And she never came back.
When she left, I said goodbye to her at the airport. But I was saying goodbye to a lot more than Jessa Mayes. I was saying goodbye to her brother and his whole crew of friends. I was saying goodbye to Dirty.
Because I wasn’t under the same illusions that Brody and her brother and everyone else seemed to be. I knew Jessa wasn’t coming back.
So I hugged her and kissed her and wished her all the happiness she deserved and hadn’t seemed to find in this city, and I saw her off.
And I said goodbye to Jude Grayson, because without Jessa around, I knew there was a very real chance I’d never see him again.
Chapter Twenty
Jude
Thursday.
It had been a week since I’d fought with Roni and she’d accused me of not wanting her around the club. Since she’d told me she changed her mind about our fuck buddy arrangement, and I walked out.
We still hadn’t spoken.
I had no fucking idea how she was feeling, what she might be going through.
All I knew was I was seeing her tonight.
And I wanted to see her.
The documentary TV series that Dirty had shot this summer while searching for a rhythm guitarist, and ultimately hiring Seth back, was starting to air tonight. Brody had decided to host a screening of the first episode. But he was keeping it tight, just the inner circle and their dates.
Maggie had sent me the guest list, and of course Roni was on it. Roni was never all that tight with the band, but she was tight with Jessa Mayes.
Since the screening was at Jessa’s house, wasn’t much chance I was getting that name scratched off the list, even if I wanted to.
Didn’t love that this was how we were seeing each other, walking into a room of people, instead of alone. But seeing her face-to-face seemed like a better option than a text message anyway.
Better way to approach her and see if maybe she was as unhappy about the way things went down a week ago as I was.
7:22 pm.
I rolled into Brody’s place alone. I wasn’t the first to arrive or the last, but when I walked into the party room, Roni was already there, helping Brody set up at the bar.
And the feelings I had when I saw her there… Nothing but warmth.
Relief.
A kind of softening of the tension I’d been carrying around.
Good feelings.
All good feelings.
But then I watched as she went to sit down on a couch… and Zane sat down next to her. Elle was on his other side, so it’s not like he was sitting down with Roni in particular… But shit, did it stick in my throat.
Seeing her sitting next to him like that.
She’d looked up when I walked in. So I knew she knew I was here.
But she didn’t come near me.
She smiled at something Zane said, and the ugliness in me crept up. That old voice inside.
The one that wondered if maybe it really was all about sex for her, and always was.
But I knew, I fucking knew that wasn’t true.
I endured the screening. The show was pretty damn good, thanks to Liv being a kickass director, even if it had a touch of that cheesy reality-contest-show feel. Zane and Jesse were great. Lots of banter and white-toothed smiles. The usual.
Roni remained on the couch, next to Zane, the whole time. They didn’t talk all that much, but the ugliness festered in me until I had to walk out.
I made up some bullshit excuse to take off before anyone else, kissed Jessa and the baby, and drove the fuck home.
When I got there, I dug out some weed. I didn’t even bother keeping cream soda stocked at home. Too dangerous.
I went out to my back porch and sat alone in the dark and smoked. I never smoked alone. I rarely smoked at all.
But I smoked in the dark, and I remembered.
Eight long months after I’d told Roni she wasn’t the marrying kind and basically made a grade-A drunken asshole of myself, we came back home off the first world tour.
With the wind totally yanked the fuck from our sails.
Seth had been kicked out of Dirty at the end of the tour. Literally on the last night of the tour, after the last show. The band couldn’t handle his drug abuse anymore, or the erratic behavior that was a result of it, and he had so much drug debt, so many bad choices dragging him down… no one could save him from himself by that point—even me.
The next day, I’d gotten his ass into rehab. He’d immediately bounced right out, and that was that.
I’d try to help him, get him back into rehab, but not until he came crawling back asking me for help again.
Which he would.
I was pretty damn sure about that.
Until then, nothing I could do.
But it was a shake-up, a wake-up call for all of us. At least, it should’ve been.
Jessa was still away, modeling, had never come home. Always had some new gig, some contract to fulfill, some reason she couldn’t come home to see us.
It bothered Jesse, a fuck of a lot. He still worried about her.
But life rolled the fuck on.
Dirty went pretty much straight into writing mode on their second album, which they’d already decided would be called Dead Crazy, which was pretty much how we all felt at the end of the tour.
I was pretty caught up in trying to balance the high-octane level of life with the band—who were now so famous I went pretty much every-fucking-where with Jesse—and my club responsibilities. By the end of the tour, we had a solid security crew established for the band, and I was managing it. I could’ve stepped away from the Kings, financially.
But I didn’t.
I never would.
I assured Piper of that, in a long and ridiculously fucking heartfelt conversation over a bottle of bourbon, a few weeks after I got back from the tour.
Then, one night, I saw Roni at a party.
The party was at Brody’s place, where so many of our band parties were. The guest lists at those things were pretty tight by then, and I always knew who was coming and going. There were always surprises; wouldn’t be much of a party without them.
How she got in without me noticing, though, I’d never know.
But there she was, standing in the kitchen, talking to Jesse.
