(Complete Rock Stars, Surf and Second Chances #1-5)

by Michelle Mankin

  Chapter Fifty-One

  * * *

  Linc

  We were all moving like sunglass wearing slugs the next morning except for Simone who incidentally was still not speaking to me. Not that I blamed her.

  My perfect goddess. I’d screwed up majorly with her last night. I told her repeatedly that I hadn’t slept with that girl. Why would I want to sleep with anyone else when I had her?

  I had just taken the celebration a little too far. We had made over five hundred dollars to add to the two hundred from the previous gig. And after the television thing aired we might make even more at the next stop. The money and all the attention was validation to me that I desperately needed. That the band really might make it and that my worries about taking care of Simone might be over.

  I hadn’t told her or anyone else also about the pain in my leg after the performance, an infirmity I despised and a reminder of everything I had lost. It had been throbbing like hell by the time we had exited the stage. I had no more pain pills so when the blonde had passed me the booze I had chugged it looking for relief.

  I was paying for my ill-advised self-medication.

  In more ways than one.

  I had learned my lesson. I would sit on the stool tonight and I would keep Simone close as soon as I got her to speak to me again.

  I put my aching head in my hands. “Got any Advil?” I asked Dominic.

  On the bench seat beside me he focused his polarized lenses my way but hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Ask Ramon. I gave him the bottle before we checked out of the motel this morning.”

  Turning my head gingerly, I looked in the back. Ramon was with the gear leaning against Ash’s snare case and was holding a chilled water bottle to his pain creased forehead. He looked as bad as I felt. Without me having to ask he tossed me the bottle. I caught it, shook out a few caplets and choked them down.

  I leaned my head against the window trying not to wince as the van lurched at each stop light. Simone and Ash were in the front and I heard them singing the lyrics to the tune the two of them had been working on at Patch’s house back in OB. I certainly didn’t like it that they were harmonizing together but I didn’t have the energy or the right to complain after the way I had acted last night.

  Feeling raw and regretful I zoned out for a bit. When I finally started to get some relief from the pounding inside my brain I refocused on my cousin and my girl just in time to hear her sweet laughter. I cracked open my red rimmed eyes only to immediately narrow them.

  Simone giggled again turning her head giving me a glimpse of her pretty profile and gifted a smile to Ash. Feelings of insecurity resurfaced and my guts churned, not from nausea now but from red hot jealousy. She was sitting entirely too close to him and they had been way too chummy all morning, the entire trip even.

  “Yes he did.” Ash flashed her a grin paying too little attention to the road and too much attention to her. “Looked like a lovelorn little puppy. I think he fell for you after that first time you met him on the beach.”

  Was he sharing confidences with Simone? I hadn’t been paying enough attention to their conversation. I gritted my teeth trying not to rise to the bait I think he was purposefully dangling. “Ok you guys. Yuck it up. Go ahead and have fun at my expense while I’m dying back here.”

  “Serves you right,” Ash said soberly. I knew he was saying a lot of things with just those three words. Our sunglassed gazes clashed in the rearview mirror.

  “I am aware.” I would have given him the one fingered salute but it would still hurt too much to move. After a lingering glance at Simone’s stiff shoulders and pretty profile annoyingly tipped toward Ash, I closed my eyes. I vowed once more to steer clear of Jim Beam and all his kin while determining to have another talk with Simone as soon as we reached the next stop.

  We arrived at the Best Western in Huntington Beach just after taking lunch at a diner back up the road. Simone’s orgasmic sounding moans as she’d eaten the deliciously crispy fries and slurped on her shake while sitting too far across the table from me had nearly driven me insane.

  The guys grabbed their boards to go to the beach across the street as soon as we parked. The fact that I couldn’t join them didn’t really bother me as much as it had previously. Right now I had a more pressing concern. I needed to make things right with her.

