Rock Free

by Virna DePaul

  Leaning down, I kissed her mouth, as I eased my dick into her sweet pussy. It was hot and tight. It probably sounded nuts, but it felt like she was made for me.

  Could that be? That two people didn’t just find each other? That they were actually made for each other? It sure as hell felt that way with Sara.

  Arching my back, I slid into her, inch by inch, stretching her pussy out around me. We were both half-frantic, bucking and wanting more of each other, but I still wanted this to be meaningful, too. When I was balls deep inside of her, I fucked her harder, building up a steady rhythm between us. She wrapped her legs around my waist and arched her own body to meet mine. Despite trying to hold out and succeeding for a little while, the frenzy built anyway. I managed pretty well until she leaned up to suck my earlobe, and then all bets were fucking off. We were fucking hard now, our bodies slamming into each other and the blood flowing through my body at a nail-biting pace. My heart was wound up and would never stop.

  I would want Sara this way forever.

  She groaned and moaned under me, reached up to scratch her nails over my back, and that satisfying bite of pain went so beautifully with all our pleasure. Sara came first, her body ripped by the shuddering force of her ecstasy, and that was enough to send me spilling over the edge too. I felt as if I’d exploded, burst into a million pieces and put back together as something different, someone better after the force of the orgasm. I held fast on to her for a while, not wanting to let go, letting the waves subside, as our heartbeats settled into a paired rhythm.

  Finally, I rolled off of her and onto my side into her arms. “I love you,” I said, my voice quieter and more vulnerable than I’d ever heard it. I felt humbled in her presence, humbled that she’d taken a risk to be with me.

  “I love you more, Wes. Thank you for taking a risk on me.”

  “Me? I’m not sure I deserve you, Sara.”

  She stilled a bit in my arms. “I know you have a past. Hell, we all do, but it’s time to set all that aside and start a new life.”

  “I love that you make me want to,” I replied. “I just want you to understand that I’ve rarely said ‘I love you’ in the past. If I say it, it’s because I mean it.”

  “I believe you, Wes.”

  I kissed her temple. “Good, because this is how I feel after only a month. Imagine how I’ll feel after a year or a lifetime or more. I’m going to prove to you that I love you, no matter what, Sara. After the risk you took for me? Always and forever.”

  Epilogue

  Wes

  Two months later, we were done with shooting Point Break’s rockumentary. Sara had been slipped into a few more of Henri’s scenes, and I’d been thrilled with the results. In one of the scenes she’d worn a red cape and had twirled right as the camera swung across, giving a sexy wink as she did. My own Little Red, owning the spotlight.

  She had finished her semester, getting all A’s—of course. I knew she would. She’d moved into my place full-time and let someone else take her job as RA for her final semester in school. She’d been able to talk to her mother often, and I’d even bought her a phone that worked so she could video chat with her mom whenever she liked. She still wasn’t talking to her dad, but one of her sisters, Rebekah, had come around and would Skype with her on my computer, putting her squirming nieces and nephews on to blow kisses at Auntie Sara.

  There’d been no blowback from Peter Crawford about outing me as bi, but I walked around with my defenses up, worried the news would drop at any moment. Last night, after Sara fell asleep in my arms, I made a decision: no more hiding. I’d always reasoned that my sexuality wasn’t anyone’s business, and that was true, but lately I was starting to feel like I was keeping a secret to avoid rejection, and that made me feel cowardly.

  But tonight, that would change.

  We were all here at a swanky club in Manhattan, celebrating the end of the shoot. The wrap party consisted of the band members, their girlfriends, Sara—even Ben was here. Vickie had headed off on another one of her adventures, this time backpacking down the Appalachian Trail. When she’d left, we weren’t on the best of terms, and she and Sara weren’t either, but I held hope that someday, we’d get there. I’d been running late and had to take a town car to the club to meet everyone. Security had slipped me in the back way, since there seemed to be a crowd of paparazzi out front.

