by HELEN HARDT
“Oh, God, baby,” he rasped. “Can’t take it. Need you.” He pulled me toward him. “Take off your shorts. Quickly.”
I obeyed, and he lifted me in his strong arms and set me on his hard cock. My back was braced against the wall as he thrust into me. My nipples strained through my camisole, aching for his touch, abrading against the silky fabric.
And he thrust.
And he thrust.
And he thrust.
“Heather”—thrust—“Heather”—thrust—“Fuck. Heather.”
He filled every part of me, even the emptiest most inner parts of my soul.
My orgasm crept up quickly, and I exploded around him, crying out in loud moans.
“That’s right, baby. Come all over me. That’s ri— Fuck!” He thrust into me, my shoulder hitting a nail in the wall and nicking me, but I didn’t care. It all added to the profuse pleasure skyrocketing through me as the man I loved fucked me into oblivion.
The man I loved…
He had come to me.
Come back for me.
He leaned against me, his breath loud and heavy in my ear for a few moments before he spoke.
“Heather,” he said huskily, “I have to know. Did you hear me the other night? The last time we were together?”
My body thrummed with desire. What was he talking about? “What?” I choked out.
“I said something to you. Something serious. You didn’t respond.”
“I’m…sorry, Jett. I don’t remember anything unusual.”
“Jeremy, damn it. Call me Jeremy.”
“Okay. Jeremy.”
“I said I loved you, Heather. I fucking said I loved you, and you didn’t respond.”
My knees wobbled, and he grabbed my arm to steady me.
“You l-love me?” I whispered.
“I thought I felt something from you too. Thought I saw it in your eyes, but when you didn’t respond—”
“Oh my God. I love you too. I love you so much!” I hurled myself back into his arms.
How had I missed a declaration of love?
“Thank God,” he said against my hair. “I was so afraid—”
I pulled away. “I’m so sorry I didn’t hear it. I never thought…in a million years… You seemed so unattainable. You’ve had so many women. You could have whomever you want.”
“I want you, Heather. Only you.”
“Oh my God.” I sighed.
“I haven’t led the most virtuous life. I know that. But is there any way you might be able to—”
I pressed my fingertips to his lips. “I love you. I had to push it aside because I didn’t think you could possibly… How could anyone not love you?”
He smiled slightly. “No one has ever loved me, other than my mother and my brother. Not the way I want to be loved.”
“You know that’s not true. Your fans love you.”
“They love Jett. I want to be loved as Jeremy.”
“Well, I love you both. Jett is part of Jeremy, and you’re both wonderful. You did something amazing for me.”
“Oh?” He waggled his eyebrows.
“Something other than that. When I met you, I had decided to quit writing, to give up on my dream. You convinced me not to.”
“I did?”
“You did. Your love of music and your drive to succeed however you could… It really moved me. I quit the diner, and I’ve been working on ways to make my writing pay. I may not be writing for the big screen now, but I can write other things. I can still pursue my love. That’s because of you.”
“I think that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me, Heather. God, I love you.”
“And I love you. With my whole heart, my whole soul.”
He smiled. “And with that beautiful body of yours?”
“Whenever you want. But what about Alicia? She told me to stay away from you.”
“Screw Alicia,” he said. “Alicia doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Works for me.” I fingered his tattoo. “I’ve always wondered about this. It’s beautiful work.”
“I got it before I left for LA. My brother got the same one. It was… This might sound corny to you.”
“No it won’t. I think it’s wonderful that you and your brother are close.”
“We are. But the tattoo means more. There’s a lot I need to tell you about that. And you may change your mind about me.”
“I won’t,” I said. “I know about Alicia.”
“You know she helped me. What you don’t know is that—”
“You fucked her a few days ago.” The words popped out of my mouth. “She told me.”
“She’s a known liar, but I have fucked her many times. It meant nothing to me. As for a few days ago, she only thinks I fucked her. I actually blindfolded her and used a dildo. I couldn’t get hard for her, Heather. I despise her. But even without the despising, I’m not sure I can ever get hard for another woman again. You’re all I want.”
His words warmed me, and I cupped his crotch.
Granite met my palm.
“Exhibit A,” he said. “I just had you, and you’ve got me hard again.”
I couldn’t help a sly smile.
But he pushed my hand away and buttoned his pants. “I have to tell you some stuff first. News is going to come out about me and my family. My career might take a hit, though I’ve already got my publicity team on it.”
“What kind of news?”
He cleared his throat. “I’m just going to come right out with it. I gave my brother an alibi seven years ago when he inadvertently killed a man.”
I clamped my hand to my mouth.
“It was an accident, and there were extenuating circumstances. But Alicia found out about it and has been blackmailing me for the last several years to keep me under her thumb.”
“She’s even more of a bitch than I thought,” I said.
