No; it felt incredible.
It felt so totally fucking right to have Jessa here among us; like she’d never even left. Nothing could be more right than this.
Nothing could be more wrong than watching her leave us again.
I felt it, in my blood and in my bones, in my fucking soul, as she played with the band. Jessa Mayes belonged here. With us.
Why the fuck couldn’t she see it?
Everyone else could.
I watched in utter fucking fascination as the music took her over, as she got all lit up in a way I hadn’t seen her get lit up in a long fucking time… since around the time her mom died, maybe.
Since long before the band left on that first world tour, and we lost her.
Many songs later, the fire was dwindling and no one was bothering to build it up anymore. The newlyweds had long since disappeared. Those of us who were single—or avoiding going to bed—sat around talking shit, drinking, smoking weed and more or less trying to outlast each other. Like a bunch of eighteen-year-olds who weren’t gonna pay for this tomorrow.
Zane, Maggie and I, as usual, were the only ones not getting trashed. Zane because he didn’t drink, and Maggie and I because we’d made it our responsibility years ago to look out for these lunatics. Besides, I tended to make an even bigger dick of myself with Jessa when I was drunk, and I wasn’t about to spend the brief time I had in her presence wasted.
I wasn’t gonna spend it sleeping either, which meant I was pretty much waiting for her to get up and leave, because I sure as shit didn’t have the balls to end this night. Not when she was still sitting across the fire from me. I glanced her way, but she wasn’t looking at me; she was gazing into the flames, a beer clutched in her hand.
Then Maggie announced that she was about to go pass out—and Zane suddenly got the bright idea to go for a polar bear swim, which, big fucking surprise, turned into a naked polar bear swim.
Zane, Roni, Dylan and Ash headed for the nearest dock and into the water—not the little pools of hot springs among the rocks below; the frigid waters of the cove beyond. Which left me with Maggie and Jessa by the fire.
“BRO-d-d-deeeeee…!” Zane sang from the water. He was in first; pretty sure his teeth were chattering.
Roni was next in, with a squeal.
“I’m good,” I called out. “Be right here, making sure no one dies.” I couldn’t help snickering as Dylan and Ash jumped in the frigid water, hollering. “Idiots,” I mumbled into my beer. I could see them, like the slick heads of seals bobbing on the water in the moonlight.
Then my eyes met Jessa’s across the fire and my smile faded.
Maggie, sitting right next to me, was saying something, but I didn’t hear a word as Jessa got to her feet. She wobbled a little, finished her beer, set it down, and turned to walk straight out the dock.
I really should’ve stopped her. She’d been drinking, and she didn’t look all that steady on her feet. But since I was dead to her… I just sat there like an asshole watching her strip down, shedding her furry jacket and the sweater beneath, then her T-shirt—a worn black shirt. My shirt? I could’ve sworn it was, and that shit was messing with my head.
She skimmed it up over her head and tossed it aside. Her back was to me, her hair tied up in a high knot, the firelight skimming off her naked curves… which meant the assholes in the water had a frontal view. But she didn’t take off her bra. She kicked off her boots, shimmied out of her jeans—flashing her perfect ass in a pair of nude-colored panties—and hopped in the water.
Maggie applauded next to me, laughing as Jessa emerged from underwater and shouted, “Jesus! Fuck, that’s cold!” which just made Maggie laugh harder.
“Maggie!” Zane threw his arms around Jessa, pulling her close, which I didn’t fucking love. At least I knew for sure it was too cold in that water to get a hard-on, even for Zane. “Get your ass in the water!”
“Don’t let the old man cramp your style, Maggs,” Ash put in.
Maggie glanced over at the “old man”—me, apparently—and rolled her eyes. Then Dylan joined in the ribbing, and Zane shouted, “Maggie May! Get your ass in the water before my dick falls off!”
“Jesus Christ,” Maggie grumbled, getting up. “Doesn’t he ever shut up?”
Obviously, it was a rhetorical question, because we both knew the answer. Maggie didn’t usually let Zane’s mouth get to her, but seconds later she’d stripped down to her underwear and was in the water, screaming.
