Hard Rock Roots Box Set (9 page)

Naomi, seriously? Why are you even going there?

I scoot onto Wren's lap and press the hard bulge in his pants against my crotch.

It's fun for awhile, until Hayden comes back, panting hard, face as white as a sheet. Wren and I both turn to glare at her.

“Naomi,” she pants, cheeks as pink as the top she's got on. It's got friggin' Rainbow Dash on the front. Like, who the fuck over the age of ten wears a
My Little Pony
on their clothing?

“What?” I snarl at her as I shove Wren back and stand up. Whatever it was that I was looking for in him, I'm not finding. I wonder if I should just fuck him, but I don't know if that'll help. If I'm honest with myself, I'm still carrying a big ass torch for Turner Campbell, one that I thought had gone out long ago. Guess it just got relit.

Apparently, Hayden doesn't like my tone and proceeds to rip into me.

“Hey, you stupid bitch, either come with me or not. If you don't, maybe I'll forget our little agreement and call the cops in Tulsa with an anonymous tip. Think the guy you stabbed last month will testify to your penchant for violence?”

I grab my jacket off the hook near the door and tear out of the bus on Hayden's heels, wishing I could just reach out and strangle her with her hair. She leads me around to the other side of the bus and down to the trailer that we tow behind it with our equipment inside.

I light a cigarette as we go, one that quickly gets forgotten when I see what Hayden wants to show me. The lit cherry tumbles through the dry darkness and hits the dirt at my feet.

On the side of the trailer, there's a message written in blood. Like a scene in a bad horror film, the headless body of a dead bird lies on the ground beside the wheel.

“Oh shit.”

Thank God we don't have a show tonight.

After what I saw, my hands are shaking so bad, I can hardly bring the cup of water to my lips for a drink. Or maybe that's from the coke I snorted. Not sure which.

“Are you sure you don't want to call the cops?” Dax asks, hovering above me and Hayden like an overprotective brother. He likes to think he's one of the responsible ones in the group. Not true. The only truly responsible one of all of us is America.

“No, it's fine,” she snaps at him as she paces back and forth, hands tucked into the pockets of her navy suit coat, bits of stray hair poking out of her slicked back bun. She looks frazzled which is pretty impressive. It's the first time I've ever seen her like that. “Spencer's probably already washed it off anyway.” America pauses and looks down at Hayden and me.

The bloody words flip through my head on a continuous loop.

Hayden knows Naomi's truth. Keep your fucking mouths shut.

“You have no clue who might've done this?” she asks in a very severe tone, one that brings tears to Hayden's blue eyes.
God, I can't stand that bitch. At least she isn't blaming me for this shit.
“Like, is there someone you might've told
something
to?” she asks, stressing the word for Hayden's benefit. Unfortunately, since Dax is standing there, she can't be anymore obvious, but I wish she could be. There's at least a fifty/fifty chance that Hayden isn't going to understand what America's trying to get at.

“Not a fucking soul,” I say, and Hayden just shakes her head. Neither of us believes her, I don't think, but there isn't anything we can do about it, so I just walk away and try not to dwell on the idea that somebody just decapitated a bird (or judging from the amount of blood, probably three or four) and used its life force to write a threatening message. At least now I know I have a stalker of some sort.

Awesome.

I leave the bus, even as America shouts at me to get my ass back there and get ready to take care of something I should've taken care of a long time ago. The adrenaline from the message and the coke are melding together to make for one pretty amazing trip. I feel like a Titan as I storm through the camp and pause outside of Indecency's bus.

The bodyguard just stares at me like I'm an idiot.

“I'm here to see Turner Campbell,” I tell him, which he's probably heard a thousand times before. The man, who's as big as an ox and twice as wide, folds his arms across his chest and sighs.

