On those few occasions when I’d been horny—or drunk—enough to have a one-nighter with some random fanboy, I’d had my staff brush him off in the morning. I’d head out for breakfast or whatever, before he got up, and by the time I got back to the hotel, he’d be gone. Joanie or Maggie or security would have whisked him away.
Sometimes they left a number in hopes of hearing from me again. Of course, I never called them.
But I couldn’t do that to Seth.
This wasn’t some hotel on tour, and he wasn’t some fanboy.
And this did not feel like a one-nighter.
It felt like something I wanted to do again. And again.
Of course, it was a one-nighter. Because there was no universe that I knew of where Seth and I could be lovers.
If, by some miracle, he ended up with Dirty again, the two of us together was a bad, bad idea. I’d been down that road with Jesse. I wasn’t doing it again.
And even if he didn’t ever play with Dirty again… I wasn’t exactly gonna carry on an affair with him in secret and lie to everyone else I cared about.
And out in the open? A few days in Hawaii were one thing. Those paparazzi photos were suggestive but inconclusive. And we weren’t sleeping together then.
Now, we were. Or at least, we had. Once.
Well… twice.
If I was openly sleeping with Dirty’s ex-guitarist, how the hell would that ever work? What was I gonna do, put him up in a separate hotel when we were on the road, my scorned lover stashed away where he wouldn’t ruffle any feathers?
Not fucking likely.
I just could not see any way that this could play out. That he and I could be together in any sense of the word.
And I did not need this guilt hangover every time I slept with someone.
As I sat here in my guilt, I knew I had to be much smarter than this. When had I started letting my pussy make my decisions for me?
The longer I sat, the more anxious I felt about it all.
I just had so fucking much to lose.
Seth… he had everything to gain. Those photos would do nothing for him but good. The documentary series would do him good. Attaching himself to me, in any way, would only help him.
But those photos opened me up to judgment, criticism, and the possibility of damaging my relationships with my band members, not to mention Brody.
Suddenly, I felt ridiculously vulnerable.
On a whim—a delicious, stupid whim—I’d jeopardized everything. My band, my friendships, my public image. Who knew how this could be twisted, to be used against me?
And yet… I didn’t regret it.
I didn’t feel like this was done. But it had to be.
In the end, I didn’t wake him. I just sat next to him until he stirred and, maybe sensing that I was awake, he woke up.
He sat up, slowly, blinking in the dull morning light. It was still early, the sun not quite over the horizon; the house wouldn’t have full sun until almost mid-day. I usually loved mornings in this house. Sleepy, slow mornings in the shadow of the mountains, where I could be alone to drink coffee and play my bass or listen to music.
And it struck me; I’d never had a man in this bed before. I’d only bought this house earlier this year, and I’d never brought Ash here.
It felt extra-intimate, sitting here now, with Seth. I had the sheet pulled up around my chest, but he was uncovered. And the first thing he did was lean over, slowly, slip one hand around the back of my head… and kiss me.
I sighed, giving in to it. I dropped the sheet. Heat rose through me fast, an instinctual response, as my body remembered the things we’d done last night. And I felt the same inexplicable, irresistible connection I’d felt then.
When he broke the kiss, his eyes held mine, awake and smoldering with desire. “Do you want me inside you?” he murmured. And I realized I was clutching onto his shoulders, my fingers digging into his muscles.
“Yes.”
He pulled the sheet away, until there was nothing between us. He moved over me as I lay back to take him. Then he rammed inside. I met him with fast, frantic thrusts. We were already fucking before we’d barely gotten into a comfortable position. All I wanted was that connection—hot and fast, that maddening friction, his body possessing mine…
He stiffened, and before I knew what was happening, he pulled out.
“What…?” I panted.
“Condom. Shit. Condom,” he panted back. His eyes were huge. “Sorry… I can’t believe I fucking did that.”
Yeah. I couldn’t either.
