Rock Stars Do It Forever (12 page)

“Chase, baby…oh, god…come for me.” Jamie held the nape of his neck and the back of his head, her body wrapped around his. He came with a counterintuitively soft sigh, slamming his pulsating cock into her with almost brutal force. “Yes, yes! Hard, I love it like that, so hard.”

Chase couldn’t speak as he came. Jamie felt his hot seed hit her inner walls, and his thrusting became deep-driving insanity, frenzied and wild. His pelvis crushed her clit, and she felt another impossible orgasm wash over her, impossible, absurd, and spastically potent. She bit his shoulder, dug her fingers into his back, and pounded her core against him, their hipbones crashing like colliding tectonic plates, slow and unstoppably forceful thrusts.

All the while, liquid heat filled Jamie, wash after wash spurting from Chase into her cleft, and she took it all, clamping down on his throbbing cock with every ounce of power she had within her.

“Jamie…oh, god,
fuck,
I love you so goddamn much.” Chase’s voice was gravelly and ragged in her ear, his thrusts finally slowing, abating. “I love you…so much. You—god…you shatter me so wonderfully, Jamie.”

He rolled with her so she was cradled against his chest. She was a dribbling mess, but she didn’t care. Nothing mattered but closeness, the warmth of his huge hard body radiating like a furnace against her sensitive skin, his manhood softening and throbbing against her thigh, his palms skating softly over her shoulder, his fingers tangling in her sweaty curls…

Jamie fell asleep more contented than she knew how to understand. She felt full in her heart, in her soul, in her mind, beyond exhausted, wrung limp and sated to surfeit.
 

“Promise me this will never end,” she whispered, her voice muzzy and heavy.

Chase threaded his fingers through hers. “I promise you this will never end. You and me…this is just the beginning.”

“Please?” It was a mumbled reply, meant to be a thankful sigh of relief, coming out as something else.
 

Chase just tightened his grip on her and kissed her eyebrow, and she heard his breathing even out as sleep stole over her.

5

Jamie fumbled for her ringing cell phone. By the time she found it on her bedside table, it had stopped ringing. Figured. She struggled to a sitting position in her bed, wishing she could’ve stayed asleep for a bit longer. She’d driven from Chase’s show in Milwaukee straight to Detroit, where she worked a nine-hour shift before finally going home. All this had been on barely four hours of sleep. She’d woken up at oh-dark-thirty to pee and had ended up pinned beneath Chase’s hard body, his sleepy eyes tender and lustful. She couldn’t—and didn’t—say no to him, so she’d never gone back to sleep.
 

Now it was Tuesday morning—Jamie glanced at her phone and swore—okay, fine, Tuesday afternoon…and she was still feeling groggy and in need of sleep. She’d crashed hard when she got home, but it had been a broken and not entirely restful sleep. She’d kept partially waking and finding herself alone in bed.
 

Two nights with Chase, and I already miss him in my bed,
Jamie thought.
I’ve got it bad
.
 

The voicemail notification beeped, and Jamie played the message. “Hey, hooker, it’s me,” Anna’s voice said. “Haven’t seen you in forever, and I miss your face. Call me. Or better yet, lunch at BD’s at one? ’Kay, good. See you there.”

Jamie leapt out of bed, swearing. It was twelve-twenty. Knowing Anna, she’d show up at Mongolian Bar-B-Q at one and expect Jamie to be there. Showering and dressing in record time, Jamie skipped makeup except for the basic blush, mascara, and lip gloss, and bolted out the door. As she expected, Anna was waiting with a diet Coke when Jamie showed up ten minutes late.
 

“There you are,” Anna said, getting up to hug Jamie. “Wondered if you’d gotten my message.”

“Yeah, sorry I’m late,” Jamie said. “I had a bit of lie-in.”

Anna laughed even as her face wrinkled in confused frown. “‘A bit of a lie-in’? Starting to talk like Ian, are we?” Anna shook her head, chuckling. “Shall we carry on to the table and have a spot of lunch?” She said this with a terrible
faux
-British accent.

Jamie frowned. “Did I say that?”

“Yeah, you kind of did.”

Jamie tilted her head back and groaned volubly. “I can’t believe I actually said that. That was one of Ian’s favorite phrases.”

