Dirty Like Jude: A Dirty Rockstar Romance (Dirty, Book 5)

by Jaine Diamond

  I’d been in charge of any kind of security we needed as the band gradually got bigger, but managing Jessa’s safety was becoming a fucking headache. One way or another, that girl was growing up, and Jesse was gonna have to get used to it.

  Still, I followed Roni through the crowd.

  She was wearing a black strapless shirt, super tight, with push-up cups. It was velvet, looked like no underage girl should legally be allowed to wear it, and fuck if I knew what it was called—a corset? Her jeans were skin-tight, low-cut on the hips, with a line of sparkly rhinestones right up the crack of her ass. They kept catching the light, snagging my eyes, like a g-string winking at me in the dark.

  She ignored me, at first, but she knew I was there. When she stopped to watch the band, I came up beside her. She pretended not to notice.

  “Piper’s not here,” I told her.

  She gazed up at me, with the put-on innocence of a stripper doing a nun routine. “Who?”

  “Piper,” I said. “My brother. You’re here for him, no?”

  “I’m here for Dirty,” she said sweetly, blinking up at me. “But I’ll hang out with you, if you want.”

  Like I’d asked her to hang out with me.

  She said it so sweetly I could almost buy the innocent act. Maybe. If I’d never met her before, or overheard all that shit about her sexual bucket list.

  But since I knew that if Piper was around he’d be her first choice, I was not falling for it.

  “I mean, unless you want to leave,” she said, turning toward me. She shifted her hips so her tits jiggled in the cups of her velvet jail-bait top. “You wanna take me for a ride on your bike?”

  I was nineteen years old. My dad and my brother were patched members of an MC. I’d been riding motorcycles all my damn life. And I worked with a rock band. Which meant I met women all the time, and I’d definitely had a lot of them ask for a ride on my bike.

  I’d never had a woman—or for that matter, a girl—ask for a ride on my bike with that much innuendo.

  “No.”

  She immediately pouted, dropping the innocent act. “Oh, come on. It would be fun. I’m an incredible passenger.”

  Again, the innuendo.

  And I had to wonder…

  If she knew what I’d witnessed, fucking Jed shoving her down those steps… would she be acting this way in front of me?

  No. She’d be different.

  Would she be angry?

  Embarrassed?

  I grabbed her by the shoulders, right then, and I kissed her, shocking the saucy-teen-seductress look right off her face.

  The truth was, I’d been thinking about her, a lot. Ever since the first time I saw her.

  Despite my efforts to forget her after I heard her talking about my brother.

  And I needed to know: What the fuck was this?

  Was it real?

  Was there anything about this that was real, that was worth pursuing?

  Or should I just forget her?

  It took her a moment to get over the shock. A short moment. But within a heartbeat, she was kissing me back. Her mouth was as soft and juicy as it looked and the kiss was tender, hot.

  Then it got hotter as she pressed into me, her mouth opening. It got deeper. Dark and brutal… and by the end, it stole my breath.

  It seemed to steal hers, too.

  I pulled back, not wanting to hurt her. Not even sure if I hadn’t already.

  I stared at her and she stared at me. Her lips were flushed and swollen. Mine felt bruised.

  I didn’t even know how to feel about any of it.

  My head was fucking spinning.

  “You want to fuck?” she asked me.

  “Yeah.”

  I didn't even know in that moment if I was going to. If I was actually going to fuck her.

  I knew she was sixteen.

  I knew she wanted my brother. My twenty-four-year-old brother.

  I didn’t know what I was gonna do.

  I just felt…

  I took her hand and we worked our way through the crowd, slowly, together. At one point, I had to stop in the crowd to talk to someone. Roni got pulled away to talk to someone else; she broke away. She got farther and farther away in the crowd.

  I looked at her across the room. I watched her dance.

  She looked back at me.

  And late in the night, when my back was turned, she left.

