Midnight Blue

  Where in the fuck had that come from? I mean, it was the truth, but the truth could always be softened while being shoved into someone’s face. “Prior commitments” were my version of “I don’t fucking want to do it,” and “busy schedule” was “I’d rather choke on someone else’s cock than meet you for coffee.” But I wanted to get a rise from her. In fairness, I realized I was being a massive hypocrite. Here I was, just about ready to sack Lucas and throw him off the tour if he so much as looked at my sobriety companion, but I had no issue telling her—while trying to fuck her—that I was going to try to win my ex-girlfriend back. Where was my tact? Wherever it was, my charm and logic were hidden in the same dumpster.

  “Wow.” Her eyebrows shot up. She pulled the straps of her dress back on her shoulders and pushed up to her feet, not even bothering to zip up. The step she took to her door was shaky and clumsy and told me everything I needed to know.

  I’d fucked up royally.

  “You’re such a bastard, calling you one is an insult to every bastard inhabiting this world. We need to invent a new word for what you are.”

  “I think the word you are looking for is ‘cunt’,” I offered, dropping the open Sharpie onto the carpet and rising, about to follow her into her room. Pissed off or not—she still had my lyrics on her back. “It is what it is. We’re infatuated with each other, but not enough to lose our bloody minds. Eyes on the prize, Stardust. You need the money. I need the muse and the warm body at night.”

  “In what universe does making me sound like a whore equate to a good flirting tactic?”

  “I’m not paying you for the sex. I’m paying you to keep me from falling off the wagon. Side bonus: you’re officially not allowed to hang out with Waitrose, so it’s not like you have any other options to choose from.”

  She turned around, giving me the same sugary smile she used when she wanted to knee my bollocks and stitch my lips together with her sewing machine.

  “Just out of curiosity, Alex, are you asking me to stay away from Lucas as my friend or my future fling?”

  “I’m demanding this as your fucking boss. Never forget that, Indie.”

  Another thing I knew would piss her off. Her door slammed in my face so hard the frame almost collapsed inward. I stared at it blankly, debating whether I should punch and kick it until she opened up or just take the spare card Blake kept, swipe it, and storm in. I wanted to threaten her, tear her apart, then pick her up and throw her onto the bed and make her see all that we were. But all my sorry arse ended up doing was plastering my forehead to her door, closing my eyes, and taking a deep breath.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  I glued my back to the door, the room coming into my vision in fragments behind the wall of unshed tears.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  I wanted to open the door and hurt him. To tell him he was a world-class asshole for doing this to me, for making me feel all these things. Even though he’d made it perfectly clear I didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell at ever being with him the way I deserved. Because Alex Winslow didn’t do love. He only did hate. I wondered if he knew that. That he wasn’t capable of giving his precious Fallon half the things a person you love should be given. Security, unconditional support, and kindness.

  I knew what I needed to do. I needed to march over to his room, knock on the door, and tell him to stop. Stop hitting on me, stop trying to make us happen, stop seducing me with his goddamn lips and lyrics and buckets of rugged charm. My lips throbbed from another kiss that had never happened, and I was irrationally angry at the world. Steam. I needed to get rid of it. Now.

  With those things in mind, I turned around, about to swing my door open and give him a piece of my mind. That’s when I heard someone hammering on it from the other side.

  Blinking, I pulled it open and peeked through the slit.

  Alex stood there with red eyes and a mist of sweat covering his forehead, like not kicking down the door left him labored and sticky. He pushed the door the rest of the way open, silently walked in, cupped the side of my face, his thumbs on my cheeks, and kissed me.

  Hard.

  I stumbled back, off-guard and unprepared, but that only made him more aggressive in his kiss. I sucked in a desperate breath just as he darted his tongue out, stroking mine. Our tongues rolled together, hungry and vicious, in a wild dance without rhythm or pace. I moaned, and he groaned, sucking on my lower lip and digging his teeth into it on a warning bite. Do not disobey, the bite said in his English accent. Or you’ll be sorry.

