinning as he squeezes her for one last hug before steadying her on her heeled boots as he lets her go. He nods to me, the animation smoothing out of his face, his eyes watchful and wickedly intelligent just like his daughter’s. The gray in his wavy hair surprises me, though I guess it shouldn’t, since Ava mentioned her parents were each other’s second marriage.

  “Papa, this is Jax.” She comes back to my side and hugs a slim arm around my waist for a second, grinning as she draws me forward. “My namorado. Jax, this is my dad, Tiago.”

  He doesn’t shake my hand. Which probably means he reads the tabloids.

  “If I’d known you were coming, I wouldn’t have started replacing the porch rail.” He nods to a stack of lumber next to a folding worktable and an assortment of wood-working tools. “Let me just clean up.”

  “No need,” I say. “Can I lend a hand?” I know my way around power tools thanks to working on the old house Jera inherited from her Granna, so hopefully, I won't embarrass myself too much.

  He looks at me and God, yes, those are Ava’s eyes. Seeing everything and quietly filing it away into an endless data bank. He nods. “That’d be a real help.”

  "I heard that, Tiago!" A slender woman with Ava's tiny curls and skin a shade lighter brown bustles out the door. "Our daughter works those guys hard enough. You're not putting them to work on building your silly shed, too." Her pale green eyes sparkle at me as she shakes my hand. “So happy to have you in our home,” she says to me, “but where’s Dean? Did he go home on the break, too? Oh, of course he did—that baby of his must be crawling by now.”

  “Hannah, he’s not a bodyguard,” Tiago says. “This is Jax Sterling. He’s the singer for the band touring with Ava right now."

  My eyes flick his way, because Ava didn’t exactly introduce me with my full name. She elbows Tiago. “And...?

  Tiago frowns at his daughter then adds, grudgingly, “And he plays lead guitar.”

  “Ooh! Why didn’t you lead with that?” Hannah grins at me. “I like all Ava’s friends but I like guitarists more.”

  Ava must have caught the curious look I sent her dad, because she answers it before I formulate a question.

  “Dad reads tabloids like a gossip-hungry teenage girl,” Ava says. "He could probably list every girl you’ve dated in order of bra size."

  “I read tabloids like a businessman who has an important stake in the entertainment industry.”

  His wife smirks. “He reads for the legs.”

  Ava laughs, Tiago glares, and Hannah changes the subject, beaming at me. "Sorry for the mistaken identity. It's been so long since my daughter brought someone home, I figured the next candidate would be wearing a skirt."

  "Since that jackass Brandt," Tiago mumbles, and something niggles deep in my memory. Brandt Black is Hollywood A-list, though until now I hadn’t remembered that he and Ava used to be linked in a lot of tabloid pictures.

  I push the thought away and give her mother my most wholesome smile. "I promise I'm not an actor, though you could probably talk me into wearing a skirt if it meant I got to date your daughter."

  Ava snorts. “Oh, Mom, he’s the worst flirt. Just ignore him.”

  Hannah laughs. “Of course he is. He's a guitarist. We can’t help ourselves.” She pushes a broad-screened smartphone at me. “Come on then, show me one of your songs.”

  I take her phone and take my time pulling up YouTube. Most of our songs are a little hard core for a maternal audience. I toss Ava a help-me look but she just shrugs. “She’s used to me, Jax. You can play her anything you want.”

  “Play her ‘Bring it On,’” Tiago says.

  I
sneak a look at him. He knows our stuff? That’s from the third album, one of the few I helped to write, though on paper it’s all Jera’s.

  Ava nabs the phone out of my hand, pulling up a live version of the song. I’m dead-center in the video, the crowd breaking like ocean waves in the foreground. The song starts with a long instrumental intro, Danny and me dueling it out at the front of the stage. Bass to guitar, then back again. When he drops out, I come in, my parts building longer and more fierce into a final long solo before I growl the first lyrics into the mike. I swallow, watching Danny fade back into the shadows. On the screen, the red-tinged lights shine off the sweat on my cheekbones and I’m alone with the crowd.

  There aren’t many lyrics, and they’re dark.

  Run me, rob me, beat me, bleed me.

  Bleed me.

  On the phone’s screen, I rip a chord and arch into the microphone. I was on fire for that show, the words tearing out of my gut, every syllable of it a memory of a day when I had nothing, and I was angry.