I was a little more concerned, though, that I hadn’t even noticed he’d started fucking me without a condom.
“Get one,” I said, gesturing at the bedside table, where we’d left the box from last night.
He leaned in to kiss me, gently, on the mouth. Then he rolled over, got the condom, and rolled it on. When he came back to me, his eyes were still wide. He looked totally freaked out.
“Fuck. I’m sorry, Elle.”
His eyes on mine, so dark and regretful, so full of longing… it felt like he was apologizing for a hell of a lot more than the condom.
“It’s okay, Seth.”
We kind of fell into one another then, kissing and comforting each other. He stroked my hair back from my face as he kissed me. I slipped a hand around his neck and pulled him closer. We pressed together until we were dry-humping and then my legs were wrapped around his waist. Then he was sinking into me, and fire swept through my entire being.
And I felt it, as we came together…
Both of us… aching for connection.
For redemption, of a sort.
We’d both suffered massive rejection. We’d been heartbroken, in our own way. And as we lost ourselves in each other—on the bed, on the edge of the bed, and finally, on the floor—as the day gradually grew brighter… it was cathartic. It was beyond intense.
It felt like he was slowly stripping me down, laying bare all my shattered pieces, flooding my heart with a dangerous longing… thrusting heat and light into all my lonely, broken places.
As Seth fucked me on the furry rug by my bed, his hand braced against the bed frame so he wouldn’t ram me right into it, his smoky eyes locked on mine… I came, hard. So hard.
It was, hands-down, the most intense orgasm I’d ever had. It wasn’t just physical; it was pure emotional ecstasy.
Every part of me was tuned into him, into this.
Because Seth was showing me how to feel whole again.
He was teaching me, with his kisses, with his hands on my body, with the patient insistence of his thrusts, how to put the pieces back together. How to feel good again, from the inside out. Not good the way I’d felt when I slept with Ash; an empty kind of good. This good was all-consuming, and with our bodies entwined, it was a oneness I’d never felt before. A oneness I’d never expected to feel with him.
A oneness that I’d feared, in my darkest moments, I might never feel with any man.
But I already knew this man in a way I’d never known another man.
There was just something here, between us, that I couldn’t begin to explain. A bond. A shared pain, maybe. A shared restlessness. A shared need to heal. Something that maybe only Seth and I would understand, but that was real nonetheless. So true and so powerful, tears shook in my eyes as he came… as he held me down, his hands locked with mine, and stiffened, his breath catching. As his body pulsed heat into mine.
He shuddered and groaned. Then he kissed me. I felt his heartbeat in his lips on mine. His chest rose and fell against me.
I wrapped my legs around his hips, my arms around his back, and held him there. I couldn’t let go.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. I knew that.
And it definitely wasn’t supposed to be this good.
It wasn’t supposed to become something I couldn’t walk away from. Because I had to; I had to walk away from this before it was too late.
Before I was in so deep I co
uldn’t get out… and it fucked up everything between me and the rest of my band.
I stood on one side of the bed, dressed in my sundress from yesterday. I was watching Seth, on the other side, looking for his shirt. Somehow, it had ended up under the bed. I watched his body as he fished it out. The way he moved, strong, graceful; the way his muscles flexed under his smooth skin as he pulled the shirt on. But already, I felt detached from it all.
Already, I could feel myself drawing away. Growing cold. Distant.
It was the only way I knew how to handle this.
“I can’t start something with you,” I told him, and he looked at me. He was fully dressed now. “You know that. It was just sex.”
It was more or less the same thing I’d told Ash. But this time, it wasn’t just sex. I wasn’t the world’s biggest fool; I hadn’t just jeopardized everything that mattered to me for sex.
Maybe he knew that, but his shoulders dropped. “If that’s how you want it,” he said.
“That’s how I want it.” I was hugging myself, my toes curled tightly into the furry rug under my feet.
“Can I have your number?” he asked me. “I have Joanie’s. I don’t have yours.”
