Heart Broke (Hard Rock Roots Book 8) (7 page)

Dax looks down at me, my body stretched out on the bed, my legs spread wide, my panties still in place. I
am
wearing a zebra patterned thong, so I can see why he left it there, but I'd rather he ripped it off.

“Shit,” he snarls after a moment, raking a hand through his hair, but I already know what it is that's almost quite literally got his panties in a bunch.

“Looking for one of these?” I ask, drawing an Indecency condom from inside my bra. I'm like a Girl Scout or something, always prepared.

Aw, the look of relief on that ruggedly handsome face is just precious.

Dax climbs back on the bed, kneeling between my legs as he takes the condom from my fingers with his gloved hands. At least the damn things leave his fingertips bare so I can feel the brush of his bare skin against mine.

“What are we doing?” he asks me after the condom's on and our position is just a little more precarious. I'm literally holding my panties aside and his dick is like
literally
touching my swollen wet pussy. I almost strangle his ass. “You don't want me,” he says which just pisses me off.

“Who says I don't?” I snap, even though I really did swear off the man this morning.

Fuck.

“This is still a really bad idea,” Dax whispers, but it's too late. Our lips are meeting, his hips are thrusting, and I'm groaning into his mouth as his cock fills me up. The piercings in his shaft slide against my insides in just the right way, those metal balls as hard and unforgiving inside the latex as they'd be outside of it.

Dax leans over me, twisting our tongues together. He tastes like beer and smoke, but I like it. I like things messy and dirty and ugly. Who needs pretty and perfect anyway? Illusion. Smoke and mirrors. That's what all that is. This right here, pure animalistic pleasure.

I lock Dax between my thighs, squeezing tight as he pumps into me, burying his emotions inside my heat. We stay hot and heavy, moving together in a rhythm that seems to mimic the music I can still hear playing on my discarded iPod and headphones.

Boom-boom-crash. Boom-boom-boom-boom.

Dax pummels me in time with the beat, our flesh meeting in a sweaty tangled frenzy, a wild burst of confused emotions and turmoil. Sweat drips down his tattooed arms as I run my multi-colored fingernails over his flesh, scraping down all that darkness with my brightness. When I see the color on my arms mixing with his, I clench tighter and he groans, grinding me into the mattress as the headboard smacks the wall and adds another layer to the song. It's an Indecency track, something old with Travis on the bass. Sounds even better with the squeak of the mattress, our panting breaths, the gasps that manage to slide their way past my lips.

Dax's body rides over me, moving my clit against his pelvis as he thrusts, his gray eyes open and staring right into mine. I can't help myself. I like him. I really do.

My hands come up and slide over the sides of his face, into his dark hair that's slowly turning blond at the roots. I let myself get wrapped up in it as I draw his face to mine for another kiss.

As our mouths meet again, my body warms with the reality of the situation.

I don't want to let go of Dax. And I want to fall in love.

Add those two things together and you've got the basic ingredients for the most deadly recipe on the planet.

Romance.

I am
so
fucked, aren't I?

Pink fucking stilettos—with leopard fur trim. That's exactly the kind of trashy retro chic bullshit I like to wear, especially when I can purchase them with my own money. I slide my debit card across the counter and nibble at my lower lip, tasting pink lemonade lip gloss and just a little bit of blood. Nervous habit of mine and I've been doing it all goddamn day. I managed to wrangle my way out of taking a bodyguard for this little outing of mine. Well, okay, so I actually kind of snuck out, but who the fuck cares? My little brother? Screw Trey and his sudden overprotectiveness.

I may or may not have left his crippled ass lying on Ronnie and Lola's bed when I left.
Maybe that'll teach the little bitch some humility.

I glance around the store, at the racks of used clothing and the few mingling patrons. Ain't nobody lookin' my way, so I think I'm clear. Who the hell's going to recognize me anyway? I'm not a member of either band, only very loosely connected to them in the first place. Part of me wants to take some of Trey's money and just get as far away from here as I can, but I know I can't do that. I
won't
do that, not to my boys, all the little brothers I collected with Trey over the years. Ronnie might be able to handle himself, but Trey, Turner, and Jesse? Nah. If I got on a plane today and left, they'd probably all be dead within the week, and even worse—broke. Somebody has to stick around and make sure they don't fuck everything up. True, they managed to get along without me for a long time, but then again, just look at the mess they got themselves into in the first place. Even Travis, God rest his fucking soul, managed to screw up so badly he makes the government look efficient.

And all of that still isn't the
real
reason I'm here.

Fucking Dax McCann.

My body breaks out in goose bumps and my breath catches.
Shit.

I snort and shake my head, relieved when the cashier hands me my card back. I know there's money on there, but I'm not really sure how much. When I get anxious about something, I stop paying attention to it. Running out of money? Well then, don't look at the account. True story that it gets me into trouble sometimes, but I like to live carefree, ya know? And even now, knowing that Trey's rich enough to wipe his crippled ass with hundreds, I can't shake the poor, can't push off the trailer park. It's a part of me and I think it always will be. Not necessarily a bad thing in my opinion.

Now if I could just stop ignoring the
other
big thing that I'm anxious about. If you guessed that corpse we left in KK's hotel room, you'd be wrong. It starts with a D, ends with an X, and has zombie tats on its arm. Yup.
That.
I am still on the subject of
that.

“Have a nice day,” the cashier says as I loop my fingers through the toes of my secondhand shoes and slide them off the counter. I give her a wink and a snap of my gum and then I'm out on the street, standing in the sunshine and wishing I had my fucking convertible with me. Milo says he'll take care of it, but who the hell knows?