Ash was then out, naked, running shivering up the boardwalk into the woods, followed closely by Roni, then Dylan. Jessa was out next, quaking, her shoulders drawn up around her ears… her nipples looking like they were about to slice through the pasted-on silk of her flesh-tone bra. She might as well have been naked.
I tried not to stare, but shit. I’d never seen Jessa this naked. Didn’t love that I wasn’t the only one seeing it, either.
Fortunately, Zane was too cold to care. I met her on the dock with a wool blanket someone had left by the fire and wrapped her in it, just as Maggie streaked by. The both of them could’ve been buck naked and making out and Zane probably wouldn’t have stopped.
“Holy mother of fuck,” he gasped as he dashed by, hot on Maggie’s tail. “My balls are up behind my eyeballs.” Then he caught Maggie and swung her up over his shoulder, caveman style.
Maggie smacked Zane’s bare ass, hard, as he hauled her off into the trees. “Do not drop me,” she ordered. “I’m freezing!” They disappeared into the dark, leaving Jessa and I alone.
She was wrapped up tight in the blanket, wavering on her feet, shivering so hard her teeth were chattering.
“You should go back to your cabin,” I told her. “Get a fire going.”
I didn’t wait for a response.
I headed back to the fire pit to put the fire out. She needed to get warm—somewhere else—and I needed to get the hell away from her and her see-through panties. She didn’t seem to get the memo on that, though, because she followed me.
When the fire was out I stood to leave, but she stood in my path.
“Yeah… a fire’s a good idea,” she said, blinking up at me, her big brown eyes all bleary and needy and soft. “Guess I’ll just have to try and get it lit and whatever.”
Seriously?
I was not fucking falling for this shit. What was I, a fucking lumberjack now? She want me to go out and haul down a tree for her, and those big brown eyes were supposed to get me to do it?
Fat fucking chance.
“It’s a luxury resort,” I said flatly. “I’m sure they’ve made it real easy for you. Probably stocked your cabin with everything you need and then some.”
“Yeah, probably.” She glanced up the path leading to the boardwalk and bit her lip.
“What’s the problem?”
“Nothing.” She started up the path, but stopped when she reached the start of the suspended boardwalk.
I came up behind her in the dark. “What’s the fucking problem, princess?”
Jessa cringed at the old nickname. “Never mind.”
I studied her dark silhouette, trying to figure out what the fuck she was up to.
I had no idea.
Used to think I knew her, could read her, knew all the shit she never told anyone, even me.
I was wrong. So totally fucking wrong.
“Have a nice night.” I bypassed her, heading into the trees. “Try not to freeze to death.”
“It’s just…” she called out after me. “I’m kind of lost.”
I turned back. “You’re lost?”
She drew the blanket tighter around herself. “Yeah, okay? That’s why I was late coming down to jam. I got lost. It was light out when I arrived, and I’ve had a lot to drink, and it’s all dark, and this walkway is dangerous. There’s no rail in some places, you know, and it’s a fucking maze…”
It was dark. The twinkly lights along the boardwalk had gone out, probably on a timer. And she was right; it was kind o
f a maze.
And she did almost fall off it last night. Still made my stomach turn to think about it, about what might’ve happened if I wasn’t there.
Wasn’t really in the mood to agree with her, though.
Instead I muttered, “Jesus, Jessa,” took her by the elbow, and led her into the dark.
Chapter Nine
Brody
“Number fourteen,” I said, pointing at the carved wooden numbers in the middle of Jessa’s cabin door as I shut it behind us. Luckily, she was too drunk to note or ponder the fact that I knew exactly which door was hers.
“Oh. Shit. I didn’t know they had numbers. Guess I was kind of… distracted… when they showed me around…”
I wasn’t listening.
