Hard Rock Roots Box Set (84 page)

I take a step forward and start to untie my robe. I need to shower, but … I think I need to be with Turner first. And not just because I flooded the basement between my thighs.

“Dax is such an emo bitch,” Turner says, lifting his chin up and breathing out. The star tattoos at the edges of his hairline draw my fingers like magnets and before I know it, the robe is gaping open and I'm straddling Turner's legs, running my hands through his hair. I kiss his forehead like my lips are possessed, drawn to the taste of ink in his skin. Doesn't hurt that he smells like vanilla soap and shampoo. “He wants you so bad it makes my dick hurt. He's got a rager for days on you, Knox.”

“It's Naomi,” I correct him as his hands slide up the backs of my thighs, teasing my dry, dirty flesh with his hot, wet skin. His head presses up against my breasts while the lines of our bodies connect with a sizzle. “And what Dax does is none of your business.” I scoot back a bit, not liking how heavy this is getting so fast. Turner's emotions are clawing at me with rigid fingers, desperate for some sort of consolation. I don't mind being that for him. God knows I find him attractive, but I can't ever forget that one, little detail. Not ever again.

“Condom?” I ask and Turner's face goes white as a sheet. He grabs onto my hips and pushes me back a step, rising to his feet and stumbling over to our pile of clothes on the floor. I follow him with my gaze, checking out the firm roundness of his ass as he bends down and starts digging through the fabric. So much for the ultra prepared bad boy act. “No balloons left in party city, Turner?” I snap, trying not to be mean. This intimate stuff is not easy for me; the last thing I want to be doing is standing here looking around for a stupid sheet of latex for his mystical divining rod. That wild, frenzied moment onstage was a freak mistake born of fear and uncertainty. I'm still paranoid about it. I can't get pregnant again, not ever. Just the thought is almost enough to dry up the downstairs.

“FUCK!” Turner screams, throwing his pants against the wall and climbing to his feet. He looks around the room frantically and snaps his fingers. “One sec,” he says, grabbing the doorknob and starting to open it. His momentum slows dramatically and then he's just slamming the door and leaning his forehead against it, struggling to breathe. I stare at the
Naomi Isabelle Knox
tattoo on his back, let myself get absorbed into it. When I close my eyes, I can almost feel the chair beneath me, the needle against my ankle. Turner sat there the whole time, watching me with half-lidded eyes, smiling. Sure, he was more fucked up than a crack baby off the bottle, but there was something there. I knew it then just like I know it now.

“What's wrong, Turner?” I ask, feeling awkward as shit standing there while he has some sort of breakdown completely nude. We're not fucking husband and wife. We're not anything yet really.
Yet, yet, yet.
I sit down on the edge of the bed.

“Might seem stupid to you,” he says, turning around and licking his lips, brushing some wet hair from his forehead. Turner reaches up and touches the piercings on his mouth for a moment before storming across the room and disappearing into the bathroom. I watch as he pauses in the mirror and pulls out both piercings, tossing them into the soap dish with an angry hand. The red plugs in his earlobes come out next. I have no idea what he's doing until I see him start to wash them.
Checking for blood, I think. Or just having a man-trum.
I'm not entirely sure.

“What's stupid, Turner?” I ask as I stare at him, feeling a sudden wash of fatigue burn straight through me, tugging down my eyelids and making my limbs feel heavy. I stand up and throw the robe to the floor, reaching out for the covers and tugging them down. I stare at the white sheets with sudden tears building in my eyes. And I have no fucking clue where they're coming from. Sexual frustration, maybe? I dash them away with a snarl and flop into the bed, sitting up and crossing my arms over my tits.

“When I need a condom and I don't know where any are,” he starts and then pauses, pushing away from the sink and stalking out of the bathroom, all haughty and arrogant again. Like I've said before – picture book. This dude flips pages like a children's book. Happy here, pissed off there. It's enough to give me a headache. “I go to Trey. I talk to Trey.” He slaps one hand against the other for emphasis, snarling out the words. “I always ask Trey.” And then he pauses and moves across the room, snatching the curtains in his hands and throwing them together like they're two rivals at war.