  I’m here

  We’re staying.

  Jera and I were in the garage for four hours that night, the notebook slashed with ink and abandoned on the floor. We kept ripping longer and longer guitar solos back and forth like a howl that couldn’t find its crescendo. Danny showed up near midnight. He listened for a minute then played a bass line, slow and quiet, and that was it. The song knew itself.

  I scrub a hand over the back of my neck, goosebumps prickling under my shirt. This song is all of us: my suffering and Jera’s talent and Danny’s wisdom. I’m damned proud of it, but it isn’t the song I would have chosen to introduce myself to the people who raised Ava to be the incredible woman she is.

  The video ends and Hannah takes the phone back with a tiny, knowing smile. “Well, I guess he’s not half-bad, is he?” She nods at me. “I've got a couple of guitars and a free afternoon on my hands. Feel like jamming?"

  Her mom plays? Oh, it’s so wrong that that is so hot. “Uh, yeah, absolutely. We can do acoustic, too, if you’re more comfortable.”

  “My mom’s the one who taught me to play guitar,” Ava says, her eyes amused. “She laid down the rhythm guitar tracks on my Boss Lady album. I think she can probably keep up with you on electric just fine.”

  Hannah tilts her head, studying me. "You look tired. I forgot this was your break, too. Why don't I feed you something, and then we'll play." She turns and heads inside, leading like she knows everyone will follow. Just like her daughter does.

  I relax, just a little.

  Judging by the exterior, I’m waiting for Home and Gardens-style fanned magazines and staged leather-bound books. Instead, there’s comfy-looking couch with the right two cushions more squashed than the left one, and a blanket twisted on the floor next to a half-full coffee cup.

  It's nice, the kind of place where you could put your feet up and not worry about getting anything dirty. My mom would hate it.

  I start to follow Hannah into the kitchen and she takes me by the shoulders and turns me around. "Out!" she orders. "Go flirt with my daughter. If you can make her stop working for five minutes at a stretch, I'll even make you dessert."

  I wink. "If that's a bet, you should know I like ice cream with my pie."

  Hannah laughs and nudges her husband into the kitchen ahead of her. "He's nearly as shameless as you," she tells him. "Think he might be Brazilian?"

  Ava rolls her eyes when I catch up with her, a smile tugging at her lips. “You’re disgusting, you know that? I bet all moms love you.”

  “It’s true.” I grin. “Even Danny’s mom likes me, and she doesn’t like anything.” As soon as I say his name, my throat clenches. I’m a pro at ignoring what I don’t want to think about. Sometimes so good it sneaks up on me all over again. I blink hard, and I think Ava saw it because she catches my hand, tugging me up the stairs. “Come on, I want to show you something.”

  I love that little glint in her eye. “So, is this one of those you-show-me-yours and I’ll—” I break off, realizing my words are probably drifting right down the stairs and into the kitchen.

  Ava spins me into a room, the door bumping closed as she backs me up against it. “How about you show me yours and I’ll tell you what you’re going to do to me with it,” she purrs. Her hands slide down my arms, fingers curling around them more softly than she usually does when she’s turned on.

  A smirk lifts the corner of my mouth as I realize what’s going on. “You’re trying to cheer me up.”

  She peeks up at me through her eyelashes. “I was really hoping bringing you here would help you. I didn’t mean for it to be a stressful, best-behavior-for-the-parents thing. Sorry for the musical inquisition.” She sighs. “And for them thinking you were my employee.”

  “Oh, I have no complaints about being mistaken for the hired muscle.” I flex just to make her giggle. When it works, I slide my arms around her shoulders, beneath the tickle of her fluffy curls. “Or about being cheered up. But should we really”—I push my knee just between hers, letting it taste the soft give of her inner thighs—“with your parents right downstairs?”

  “They take forever when they’re cooking for company. Besides, if my mom knew you were up here getting me off, she’d leave us up here until we starved into skeletons.” She laughs, her breath warm against my neck. “She thinks I don’t get laid enough. It’s wildly embarrassing.”

  “Far be it from me to disappoint a mother.” I shift Ava away from the door and against the more solid surface of the wall. I’ve got plenty of practice at low-profile fucking on a tour bus—turns out trying to breathe quietly is a fun form of erotic asphyxiation—but absolutely no practice being low-profile for a family.

