LOW: A Rockstar Romance (42 page)

The sight of the bed inspired a Pavlovian yawn response. I rummaged in my suitcase until I found my pajamas and fell into bed.

I shifted, pulled, yanked the covers over my head. Then I uncovered myself with a sigh.

I was too keyed up. Tired and wired at the same time. And as much as I needed a nap, I needed to pee first.

I turned out of the room and went to the end of the hallway. The door way halfway opened and I could see the tile floor, so I pushed in blindly.

"Oh, shit!" I screamed. Then my mouth went dry.

He had just stepped from the shower, his body still glistening with droplets of water. Instead of covering his cock, he rubbed the towel through his hair, which was electric blue and doing disconcerting things to his eyes.

"Hey, Bit," Jax drawled with a wicked grin.

Chapter Eight

Jax

After the debacle at the studio, the only thing that kept me from running to the bottle was the fact that Bit was flying in today. I was looking forward to it way more than I would ever admit. I pictured her clearly in my mind, even had a quick jerk in the shower thinking about her tight, tiny body that was just shaped perfectly for my hands.

So I was feeling pretty good when I stepped out of the shower.

And there was Lily, standing there in the middle of the bathroom. She was dressed in purple flannel pajamas and had murder in her eyes.

"Hey, Bit." I smiled.

That only seemed to piss her off more. "Could you please cover that up?" She gestured to my cock.

And even though this was not the reunion I had pictured, I couldn't help it. I laughed. A pissed off Bit was always my biggest weakness. When she got angry, it always reminded me of a tiny, ferocious kitten ready to pounce. All fluffy fur and needle-sharp claws. You couldn't help but provoke it.

"Why? You don't look like you've had your fill yet." I smirked, stretching up to towel off my mostly dry hair. "It's been so long since you've seen it, and all."

Her big brown eyes practically bugged out of her skull. She was just so damn adorable with those wide-set eyes and little doll lips just aching to be kissed until they were bruised and swollen.

Speaking of swollen…

"Are you seriously getting
hard
right now?"

I looked down. "No. Not
getting
." If she would just stop being so damn insulted by my very presence, maybe I'd be able to calm down. Self-loathing makes for interesting fetishes. "I'm completely hard. Shouldn't be, though, because I totally took care of things in the shower." I grinned at her and waggled my eyebrows. "Thinking about seeing you again got me all fired up."

"You're disgusting."

"You ever do that, Bit?" I pressed. I couldn't seem to stop pissing her off. Damn my addiction. "Touch yourself while you remember me?"

"No!" she shot back fast. Too fast. The tips of her ears were red.

My Bit was lying to me.

"Don't lie, Bit. You can still have it. It's right here, waiting for you."

I meant it as a joke, another jab to provoke her, but her eyes went down the second I suggested she look. Like she was waiting for permission.

She made a noise of disgust, all the while staring at my cock like it had insulted her dead mother. But staring nonetheless. And with a jolt, I was taken back to how it used to be with us. Her wild noises, the way she squirmed when she got close, her wide-eyed, mute adoration that made me feel like a fucking god among men.

No,
now
I was hard.

"Liliana." I said her real name, not the nickname that I had given her, that everyone had immediately adopted because it just suited her so well. I wanted to touch her face, feel her soft skin warm under my fingertips again. Every girl I had been with since she left was just an exercise in trying to forget. But my body hadn't forgotten at all. I knew exactly how she would feel if I touched her now.

"Jaxson." She still sounded pissed, but this time more at herself. She shook her head, and then her whole body. "Would you please cover that thing up? And get out of the bathroom, I have to pee."

Chapter Nine

Liliana

I finished and yanked my underwear back up again, the damp fabric clinging unpleasantly to my legs. Goddamn Jax. Seeing him step out of the shower had done nothing to soothe the ache between my legs. I felt so empty down there it was like a crater had opened up.

I stuck my head out of the bathroom and triple-checked the hallway before sprinting back to my room and slamming the door closed. My heart was hammering in my throat and a pulse pounded between my legs.

