“Jesus, Jed,” Chloe whispered, stunned horror in her eyes. Her fingers on the spider tattoo had grown still. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
He shook his head, his smile genuine. “It’s all good. My wife should know the tragic backstory of the man she marries, yes?”
He expected her to laugh, to point out they really weren’t going to get married. Instead, she nodded and pressed her palm to his chest, directly over his heart. “Yes, she should. Go on.”
A heavy pressure wrapped his chest at her words. A feeling of intangible happiness rolled though him.
“He left one day to go to work,” he continued. “He was a security guard at our local shopping centre—and never came back. Mum cleaned up her act, got a job, and did everything she could to raise me right. To apologise for the life she’d given me when Dad was still around.”
Chloe studied him. “And the spider represents the poison he’d injected into that life?”
Jed nodded, another warm swell of happiness flowing through him at the fact she understood. “He came back when I was almost eighteen. I came home from school one day to find him in our kitchen, off his face drunk, and laying into Mum with his fists. Her shirt was torn open, her skirt ripped. She had scratches on her throat, her chest. Her lip was bloody and swollen. I picked up the closest thing on the table and beat the shit out of him with it. It wasn’t until he fell to the ground that I realized I’d been hitting him with a rolling pin.”
“Did you kill him?”
The memory of that afternoon washed over Jed, bringing with it the familiar mix of hate, guilt, and relief. “No. But we never saw him again after that. As far as I know, he died in a gutter somewhere a few years ago.”
“Jesus,” Chloe whispered again.
He gave her a wry smile, sliding her palm to the tattoo of the ornate cross on his side. “Which brings me to this one,” he said, watching her gaze move over it. “After Dad left us the first time, Mum found religion. Big time. She moved me to a Christian school. I was in the church choir, and then a Christian rock band. That’s where I was discovered. A record-label scout heard me singing at a school talent contest when I was seventeen. Believe it or not, there’s actually an album out there in the world with me singing all about the grace and beauty of God.”
Chloe’s eyebrows shot up. “There’s what? How is it I don’t know anything about this?”
Jed grinned. “I have a very good agent who has spent a lot of time and money making sure Jed Brody and Jedidiah Smith—my father’s last name—are never connected.”
Her lips parted. A frown pulled at her eyebrows. “And you’re telling me?”
“I trust you.”
She didn’t say anything to that. Instead, she drew her face closer and brushed his lips with hers.
For a moment, he fought the need to deepen the kiss. To capture her lips completely. His body ached to do so. It was only sheer willpower that stopped him.
That and the fact that telling her about the tattoos right now felt…important.
Finding her gaze, he smiled again. “Mum was religious, but I questioned it. All the time. When Dad came back, when he…when he tried to rape her, almost beat her to death, I knew I was done with God. The day I told Mum I was quitting the band, that I was changing schools and not going to church with her…”
“It tore you apart?”
The tender sorrow in Chloe’s voice caressed Jed as surely as her hand on his side. “We recovered, Mum and I,” he said, chest tight. “But the wound between us has never truly healed. I’d also torn a part of who I was out of me. And there’s the story of the cross. I got that one first, by the way. Before the spider. It was my first tat when I moved out of her home. Of everything I’ve done in my life, I think that tattoo and what it represents is the one Mum’s the most disappointed about.”
“Parents,” Chloe uttered, her soft grunt wobbly.
“They make us who we are,” he said, tracing the back of his knuckle down the side of her face.
He’d shocked her. Shaken her. He could see that.
“They do,” she answered back, her voice husky.
“Let me ask you a question?”
She nodded, her eyes unreadable.
“Are you really spoilt? I just don’t get those vibes from you. Feisty, yes. Supremely confident and self-assured, sure. Self-aware, absolutely.” He touched her cheek again when she let out a wry snort and gave him a sheepish smile. “Spoilt, though? No. I don’t think you are.”
