Bad for You (Fallen Star Book 4)

by Candy J. Starr

  Bad For You

  Candy J Starr

  Contents

  1. Chapter 1.Devon

  2. Chapter 2.Daisy

  3. Chapter 3.Devon

  4. Chapter 4.Daisy

  5. Chapter 5.Devon

  6. Chapter 6.Daisy

  7. Chapter 7.Devon

  8. Chapter 8.Devon

  9. Chapter 9.Daisy

  10. Chapter 10.Devon

  11. Chapter 11.Daisy

  12. Chapter 12.Devon

  13. Chapter 13.Daisy

  14. Chapter 14.Devon

  15. Chapter 15.Daisy

  16. Chapter 16.Devon

  17. Chapter 17.Daisy

  18. Chapter 18.Devon

  19. Chapter 19.Daisy

  20. Chapter 20.Devon

  21. Chapter 21.Daisy

  22. Chapter 22.Devon

  23. Chapter 23.Daisy

  24. Chapter 24.Daisy

  25. Chapter 25.Devon

  26. Chapter 26.Daisy

  27. Chapter 27.Devon

  28. Chapter 28.Devon

  29. Chapter 29.Daisy

  30. Chapter 30.Devon

  31. Chapter 31.Daisy

  32. Chapter 32.Devon

  33. Chapter 33.Daisy

  34. Chapter 34.Devon

  35. Chapter 35.Daisy

  36. Chapter 36.Devon

  37. Chapter 37.Daisy

  38. Chapter 38.Devon

  39. Chapter 39.Daisy

  40. Chapter 40.Devon

  41. Chapter 41.Daisy

  42. Chapter 42.Devon

  43. Chapter 43.Devon

  44. About me

  Chapter 1.Devon

  “What did you just say?” She sounded angry.

  What had I said? The chick straddling me stopped moving. She glared and groaned, not in a good way. I’d obviously said something wrong. I had to fix this so she’d go back to doing that thing she’d been doing to my cock. That had been really nice.

  “You don’t even know, do you? Who the hell is Julie?” she yelled.

  Fuck! I hadn’t.

  “I never said ‘Julie’. I said ‘duly’. As in ‘duly noted’. Have you never heard anyone say that?”

  Fast thinking on my part but my stomach clenched. The things you say in the heat of the moment. She raised her eyebrows but went back to riding my cock. The bed sheets twisted around us, and the room smelt of sex and lust and cheap perfume. Outside, a maid’s trolley rattled down the hallway. I’d pulled the curtains tight to block out the sun but a sliver of light came through the crack, making a line along the floor.

  I wasn’t so into it now. The spell had been broken. Why hadn’t she just kept quiet?

  Could I could fake it and get rid of her? Chicks do it all the time and if I hid the condom from her afterwards, she’d never know.

  This had definitely become a cock-softening situation. I hadn’t lost my hard on altogether but I wasn’t meeting my full potential. The chick hadn’t seemed to notice. A lacklustre performance from me was still better than most men.

  She whipped me with her long, brown hair as she ground against me. I couldn’t even remember her name. Grace or something with a kind of religious feel to it. Faith? Mary? No matter. I’d never see her again.

  I raised my hips, lifting her in the air and grunting with the sexual performance of my life. That’d finish it off.

  “You like that, baby?” she said, with a sly grin.

  “Sure,” I replied, rolling her off me. I got up and handed her the dress she’d thrown on my hotel room floor. “But I’ve got to get to rehearsal now. I’ll call you sometime.”

  I wrapped a robe around myself. She dressed slowly. Very slowly, considering she’d only been wearing that dress and a pair of shoes when she came to my room. As she buckled her shoes, she kept shooting me glances. She wanted to stick around. She wanted to talk, even.

  I checked my watch and sighed. There was no rehearsal, we didn’t even play for another week. I just needed her out of here. She had that generic hot chick look about her — long legs, small waist, big tits. The standard wavy hair and long eyelashes, probably false. There wasn’t much to distinguish her from the one last night, or yesterday afternoon or all the days before that. Sometimes they were blonde instead, sometimes redheads but they all blurred into one.