“I'm sorry, Turner,” I say with a sigh. I'm trying here; I really am. But this is all new territory for me. I hope he understands that. “I'm sure somebody has one. I'll … ” I almost choke on the words.
God, this is so weird. I don't have adult conversations like this with people. I just don't. I meet up with random guys and we screw real quick. I don't need to look for condoms because they always have them. If they don't, we don't fuck.
“I know Trey's really important to you.”

He spins to face me, chest heaving, cock hard as sin. My eyelids flutter. I want it
so
bad, but no glove, no fucking love. I try not to groan in disappointment.

“When you were missing, I believed you'd come back.” Turner points at his chest with a fierce finger, jaw clenched tight, breath coming in quick bursts. “I believed when nobody else did, and now … Trey. I have to believe he's going to be alright, even though nobody else does.” Turner puts his hands up to his face and snarls, making this wild cry of frustration in his throat that does absolutely everything for me. It's like one of his stage sounds mixed with real, honest to God, human emotion.

“Turner, come here,” I tell him, moving the blankets aside and trying to feel the sting of the air against my skin. Whenever I'm with Turner, I can
feel
my nakedness like it's on radar. I can't just walk around with him in the room and not care about the skin I'm showing. His gaze is like fire and his touch is molten. The sexual tension between us won't go away, no matter how hard or how often we fuck. It's always there, boiling beneath the surface, getting ready to singe and sear and cauterize. I shiver, but it's not fucking cold. I shiver because when the bed dips and he climbs into it, my body goes nuts and attempts to perform a coup against my brain.

He slides in next to me, but doesn't touch me, just scoots down and puts one of his hands under his head, gazing at me with shimmering darkness in his brown eyes. My throat closes up, and I find it hard to breathe. I want to wrap my body around him, feel him moving deep inside of me, teasing my hot flesh, igniting that spark into an all out explosion.

“I've never been cock blocked by a fucking condom before,” Turner whispers and there, right there.
Angel.
My heart stops and my skin gets tight, like it's been pulled across my flesh and stretched so taut I can't move. He looks like an angel again. This has got to be the most emotionally vulnerable I've ever seen this man, this devil, this fuckin' rock star with a hard ass and a bad friggin' attitude. I touch my fingers to his cheek and blurt it out before I can stop myself, running my hand down his face and across his full lips.

“You look like a fucking angel.”

As soon as the words are out, I feel better. Honesty. I guess it all comes down to honesty. No wonder Turner's such a blabber mouth dumb shit. He just blurts whatever he feels whenever he feels it, and while there are all sorts of things wrong with that, it must make him feel pretty damn good. The cocky arrogance makes a whole lot more sense to me now.

As soon as he hears this, he smiles. And he doesn't look like an angel anymore. Turner looks downright wicked.

“You're only saying that because my dick's not singing to your sweet spot.” He crawls towards me, draping his upper body over my midsection, closing his eyes like he's fighting hard not to just grab me and fuck me. Good for him because if he tried, I'd have to break his balls off.
Never again. That can't happen ever again.
I take a massive breath and hold the air in my lungs, focusing on the back of Turner's neck and the paw print tattoos there, the feel of his stubble against my belly. We're both pretty experience rich but life poor, you know what I mean? I've tried drugs most people have never even heard of, fucked more people than I remember, took human lives. But I don't know anything about having a relationship. I've never slept with the same person this many times in a row. And I've definitely never had a guy rest his head on my bare belly before. To think the first man I'd ever let into my life like this would be Turner Campbell. Hah, if you'd asked me a month ago if I'd see myself here, I would've spit in your face. “If I was inside of you,” he whispers, his lips brushing against my skin. “You wouldn't be saying that. You'd be calling me a demon from hell.” He grins against my belly and slides down, scooting between my legs.