A wistful expression crossed her face and she let out a sigh. “No,” she said, shifting a little on the bed beside him. “I’m not spoilt. No more than the average daughter, I guess. Mum would have had a conniption if Dad had tried to spoil me, and to be honest, Dad didn’t try. I grew up knowing he was famous, that Josh was famous, and when I was old enough to understand what that meant, I realized I was famous for being a part of their family, which was weird. By that stage, I’d heard the word no enough as an answer to requests for things Mum and Dad considered unnecessary indulgences that I was pretty grounded.”
Jed studied her. It dawned on him, as her voice played with his senses and her words played with his heart, that he loved hearing her talk. The fact she was sharing something about her life, her family…it felt special. It made him feel special in a way screaming fans and Number One hits didn’t. A profound connection he’d never truly felt before until now.
He wanted to kiss her for that. But later. For now, he wanted to talk with her more. “Did they approve of you becoming a musician?” he asked, curious about her decision to become a cellist in a family of rock gods.
“There was no pressure to follow Dad or Josh into music,” she answered, that wistful look becoming a warm smile. “In fact, for a while I wanted nothing more than to follow in Mum’s footsteps and become a teacher, although I was thinking more visual arts teacher in a high school rather than kindergarten teacher.”
“What changed your mind?”
She let out a soft laugh. “A musical-instrument workshop at school when I was eleven. One of the instruments I picked up in that workshop was the cello. It was love at first sight.” Her eyes twinkled. “Kind of like us.”
Jed grinned. “That powerful, eh?”
“That powerful. I came home from school and asked Mum and Dad to buy me one.”
“And they did?”
“Yeah. On the proviso I pick up our dog’s poo in the backyard every day for the next six months.”
Jed burst out laughing. “Oh man, I would give good money to see you picking up poo.”
“Told you I wasn’t spoilt. When it was obvious I was talented at playing the cello, the serious lessons began. But even when I was accepted into the Sydney Conservatorium of Music after high school, I wasn’t allowed to be a diva brat. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to express my appreciation to Mum and Dad for that. They are the best parents ever.”
Best parents.
A shaky sigh escaped Jed before he could stop it.
Mortified contrition flooded Chloe’s face and she pressed her palm to her mouth. “Oh, Jed,” she said into her hand, her voice muffled. “That was so thoughtless of me. I’m sorry. Fuck. I’m so sorry.”
He shook his head and leant forward enough to place a soft kiss on her lips. “It’s all good. I’m at peace with my childhood, honest.”
Her eyebrows dipped in a frown. He could see she was upset with herself.
“I’m good,” he reassured her. “Promise.”
She lowered her hand from her mouth, her gaze locked on his face. “You don’t have to tell me about the wings if you don’t want to.”
He let out a laugh as husky as her voice. “Scared?”
She shook her head. “No. But I hate that I’m making you recount all the shit and hurt you’ve been through.”
“The shit and the hurt also make us who we are, babe.”
She studied him, searching his eyes for something. He didn’t know what, but he didn’t look
away. He was with her now. One-hundred percent. All the way. He was hers. He wasn’t going to hide anything from her.
It was liberating.
Wonderful.
“Tell me about the wings,” she said, the words barely more than a breath.
He smiled. “The wings are fucking cool. And they completely cover up a scar I have on my back from a mole that needed to be removed when I was twenty.”
Chloe blinked.
Jed stretched his smile into a grin. “True.”
She blinked again. “So, two soul-wrenching reasons and one ‘’cause they’re cool’ reason? Really?”
He grinned wider. “Yep.”
She frowned. “I don’t know whether to slap you, tickle you, or kiss you senseless.”
“All three sound—”
She silenced him with the third option before he could finish.
It didn’t take long for the kiss to become more. At some point, after long, glorious, delicious minutes of foreplay, during which he made her come twice with his mouth, and Chloe almost made him come with hers—and a mad dash to his discarded jeans to find his wallet and the condom inside it—he sank into her sweet heat.