Oh my God. Oh my God oh my God oh my God.

A year ago, I was certain that eighteen-year-old Jaxson Blue was the sexiest man on the planet.

I was wrong.

Nineteen-year-old Jaxson Blue was.

While I was gone, he had worked his already perfect body into rangy perfection. The taut belly I had kissed so ardently was now sculpted into the ridges and valleys of a perfect six pack. The shoulders I had clung to were broader, the back I had scratched my nails down was stronger. The jawline I had nibbled was more defined and the smooth skin I had worshipped was spider webbed in new ink.

His cock, though—that was exactly how I had remembered it. Heavy and long, with that wicked little curve at the end. And the little wink of metal from his Prince Albert. The way that had felt as it slipped inside of me…

The sight of it nearly brought me to my knees, making me fear that once I was down there, instinct would take over.

I groaned out loud and buried my head in my pillow. Suddenly my whole body seemed overly sensitive. The brush of my flannel pajamas against my breasts was enough to make my nipples tighten. The seam of my pants pressed achingly against my throbbing clit.

It doesn't mean anything,
I told myself as my fingers wandered downward.
It's just fantasy. It's not real.

But hot slickness my fingers found was all too real. With a moan, I squeezed my hand tightly in my thighs, imagining Jax’s mouth down there. He used to love eating me out, spreading me wide wherever he could pin me and making me shriek. I shivered as I remembered the way his shoulders would bulge as he pressed against the inside of my thighs, eyes closed, that little mmm-ing noise he made that made me feel utterly delicious.

I flopped over onto my back and arched upward. There was no warm chest above me, no lips against my ear, whispering filthy, wonderful promises, but I was a writer—I could imagine it. Perfect fucking recall, down to the last detail. I could indulge in a little reminiscing and
it didn't need to mean a thing, right?

My orgasm came fast and breathless and aching. I gritted my teeth, panting as the tremors ricocheted through me.

And then it was gone.

And instead of sating me, it just left me frustrated and wanting the real, blue-haired thing.

I yanked my hand out of my pajama pants with disgust.
Really, Liliana? Jilling off as soon as you see him? You're fucking pathetic.

I tugged on my jeans and threw on a halter top, intending to rush back to the bathroom and wash my hands, get the smell of my desperation off of me.

Instead I opened the door and nearly ran smack into the source of my desperation's now-clothed chest.

"Jax, what the hell are you doing here?" I shrieked, jumping away from him like he had electrocuted me. He may as well have.

He lowered the hand he clearly had raised to knock on my door. If I could die from blushing, I would have welcomed it.
Kill me now. Just let the big California earthquake hit right at this moment so the earth swallows me up and I don't have to look him in the eye.

Jax raised an eyebrow. Fuck, he wanted to tease me. I braced myself, hiding my hands behind my back. Hiding the evidence.

But instead he sighed and straightened his shoulders. "That wasn't how that was supposed to go." Goddamn him, he actually looked sheepish. In his white button-down and low-slung jeans, he couldn't have been more delicious than if he’d tried. His lips always had the sweetest curve, an exaggerated Cupid's bow that would've looked feminine on any other face, but on his, it only made the curve of his mouth more tantalizing.

"How what was supposed to go?" I was still out of breath. And knowing Jaxson and his preternatural ability for sniffing out my weaknesses, he could probably smell my orgasm still lingering about me.

"Our first meeting."

I leaned against the doorframe and crossed my arms. "No, I'd say that was about normal."

"Why do you always assume I'm being an ass?"

"Because you usually are?

He looked wounded a second. Then I immediately recognized the twisted curl of his lip that he did whenever he was trying to hide irritation. "So, how are you?"

I clenched my fists. "How am I?"

His eyes blazed. "Yes. How are you? It's a simple fucking question, really."

I hated him. "I'm jetlagged and irritable. I don't want to be here, and my soon-to-be stepbrother won't leave me the hell alone. How do you think I am?"

He grinned. "I'd say that was about normal.”

"Real nice."

"Oh, would you stop being so damned
prickly
all the time?"