“No.”
“You don’t want me to call you?”
“No.”
Silence. He stared at me, and for a moment I thought he might fight me on this. Then he said, “You sure about that?”
“I’m sure.”
He didn’t look like he believed me. He looked hurt, kind of. Angry, maybe. But mostly… resigned.
I watched him take his phone out of his jeans pocket and call a taxi. Then he looked at me again, like he was waiting for me to say something else.
I didn’t.
“You make the rules, Elle,” he said softly. “I’ll follow them.” He didn’t make any attempt to come around the bed. He didn’t make a move toward me at all.
I just nodded.
“Joanie has my cell number,” he told me, “if you change your mind.”
Then he left. He walked out of my bedroom and I didn’t follow. I heard him downstairs, walking out the front door. He didn’t exactly slam it, but he didn’t close it softly, either.
I sat down on the bed and stared at the rug at my feet. I was still pulsing, my heart pounding, blood thrumming through my body from the sex we’d just had on that rug. From that feeling—the feeling of coming, of plummeting right over that edge, because he made me come. He made me come while he looked in my eyes. And the feeling of his kisses on my skin… The way his hands moved, so carefully, over my body.
Sometime later, I heard the taxi pull in. And when the car pulled out of the driveway, when Seth was gone, I did something I hadn’t done since Jesse left me.
I cried.
Chapter Twenty
Elle
Two days later I was sitting in a meeting with my band; a meeting about the next round of auditions we were planning. The meeting was at Brody’s house in North Vancouver, in his home office. Jessa wasn’t here, but the room was full. Besides Brody and myself, Maggie, Jesse and Dylan were here. Zane and Woo, who were still down in L.A., joined us via FaceTime on Brody’s laptop.
Brody and Woo had been screening more hopefuls, and apparently they still had a lot of options for us, including some promising guitarists who’d applied in the first round but hadn’t yet auditioned. It was quickly decided that we’d work a slightly less-aggressive schedule this time. Six days of auditions, which the network had agreed to pay for. Three days on, one day off, then three days on again.
After that, we’d see where we were at, and consider going back to L.A., or possibly the east coast, on Dirty’s dime.
It seemed obvious that our best prospects, Johnny O’Reilly and Boz Bailey, were no longer being considered, since Brody hadn’t brought them up again. But I felt the need to ask anyway.
“Where are we at with Johnny O?”
“Johnny O’Reilly’s a prick,” Jesse said. “I can’t work with that guy.”
He was right; Johnny O’Reilly was kind of a prick. But he also had a hell of a lot of fans, and would fit, musically, with Dirty. Besides that, I didn’t personally have a problem with him. “He’s always been nice to me,” I said.
“That’s because of what’s between your legs,” Zane said bluntly. “You don’t want that guy in the band.”
“I can handle Johnny O,” I said.
“No one wants him in but you, babe,” Zane countered.
I sighed. If that’s the way it was, there was no chance. “Because I don’t have a problem with him.”
“Yet,” Zane said.
“I do,” Jesse said at the exact same moment.
Yeah; no chance. Johnny was clearly out of the running.
I glanced at Dylan. He met my eyes and shrugged. “What about Boz?” he asked, though there was hardly any point.
“Boz Bailey isn’t welcome down south,” Brody said. “So he’s out.”
“Too bad,” Dylan said. “He’d be great.”
“Not if he can’t be there for our American tour dates,” Brody replied. And we all let it lie; Boz clearly wasn’t gonna work. Not until he cleared up his issues with the U.S. government, and who knew when that would ever happen. We could hardly wait on him indefinitely.
We’d waited long enough.
“What about Seth?” Zane asked.
Brody inhaled, long and slow, as the rest of us sat in silence… then exhaled just as slowly. “What about Seth?”
“Just wondering, brother,” Zane said.
I met Brody’s eyes, and everything Jessa said to me over the phone—and right in front of Brody—replayed in my mind.