“He isn't here,” he tells me and then shakes his head, continuing on before I get the chance to start an argument. I'm kinda glad because my fights never end well. Last month, I stabbed a rabid fan in the stomach with a fucking hunting knife. Thankfully, the charges were dropped, but I have to be more careful than that. Another incident could bring everything crashing down around my fucking head, and if I go to prison, I'm hanging myself with my sheets. I won't survive in there. “But he did tell me to expect you, so if you'd like to go up and wait, that'll be fine with me. I just have to pat you down for weapons first.”

I stare at the man like he's fucking insane.

Expecting me?

Turner was
expecting
me?

That son of a bitch.

My blood goes hot and my heart cold.

“Thanks.” I force the word out through tight lips and spin away on my heel, moving across the dirt in the direction of the gas station when a voice calls out behind me.

“Naomi?”

I turn around and find a blonde in dark washed jeans and a red T-shirt. I don't know his name, but I know he plays bass in Turner's band. He's standing on the bottom step of the bus and holding the screen open with one hand. In the other, he has a book. I trust him right away.

I take a step forward.

“Yeah?”

The man smiles.

“Hey, I know you don't know me, but my name is Joshua Drake. I was wondering if I could talk to you for just a sec? It's about Turner.”

A smile stretches hard across my lips, and I head for the door of the bus with a very specific purpose in mind – pissing off Turner Campbell.

Chapter 10
Turner Campbell

I fuck around the city for awhile, hitting up a few bars and stumbling half-drunk back to the parking lot where the buses are parked for the night. I find a lot of girls that night, but I turn them all down. Cannot stop thinking about Naomi Knox.

That was her?
I wonder for the hundredth time. I'm still having a hard time believing she was the one that walked in on me fucking that roadie. Was that when we first met? Is that why she hates me? Nah. Well, maybe a little. But that isn't it. There's something else, something more.

When I hit the bus, I pause next to our bodyguard – can't remember his name for shit – and squint at him with tired eyes.

“Naomi stop by for me?” I ask, and the man smirks. Makes me want to hit him in the fucking face. Who the fuck does he think he is? “What's your problem, man?” I growl when he just stares at me. He doesn't speak, doesn't bother to answer my question, and I swear on my fucking cock that I'm about to fire his ass when I hear moans emanating out from the bus. Normally, I'd just ignore that shit, but the look on the bodyguard's face tells me that there's something else going on here.

I tear up the steps and pound down the bus into the bunk area, snatching Josh's curtain back so hard that it comes off the rod and falls to the floor.

Naomi Knox is completely topless, draped over Josh's shirtless chest with one of his gloved hands resting on her lower back. The blankets are covering their lower halves, so I have no idea how far this has gotten, but it doesn't matter; I'm seeing fucking red. I am blinded by it.

“What the fuck, man?” My voice explodes in a roar and next thing I know, I'm grabbing Josh by the hair and yanking him out of the bunk and onto the floor. Naomi rolls to the side and comes up on her feet behind me, dressed only in her fucking panties.

Josh comes up swinging and I'm glad to see that he's still got his boxers on.
Good. If he'd have fucked her, I'd have killed him.
Why that is exactly, I have no fucking clue, but I'm drunk off my ass, and well, let's just say inhibitions … what inhibitions?

“Screw you, you motherfucking whore,” Josh screams as he smashes me hard in the jaw and sends me stumbling back into Naomi. “You don't deserve her. You don't deserve any woman, you piece of shit!” Soft flesh presses against me as Naomi and I collapse to the floor, and then it hits me, this memory of a girl pressed against into a bed, eyes wide with tears rolling down her cheeks. I can hear the words,
I love you,
over and over and over again, and then it just fades, blacked out by a rush of alcohol, and I'm up and swinging again.

Josh's nose cracks under my fists and blood sprays out across my face as I pummel him back against the bathroom door and pin him there nice and tight, getting so close up that we could fucking kiss.