Their orgasms claimed them at the same time. He’d never experienced anything so perfect. So powerful.
Some time much later, after a shower that turned into a water fight of epic scale, and a room service order of ham-and-pineapple pizza and chocolate chip ice cream, they curled up together on the suite’s biggest sofa, Chloe tucked into Jed’s body, and watched the most cheesy, trippy, B-grade sci-fi horror movie Jed had ever seen on television.
“Kill him!” Chloe yelled at the screen as a petrified astronaut fought with an alien clearly created on someone’s home computer. “Kill him, kill him, kill him!”
She wriggled against Jed with every excited order, her naked butt mashing against his groin. All he could do was laugh. And hug her closer.
And wonder if he was dreaming.
How had this happened? How was he, Jed Brody, sharing a moment of sheer contented, romantic, blissful life with the Untouchable? How was every fantasy of normalcy he’d ever had now coming true with her?
He’d never felt more relaxed, more happy, and more real than he did now.
The sound of Chloe’s laughter, the feel of her body next to his, their mutual enjoyment of a movie no one else he knew would waste time on…everything was exactly what he wanted.
And he was living it now. With the only woman he wanted to live it with.
How had that happened?
And what did he have to do to make sure it didn’t end?
On the screen, the woeful CGI alien overpowered the terrified astronaut.
“Boo,” Chloe protested on a laugh. “Boo.”
He tucked her closer to his body and kissed her cheek. “Told you so.”
She twisted in his arms to grin up at him. “Yeah, yeah, I know you reckoned the alien was going to win.”
He grinned back. “I’m a closet B-grade sci-fi cinephile. I should have warned you about that before you agreed to be my wife.”
Fisting her hand in the hair at the back of his head, she tugged his face to hers and smacked a loud kiss on his lips. “I love that you’re a closet B-grade sci-fi cinephile,” she declared. “So is Dad. But don’t tell anyone. It’ll ruin his cool reputation.”
An image of the Nick Blackthorne watching cheesy low-budget sci-fi movies in the dark filled Jed’s head. He grunted, the sound wry even to his ears. “At least that’s one thing he might approve of about me.”
He didn’t realize he’d muttered it aloud until the smile on Chloe’s face faded.
Fuck.
Shifting suddenly, she snatched up the remote, turned off the television, and then dropped to the floor, kneeling to face him where he lay on the sofa, her bent elbows resting on its edge near his chest. “Why does Dad think I need to stay away from you? He’s never said, just that you’re off-limits.”
Jed’s stomach clenched. “I don’t know. I’m thinking it has everything to do with my reputation.”
She frowned. “But he, of all people, should know a reputation is just that—an opinion, not the truth. I’ve read about Dad’s reputation when he was younger and he wasn’t an angel. I’m surprised Mum ever let him back into her life at times. So what’s so horrible about yours?”
Letting out a slow breath, Jed sat up. Chloe ducked as he swung his leg over her head, smoothing her palms up his thighs when he’d settled into a slightly slumped sitting position, his legs framing her shoulders and sides.
She searched his eyes in the direct, unabashed way she had before, an intimate connection he was already completely enamored with.
“So?” She shrugged, looking up at him, the warmth of her palms a gentle caress on his thighs. “Do you have any ideas?”
“I suspect,” he began, before stopping. He scratched at his check, the bristles there rough under his fingertips. “I suspect it has something to do with what happened when I was first getting attention in the rock world.”
Chloe frowned. “You mean that paparazzo in Melbourne?”
Jed huffed out a shaky sigh. Of course she would know of the paparazzo incident. Everyone in the world did. One moment in his early career, the only moment really, he wished he could go back in time to change. No, that was wrong. He wished to hell he could go back and prevent his agent from milking that moment just as much. It may have helped his career, his sales, but…
“The pap,” he said, resting his hands on the backs of hers, his chest tight, “had done his research on me. I can’t remember his name. He was an older guy. Had a reputation for being a wanker. Holston something… No, Carl Holston. That was it. Holston had dug up not only stuff about my Christian rock band days, but stuff about my family. About the life my mum and dad led before Dad deserted us.”