  Even I hated myself for thinking like that. I was a pig. A man-whoring pig. But what could I do about it? Even if I tried to resist, they threw themselves at me. They came knocking on my door or draping themselves over me in a bar. So many women requiring me to satisfy them. It was hard work but luckily I was up for it.

  It was easier this way. I never had to talk to them or consider their feelings. The most conversation I ever had to make was asking them what they wanted to drink. They didn’t care either. They knew the score. Well, most of the time they did. Some of them, like this one, wanted to linger.

  “Are you sure you have to rush?” she said. She walked over to where I sat at the desk. I could see her behind me in the mirror. She put her arms around me and rested her head on my shoulder.

  “Sorry, love.”

  She opened my robe and trailed her hand down my chest. “I give good head,” she said.

  I’m sure she did but I needed to be alone.

  “Next time…”

  With a huff, she walked out the door. Finally, some peace.

  I had no emotion to spare on her. She was probably already working on the next rocker on her list anyway. I was just a name to be crossed off. And reviewed. Damn, I hoped it was a good rating. I’d have to check the groupie sites later. I didn’t want my 9.5-star rating to go down.

  There’d been a lot of women in my life but only one had mattered.

  I was in love with a ghost, the memory of a lost love. Julie. She’d been the one. When she’d died, my heart had been buried with her. Not much else remained.

  When I think of her, I see her sitting in the sun, her head thrown back because she’s laughing so hard. In my mind, she wears a yellow sundress and a big straw hat. We were on one of our tours down the coast, playing to the summer holiday makers. Tex and Brownie and I, with Julie tagging along. She’s tanned and glowing in my memory, not pale from living in the night time shadows. That would come later.

  I’d wanted to wrap her up and protect her. She’d be mine forever. But there was something she loved more than me, and that was the thing that killed her.

  If only I could forget her.

  I’d tried, God knows, I’d tried. On more than a few occasions, I’d met someone who I thought could be the one. Julie would be pushed to the past and I could start anew. But it’s hard to move on from something like that. It wasn’t just that she’d been the love of my life. When she’d died, all my trust had died with her.

  So many times she’d promised she’d give up the gear.

  “It’s nothing,” she’d laugh. “I can quit any time, so stop being such a bore. There’s plenty of time for all that when we get older.”

  But Julie had never gotten older.

  After a few dates, the doubts would creep in. Were they acting weird? I’d check their pupils, look at their arms for track marks. If they were late meeting me, I’d question them. I’d even go as far as checking their phone messages.

  Every time it ended the same way.

  “You’re a freak,” they’d say. “I can’t handle this.”

  I never told them why. I never discussed Julie with other women. They just got sick of me constantly keeping tabs on them. I wasn’t possessive and I wasn’t jealous, not of other men. I just knew that my heart wouldn’t take another betrayal.

  The thoughts of Julie made me morbid. I needed to get out of myself. I didn’
t know many people in this town. I’d moved here with my band a few weeks before. We’d be hanging around for about three months to get down the new album. Stu Bailey, the producer I wanted for the album, had his studio here. We had a few local shows planned, mainly to test out the new material.

  I’d been thinking about making the move more permanent though. I didn’t need those hometown ties. Make a fresh start, maybe find an apartment to rent instead of these generic hotel rooms. That might be the best plan.

  I sighed and rang housekeeping to clean the room, then headed out to another bar.

  Chapter 2.Daisy

  “Do I look okay?” I asked Meadow. “Are you sure I look okay?”

  “You look fab, Daisy,” she said. “It’s not like anyone is going to see us in that crowd anyway. We’ll just be faceless nobodies.”

  I rubbed along my jaw, paranoid I had a makeup line.

  “I know and this might sound strange, but I’ve got a feeling something special is going to happen tonight. Something magical.”