Seth Brothers is not a rapist, and he didn’t do anything to me. So if you hear Brody or my brother say any such thing, you can tell them to—
“Seth won’t work,” Jesse said flatly. “So when do we start the auditions?” He posed the question to Brody, and Brody and Maggie got to work filling the rest of us in on the proposed schedule.
And just like that, Seth was out of the running. For good.
I did not say a word about it.
In my head, I’d already let go of any hope that the band would come around. Zane would, possibly. Maybe he already had. Dylan might, too. But Jesse and Brody were firmly against even the idea of Seth rejoining the band, and clearly, they weren’t budging.
When we were done and both Jesse and Dylan had left, I stuck around for a few extra minutes; the guys had invited me to join them for lunch and beers, but I’d declined. I lingered just long enough to tell Brody and Maggie, in person, that I needed some space. I’d honor commitments already made. I’d be at the auditions, of course. But otherwise, I wanted to be left alone for a while. A few weeks. Nothing outrageous.
They could give me that, right?
Maybe they thought I was just annoyed with them for sending Liv down to Kauai to interview me. Maybe they thought I was just trying to get under Jesse’s skin somehow by taking photos with Seth, holding hands on the beach.
Who knew? We hadn’t exactly talked about it.
Since I’d come back from Hawaii, no one other than Dylan had said a word to me about my time in Kauai with Seth. It was there in their eyes when they looked at me, but no one had asked. Maybe they’d all agreed not to bring it up.
Maybe Brody had advised them not to bring it up, in hopes of making the whole thing just go away.
Maybe Maggie or Dylan had suggested they leave it alone and leave me to my privacy.
I didn’t know. I didn’t particularly want to know.
I simply explained to them that I had some things, musically, that I was working on with DJ Summer; things that it was still too early to talk about. It was true enough. She and I had been working together, casually, ever since my solo album, making music whenever the mood struck. Nothing formal, but I’d been planning to write some new material with her again, soon.
What I didn’t say was that I’d been thinking, seriously, a
bout inviting another musician to work with me.
I knew I was lying to them—all of them—by omission, by not breathing a word about my brewing feelings for Seth. About the connection I’d felt with him in Hawaii—and in my bed. About the music I was thinking about making with him now. In secret.
And I felt bad about it.
More so, when both Brody and Maggie looked at me like they clearly didn’t like what I was doing. Distancing myself from everyone. Keeping something from them that they couldn’t quite put their finger on.
Well, too bad.
Just because Dirty wouldn’t work with Seth, that didn’t mean that I couldn’t.
“I can’t promise you anything,” I told Seth, as we stood in my home studio together the next day. “I was just thinking about it… and I think we should keep playing together. We could write, if it feels right. Create something new. I don’t know… maybe we could even cut an album.”
He’d been perusing my collection of bass guitars, lined up on a row of stands against one wall, but looked up at me on the word album.
“But first…” I shrugged. “We could just play. See where it goes. I could play you some things I’ve been working on. Maybe you have some material you could play for me, too…?”
He took a step toward me like he had to peer deep into my eyes to be sure I meant it. “You’re serious?”
“Yes. I’m serious.” But I tried to make a joke. “I mean, I summoned you again, didn’t I?”
Seth didn’t smile at all. “You’re serious… about making an album together?”
I shrugged again and walked over to the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out over the water. “Maybe,” I said. “I could. We could.” I turned back to face him. He was staring at me, hard. “My solo album did well enough… I can kinda do whatever I want. If I called the record company tomorrow to tell them I had a new album for them, they’d be happy.”
“I’m sure they would be,” he said carefully. “But how happy do you think the rest of your band would be? How happy would Brody be if you cut an album with me?”
I crossed my arms over my chest and tried not to think about that. “Would you believe me if I said I don’t care?”
Dirty Like Seth: A Dirty Rockstar Romance (Dirty, Book 3) Page 19