“You touch her again, and I will fucking kill you,” I tell him, watching his blue eyes shimmer with rage and his jaw shake. Josh is young, too fucking young, and he isn't one of us. I think that's what pisses me off so much. Jesse, Ronnie, Treyjan, and I went to high school together. We
survived
shit together. And then Travis dies, and we get this fucker as a replacement, this bottle sucking baby who can't even drink yet, and he … he, what, Turner? What did he do wrong? I step back suddenly and throw my arms up.

Josh wipes his hand across his bloody face and glares at me, trembling like a fucking cougar ready to strike. He's not done yet, so I take another step back to get out of range.

Out of range of Josh that is; Naomi is a whole other story.

She spins me around and grabs my face in her hands, coming close enough that I can smell her – a mixture of cigarette smoke and laundry detergent.

“You are not a fucking hero!” she shouts at me, digging her nails into my cheeks and drawing blood. My hands come up and wrap her wrists tight, attempting to push her back, but she's stronger than she looks, and I'm drunk off my ass, so we end up in a complete standstill. “You're not saving me from anything!”

“Let go of me, you fucking cunt,” I snarl as she presses her forehead into mine. I can hear Josh panting from behind me, and the rage boils up again. Now, I want to beat them both up, Naomi and Josh. I try to move her back with the weight of my body, but she holds tight and we end up crashing together, front to front, and then I find my hands sliding around her waist and caressing her body, feeling up the plump flesh of her ass, the gentle curve of her back, her tits.

She doesn't stop me, but she keeps yelling.

“You don't own me,” she says. “You don't have any claim on me, so what do you think you're doing? What is it that you want?”

“Right now, just you, baby,” I tell her and then she's biting my lip and kissing me so hard that blood fills both our mouths as we crash our teeth together. She sucks on the piercing in my tongue and swirls her own around it, flicking the metal hard while she climbs me, wrapping her legs around me and relaxing the pressure on my face.

I slam Naomi's body back against the cabinets in the kitchen, and I forget all about Josh. I'm pretty sure he's screaming, too, but fuck him; she's mine now. Ah, and fuck, she tastes like dirty candy and blood and sweat and ash. Best damn shit I ever tasted. Period.

My hands move up her back and into her blonde hair, tangling and tugging and testing the limits, seeing how far she'll let me go before she stops kissing me and starts biting. I have a feeling that in this case, the bite really is worse than the bark.

Naomi's nails gouge my back, digging into my flesh through the shirt before she finally takes it in two strong fists and rips it up and over my head, breaking our kiss for a moment and somehow cranking up the heat in the bus by a notch. That little burn I've got going for her turns into raging flames as I drop my head and brush a kiss across the tattoo on her chest. I'm too drunk to really register what it means right now, but I'm pretty sure it's a broken, bleeding heart.

I nibble on Naomi's nipple, sucking the hard pink flesh into my mouth and rolling it around, making sure the stud on my tongue teases it mercilessly. My eyes flicker up and find Naomi's. They're starting down at me, wide and pissed. She's angry. Good. I like angry sex, and fuck, I'm angry, too.

I grin at her, and she grabs my chin, pressing her mouth to mine as I reach down and undo my pants, pushing them down my hips as far as possible without having to separate my lips from Naomi's. My cock springs free and my fingers push aside her panties, teasing the hot wetness there as I get ready to thrust in, to finally scratch that itch.

“God, you're gonna love this, baby,” I snarl as she nibbles my lip, and then like a fucking tiger, she's swiping at me and cracking her palm against my face, nails slicing me good and spilling hot blood down my cheek. To say that I'm shocked is a friggin' understatement. Talk about mixed messages. What. The. Fuck.

I throw Naomi off of me and step back, stumbling over my fucking jeans and ending up looking like a fucking tool on the floor of the bus. She stares down at me, and her lip twitches in disgust. The expression's a far cry from the one she had just a moment ago.

“Not again,” she whispers. “Never again.”

And then she spins away and disappears naked into the night.