My guard was down. I was so caught off-guard, when she saw me and kinda smiled like she couldn’t help herself, I actually hugged her. We started talking, and within a few minutes of talking to her, of standing so close to her I could smell her familiar, sexy smell and feel the warmth off her body… my dick was up.
I wasn’t drunk, and she wasn’t flirting with me, but she was smiling at me, a genuine, wistful sort of smile. And I knew she wasn’t with Ben anymore; I’d seen him at the clubhouse and that was pretty clear.
By the time she excused herself to get another drink, I was getting all kinds of wrong ideas.
Not ten minutes later, I saw her flirting with some dude, some promoter Brody had invited. He had his hand on her waist and she was smiling at him.
And my hard-on officially died.
I spent the rest of the night with my arm around some other girl, getting mildly sauced and pretty much avoiding her.
Late in the night, I saw her doing shots with Zane, of all people. I should’ve known right then what was coming.
But I told myself I was over it.
I wasn’t fucking over it.
I wasn’t over her.
It was definitely easier to put Roni Webber out of my mind when life was busy as fuck and I was traveling with the band and the women were a penny a dozen.
But when she was right in my face… this girl… she drew me like a damn magnet.
So that night, I very purposefully magnetized myself to some other girl.
Roni might’ve thrown me a few wounded looks over it, but hey, I was over it, right?
The party went late. Like until-early-the-next-morning late. Jesse crashed in one of the guest rooms,
so I stayed over too, taking one of the couches in the music room. Figured we’d have breakfast—or lunch—with Brody whenever we got up. I didn’t even see Roni leave, told myself I didn’t care. But in the morning, I found her.
I found her in bed in the other guest room with Zane.
The kind of rage I felt as I woke her up, hauled her ass out of that bed, shoved her clothes at her and marched her out of Brody’s house, was like nothing I’d ever felt before. It was almost like I was floating apart from myself. Like I was boiling alive and completely numb at the same time.
I said all of two words to her.
Get out.
I threw her in a car with Elle and one of her girlfriends; they were just pulling out of the driveway when I flagged them down. Then I stormed the fuck back upstairs to the guest bedroom where Zane was just dragging his sorry, hungover ass out of bed. I knew he was drunk off his ass last night. Maybe still was.
What the fuck else was new?
Somehow, that just made it worse.
“What the fuck was that?” I threw the bedroom door out of my way. It didn’t have one of those door stopper things on it, or else I broke it, because the doorknob punched right through the drywall.
“What?” Zane looked at me with his bloodshot eyes and I seriously wanted to punch him. I’d never wanted to punch Zane before.
“I fucking warned you about this shit,” I growled, fucking seething. I felt like that beast in the Looney Tunes cartoon, the Hyde creature that comes out after the scientist drinks that fucked-up potion.
Must’ve looked like it too, judging by the look on Zane’s face.
“What shit?”
“This shit.” I grabbed a beer bottle off the bedside table, knocking the other bottles and glasses right off in the process, and smashed it against the far wall.
“Whoa. Whoa, whoa.” Brody came up behind me. “The fuck’s going on?”
I shrugged him off when he put his hand on my arm, and got in Zane’s face. “I told you, you keep down this path, we’re puttin’ your ass in rehab. Before you end up like Seth.”
Zane stayed pretty damn calm. His eyebrows went up, his liquor-drenched brain cells working on overdrive to figure out what the fuck was up my ass.
“This really about me?” he asked me, even as Brody put a hand on my chest and tried to angle in. “Or about Wild Card?”
“Zane,” Brody said, “just get your shit and go downstairs.”
Zane didn’t move.
“I didn’t know you were into her, brother,” he told me, reading the fury on my face. His eyes on me were pretty steady for someone who was probably still half-cut. “I wouldn’t have, if I knew.”
I pushed in until my chest bumped his and snarled at him, “I am sick as fuck of cleaning up your shit.”
Then I stormed the hell out.
After that, I should’ve gone home.
I went straight to Roni’s.
She’d moved out of her mom’s place the year before and I’d never been to her new place, but I knew exactly where she lived. It was an apartment, a basement suite in a house near Kits Beach, shared with a couple of roommates. Fortunately or not, neither of them were home when I hammered on the door and Roni opened it.
“You fucked Zane?” I bowled right past her into the house.
She just stared at me, speechless, for a long moment. Then she shut the door and followed me up the hall, where I was pacing like a pissed-off beast.
She hugged her arms tight around her waist. She’d showered already; maybe I’d gotten her out of the shower. She had on a little silk robe with flowers on it and her hair was wet.
“Why would you care?” she asked.
I advanced on her so fast, she stumbled and almost fell backing up, and I fucking hated myself for it. But I was not a rational human being when it came to this woman. I put her right up against the wall without even touching her, and she didn’t even look the least bit scared. Just confused.
“Why can’t you just get the fuck out of my life?”
Yeah, I had some balls to say that to her when I’d just barged into her home.
It wasn’t even my life she was trespassing in, anyway.
It was my fucking head.