"Me?" I wanted to shove him, but that would mean I had to touch him, and I couldn't trust myself with that. "You're the one who's giving me shit!"

"I'm trying not to!" he exploded and for a moment there I saw genuine frustration. Then the cocky sneer returned. "Time to go to dinner. Annie commands." He turned, his eyes already on his phone.

Chapter Ten

Jax

Two for two.

Actually, if you're counting my record in fucking things up with Liliana Nesbit, those two encounters were nothing in comparison with how badly I’d fucked things up in the past. But still, twice in the same day, the first day I saw her in a year… that was pretty incredible.

So I had gone and picked a fight with her. When all I wanted to do was sweep her into my arms and cover her in kisses and promises of never letting her go.

I am an idiot.

I pounded down the grand staircase of my mom's stupid trophy house, making as much noise as I could. I wanted to smash my feet right through the floor, so something else was as fucked up as I felt.

Yeah, I never finished high school. Yeah, I wasn't much of a reader. Maybe I was pretty dumb, but in all of the weird excitement about this sham wedding, it never really occurred to me what it meant to my life. I was just happy it had forced Lily to come back home so I could see her, mess with her, have her close by to torture me, whatever the fuck I was playing at here. Pick things up where we left off, before my idiot ego ruined everything. I just wanted things to be how they were supposed to be: me and my Bit against the world.

In all of that, I never considered that our relationship would change through no fault of my own for once.

Her dad was marrying my mom.

She was going to be my
sister.

I suddenly hated my mother. More than before. And fucking Nails too, the tumor that he was. Glommed on to my mom for a decade and only bothered to put a ring on her finger now, after all this time, after Bit and I… fuck.

I wanted to destroy something.

I rounded the corner into the big dining room with the table with mismatched chairs. My mother had more money than God, but she still insisted on living like a college student. Like it gave her "cred" with all these yes men and hangers on that surrounded us at all times, leaving no room for privacy.

That disgusted me too.

I grabbed the ratty wicker back chair at the head of the table and brought it smashing down to the floor. The splintery crash echoed through the big, empty house.

I heard the squeak of a sneaker and waited. They were going to come running soon, all of them. Greg and Bash and Diggs and all of those guys that were always staying over here, surrounding my mother like a flock of pothead butlers. Bash would mostly likely get here first and get pissed at me, possibly even take a halfhearted swing. That was what I needed, a fucking fight.

"Fuck you!" I shouted into the house.

"Oh, what the fuck, Jaxson?" Bash was indeed the first person to see me standing there with a broken, jagged chair leg in my hand.

"What the hell did you do?" Greg drawled, stoned as ever.

Then my mother pushed her way between them.

"I broke the chair," I announced. "You need to buy some new ones anyway. This bullshit, boho poverty chic is pretty pathetic when you consider how much your net worth is."

My mother just looked at me, nostrils pinched. I wanted her to lay into me. I itched for a fight so I could tell her exactly how stupid this whole wedding idea was.

She shook her head once. "What?" I challenged her. I sounded like a petulant teenager, which only pissed me off more.

"Diggs, can you grab one of the contractor bags? I think they're on the porch," she said, as calm as I was angry. She turned back to me. "Don't worry, Jax. Mommy will clean up your mess. Again."

As soon as my mother spoke, that was the end of that. They all turned away, done with me.

All except for Lily.

She was so little, I hadn't seen her there, staring with her wide, brown eyes.

"Lily?" I didn't give a fuck what the others thought of me, but the thought of Liliana staring at me with contempt nearly sent me into another round of chair breaking.

"You okay?" she said. Softly, so softly I would have missed it if I weren't focused completely on her lips.

I had forgotten. The desire—fuck, the
love
—was still there, but I had forgotten this part. When the world narrowed down to a pinpoint and she was the only thing I could see.

When I was with her, everything quieted down, both on the outside and inside of my head. When I was with her, things got clearer.

The answer to her question was clearest. "Am I okay?" I shook my head. "No. No, Bit. I'm not."