  “Dude!” Tucker grinned, handing me a beer when I walked into the club. “You’ve been running fucking late all week. How can you miss out on the bulk of your own wrap party?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Dude,” I countered. “I’ve been working all week on some final touches for a class project. Since Henri had the other parts of the film covered, well, I need to make my professors happy, too.”

  Tucker sipped his drink. “You should just send your professors an advanced copy of the film and point out what you directed. Easy A, man!”

  I almost choked on my drink. Even though I’d tried to be as artistic as possible, I didn’t think my professors were ready to accept parts of a rockumentary film as a final semester project. Then I shrugged. Who’s to say the BFA program wouldn’t look at my work as art? This was why I was in school, right?

  “I’ll think about that next semester,” I said, looking around for my woman.

  “Awesome.” A moment passed, then Tucker said in a voice more serious than usual, “You know, you don’t have to hide things from us. Never did need to hide.”

  I choked on my beer. “What?” Had I been outed? Had Peter Crawford done something? Or one of his enemies?

  “About wanting to be a director. We all have stuff we want to do outside of Point Break, bro. You could have told Liam, Corbin, and me about the Spielberg thing earlier. We would’ve gotten it.”

  I clapped Tucker on the shoulder. “Thanks. I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll be more open with you. I mean, who else can I get to work for free as a star in my inevitable indie flicks?”

  “Oh, I get paid, dude. Believe me.”

  “We’ll see about that.” I laughed.

  Suddenly Liam was rushing up to me, Abby’s hand clutched tightly in his own. They both wore worried expressions on their faces. I glanced around the room, desperately searching for Sara, hoping the worry on Liam and Abby’s faces wasn’t because something had happened to my woman.

  When I caught sight of Sara at the food table, laughing with Aimee, I calmed.

  Liam pulled me away from Tucker into a corner of the room. Abby seemed to stand guard around us, looking all over to make sure no one got close.

  “Liam, what’s wrong? Is someone hurt?”

  Liam shook his head. “No, but there’s something blowing up social media.”

  “You planning to tell me what is or leave me in suspense?”

  “Some rumors leaked today, about you being bisexual. There are paps already swarming outside the club.”

  Well, fuck.

  The first thing that ran through my mind was Peter Crawford. Sara had told her dad she was dating a rock star, but she hadn’t given her father my name. Had he found out already? And found out about my sexuality?

  But you know what? I no longer felt it was the big deal I’d once thought it to be. If Sara could come clean to her family about who she loved, then I could come out to my friends.

  It was time anyway.

  From across the bar, Sara lifted her beer in my direction. She watched me carefully, as I gathered Liam close to me and called the other guys into a huddle. I winked at her. It was all good. Everything would be fine from now on.

  “What’s going on?” Liam said.

  The four of us—me, Liam, Tucker, and Corbin—all with our arms around each other, leaned into the circle, as Abby kept watch.

  I sucked in a deep breath. “I was going to tell you all this tonight anyway, but I wanted you to hear it from me, not anywhere else.” I prepared myself for the inevitable. Here goes nothing…

  “What, the thing about you liking girls and guys?” Corbin said,
his attitude nonchalant.

  “Yeah, pfft,” Tucker added, seemingly disappointed that I hadn’t called him over for something more interesting. “Dude, you’re not telling us anything we didn’t already know. I thought maybe Sara was pregnant or something. Now that was some tabloid shit right there!”

  “Wait, what?” I couldn’t stop staring at them. They were serious. Dead serious. “You guys know?”

  “Of course we know!” Tucker slapped my back.

  I looked at Liam, who’d walked in on Ben and me when he was drunk, but had never said a word to me. “Did you—”

  He shook his head. “No, man. I didn’t say a word about you and Ben. Apparently they knew what I didn’t.”

  Tucker scoffed. “You think we can tour the world over, get drunk every other night of our lives, and live the rock star life for three years now, and not know each other’s shit? Come on, bro. Give us a little more credit than that.”