  Chapter Eleven

  Roni

  I put in my hours at the display suite office on Monday, and while I did, I worked on the New Year’s Eve event as much as I could. I kept working on it over Indian takeout at my dining room table, after work.

  And all the while, I put Jude and what we’d done last night completely out of my mind. Or almost completely.

  Because I was determined to keep the New Year’s event and what happened last night separate.

  Work. Play.

  Work was serious.

  Play was not.

  The last thing I needed was to get serious about screwing Jude Grayson.

  Brody had already emailed me some sample contracts, and by the time I’d finished dinner, I’d sent a detailed outline of the terms I needed drafted into a contract to my lawyer. I’d worked out a rough schedule for the day of the event, beginning with the time security and crew needed access to the venue, and including the tear-down in the hours after the show.

  And I wondered, as I stared at the schedule on my laptop, if that night—as we finished up with the event, the crew packing the gear out of the venue and Jude sending his guys home—would be the last time I ever saw him.

  I’d had so many moments in my life that I’d thought would be the last time I ever saw him. And yet… somehow, he just kept coming back.

  Or I did.

  When I walked into my bedroom, it was so empty of him it actually hurt. When I woke up this morning, he was already gone. Actually, he was gone long before morning came. But he’d been here, in my home. When I woke up, I could smell him on my sheets.

  I could smell him on me.

  I didn’t even want to take a shower this morning because of it.

  I did.

  But yeah. Not good.

  I sat down on my bed and stared, for a while, at the glass of water on the bedside table.

  So strange, how a man and a woman could act like such animals together. Naked and raw and so ridiculously intimate, and afterwards get dressed and go about all the polite niceties of life.

  After Jude fucked me so hard and so good my eyes watered and a vase on my bedside table smashed on the floor and my neighbors probably hated me, he sat on the edge of my bed and asked me if I wanted a glass of water.

  Then he went into my kitchen and poured me a glass of water. He put it on the table by my bed, where the vase had been, then went into the bathroom to clean up.

  The water glass was a generic tumbler with an ugly pattern of yellow flowers on it, which I’d held onto somewhat ironically when I moved out of my mom’s home for the first time. It was one of those glasses they used to give out for free at the gas station at the end of our street when you filled up your tank with gas. I was proud the first time I could afford to fill my mom’s gas tank all by myself. I’d brought the tumbler home to her.

  That very same night, her boyfriend used it to drink whatever shit he was drinking, got drunk, and broke it. Not on purpose, but just as a side effect of generally being an idiot and a drunk.

  One month later, when I could afford to, I filled up the tank with gas again, got another tumbler, and kept it in my room. It was a symbol of a whole lot of shit to me at the time; my independence, my ability to take care of myself, the places I was headed in life with or without my mom’s help. I barely even noticed how ugly it was.

  As it sat on my bedside table where Jude had put it, I wondered if he noticed how ugly it was. I wondered why he picked that one ugly glass from a cupboard filled with much more beautiful glasses.

  After I got ready for bed and finally
slipped under the sheets, naked, I couldn’t quite sleep. I checked my phone to see if Jude had texted me, too many times.

  He didn’t.

  Then I ended up masturbating, thinking about him. I thought about last night, about the sex, obviously. And the build-up to the sex.

  I thought about him kissing me, like I so often did.

  I tried to draw it out, make it last… but Jude just got me there too quick. Even when he wasn’t in the room.

  Afterwards, I still couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about how he’d asked me—no, told me—to text Taze before he fucked me. How he wanted to break us up.

  Like he wanted me for himself.

  For more than one night?

  It definitely didn’t feel like a one-time fuck. It felt like a fuck that led to other fucks… and from there… probably nowhere.

  Just like every other fuck we’d had.

  Every other amazing fuck.

  And still… I would fuck him again. I knew that much.

  I was going to work my ass off on this event and I was going to fuck Jude any chance I got.

  If I got the chance.

  Fine plan.