People move around me, shopping bags swinging, focused on whatever dose of daily drama they've been dolloped for the day and me, I just enjoy the anonymity of it all. No crowds, no bodyguards, no bullshit.

I love it.

But then I also miss Dax.

“Jesus fuck,” I snap, tossing my shoes onto a bench as some old wrinkled lady narrows her eyes at me and makes the sign of the cross over her chest. Eh, I'm used to it. I flop down and dig a cig from my bag, lighting up and breathing out a puff of smoke to join the smog hovering over the city.
I hate Los Angeles.
“City of Angels, my ass,” I mumble, leaning back and draping my arms over the back of the bench. Chilling on Melrose Avenue all day might be alright, but I can't sit here and dream about a boy with gray eyes and ice cold fingers sharp enough to chill me to the bone. I shake my head and drop my smoke to the cement, crushing it out with the toe of my purple heel.
Fucking Dax.
If I'm honest with myself, I know why my brain's all twisted up in a funk, and it's not just because I somehow managed to lose my modeling contract with
Tattoo Terror
.

Or that I got screwed into a dirty hotel mattress like a wood screw.

Nope.

It's not the sex that's freaking me out. It's everything
else.

I've got a crush. A big one. And it hurts so bad it's almost good. I might be out on the town right now, but my mind is still in that hotel room with Dax. If I hadn't leapt out of bed post-orgasm and taken off like an Olympic sprinter, I'd probably still be laying there
cuddling
Amatory Riot's drummer.

Ahhhhh. I
really
need a girlfriend or two or ten to talk this shit out with.
Wake up, Naomi fucking Knox.
Some estrogen tempered advice would totally rock right now.

I sigh again and run my hands over my face while the sun beats mercilessly down on me and tries to dig its nasty little melanoma fingers into my flesh. I could go home, make myself some fruity cocktail, lounge by the pool and bitch at Lola. She's definitely solid GF material. But I made myself a promise today, and I'm not going to let some tiny, little, teensy-weensy problem like
true love
stand in my way.

Hah.

“Screw this.” I force myself to my feet and pull my phone out of my purse. I have the address for the studio right there, plugged into my contacts and ready to go. Nobody wants to answer my emails, my phone calls, my texts. Fuck 'em then. I'll go in person.

Sydney Charell in person is almost impossible to say no to.

I smirk and hail a taxi.

Not everyone believes in ghosts and shit like I do, but if they saw this woman's face, they'd change their mind real fast. She's white as a sheet—and that's
with
a spectacular LA tan coloring her features. Guess my presence is enough to drain the blood right out of those plastic surgery perfect cheeks of hers.

I raise a blonde brow.

“You deaf, woman?” I ask, splaying my multi-colored fingernails out across the quartz countertop. “Sydney Charell, look me up.” I point down at the iPad lying abandoned on her side of the desk and try not to let Crazy Sydney out to play. My emotions are all over the fucking place right now, twisted up in dreams of a man so broken and shattered that all I want to do is devote my free time to fixing him.
Dax McCann, you dick.
I drum my nails on the counter and watch as the woman straightens out her designer suit jacket and takes a deep breath.

“I know who you are,” she says and then lets her mouth settle into a practiced professional perfection that bugs the ever living crap out of me. I can smell rudeness like a thousand miles away, and I'm just about ninety-nine percent sure she's about to say something we'll both regret in the morning. “You're that stripper we scouted.”

I purse my lips and take a step back. I
could
go all Turner Motherfucking Campbell on her ass and slap a bitch, but then I'd probably get arrested for assault. People don't seem to know how to handle their crap without getting the cops involved. Whatever happened to being able to brawl for your own honor?

I glance around at the potted palms, the expensive white leather chairs, and the polished concrete floor. Outside, it's a million degrees, dusty and warm and so … so
So Cal
. In here, in typical Los Angeles fashion, the air conditioner's blasting away, turning my nipples to hardened points. The secretary notices and curls her lip, but I don't care. This bitch is nothing to me; I've met a thousand like her. It's real easy to look down at someone else because you don't understand, because all you know about their life is what you've seen in movies. Being a stripper sucks, but so does sitting in a cubicle all goddamn day. It's a job, just a job, and it doesn't define me. Then again, I'm also not ashamed of it either.

“Yes, I'm
that
stripper that you scouted and then subsequently canceled on. I want to speak to …” I pause for a moment trying to remember the name of my contact, the woman I was supposed to meet with a few days ago to get ready for the shoot. “Mag Delano. Can you see if she's in, please?”

“Mag doesn't take walk-ins,” the woman says, snubbing me and pretending like she didn't shit a brick when I walked through those doors and announced myself. “If you have an appointment, I'll be glad to show you in. If not, I'm sorry, but you'll need to check our website for further information on the application process.” The woman smoothes her beige skirt underneath her and sits down like the conversation's over. To me, it hasn't even started yet.

“I actually
had
an appointment, a few of them to be quite honest with you, one of which was supposed to be today, right here, right now.” I get the chills just thinking about it, about the fact that this was going to be my big break, the day of my first shoot. Somewhere in this massive building, I'd be behind a camera with my body on display like a frosted cake. This was
my
fucking opportunity to change shit, to make thirty a milestone year that I'd never regret. “Now, I was told someone would contact me about rescheduling, but nobody seems to want to talk to me at all, including you. Don't think I missed that look on your face when I walked in here.” I point at the secretary; I've noticed people really fucking hate being pointed at. It's a good way to piss someone off without actually doing anything at all. “Now, get me Mag Delano. She's not such a big shot that she can't see me on short notice.”