“Turner,” I warn him, but he just looks up at me from under a fall of wet blue-black hair, brown eyes twinkling.

“I wouldn't do anything you didn't want me to,” he says, sliding his fingers along the pale skin on my inner thighs, opening me up. “Thought you might've figured that out by now, you stupid bitch.” I reach down and grab a handful of hair, lifting his face up, studying Turner with critical eyes. Eventually, he's going to cut and run. Eventually, if I let him in, he's going to destroy me from the inside out. I feel a frown tugging at my mouth. One day, I'm going to walk in and find him balls deep in some bitch with a wannabe rocker do and a small tattoo of a turtle on her fucking ankle that she thinks makes her all hardcore and shit.

“I said I loved you, Turner,” I tell him and my voice catches sharply in my throat. “But I never said I could trust you.” He growls at me and sits up on his knees, looking down at me with a face I can't decipher. All the things I said to him before were true: I
do
respect him. But I also told him I didn't think he understood love. And I meant that, too. I don't know if he has the skills or the self-discipline to really go through with something like this. Or maybe I'm just horny and pissed the hell off.

“Why?” he asks, sounding exasperated, running a hand through his hair. I don't really want to get into this, not with the whole Trey thing, not with the giant shit storm swirling above our motherfucking heads. I'd rather not drown in a diarrhea bath of lies and bullshit. I scoot out from underneath him and grab his shoulders. At first he doesn't want to budge, but I push a little, knowing he doesn't have much left in him for today. Seeing his friend, basically his brother, get shot like that was not easy on him.

“Just relax,” I whisper in his ear, guiding his head back down to the pillows. “And we'll talk about this later.”

“Yeah?” he asks, getting smug, even as his eyes droop. “You gonna suck me off, baby? Better get used to that down there. He is all fucking yours.” I roll my eyes and settle down between his knees, watching his face as he relaxes completely, just lets himself go right there beneath me without a single fucking doubt in his tiny pea sized brain.

Frankly, I don't fucking understand it. All I know is that when I get ready to go down on him, I hear him start to snore and know that he's already asleep.

When I wake up, it's dark outside, and it throws me for a fucking loop. I panic momentarily and end up shoving Turner off of me as I stumble out of bed and grab onto the lampshade for support, nearly knocking the whole damn thing to the floor along with the phone and the alarm clock.

“Shit!” I snarl, steadying myself, shoving everything back into place. I flick the light on and glance over at the bed. Turner's still sleeping, lying on his back with his junk wide open for all to see. I think he was
snuggling
me or some shit. I shiver and touch my hands to my body, to my warm skin and the sudden feeling of cold that's sweeping over and through me. Cuddling. With a man. Not my usual thing. I snatch the cigarettes off the nightstand and light up, turning the digital clock around to face me. Ten in the evening. Jesus and shit fuck. We slept the whole day away. Shouldn't be a surprise, I guess, considering what we went through, but it just feels wrong. Waking up here without the sound of generators and shouting roadies and freaking angst being spread on the wind like a disease.

When I pause and listen carefully, I can hear crickets outside and beyond that, the nearly incomprehensible concept of pure, unadulterated silence. Silence. Silence. No cars, no people, no machinery. Just woods and dirt and empty star filled sky. I shiver and shake my head, making my way over to the door and peeping out. Ronnie's coming out of his room at the exact same time, pausing when he sees my head sticking out from behind the door. He's clean and showered, but he looks a hundred times worse than he did a week ago.

“Bad news?” I ask quickly as he leans down and grabs his bag from the floor in the hallway. Mine's here, too. And Turner's. Good ol' Spencer. I forgot how much I liked having her around. Now if we could just get our blood splattered bus back from evidence, it'd be like home sweet home all over again. Ronnie shakes his head, wet hair slapping against his gaunt face and ashen skin.