  Admittedly, I didn’t think. Not about how he’d managed to corner me deeper into my room in a lust-filled haze, and certainly not about the consequences. That’s why when he cupped both my ass cheeks and pushed me, my back slamming against the antique dresser, I let him. He bit my lip again, this time harder, and I winced. I wanted him to know I wasn’t surrendering to him—I was surrendering to my own needs. It was different. And selfish. And mine.

  “I always wondered, you know.” His lips ghosted mine, wet and drenched with dirty intentions. “What it feels like when you do that, gnawing on that sexy, fat lip of yours.”

  All I could do in response was sigh into his mouth. He tasted of the virgin lemonade he had after the show and the bitter bite of his last cigarette. Delicious in a hardened, unapologetic way. My fingers found the silk of his wavy, brown hair and I twisted it, my hips grinding against his abs. He grabbed the back of my thighs and brought them up to circle his waist, crashing his groin into mine. I clenched around nothing, desperate to feel him inside me, but knowing better than to unzip him.

  He took my hair in his fist and pulled hard, forcing me to stare at his face. My scalp tingled, but he didn’t hurt me. Not too much.

  It felt like I was dipped in cold fire and caressed by a thousand feathers. My whole body tingled, and I’d never felt so awake in my entire life. He laid me on the queen bed and hovered on top of me, much like he had earlier on the sofa, and it reminded me I’d already lost the battle. The one where I drew lines and lived comfortably within them. Because—and this was the really sad part—I’d already crossed so many limits when it came to Alex Winslow, and not one of those decisions was conscious.

  He rolled his hips between my thighs, his erection sliding along my thin leggings and his jeans.

  “Look at me,” he said. I didn’t. Couldn’t. This moment was mine. The fact he was in it was completely irrelevant, or so I tried to tell myself. I kept my eyes closed, kissing him fiercely.

  “Look. At. Me.” He took my hair in his fist and pulled hard, forcing me to stare at his face. Whatever he saw in my expression made him loosen his grip on me, but the intention was there. Alex Winslow played rough, in and out of bed.

  “I apologize in advance.” He cocked his head to the side.

  “For?”

  “Ruining you for any other man on this planet. I’m going to fuck you, Indie. So hard you’ll think about me years from now, when you lie under your boring, missionary-loving husband. I will own every orgasm, every shiver, every wave of pleasure inside you. From here on out, it will be me. Just me. And for that, I truly am sorry.”

  “You’re so cocky.” I ran my lips down his neck, and he did this thing, where he ground his jeans against my sex through our clothes fast and rough, creating so much friction my clit swelled and screamed for release.

  “That doesn’t make me any less right.”

  “Are you going to make me sign an NDA before we go to bed together?” I grinned, and for that, I got my chin bitten.

  “When I fuck you, Stardust, you’ll scream so hard, the whole city will know I’m finally inside you.”

  I raked my fingers along his broad back, and it felt good, marking him back. After all the times he’d taunted, teased, and messed with me, finally, it was my turn. He scarred me. I decorated him. But at the end of the day, we were both tainted by each other. “We’re not going to have sex. I’m no
t…super experienced.”

  He pushed up from me, running his hand through his lightly stubbled jaw. “Are you a virgin?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. Just…I haven’t been around much.”

  “How many?”

  That again? Ugh.

  “One.”

  “When?”

  “High school. Junior year.”

  “Give me his address when we get back to L.A. Promise, I just wanna talk.” He cocked one eyebrow up.

  I laughed and swatted his chest, and he locked my wrist in his palm and brought it to his lips, breathing hard against it. I shivered again.

  “Okay.” His tone was low. “No fucking tonight. We’ll take it slow.”

  A kiss on the lips. The nose. The forehead.

  Jesus Christ, heart.

  I’m trying my best here, heart.

  Enough, heart.

  “I’m tired,” I said, even though it was a lie. I was buzzing and high and in need of a release. I wanted him to get the hell out so I could run to the bathtub and release the ache between my legs with my fingers.