  “Simone.” I touched her arm softly and she jumped. Why was she so keyed up? What had she been thinking about standing beside the van with that faraway almost lost look in her eyes? “Stay at the motel. Talk to me.” Looking like that was the last thing she wanted to do, which hurt my heart, she glanced in the guys’ direction one more time before nodding.

  I could feel Ash’s gaze lingering on us but at the moment I didn’t care. She was my priority but later he and I were going to have words. He was getting entirely too friendly with my girl.

  Inside the indoor outdoor green carpeted motel room Simone flopped into the desk chair and fiddled with a laminated pizza takeout menu while continuing to avoid my gaze.

  “What can I do to make things right between us?” I asked kneeling in front of her and peering up at her. “Name it, babe, and I’ll do it.”

  “It’s not that simple, Linc.” Her hurt filled eyes focused on me. “I’m wondering now if I should have ever come on this trip in the first place. Since the boat everything seems to keep going wrong for us.” Her lips trembled and I felt regret churning in my gut even worse than it had before. “Maybe we should take the hint and call it quits before we hurt each other any worse than we already have.” She meant before I hurt her any more than I already had. When had she ever done anything wrong?

  But I was done screwing things up with her. I wanted to run away with her and our problems leaving the past and all its problems. But I knew I needed to stay and fix things in the here and now. So I compromised with myself, scooped her out of the chair and carried her to the bed pinning her beneath my body instead.

  “Linc, don’t,” she protested though her eyes darkened the way I was sure my own had as soon as I had her soft curves beneath me.

  “Yes, Mona.” I smoothed her silky hair back from her pretty face. “This. You and me. This is right. Perfect in fact. You just need a reminder.”

  “Not perfect. No relationship is perfect. You put me too high on a pedestal.” She looked away. “Sometimes I don’t think you keep things in perspective. And then we get into trouble because you think you don’t measure up. It’s just me, Linc. Accept my love. Leave the rest of the world and their expectations outside. Let’s just be together. Like it was before everything went wrong.” Her eyes when she slid them back to me held a glassy sheen and were no longer filled with passion the way I wanted them to be.

  “I love you, Linc. I really do. I wish you would take it to heart.” She framed my face with both hands fingers gliding over my features as if memorizing them…as if she were saying goodbye.

  I didn’t heed the subtle warnings. I didn’t hear the deeper meaning in her words though I remembered everything later when I had nothing left but time to analyze my mistakes. I just wanted to make her mine again and immediately set out to do just that.

  Peeling her tank over her head, asking her to lift up so I could unclasp her bra, tracing her breasts and teasing her by not touching the nipples until she begged me to, then sucking on them so hard she gasped and arched her back off the bed.

  “Yeah, babe. Just like that,” I praised, rewarding her and myself with languid swirls around her rosy nipples and harder licks across the peaks that made her moan and me groan as my dick jumped in approval.

  She was wrong. She was perfect. An erotic goddess. I couldn’t look at her let alone touch her without falling under her spell.

  Eyes heavy lidded, her hands under my shirt, her soft fingers sliding over my skin. I wiggled to help her remove it.

  Lowering my head I feasted on her lush cherry glossed mouth licking between the seam and plunging my tongue between to take possession slanting
my head one way and then the other until she writhed beneath me.

  “Linc,” she whispered when I switched angles her fingers laced deeply within my hair. “Linc. I love you.”

  I showed her I loved her too by sucking on her tits again. Hard and deep. No more gentleness. Just raw and rough passion until her breasts were completely red and her body was shuddering with the force of her need.

  Perfect, I decided though she denied it.

  “Shorts and everything off,” I ordered easing off the bed to quickly remove and fling aside my shorts and boxers. She had the comforter kicked aside, was naked and reaching for me with her shapely arms before I could get my knee back to the mattress.

  I complied with her beautiful unspoken request eagerly taking her lips again fusing my mouth to hers coaxing her to open wider and take my tongue deeper the way I planned to give her my cock soon.