  “Yeah, man. Were we supposed to think that Ben was your straight bestie?” Corbin laughed, and Tucker joined in, as they bumped elbows.

  “It’s all right, dude. We don’t care. Never did.”

  All three guys stood there, body language unchanged, easy and free and smiling at me.

  “Why didn’t any of you say anything to me?” I asked.

  Liam was the one to answer. “Because coming out is personal. It was up to you if and when you told us. Didn’t matter if you never did, either.”

  “Yep,” Corbin chimed in. “Didn’t matter to us. The tabloids might make a field day out of the news, but it’ll just add to your rocker bad boy edge. Our true fans won’t give a shit.”

  “If anything, we’ll have a lot more guys chasing your ass. And if anyone gives you shit, they’re taking all of us on,” Tucker said, raising his hand to give me a high-five. I clasped it and gave him a bro hug.

  “We love you, brother,” Liam added gruffly.

  Abby nudged her way into our circle. “We all do, Wes.” She tipped her head and grinned. “Abby, Nikki, Aimee and I all know, too. Have known for ages. Never made a difference. Never will.” She wrapped me up in a tight, warm hug.

  Fuck. They’d all known and loved me anyway. All this time they’d loved me for who I was, who I completely was. And they’d cared enough to let me take my time in telling them the truth. I’d raised walls up, as high and strong of walls as I could build, but my friends had just peeked over and kept watch over me this whole fucking time. It was overwhelming, the clear and easy support I had from my Point Break crew.

  Sara sauntered over and settled her arm around my waist. “Everything okay?” She looked so sweet and hot in her light blue dress that showed off her curves and accented her naturally red hair.

  “My Little Red…” I kissed her and watched my bandmates all walk away, resuming what they’d been doing before I’d called them over to confess what had never been a secret to begin with.

  In life, you’re born into a family, but the one that matters is the one that stays with you, the one that walks through fire for you, the one that would die and bleed for you. The one that watches over you. The one that waits for you. For me, those people were all here tonight, gathered in this very room.

  “Everything is perfect. Just perfect.” I grinned. “Come on, Little Red. Let’s go find ourselves an elevator.”

  Thank you for reading Rock Free!

  If you enjoyed spending time with these characters, be sure to check out my other books,

  including my edgy bad boys in the HARD AS NAILS Series.

  Here’s a sneak peek of Book 1, Hard Time:

  Hard Time Excerpt: Prologue

  Katie

  My mom used to tell me to dream big. That I could be anything I wanted to be. Funny, I never wanted to work in a prison cafeteria, but that’s exactly what’s happened. Now my days are a never-ending vortex of the same mundane task, tossing two scoops of what can only be described as slop into each tray as inmates march down the service line.

  They all look the same. They all act the same. It’s impossible to distinguish one from the next, even though they vary in skin color and personality. It’s a blur of one ghosted face after another.

  Some of the men scare me.

  Most of them do, to be honest.

  But he scares me most of all.

  Thomas Street.

  In the montage of blurry faces, his sticks out like a sore thumb. Something about him is different. Mary, my older—and far wiser—co-worker says that something different is the way he looks at me. I laugh her comments off, but deep down I know she’s right. He’s always staring, his eyes on me even as he settles at a table and pokes his fork at barely edible food.

  I look at him, too. I have for months. And while I tried not to get caught looking at first, I soon abandoned all pretense. Even when he’s not around my gaze searches for him. My body yearns for him. And when I finally spot him, it’s always more than a quick gaze.

  Like now.

  Entrapped by those deep, piercing blue eyes, I can’t look away. I’m stuck in place, dreaming into the abyss of space between us while he eats.

  Even as I’m lost in an unwelcome world of longing and desire, my hands continue to scoop slop against trays. It’s the easiest job I’ve ever had, and I’ve become accustomed to running on autopilot. I’ve become a robot, a machine, in the six months I’ve spent here.