  He pushed off me without an argument. It shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. Alex Winslow was an accidental rock star. I knew it when I watched his bigger-than-life figure moving in the luxurious hotel room, and knew he didn’t belong there. He belonged in some dingy underground pub in the bowels of London, screaming to the microphone about anti-fascism and anarchy. He’d lost his soul somewhere along the way, and I was just another piggybank he shook, trying to see if what was inside resembled what he was looking for. And at that moment, I knew I’d take it.

  He was going to break the pig, and I was going to let him.

  “I found my well in the middle of the desert,” he said from the threshold of my open door. “Now it’s time to drink from it. Every. Single. Drop.”

  Moscow, Russia

  The plane ride was the closest thing to hell ever recorded on planet earth.

  Partly because Blake and Jenna were yelling at each other in decibels that threatened to bring the aircraft down—she was on speaker, since Blake had to answer emails simultaneously—but mostly because Lucas insisted on not getting the memo that Stardust was not for the taking and lay beside her on the L-shaped sofa, gazing at the ceiling like a fucking John Green character and talking to her about life. Which was ironic, really, considering the fact I was about to end his if he kept throwing himself at her. Alfie was curled up beside me, playing a video game and making sure I didn’t use any of the laptops or mobile phones around us to go on the Internet. I was bored, and agitated, and fuck, hadn’t I told her she couldn’t hang out with Waitrose? Obviously, I had to put my point across more blatantly.

  Because subtlety is clearly my forte.

  “Ever seen a cockpit from the inside, Stardust?” I asked Indie from across the room, sprawled on a recliner high and plush as a cathedral.

  She looked away from Lucas and at me lazily, putting her patched dress down. She was sewing every spare moment she had. Compulsively. Wasn’t that the only way to make art?

  “So many sexual innuendos from this one.” Alfie smirked to himself, eyes still hard on his Nintendo screen.

  “You know the answer to that question.” Her scowl warned me not to screw with her unnecessarily.

  Fair enough. I did know the answer. The only times she’d ever been on planes had been with me, and I’d never offered to show her anything other than my boot inside her arse as I sent her away. I shot to my feet and sauntered over to them, stretching my open palm in her direction.

  “You’ll like it. Lots of buttons to push,” I enunciated the last sentence, in case Lucas didn’t quite understand what kind of fire he was playing with. I wasn’t a match. I was the kind of flame that burned down an entire forest.

  “I can show you, if you prefer.” Waitrose looked over at her, still holding the next patch she was meaning to sew. Surely, he couldn’t have been that daft. But of course he knew exactly what he was doing. He wasn’t only pushing my buttons. He was prodding them so hard, they cut deep.

  Ignoring him, I turned my head back to her.

  “Time is money, Blue,” I used the nickname Blake gave her, for no other reason than to remind everyone they didn’t have exclusivity on anything Indigo Bellamy.

  She scooted her perky bum from the sofa and followed me, silently refusing my hand. Which was fantastic, because it only served to turn me on even more. Her defiance was refreshing. She should patent, juice, and give it to the next girl I dragged into my miserable life.

  “Thanks for doing that,” she muttered behind me.

  “Sure.” I had no idea what she was referring to. My mind was set on one thing, and that was finding out what color her knickers were today.

  “Can you take a picture?” We were out of the main space, advancing inside the narrow corridor.

  “Of what?”

  She hesitated. “Umm, me in the cockpit?”

  I’ll show her a cockpit…

  She was still mid-step when I pushed her hard against the bathroom door and locked us both inside. I had no illusions about making her a member of the mile high club. She needed more prepping. Still, messing around was part of the process, so I needed to make sure she wasn’t skipping any classes.

  Her back dug against the sink as I lifted her thigh up and curled it against my waist, dipping my groin against her clothed cunt without warning. This couldn’t have been a comfortable angle for her, but I had a point to make.

  “Feel that?” I was fully hard and strained against my jeans, my balls already swollen and heavy with need. “Feel what it does to me when you go and shit all over our arrangement?”