  “Hell, are you sixteen years old? Magical. Jeez, the only magical thing I’ve got coming to me in life is getting a black cat to add to my crazy old cat lady collection. We’re spinsters. You’ve got to face it. The only way we’d ever get a guy like Devon to look at us is if he comes to visit an old people’s home.”

  “Ha, speak for yourself. I’m nowhere near thirty.” I gave Meadow a pointed look. She was a year older than me. “Anyway, tonight, in my mind, I’m going to be sixteen again. I’m going to adolescent fangirl like there’s no tomorrow.”

  Meadow laughed. “Hell, yeah.”

  The poster of Devon still hung on my wardrobe door from back when he was the bass player in FORSAKEN. It was faded and the edges had become ripped and curled from being taken down every time I moved house but I’d had that poster for so many years now, it’d become an integral part of my decor. Home wouldn’t feel like home without it.

  I’d seen him play a heap of times with FORSAKEN, before they broke up. I even got to see them play once after they reunited. A lot of people dismissed him as just the bass player but he was the one I went to watch. Tex, the lead singer, was sizzling hot. There’s no denying that, but Devon was something else. Roguish and wild, like a dark gypsy who’d steal your heart.

  When they’d broken up a second time, I’d died inside even more. Then, he’d formed his own band, with him upfront, singing.

  I had mixed emotions about that. As he came into the limelight, sure it was good for his career and all, but it also meant a lot more girls noticed him. Not that he was ever without the groupie rumours, but he’d hit the big time without Tex overshadowing him. Seriously, if even one percent of those stories on the groupie sites were true, the man was a sexual powerhouse.

  It was ridiculous to even consider that he’d be sexual powerhousing me but that didn’t stop the shards of jealousy piercing my heart every time I read one of those stories. I tried to stop myself but it was like picking at a scab. Even though I knew it’d cause me pain, I couldn’t stop.

  I reassured myself that him being the biggest manwhore in rock was a lot better than him settling down with one chick. None of those groupies meant anything to him. He needed to meet the right woman. Who was me, obviously.

  I’d never get anywhere near the guy. Although, things were looking up.

  “He’s moved here, you know,” I told Meadow.

  “I know; you’ve told me fifty times.”

  “Well, don’t you ever think about it? That you might be buying some eggs at the supermarket and he’s buying eggs too. Or maybe he’ll walk into a cafe when you’re having brunch. At any point in time, you could run into him.”

  “Yeah, I’ve noticed how you fancy yourself up lately to just to go get a carton of milk.” She spun around and stared at me. “God, that’s why you took that job across town, isn’t it? It’s in the same block as the recording studio.”

  I gave her the finger guns. “You got it. It’s boring as all hell but the location is perfect.”

  Meadow loved Devon but not in the way I loved Devon. She liked his music and she liked seeing him play but she didn’t have the obsession I’d always had. I guess that’s why we were still friends. If she loved him the same as me, I’d probably end up hating her. Well, not hating hating, but there’d be tension.

  To me, he was the ultimate man. When those dark eyes flashed, I melted. No man could do that to me with just their eyes but him. It wasn’t just his eyes though. That dark, tousled hair and the strong hands didn’t hurt either. Oh, and his rock-hard abs. Not to mention, the way the muscles in his tattoo-covered arms pulsated when he played.

  I wondered if he’d take his shirt off tonight. Please let him take his shirt off.

  “Hurry up,” she said. “You’ll be preening all night and miss the show.”

  Of course, when we got there, the doors hadn’t even opened. There was no line, it was way too early. We waited in front of that big metal door with its big lock, clutching our tickets.

  “Do you think he’s here, sound checking?” I asked Meadow.

  She shrugged. “It’s possible. Why don’t you run around the back and check?”

  “No way. That would be far too pushy.”

  “See, that’s why all those other groupies get sex and you don’t. They are probably back there, in skimpy little bikinis offering to blow roadies to meet him.”