  I often find myself wondering if the inmates that pass me notice. If they see the emptiness hidden behind my hazel eyes. Probably not. They’re too lost in their own fantasies, if not of what it would feel like to rip my clothes off and fuck me where I stand, then what it would feel like to be on the outside again, living a life of freedom. Little do they know that even when I go home for the day, I wonder the same thing.

  How’d I get stuck behind these prison walls? At what point in time did I say to myself, You know, maybe I should go serve processed food to the most dangerous men on Earth. Even worse, how is it that when I’m in my car driving home after work, I often feel like I’m going from one kind of prison to another?

  It’s so ironic—this place is my escape from the outside world, and yet each of these men wish they could find an escape to the outside world. In here, I almost feel safe.

  I jerk when I feel fingers wrap around my wrist. There’s no one in line, and I’d just scooped slop onto the metal counter in front of me.

  “What’s up with you?” Mary asks with a furrowed brow, letting me go. “What are you dreaming about?”

  Heat swamps my face as I imagine Street witnessing what I’d just done. I shoot Mary a weak smile as I clean up the mess I made.

  “You know me, Mary. I don’t dream.” It’s a lie, of course. I dream about him and I’m sure she knows it. But I’ll never admit it out loud. I sigh and pull the latex gloves off my hands. “Reality is reality; no amount of dreaming will change that.”

  “You’re watching him, aren’t you?” She shifts slightly so that her eyes are angled at Street. “I don’t blame you if you are.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” I huff and flip a switch, turning the heat lamp above the dish of slop off.

  “He watches you too.”

  When I say nothing, when this time I manage to keep my eyes on her face, she laughs and turns to the kitchen. I follow her, but take one last glance—this time it’s a quick one—at Street before pushing through the swinging double doors.

  He’s still staring at me, as if he couldn’t take his eyes off me if he tried. There is a landmine of magnets between us, with a pull impossible to ignore, but he’s off limits. He’s a man behind bars, and I’m a woman caged in another form of prison, one that’s my own personal hell.

  When my shift is over, and the food is prepared for the next day, I begin the long walk to freedom along a path flanked on either side by towering fences with barbwire, one separating me from the prison courtyard, and the other cordoning off some utility buildings. My feet plod against the beaten gravel as I speed down the path, hurryi
ng so I can get home in time to prepare dinner for my boyfriend.

  He’s a man with a temper, and nothing sets him off like coming home to an empty table. Sometimes, it seems as if all I do is cook.

  The dying sun beats against my face as it prepares its descent from the horizon, and a light trickle of sweat traces down my forehead. I hear the shouts of men playing basketball in the courtyard. Suddenly, my body tenses. My skin prickles. And somehow, without seeing him, I know Street is there. As if to confirm my suspicion, someone calls his name, and I stop and turn.

  Street dribbles a basketball along a concrete court, weaving his way around his opponents. Any other time, the inmates wear their prison garb, but for some reason, in the yard when they’re playing basketball or working out, the prison lets them wear athletic gear, and play shirts or skin.

  Street’s showing lots of skin. He’s tall; I’ve always known that, but somehow he looks taller without his shirt on.

  His abs are crunched tight as he shifts downward, spinning beneath the arm span of a man on defense. He quickly gains his footing, steadies himself, and throws the ball into the basket, scoring a three-pointer with ease. In celebration, he claps his hand against a teammate’s as they cheer, and they bump chests.

  Men.

  His fingers fall to his hips, pressed against his body where the line of his black basketball shorts melts against tanned skin. A spider spins a web beginning at the arch of his right shoulder, and trailing all the way to his elbow in the form of an ashen-colored tattoo. On his left shoulder, a tiger with the same bright blue eyes as Street threatens to pounce.

  His teeth sink into his lip, and it’s like he’s putting on a show. But there’s no way he can know I’m watching, right? He hasn’t even shifted his attention in this direction, giving me time to study him. He has a strong jawline and even though I can’t see it now, he has a long scar just under his right ear, where some left-handed nemesis tried to cut his throat in a fight.