  “Mona,” I bathed her kiss swollen parted lips with her name then the column of her neck as I moved down it. Her hands moved restlessly across my shoulders and kneaded muscles that bunched beneath the strain of holding back. I desperately wanted to be inside her, the two of us moving together in unison.

  But not yet. My goal was to make this perfect for her.

  I went back to her tits lapping the breast bone in between and nipping the puckered peaks until she reached down between our slickened bodies and grabbed my cock.

  “You ready for me, babe?” I queried in a low more beast than man rumble.

  “Yes.” She peered up at me from beneath her lowered lashes. So seductive.

  “Good. I’m ready for you, too, gorgeous.” I was always ready for her.

  Her hands covered mine as I caressed the soft skin of her inner thighs and gently parted them wider. She kept her heavy lidded eyes on mine as I positioned. She moaned as I sank my cock inside her until I was buried to the hilt.

  “You feel so good,” I told her. “So right. No place in the entire world I would rather be than here with you like this.”

  Her hands moved to my ass. Her eyes fluttered closed as I started to move but even without the visual reference within them her ecstatic expression confirmed that she felt exactly the same way as I did.

  There was no denying anything. No mistakes. No past. Just the present reality as we moved together. Her hips lifting to deepen my thrusts. Her moans making my rhythm even more frenzied. Her fingernails scoring my ass to urge me on.

  And then the hot implosion that started at the base of my spine. My cock stiffened and sublime pleasure hit me greater than any other high I had ever experienced. She made me feel better than anything in the world. Worthy. Valued. Loved. Better than I used to feel when on my board maxing out on a tube in a competition. Insecurities. Shortcomings. Doubts. They were silenced when I had her in my arms, when we were joined together like this. She was it. She was the one. She would always be the one.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  * * *

  Simone

  I hid my tear soaked cheeks in his neck. It had been so beautiful, every caress, every heated glance, each touch until the culmination proving his love.

  Hair hiding my face and skimming my breasts, I scurried off to the bathroom mumbling about getting cleaned up fast so he could have his turn.

  When I was done and we switched places he stopped me to brush a soft kiss across my still stubble abraded sensitive lips. I told him I loved him. Again. He didn’t need to tell me. He’d shown me. Thoroughly and completely.

  I located my discarded clothing and put it back on smoothing my hair and draping my towel over the chair to dry, before running my fingers reverentially over the spot on the bed that was still warm from our lovemaking. But even with all that evidence of how right things could be between us there were still those parts that felt wrong. Things I had tried to explain to him. Things I still thought he didn’t really understand. Things I had been ignoring for too long because I was so far gone for him.

  “Let’s go grab something to eat.” He emerged from the shower in a cloud of steam drying his hair on a towel that he tossed over mine when he was through.

  “Sure,” I agreed watching appreciatively as he bent to retrieve his clothing and also noting the red jagged scar on his leg. A grim reminder he would always carry, as if he could ever forget all that he had lost. To me it represented the beginning of the unraveling between us.

  Almost losing him.

  Getting him back.

  But not all of him I was coming to realize.

  Only the parts he allowed me to have.

  Not the lows he had fallen into after the accident.

  And not the highs of success either.

  Would he ever share the whole of him again?

  I took the hand he offered me trying not to cling too desperately to his fingers as he pulled the door closed and we hit the palm lined sidewalk above the beach toward town. There were a few vendors set up on the plaza in front of the pier when we got there. I bought him a skull ring from one insisting it was a necessity for his new rocker image. And he bought me a silver curb chain with our initials so I could be just as cool, his rocker chick.

  My eyes were misty by the time we got a couple of hot dogs and sat on a bench to eat them with the ocean laid out before us like a dispassionate void. The vast expanse of the Pacific once used to settle me and make my thoughts hopeful. Now it seemed capricious and untrustworthy like some aloof entity unmoved by our plight.