“She’s a miserable human being,” he said. “But she’s irrelevant now. My brother went to the DA and he cut a deal. I’m not in any trouble, and I owe my brother everything.”
“Sounds like maybe you owe each other everything.”
He smiled, running his fingers lightly over the lion on his upper arm. “You’re wonderful. Do you know that?”
“No more wonderful than you are, especially to save your brother the way you did.”
“It’s a long story,” he said, “but we have all night. You want another glass of wine?”
I smiled. “Later. Like you said, we have all night. Right now I want you to take me to bed. I want to make love with the man I’m hopelessly in love with.”
“I want that too, baby. For the rest of our lives.” He swooped me into his arms, and we headed into my bedroom.
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Acknowledgments
I’ve always fantasized about being a rock star, and I still love covering Joan Jett and Chrissie Hynde on karaoke nights. Living in that world for this fictional party was a lot of fun!
Many thanks to my editor, Celina Summers, my line editor, Scott Saunders, and my proofreaders, Lia Fairchild, Jessica Robinson, and Chrissie Saunders. You all know how to make my work shine, and it’s always better for your efforts.
Thank you to Meredith, Jon, and David at Waterhouse Press for asking me to write in this series, and to the rest of the Waterhouse team—Robyn, Yvonne, Jesse, Kurt, Haley, Jeanne, and Jennifer—for doing your part.
Most of all, thank you to my street team, Hardt and Soul, and to all my other readers. I hope you have as much fun reading Misadventures with a Rock Star as I had writing it!
Don’t miss the new Blood Bond Saga!
Blood Bond Saga: 1
Available August 21, 2018
Keep reading for an excerpt!
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Misadventures with a Rock Star?
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Excerpt from Blood Bond Saga: 1
Lust rolled through me. I stood against a sink in the men’s room where Erin—that’s what the other guy had called her—had pushed me, and I glanced in the mirror.
My jaw dropped. I looked like a wild man, my hair in disarray, several days’ growth of dark beard on my jawline, blood drying on my cheeks and chin. But that in itself wasn’t what astounded me. The last time I’d seen my reflection, an eighteen-year-old high school student had stared back at me. Now I was looking at a man’s jaw, a man’s profile, a man’s beard. The skin around my eyes showed slight signs of age, a few wrinkles here and there. My front teeth no longer had a gap between them. They’d moved together somehow. Maybe when my wisdom teeth had erupted. I remembered the pain when they broke through my gums, pain that had seemed like nothing after what I’d been through.
So long ago now…as if they were only fuzzy memories from a dream. Or a nightmare.
Still, I was a mess. I was lucky she hadn’t run screaming.
Instead, she was trying to help me. Help I didn’t deserve after desecrating her blood bank. Who was she? And why hadn’t she responded to my attempt to glamour her?
Her scent had intoxicated me. She was one of them—the humans with dark hair and fair skin, whose blood tasted better than the most exotic nectar. Her eyes were a light green, almost as light as a peridot, and they sparkled with fire and ice simultaneously.
My gums began to tingle once more. Just the thought of Erin’s blood awakened my urge to feed.
I’d gorged on the bagged blood, enough that I should have been sated. I couldn’t go back for more. Someone would have been notified to clean up by now.
More bagged blood wouldn’t help anyway. I wanted her blood.
I tried to push the hunger from my mind and concentrate on something more important.
I was free.
Unchained from the shackles that had bound me for so many years.
So why did I still feel like I was imprisoned?
I was still in New Orleans. Was my family still here? Dad? Em? River? Uncle Braedon? Grandpa Bill? Bill might be over a hundred years old by now. He could very well be gone.
Even if they were still here, I had no idea how to get in touch with them.
Erin. Erin was my only chance.
What if she forgot? Didn’t come back for me?
I resisted the urge to lick the dried blood from my face and hands—it wouldn’t satisfy me anyway—and furiously scrubbed at them.
Erin.
I needed her blood. I needed her.
I’d felt it. She needed something from me as well. I wasn’t sure what, but I’d felt the tug. She wanted to touch me. Couldn’t stop herself from putting her hand on my skin, even though I must have looked like an animal after a kill with blood streaming from my lips.
I’d brushed her away, for fear I’d lose the last thread of self-control keeping me from lunging toward her, sinking my teeth into her soft flesh, and taking from her the sustenance I craved.
Hunger still clawed at me. Not just for Erin’s blood, but for Erin herself. My groin tightened.
Not again.
I willed the erection down. Couldn’t go there. Not now. I’d had erections during captivity and no way to release, with my hands always bound. I certainly had no way to release now. How long had I been gone? I had no idea. Only that it had been years. Many, many years.
Erin had told me to stay put, that she’d come back for me. Could I trust her? Why would she want to help me?