  But what happened when he decided we were done, like he did before?

  I did not like making myself vulnerable to him. I really didn’t need any more Jude-induced heartbreak in my life.

  I was perfectly fine without him.

  But since when was “fine” good enough?

  I did not want fine.

  I wanted epic, frantic, desperate, intense, brutal, no-compromise alive. I wanted what I felt when I was with him.

  I wanted Jude.

  I wanted him…

  But I didn’t text him. I didn’t call.

  On the edge of sleep, I was still thinking about him kissing me in the cab last night. And I was thinking way back to when he kissed me eleven years ago, at that party.

  The best first kiss I’d ever had.

  The feel of his lips on mine for the first time; that surprising kiss. The foreign taste of him that quickly became familiar, the heat of him and the rhythm of his mouth…

  That kiss that was my secret.

  So unexpected. So brutal.

  So soft.

  That kiss Jude stole; that little piece of my heart that he took from me that night, and never gave back.

  Even after Jessa told me what happened to her that night—that Brody had kissed her outside that party before he drove her home—I didn’t tell her Jude kissed me. It just felt too intimate. Too private, even though it happened right in the middle of a crowded party.

  Plus, I didn’t really want anyone to know.

  So I never told anyone.

  I was after Piper, I wanted Piper, and that didn’t change.

  For one thing, I’d already declared to every one of my girlfriends, repeatedly, that I was going to make Jeremy “Piper” Grayson mine. I was committed to my mission, and I wouldn’t back down. It wasn’t my way. I just wouldn’t do it.

  Not until I got what I wanted.

  And I knew what I wanted.

  I also knew the way things worked in the biker world, more or less. From what I’d gathered while interrogating Jessa for everything she knew about Piper Grayson, he was tight with his brother. Which meant if I messed around with Jude first, the odds of Piper going anywhere near me were slim.

  For another thing… I was sixteen and stupid.

  I thought, from my limited experience with men, that I could get whatever I wanted. That I should get whatever I wanted.

  I was just plain wrong.

  I’d made my choice, but I’d made the wrong choice.

  I just didn’t know it yet.

  Somehow maybe the universe knew, even if I didn’t, that it should’ve been Jude. Maybe Jude knew it should’ve been Jude, and he was telling me so with that kiss.

  Maybe he was just gonna hold onto that little piece of my heart until I figured it out.

  And fool that I was, stubborn as I was… maybe I convinced myself that I could live without it.

  It happened at a crappy house party.

  Well, the party was okay. The house was owned by some Kings hang-around—some guy who wanted to be a King, hadn’t yet been invited to prospect for the club, but had a house on a property way out in Cloverdale and threw decent parties that usually promised to include at least a few Kings.

  Piper was there that night, I was there, and I was on a mission. He was drunk, he was single (after a brief, inexplicably lingering semi-relationship with a girl I was sure was half as pretty as I was, though twice as slutty) and when I started pouring him shots, he started paying attention.

  It had taken me a long, long time to get Piper’s attention. I’d been chasing him for a year. Granted, there were a lot of girls vying for his attention, so maybe it was only fair I had to wait in line. I was only seventeen, and he didn’t seem to go for girls my age.

  Which only made me more committed to turning his head.

  I was almost eighteen anyway. I was mature. And I was the girl for him. He just didn’t know it yet.

  These were the things I’d been telling myself for the last year.

  Eventually, that night, I did turn his head long enough to get him alone in the kitchen for a few hot minutes.

  But his attention really didn’t last long.

  And afterwards, he sent me on my way.

  It didn’t bother me as much as it maybe should’ve, considering I’d been hoping to make him my boyfriend, had idealized him in my mind and fantasized about him for so damn long. But the whole thing was so incredibly anticlimactic, so… just… nothing at all… it didn’t even seem to matter.

  Kinda made me feel, for a few minutes, like I didn’t matter.