I ditched my jacket and went straight to the fireplace, ignoring the suitcase that was tossed open on the bed, her lingerie spilling out of it. Silky, lacy, skimpy shit—
But yeah, I was ignoring that. Definitely wasn’t picturing her wearing it or wondering why the fuck she’d failed to wear any of it when she showed up at the wedding without panties on and gave that photographer an eyeful.
I flexed my hand. My knuckles were bruised and one had split, but the blood had dried. At least I knew the guy whose face had taken the brunt of the damage wasn’t gonna do shit about it. Not after Piper and Jude had a talk with him. I wasn’t gonna deny that it was convenient as hell that our head of security was connected to a powerful outlaw motorcycle club, and when problems needed to disappear, they tended to do just that. I’d never asked Jude to ask his brother for anything on my account, but I wasn’t naive about it occasionally happening. And in a case like this, I wasn’t complaining.
I got the fire going with a wooden match and got it burning hot. Wouldn’t take long to get the room warm. It was smaller than the one Amanda and I were given, just a single with a double bed instead of a king.
I was just turning to stand when I realized how thin the walls between the rooms were, as the unmistakable sounds of fucking started coming right through. No doubt Jessa’s good old friend Roni was entertaining someone, or more specifically two someones, in an adjacent room. Loudly.
No secret that Dylan and Ash liked sharing women, and no secret that Roni liked taking it from more than one guy at a time, so no big surprise there. Didn’t mean I was in any mood to listen to it.
“Wait. I got it,” Jessa said, digging out her phone and turning on some music. It was Arctic Monkeys, “Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?”. She went to the bedside table, dumped a bunch of pine cones out of a decorative bowl that was sitting there, and lay the phone in the metal bowl, which worked pretty well as an amplifier. Then she turned it up, turned to me and smiled.
It was a big, dorky smile, just like she used to smile when we were kids. Which might’ve been cute as she stood there all damp and drunk, wrapped in that ugly wool blanket—if not for the fact that I was still oscillating wildly between wanting her and wanting like hell to hate her.
Then she moved to sit on the edge of the bed—and missed. She wasn’t kidding that she’d had a lot to drink.
As I looked at her down on the floor, smiling her dorky smile and kind of giggling as she struggled to get up, all cocooned in the blanket, I realized she was definitely gonna need some help getting through this night.
Which meant I should rally one of the girls to look after her, and get the fuck out.
Instead, I went into the bathroom and got the water running warm in the bathtub. If Jessa Mayes died of hypothermia tonight and I was the last one to see her alive, pretty fucking sure her brother would never forgive me.
“Please, don’t be angry with me.”
I looked up into the big window over the tub and saw her reflected in the glass, leaning against the bathroom door, watching me.
“I can’t take it,” she said, “not on top of everything else.”
I had no idea what “everything else” was, but it really wasn’t my problem. Neither was her discomfort with me being angry.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“You’re not.”
“It’s the middle of the night, Jessa. I’m fucking tired.”
“You are not fine.”
“Neither the fuck are you.”
She hugged herself and said, “How would you know?”
“You’re right.” I stood and faced her. “How would I know? How would I know a fucking thing other than what you told me? You refused to come on tour with the band because you said you didn’t want to be famous. Then you became a fucking supermodel.”
“I am not a supermodel.”
“No? Well, the only place I get to see you is on the fucking internet, in your underwear, like all the other assholes with their dicks in their hands.”
She gaped at me. “It’s not my underwear,” she objected, like that made a fucking difference. “And they pay me a lot of money to wear it.”
“We would’ve paid you too. We did, tour or no.”
“It wasn’t about the money. It was about me finding out who I am. I just couldn’t do that on tour with the band.”
“How would you know? You never gave it a chance.”
“I’m not having this same argument with you again.”
And just like that, the wall went up.
I sucked back a breath and turned away—but there she was in the goddamn window. Moving closer to me. “You’re angry because I didn’t come with you guys when you left on that first world tour,” she said softly, “and you’ve never forgiven me.”
Well, fuck me.
I was kinda stunned that she would go there. Say it right out loud like that, when she’d run away from it for so long. But then again, alcohol could be one hell of a truth serum.