I had to get out of here. If I stayed in one place for too long, I risked being tracked by her. Vampires had no scent to each other, but we had other ways of keeping tabs. I had no doubt she had the ability to find me.
I grasped the edge of the sink, steadying myself.
I pulled against the leather restraints. “Who the hell are you? Why am I here?”
The woman was dazzling…in a terrifying way. She was masked, except for her icy blue eyes. When she smiled, her fangs were already long and sharp.
“Don’t you recognize your queen, Dante?”
She was delusional. We recognized the government of the places we lived. In this case, the United States of America, which didn’t have a queen.
My clothes were gone. I lay naked, my wrists and ankles shackled to a table. Or was it a bed?
“So young and beautiful. I can smell the testosterone flowing through you, turning your boy’s body into a man’s. How old are you? Sixteen? Seventeen?”
I was eighteen. A late bloomer, something I found pretty embarrassing. My cousin, River, who was a month younger than I, had matured before I had. My voice had finally changed two years ago, which was the signal that a male vampire had become fertile.
“You are no queen,” I said through clenched teeth. “Let me go.”
She laughed. “You will recognize me as your queen soon enough.”
“Let me go!” I demanded once more. “My father will come for me. My uncle. My grandfather. They are more powerful than you could ever hope to be.”
She snarled, her fangs bared. “They’re already on their way, sweet one. Something I was counting on.”
A thud pulled me out of the nightmare.
I’d fallen to the hard tile floor.
That horrible night, so long ago, when I’d awakened in her dungeon.
Escape. I needed to flee now. Erin had promised to help, but I couldn’t wait. Not when she could already be on my trail. I left the men’s room with my face and hands now clean, but my clothes were a different matter. They were tattered—they’d come from a homeless man, after all—and covered in blood. I sneaked down a hallway until I found a locker room. I traded what I was wearing for a pair of jeans that were slightly small on me and a black hoodie. I didn’t like stealing, but I had no choice.
I raced around, looking for the back door where I’d entered.
No! A pull. Erin was mentally tugging me toward something. Something I’d seen before.
I ambled into the emergency room, trying to look inconspicuous, when something tight wrapped around my wrist, and I flinched. I rubbed at it, but found only the calluses from the leather bindings I had finally left behind.
Then I saw it.
A man on a gurney had grabbed Erin’s wrist. The need to protect her hurled into me like a cyclone. I inhaled, yet I smelled only Erin’s scent. But I recognized the man.
“Why won’t he let go?” Erin asked, pleading.
“I don’t know.” A woman in a white coat was looking into the man’s eyes with a flashlight or something. “Pupils are dilated. We need to take some blood for a drug panel.”
I knew what to do. I quickly walked toward the gurney and gazed into the homeless man’s eyes, letting go of the glamour that had been holding the homeless man since I’d run from the cop earlier. In my hurry to get away, I hadn’t released him.
The doctor was too involved in her work to notice me, but when the man closed his eyes and let go of Erin’s hand, she looked up.
“You!” she said.
I turned and walked swiftly toward the first door I could find.
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Continue Reading the Blood Bond Saga
Q & A with Helen Hardt
What did you love most about writing this story?
Misadventures are fun and erotic stories. I had just completed the Steel Brothers Saga, which was a very dark, intense, and suspenseful series. Writing Misadventures with a Rock Star was just the break I needed. It’s still signature Helen Hardt style—fast-paced, suspenseful, and sexy—but I got creative and added a little kink!
Typewriter, laptop, or pen & paper?
Laptop while sitting in my recliner.
Where is your favourite place to write?
With my laptop in my recliner!
What word or expression do you most overuse?
Oh my, there are a lot of them! Beautiful is a big one. I always have to do a search and replace for that one.
What’s y
our all-time favourite adjective?
Probably beautiful, since I tend to overuse it!
If your book(s) were to become a movie, who would you like to see star in it?
Enrique Iglesias would make a great Jett (though he’d have to get some hair extensions.) For Heather, Sophie Turner with her natural auburn hair.
When did you realize you wanted to become an author?
When I was six years old and wrote my first story.
Do you believe in writer’s block?
No, I don’t. I don’t believe in a muse, either. If you want to become a success in this industry, you must consider writing a job that you need to do every day. It’s just like any other job. You go to work each day, even if you’re not feeling it. You sit down, put your hands on that keyboard, and you do your job. Honestly, I sometimes get my best work when I have no idea where I’m going but I just sit down and make myself do my job.
Do you listen to music while you write?
Not usually. A lot of authors do, but I prefer to write in silence.
Whom would you want to write your life story?
I’d write it myself. Who knows me better than I do?
What do all writers have in common?
I’m not sure we necessarily have anything in common. We’re all unique individuals who write for our own reasons.