  She was right about that. Well, I’m not sure about the bikinis, it was a bit too cold for that. This thing with Devon and I would never work out if he just saw me as one of the queue of girls chasing him for sex. He had that aplenty. In my dreams, we always met by accident. He pursued me and appreciated my good qualities. My good qualities didn’t include wearing bikinis or blowing roadies.

  “Why have we never done that?” Meadow asked.

  “What?” My mind still repulsed by the thought of blowing roadies.

  “Tried to get backstage? Just to get an autograph or a photo?”

  “Because we’re old and tired and just want to get home to put our feet up. Anyway, remember that time with FORSAKEN? The security guy was going to call the cops.”

  Even though I scoffed, Meadow got me thinking. I’d only seen Devon play in our town once before. This place was far too small for big name stars. Normally, Meadow and I had to jump into the car to drive back home straight after the show, before we collapsed of tiredness. But, tonight, we had a five-minute drive home and no work tomorrow. That feeling that something special was about to happen prickled through my body. Special things are more likely to happen if you give them a helping hand too. For starters, Devon moving to my town, that had to be a sign.

  Finally, the doors opened. I ran for the stage area. Meadow ran for the toilet.

  “I’m not saving you a space,” I called after her. Bladders were for weaklings. I’d get my spot and I’d stake it for hours until Devon came onstage because that was more important.

  A few people had joined me at the barrier when Meadow came back from the toilet but not that many. I put my coat over the rail to mark my spot and we sat down on the floor.

  “Nothing to do but wait now,” she said. She got out her phone. “Let’s take a selfie.”

  By the time the support bands finished, my back ached. I bent over to stretch it out. Meadow did the same.

  “We’re getting too old for this,” she said. “Next time, let’s get seats in the stands.”

  We looked at each other and laughed. As if. That would ruin all the fun. I needed to be close enough that maybe Devon would make eye contact. He did, once. November 13, 2013. He’d looked right at me and winked. My legs had turned to jelly and my insides became liquid so that I could barely function. I couldn’t even remember what songs they played for the rest of the night. I lost all sense of colour, of sound, of breathing even.

  Then the lights dimmed and people crowded forward. Bitches would try to push me out but I’d not be moving for anyone. I’d be crushed against that barrie
r with the criss-cross of wire pressed into my stomach so I’d have that pattern for days afterwards. That was the best way to deal. I hooked my arms over the top railing, anchoring myself and planted my legs firm. If those bitches wanted to be up close, they could get here early and put in the hard yards like I did.

  A guitar played off stage, then the lights went up and my screams intensified. This was it. The magical moment.

  As Devon moved into the spotlight, I grabbed Meadow’s arm and bounced. I was sixteen again. There was nothing between Devon and I, nothing but a few photographers on the other side of the barrier, a stage and some fold back speakers. His voice soared over the crowd. I lived for these moments.

  As he started singing, everything else in the world disappeared. I loved him. I loved him so much that no other man could compare. I didn’t need to ever meet him or speak to him. He just needed to exist. I loved him so much, I doubted my heart could hold it. One day it would burst open, showering pieces of my glittery, rainbow-coloured love over the world.

  Chapter 3.Devon

  I came off stage in a foul mood. The show had gone okay, but I wanted more than okay. The new songs just hadn’t worked like I’d wanted them to work when I performed them live. You know when there’s a buzz in the room, and you know when that buzz dies. People decide to head to the bar for a top-up drink or take the chance for a toilet break. That’s death when you’re playing.

  We needed to work harder, that’s for sure.

  I grabbed a towel off one of the staff and wiped down my face and neck. Then Pete came over. I hated that jerk but I wasn’t willing to go hunting for a new manager. It wasn’t that he was a bad manager, more that he just got under my skin.

  “Ready to talk to the press?”

  Shit, I’d forgotten he’d set that up. The last thing I wanted to do was answer the same boring bunch of questions. Press interviews pissed me off. I used to love them, loved talking about myself, but I’d reached the limit. They’d ask me about the new album. I didn’t want to talk about that.