  I can’t remember the last time a woman brought me home to meet her parents. I lift my head, trying to think. Has it ever happened? I guess not since high school, and when everybody lives with their parents you can’t really help it. Something in me swells a little stronger at the idea that Ava cares enough about me to invite me into her family’s home.

  When we came in, I didn’t spare a glance for the room, but now it comes into focus with a snap. It’s unmistakably Ava’s, with vintage guitars anchoring the walls, and a bookshelf of dusty dragon figurines, along with framed pictures of her with a lot of the same bands whose posters decorated my walls through high school and college. There’s a desk I couldn’t fit my knees under, with balloons painted up the sides that makes me think her family has owned this house for a long time.

  When I was listening to her albums as a teenager, through my headphones so I wouldn’t bother my mother, Ava was here.

  And now I’m here, too.

  I dip down and sweep her off her feet, the weight of her an impossible nothing compared to the breadth of her personality. The bed’s not her childhood version, thankfully: a very adult four-poster of dark wood with white, gauzy fabric swirling down each post.

  “Whoa, Romeo!” she laughs. “What brought that on?”

  “I think I’m having a fangasm at seeing your room.” I lay her down on the white coverlet.

  “You wanna play rockstar and groupie? Who gets to be who?” She grins wickedly, but without her spiked stage costumes, she looks all soft and cuddly. I remember thinking when we first started hanging out that I wanted to curl up in her life and disappear into a nap. Now that I really know her, it’s even more true.

  “I don’t want to play anything,” I whisper. “I want this to be real.”

  I slide her shirt up over her head, and she’s not wearing a bra, so there’s nothing left between us. Her nipples peak immediately when I blow a gentle stream of air across them, and her stomach muscles tighten in anticipation.

  We haven’t made love since that ferocious, broken thing we did on the floor of her beach house right after I found out about Danny. Normally, three days’ drought would be enough to have me binging with half the Hawaiian Tropic bikini team, but what she said to me on that floor seems to have sorted my emotions out. When I’m
sad about Danny, I’m just sad. And now that arousal is starting to sizzle through my veins again, it’s not because I’m trying to ignore that. I’m still wrecked. My throat still throttles closed at the idea of what’s coming. But Ava’s still beautiful, and there’s no shame in me for wanting her. Not anymore.

  “Thank you,” I murmur. “For everything you did for me this weekend. I know I haven’t made it easy.”

  “Life doesn’t make it easy. But you...” Sudden tears glitter in her eyes and she cups my cheek in her small, calloused hand. “Ah, Jax.”

  “Don’t cry.” I kiss her cheekbone, the dampness of a tear slipping salty against my lips. “If I go down on you, will you stop crying?”

  She covers her eyes as she bursts out laughing. “You’re impossible.”

  I unzip her ankle boots, pulling them off and giving a quick thumb rub to the spot on her arch that always cramps up in heels. Her jeans and panties follow them onto the floor before she’s done laughing. “You should know me better than to think I’m kidding.”

  “I promise I’ll stop crying if you take off your clothes.” She lets her hand drop, her eyes still shiny but her smile stretching wide. “And you know me well enough to know I’m not kidding.”

  Chapter 21: Coming Clean

  I reach behind my head and yank off my shirt. My pants I ditch on the quick trip to hit the button lock on her door. But when I come back, she’s still smiling, and I hold onto her hands as I slide down her body. Her bare leg clenches against my back as I love her with my mouth, and she gasps when I circle her entrance with my tongue.

  I keep half an ear out for her father as I pleasure her, but I’m not nervous. It feels like I’m supposed to be here. Like I’m her man and we’re just home for a holiday visit.

  I don’t know if it’s the throaty whimpers she’s making, or where we are, or the fist squeezing ever tighter around my heart, but I lose control as soon as she arches into her first orgasm. I surge up over her, no finesse at all as I thrust inside. God bless her big solid bed, it doesn’t even squeak, cushioning all my ferocious energy as I piston into her, devouring the velvety skin of her neck and inhaling the cucumber and leather smell of her. When she clenches around my cock, peaking again, it soothes me. I find myself doing something I haven’t done in a long while. I take her missionary style, face to face.