“I’m not in your life,” she said carefully. “I… I sent Jesse a nice photo I saw of Jessa from a shoot she did. I know she doesn’t always send them to him, so I did. He thanked me and he told me about the party. I thought that was really nice of him to invite me. So I came.” Her eyes were starting to shine, but I couldn’t tell if it was hurt or anger. “If you’d rather I didn’t come to any Dirty parties, ever again, you can say so and I’ll stay away. You’ll never have to see me again.”
“Good. Then stay the fuck away.”
“Fine.” She swallowed, and I could see it in her eyes: definitely hurt.
I turned away and stormed toward the door. But when my hand was on the handle, I stopped.
Jesus Christ, what was it with me, with this girl?
I scraped my fingers through my hair, then turned on her. She was right behind me, probably ready to slam the door shut behind my ass as soon as I walked out.
Instead, I grabbed her and kissed her. Crushed my mouth to hers and pretty much ate her face off. She didn’t protest. She didn’t kiss me back, either, for at least a few seconds.
But then she was right there with me, devouring me back.
Within seconds, we’d fumbled our way into a bedroom. I assumed it was hers. I ripped off her robe and pushed her on the bed. I knelt over her and stripped off my jacket, my shirt. While I did that she took out my dick. She handed me a condom; she had them in singles in a bowl by the bed, which I didn’t even want to think about.
I sheathed myself without even taking off my jeans, while she worked them down around my thighs.
Then I fell on her and her thighs went around me. I drove into her fast, spearing her mouth with my tongue as I gave it to her.
That first time we’d fucked had been slow, passionate. Tender, even.
This time, it was the last thing from tender.
It was angry, hurt, bitter, brutal and dirty. I went at her with a groaning, skin-slapping, possibly bed-breaking vengeance until she suddenly shoved at me.
“Pull out,” she said.
“What…?” I rolled off, and she immediately went at my dick, tearing off the condom so fast it hurt.
I flinched. “Fuck.”
“Sorry,” she said, like she wasn’t sorry, as she tore off my jeans and underwear.
Then she went down on me.
And fucking hell, could Roni Webber suck cock. I didn’t even want to know where she’d learned those particular skills… but I was grateful she’d learned.
Some girls had no sense of dick whatsoever. No idea how to touch a dick or suck a dick. Roni was all over it like a pro. Working my shaft with one hand, my balls with the other, her mouth devouring me and her tongue ravaging all the sensitive spots.
Then she squeezed the base of my shaft, hard, fucking strangling me, and sucked like hell on my head, like she was trying to pull me apart.
I fucking groaned. I liked it rough. Most girls were too scared or timid or uncomfortable to get rough like that.
Not Roni.
I got up on my knees, somehow, while she was doing her thing, and started fucking her mouth. She sucked me harder, like she was saying Bring it the fuck on. So I rammed my hips forward, hitting the back of her throat, and she squirmed, pulling away.
“I don’t do that,” she gasped, her green eyes flashing up at me.
“What?”
“I don’t deep throat.”
So I just let her blow me how she wanted, let her control the depth.
“Touch yourself,” I ordered her, while she was sucking me off. She ran one hand down between her legs and did that. She shifted to lie on her side on the bed, giving me a front row view of it. “Keep goin’,” I told her. “Make yourself come with my dick in your mouth.”
Sh
e did as I told her to. She moaned as she blew me, and it was kinda torture, but I made damn sure I didn’t come.
She did.
And right when she did, I pushed forward, slowly, easing my cockhead into the back of her throat.
Her throat squeezed around me and her eyes met mine, kinda dazed with orgasm. I eased myself out, giving her a moment to push me off. She didn’t.
So I eased back in. Then she closed her eyes as my dick cut off her air. Her body writhed beneath me as she kept riding her hand, and then I pulled out, letting her breathe.
She sighed, kinda melting as her hand slipped out from between her legs.
I flipped her over and pulled her hips up, so her shoulders were on the bed and her ass was where I wanted it. I helped myself to another condom from the bowl. I rolled it on and slammed home, filling her slick pussy with everything I had to give her.
I didn’t want to hurt her, but I was just gonna go ahead and take what I wanted unless she told me to ease the fuck off.
She didn’t.
I grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her head back. She cried out and said Yeah and Fuck a lot, so I figured she was as into it as I was. When I let her hair go, my hands dug into her hips as I drilled into her. The sleek curve of her arched back gleamed with fucking sweat. My hands slipped on her skin when I smacked her ass a few times. And I smacked hard.
She didn’t complain.
She was sweating with want for me.
“Give it to me, Jude,” she pleaded. And not like some pre-rehearsed line she might use on every guy. Breathless and desperate, like she was aching for it.
Like she’d been aching for it ever since the last time I was inside her.
Three. Motherfucking. Years. Ago.
“Darlin’, I’m gonna give it to you so good, you’re not gonna walk right for a week. You’re not gonna forget this day and how good I fucked you, for the rest of your damn life.”
All kinds of dirty, stupid shit like that just flew the fuck out of my mouth.
“Good…” she moaned. “Fuck me like that. I like it rough… I want you to fuck me, just like that…”
Fuck…
This girl.
I could feel it as our bodies slammed together…
Dirty Like Jude: A Dirty Rockstar Romance (Dirty, Book 5) Page 24