  “There’s no arrangement. Lucas and I are friends.” Strong words, spoken by a woman who sounded almost believable, if it wasn’t for the fact she was grinding her sweet groin against my crotch.

  “Lucas wants you.”

  “Debatable. And even if he does, he can’t have me.”

  “But I can.”

  “For a while.” Pause. “Maybe.”

  Fuck. Your. Maybe. Lady.

  I crushed my mouth to hers so fast and so hard, she stumbled backward, even though there was no space to fall into. Grabbing the back of her neck, I bit her lower lip until I produced the sound I was after—the moan I knew had sat somewhere at the back of her throat since the day she fucking saw me—as I slowly but surely thrust between our clothes, dry-fucking her. My firm torso against her soft everything made both our bodies tremble. She whimpered every time my cock hit her groin, and I inwardly cursed the pretty baby blue dress that separated our skin and matched her hair so nicely.

  She pulled her lower lip away and flicked her tongue into the roof of my mouth, dragging it leisurely, making my skull break into goose bumps. The surprise alone made my cock jump in appreciation, and it was already straining inside my tight jeans. Why couldn’t I be a rapper? They had such great attire for erections. I could hide two Indies inside Lil’ Wayne’s trousers and no one would know.

  “Fuuuuck.” I bit her shoulder to suppress a frustrated scream. The need to be inside her matched the need for a drink and two lines before stepping onto stage at Madison Square Garden. It justified making out with a girl six years my junior like some sort of a desperate teenager. Only I was a grown-up. No. No, I wasn’t. I was a fucked-up kid with a babysitter. A babysitter I was going to eat alive. She trailed her tongue up my neck, to my chin, all the way to my mouth. I laughed, because it was so unsexy, yet so her.

  Real.

  Sweet.

  Indie.

  “You taste so salty,” she breathed into my mouth.

  “You taste so innocent,” I countered.

  She didn’t smoke or drink or cuss. She didn’t fuck around or try to get back at the world. She was pure and untroubled. Her problems were external—fucked-up brother, lack of money, dead parents. Inside, she was unsoiled. It helped. The idea I was wrecking her.

  The act of corruption fed my power hunger. br />
  “Alex.” She rolled her head to the side, giving me access to her neck as one of my hands ran down her ass and squeezed, the other snaking between us and skimming over her pussy. She wore thick leggings. Guess I couldn’t fault her for that. It was close to freezing on the airplane, plus Moscow was going to be a shitshow weather-wise, and she knew better than not to check the weather, thanks to my cunty remark when we’d first arrived in Australia. I hated myself for riding her ass about her clothes. I also hated her leggings and all leggings in general and declared war on them. I rubbed her slit, salivating at how wet she must be under the layers of fabric between us.

  “For fuck’s sake,” I groaned, throwing my head between her shoulder and neck. I needed so much more, but she was tiny. There was literally not enough to satisfy my hunger for her. My fingers were pushing so aggressively through the material of her leggings, I was sure I was about to tear them apart or set them on fire from the friction. Neither was an option that would score me brownie points on my way to her bed. “Strip for me.”

  To my surprise, she pushed me away, wiggling out of her knitted stockings while standing up, her cheeks so red I did want to take a picture this time. Because she looked like foreplay, and foreplay and music were the reasons I’d been put on this earth.

  “God, you’re beautiful.” And oh, was she ever. Like a painfully short, brilliant song that keeps you thirsty for more.

  She dumped her leggings on the floor and launched at me. My back hit the glassed shower from the other end—viva la private jets—and we stumbled in together, so turned on we were fighting for each breath.

  “Oh…oh…oh!” she screamed in pleasure as our tongues met and danced together, my fingers nudging her panties aside and fluttering over her slit. Shit. She was soaked, and I didn’t even dip one in. I rubbed my thumb up and down along her cunt, feeling my cock growing so impossibly hard and erect, it was reaching the point of painful. But I couldn’t rush her, and I didn’t want to, anyway. This was fun. Fun in the pre-adulthood kind of way, when you actually had to work hard and didn’t wash your hands for two days straight after fingering a girl.