  I started to turn away from it when I noticed a couple of surfers bobbing side by side on their boards in the waves. They reminded me of Linc and Ash. Linc visibly stiffened when he noticed them and he tried to disguise the longing he felt, but it was obvious and my heart ached right along with him.

  “Outside,” the one on the right yelled to the other as a steep wave rose and curled over him.

  “What does that mean?” I asked Linc. I had heard the term before and wondered but had never had the opportunity to ask.

  “That there’s a good wave, a surf-able wave coming up behind you,” he answered his eyes still trained on the ocean. “Up to you to turn around and take it or get out of the way before it crashes over you.”

  I popped the last bite of hot dog in my mouth, chewed reflectively and mulled it over watching the surfers. When he finished eating he tossed our cardboard containers and the napkins we had used into the trash bin. I leaned my head against his shoulder as we headed back to the hotel trying to put aside my morose musings and allow the soothing ocean sounds to put my mind at ease.

  I frowned when Linc’s cell suddenly rang bursting our brief bubble of solitude.

  “Yeah,” Linc answered…Shit! You’re kidding?…No way…Ok…A block once we hit Main Street past the fountain…I got it. We’ll meet you there.”

  “Who was it?” I queried as soon as he hung up. “What’s going on?”

  “That was Ash. He said they’re surrounded by a group of fans at the motel. Apparently they saw the KABC feature and recognized our van. Kind of a unique vehicle. It sticks out if you’re looking for it. Guests at the hotel complained about the crowd. The cops are escorting the guys to the club. He said if we’re close it’ll be easier for us to meet them there.”

  “Ok.” I couldn’t quite believe it, but the evidence was hard to ignore. The power of the media had definitely taken our little known local band from OB and turned them into an overnight sensation.

  “That’s not all.”

  “Seriously?” I raised my brows.

  “Morris apparently is aware of all the coverage we’re getting. He told Ash he’s sent one of his AR guys to check us out. He’s bringing a video crew with him. They’re going to record us. If he likes what he sees and hears and if we can keep the momentum going Morris might come talk to us personally when we reach San Fran.”

  “Congratulations, Linc. That’s awesome news.” I was so happy for him. He’d been through so much bad. We both had. We were due a break. Tears sprang into my eyes and I launched myself at him throwing my arms ar
ound his neck as he spun us both around in a celebratory circle.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  * * *

  Linc

  Huntington Beach. We crossed the multilane Pacific Coast Highway at a stoplight holding hands. The self-proclaimed Surf City USA had huge two story surf shops at the beginning of its main drag and images of famous surfers stamped into the sidewalk we followed on the way to the club.

  I immediately understood why Ash had sounded freaked on the phone when the neon marquee of the Main Street Club came into view. Two news vans waited out front with their crews rolling footage of a crowd of fans holding handwritten Dirt Dogs signs. Mostly girls.

  I glanced at Simone to gauge her reaction. She glanced back at me just as stunned. “You think anyone will recognize me?” I posed the question but I didn’t get a chance to hear her answer. The video crew had spotted us and the screaming girls drowned out whatever she said.

  I wrapped my arm protectively around her shoulder as the crowd surrounded us pulling her close feeling her unease as were jostled, pinched and prodded under a near blinding light shining down on us from a handheld pole. I continued to press forward in the direction I hoped was the entrance to the club.

  When we made it to a velvet rope, the stern faced club bouncer stepped around us and glared at the crowd while opening the glass door for us. I grabbed Simone’s ice cold hand and pulled her inside.

  “Holy shit!” I exclaimed while looking at her. “Can you believe this?”

  Eyes wide she shook her head.

  “He’s here.” A girl with a French braid and wire rimmed glasses spoke into a hand held walkie talkie then motioned for us to follow her. Down a long ramp and through a narrow corridor we went until we reached a door with the club’s name on it. She knocked on it twice before pushing it open. The guys were all inside looking excited rather than shaken like we were.