  On the edge of some minor emotional crisis, I took my ass outside, where I could be alone. I was planning to leave, but figured I should get myself together before I drove. I wasn’t drunk, hadn’t even been drinking, wanted to be sober when I talked to Piper. But it wasn’t like we did much talking anyway.

  I was sitting on the back stoop of the house by myself in the dark, kinda half-smoking a joint, when I realized a man was standing over me. He startled me, but when I looked up and discovered it was Jude, I relaxed.

  “Hey, V,” he said, looking at me in that silent way he did. Like he was reading the situation.

  Reading me.

  It was the first time he’d called me V. He’d never, ever called me “Wild Card” like Jessa’s brother, Jesse, did, or like Zane and some of their other friends did. Jude called me Roni or Veronica. And now, V.

  He was wearing his leather Kings cut with the too-clean Prospect patch on it. He’d started prospecting for the Kings that year. Jessa had told me that Jesse was hellbent on making it big with Dirty so they could take Jude on the road and keep him out of the MC, but I was pretty sure, by the looks of things, even if Jesse’s band made it huge, Jude was still gonna be in the MC.

  He did work with the band a lot though, as a roadie, bouncing parties, that kind of thing. Which meant I often ran into him, because I went to as many band parties as I could. He’d always been nice enough to me, but he’d always kept his distance, too.

  Other than that one night he’d kissed me.

  Piper was also distant, but as Jude sat down beside me on that stoop in the dark and looked at me, I could feel the stark differences between them.

  Maybe I’d convinced myself Piper just hadn’t had a chance to discover how fabulous I was yet; that he’d come around when I got my chance to seduce him.

  It wasn’t that.

  Piper was distant because he just didn’t care. Frankly, he probably thought he was better than me. Not that I really kidded myself that Piper thought about me at all—especially after that night. More like he barely even noticed me because, in his eyes, I wasn’t someone worth noticing. I was just more slutty white noise, which, for a brief moment in that kitchen, for whatever reason, he chose to tune in more clearly.

  Then tune r
ight back out.

  But Jude… Jude kept himself at a distance from me deliberately. I knew that because even while he stayed distant, he watched me.

  And it was pretty obvious to me why, on that night of all nights, he got close. Because I was sitting in the dark, alone, at a biker party, and when I looked up at him I had tears shining in my eyes.

  I’d watched him, too, and even though Jude was quieter than Piper, I’d figured a few things out about him. One thing I knew for sure was that Jude cared about people. More than that, actually; he felt responsible for people. I’d seen it again and again with how he looked out for Jesse, the rest of the band… and Jessa. How protective he was. How he was always breaking up fights and kicking people out of parties when they got out of hand.

  He didn’t want people getting hurt on his watch.

  And that night, I’d been hurt. As much as I didn’t love to admit that to myself. It wasn’t exactly that Piper had hurt me. In reality, I barely knew Piper, and he definitely didn’t know me.

  It was that I’d set myself on a year-long course to get hurt… for nothing.

  Nothing but a few hot minutes in some dude’s kitchen at a party.

  Jude’s shoulder brushed mine, maybe because the stoop was so small and he was so big—he’d gotten bigger since I first met him. He felt warm next to me, and solid. It just made me feel small and cold.

  “You got any more of that?” he asked me, flicking his chin at my half-finished joint. As if he couldn’t get weed from his brother or anyone in that party?

  “Take it.” I handed it to him. He took it and smoked, but he didn’t hand it back to me—which was when I realized he wasn’t smoking it because he wanted to smoke it. He was smoking it so I couldn’t smoke it. “How old are you now?” he asked me, exhaling smoke.

  I was pretty sure he knew how old I was, which meant he was asking the question for me. My defenses went way up, along with my attitude.

  “Seventeen,” I said, like he was stupid for asking. “And so what? I can’t have any bad habits?”

  He considered that. Even in the dark I could kinda see his eyes, searching my face. “This a habit?” He held up the joint.