He stopped once again. An invisible band wrapped his throat. Crushing at the hot lump trying to choke him as he spoke.
“He said something to you that you didn’t like?” Chloe asked, although Jed knew it wasn’t really a question. Chloe Blackthorne was more famous than he was. She’d grown up in the paparazzi’s crosshairs. She knew what it was like to be hounded by the media, provoked and antagonized for the slim chance of capturing the money shot.
“He said something,” Jed confirmed. “Quite a few things, in fact. I ignored most of them. I was twenty-eight at the time, but I was still naïve to the world I was entering. My first single was getting some pretty good airplay, Broken had appeared on the Today show, my official YouTube page was going off, ‘Storm Clouds’ was climbing the iTunes charts…but I was still clueless.”
He snorted out a low, mirthless chortle. “Clueless and with a temper. That was me. So when he called my mum a drunken whore, I saw red.”
“He did what?”
The stunned shock in Chloe’s voice tore at something in Jed’s soul.
He gave her a small smile, wanting her to know he appreciated it. Theirs was a surreal life not even close to average and normal, but her pain for him made him feel, on a level he didn’t really comprehend, like a real person.
“I’d ignored all his jabs at me being an altar boy, about how I must have been the priest’s favourite. But when he called Mum a drunken whore…well, he could see he’d finally got under my skin.”
“What did you do?”
“I told him to back off. This was way before I had a bodyguard. Or any kind of minder. I was out with the guys, it was close to two a.m. We were celebrating being a successful rock band. I was sleep deprived. I’d had a couple of drinks. None of those are excuses for what happened next, though. They just…” He scratched at the bristles on his jaw once again. “I just need you to know where I was at.”
Chloe nodded. She didn’t remove her hands from his thighs. He would love her forever for that.
Love. Yep. He loved her.
Talk about unexpected.
“What happened?” she prompted, her voice gentle.
“When he saw me react, he kept going on the mum thing. Threw her arrest record at me, the fact she’d been caught drunk driving when I was only four and in the car, asked if I knew she’d been in a commune when she fell pregnant with me. I kept walking, but I also kept telling him to shut up. I finally snapped when he said she most likely spread her legs for anyone who came along.”
“Jesus.”
Chloe’s hoarse whisper scratched at the room’s silence.
Jed’s stomach lurched. A sour taste coated the back of his throat. The memory of that night had never left him. Of what he’d done to the pap.
Every time he replayed it in his head, however, his fist smashing against the man’s jaw became a rolling pin against his father’s head.
Over and over.
He swiped a hand over his mouth and let out a slow sigh. “I hit him. Broke his jaw. Almost broke his nose. He ended up in the hospital for a fortnight. Underwent reconstructive surgery. Charges were never filed—I still don’t know how my agent made that happen. What happened after though…”
He swallowed. Who would have thought less than twelve hours ago, when he was touching down in LA to attend the Grammys, he’d be baring the poison of his soul to the woman of his dreams while they were both naked?
“My agent convinced me,” he went on, his mouth dry, that sour taste boiling in his gut, “to let word of the confrontation leak to the media and gossip sites. ‘We’ll spin it well,’ he said. ‘Keep the nasty details out of it, of course. The chicks will fucking cream over you after this. Trust me.’ He said it would triple the sales of my single, maybe even more. Before I knew it, I was the new bad boy of Australian rock, with a reputation for anger and violence and disrespect, and ‘Storm Clouds’ was Number One on every chart that mattered.”
Slumping farther back on the sofa, he huffed out another sigh and gave Chloe a wry grin. “I’m pretty certain that’s why your father doesn’t want you having anything to do with me. He’s worried I’m a violent prick. Your brother said as much tonight.”
BANGED: Rock Stars, Bad Boys & Dirty Deeds Page 6