Had she actually started to comprehend what the fuck she’d done?
Was this heading toward a legit apology?
Fuck that. I wasn’t accepting an apology from her. I wasn’t accepting shit all from her.
Jessa Mayes could take her apologies and her too-little-too-fucking-late and go fuck herself.
I turned to look her right in her brown eyes—and I knew I was lying to myself. Fucking right, I wanted her to apologize. I wanted her to get down on her knees, suck my cock, and tell me, I’m sorry, Brody. I never should’ve left. It was the worst mistake I’ve ever made. Please tell me what I can do to make it up to you…
Yeah. Right.
“I was angry about that,” I told her. “I’m not anymore.”
“You’ve been angry with me for years,” she whispered. Then she put her hand on me. Laid it right on my bare skin, on my bicep; just like she fucking owned me.
I froze, every muscle in my body going rigid. Yeah, even in my cock, since all my blood was pumping there post-haste.
What the fuck did she think she was doing?
Touching me, just like she used to touch me, like no time had passed at all… like she could walk out the door, never look back, not even speak to me for years… and then she’s right here, in my face, her fucking hand on me, and nothing had changed.
Because nothing had changed.
I still wanted her. Whether I wanted to accept that or not, my cock was making it pretty fucking clear. And Jessa? She was still pushing the same old bullshit.
“Get your fucking hand off me.” I said it as coldly as I could, even as my blood ran hot.
She didn’t flinch. She didn’t snatch her hand back and run away like I expected her to. She just stared at me with her big brown eyes. This close, I could see all the colors in them. Hazel, green, gold.
“Take your hand away, Jessa,” I said, my voice dropping low, getting gravelly as the walls of my throat got thick; too thick to breathe right. I leaned in a bit but she didn’t remove her hand, just tightened her fingers, her nails digging into my tattoos. “Is that what you want?” I stepped into her space and she backed up, but she didn’t let go. “You want what you never got?” I backed her right up against the counter and slammed my hips
against hers, my body working on autopilot. “Yeah,” I said, searching her face. Her eyes were softening and she swallowed, hard. “I can give you that.”
I could. If my dick was all she’d ever really wanted from me, she could have at it. If that was all this was ever about, maybe I should’ve thrown any gallant gestures bullshit out the window long ago and just given it to her.
I lifted her, shoving her up on the edge of the sink. She didn’t fight me. Her arms went around me and the blanket fell open. I ripped it aside and shoved myself between her bare thighs. Then I pulled her to me, holding her on the edge of the counter in her underwear—still damp and clinging to her and totally fucking see-through.
I leaned in to kiss her, but I didn’t. I pressed my forehead to hers and waited for her to come to me.
She did.
She smashed her mouth to mine. As I kissed her back she moaned, opening for me, and then I was inside her—my tongue stabbing deep into her mouth. Her nails dug into the back of my neck as she pulled me in. She sucked on my tongue and my brains pretty much fell out of my head. Her legs were tangled up around my waist and as we kissed, hot, frantic and messy, finding a wet, greedy rhythm, she started rubbing herself against the crotch of my jeans… and I lost it.
I grabbed her hips and ground the length of my throbbing cock against her clit, slowly, then started fucking it against her… like I could dry-hump her right into submission. She whimpered as her thighs fell open… as I rammed my cock against her again and again. She looked like she was on the brink of an Earth-shattering orgasm as her head fell back, her mouth open. A flush was creeping up her chest. Her tits were swollen in her bra, her nipples hard. And her pussy? Even through my jeans I could feel her, soft and swollen and needy; hungry for me.
“D’you… have a condom?” she rasped out, her gaze meeting mine… and the look in her glassy eyes was like an ice-cold vise on my dick.
What the fuck was I doing?
No, I didn’t have a condom. And no, I wasn’t gonna fuck her on the bathroom sink while she was wasted. Because then what? She’d be on a plane, and thanks for the fucking memories?
Dirty Like Brody: A Dirty Rockstar Romance (Dirty, Book 2) Page 10