Anna cast a quizzical look at Jamie as they scooped uncooked chicken and vegetables into their bowls. “Was?”

Jamie bit her lip. She wasn’t quite ready for that part of the conversation, but Anna knew her too well for Jamie to be able to dissemble for long. “Yeah, well…you know what I mean.”

Anna scooped teriyaki sauce into a ramekin and set the dishes on the counter for the grill guy. “Maybe I don’t.” She dug her cell phone out of her pocket and tapped a message, then sent it and turned back to Jamie. “You’re being purposefully vague, and I don’t like it. Spill, sister.”

Jamie watched the grillers show off with their grill-sword things, trying to come up with a suitable response that would still buy her time. In the end she just sighed. “How about I ignore all interrogative queries until after I’ve eaten?”

Anna frowned, shrugging. “Okay, guess I can handle that. But I get the feeling I’m not gonna like this very much, am I?”

Jamie couldn’t answer that. She accepted her food with a smile for the sweaty but good-looking young guy behind the grill, tossing a couple dollar bills in the tip jar and banging the gong. Anna was true to her word, letting her eat in peace. When they’d both finished, Anna toyed with her chopsticks and leveled a serious look at Jamie.

“Okay. We’ve eaten. Now…
spill
.” Anna stabbed Jamie’s hand with the chopstick playfully. “Ian didn’t knock you up, did he?”

Jamie sighed, half-laughing. “No.” She took a deep breath. “Ian and I broke up about an hour after I got to Chicago, actually.”

Anna’s brow wrinkled. “Really? I thought things were going well. I was half-expecting you to tell me you were moving to Chicago.”

Jamie shook her head. “It was never going well, Anna.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ian…the whole thing with him. It was never going to work, and I knew it from the get-go.”

“I don’t understand. You seemed to like him. You were always talking about him whenever we hung out.”

Jamie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well…I was trying to convince myself everything was fine.”

“So you broke up with Ian on Friday…it’s Tuesday, and I know you work every Monday…so what happened Saturday and Sunday?”

“Actually, technically, he broke up with me, but I was gonna do it soon anyway.”

Anna waved her hand dismissively. “Irrelevant. Where were you the rest of the weekend? What are you not telling me?”

“Um.” Jamie tied a knot in the empty paper wrapper from her drinking straw, not looking at Anna. “Nothing?”

“Fuck you, hooker. Give me the truth.”

“You can’t handle the truth.”

“Okay,
fine
, Tom Cruise.” Anna scooted her chair back and prepared to stand up. “I’m going to the bathroom. If you can’t talk to me, I get it. Or really, I don’t, but I’m not gonna try to drag the truth out of you. You’ve either avoided the truth or outright lied to me every time we’ve talked for, like, months now. I’m getting sick of it.” Anna left, her messy blonde braid hanging down her back, swaying as she walked.
 

Jamie put her face in her hands, groaning in despair. “This is gonna suck,” she muttered to herself.

Anna came back and sat down, crossing her arms over her chest. “Last chance, Jay. Or we’re fighting for real.”

Jamie took a deep breath, shredding the straw wrapper between shaking fingers. “I ran into Chase after I left the restaurant where Ian broke up with me.”

“Shit.” Anna’s eyes slid closed slowly. “I knew it. I
knew
it. You fucked him, didn’t you?”

Jamie looked up sharply. “It wasn’t just
fucking
, Anna.”

“Whatever, Jamie. You slept with him. You had sex with him.”

 
“It’s not…it was more than that.” She could barely manage a whisper. “I can’t even explain to you how much has changed for me. It feels like…I don’t know how to put it into words. It’s hard to believe it was just a single weekend. Two days. Two days, but everything is different.
I’m
different. He changed me, Anna.”

Anna drew a long breath and let it out slowly. “Yeah. He has a way of doing that, doesn’t he?” She reached out and took Jamie’s trembling hands in hers. “I’ll bite my tongue as long as I can, but you have to talk to me.”

Jamie nodded, pushing back the huge weight of emotion bearing down on her chest. “I’m in love with him, Anna. I have been since Vegas. I tried so hard,
so goddamn hard
to deny it. To pretend it wasn’t true. I did. I swear to you, I didn’t want this to happen, but it did. We both tore ourselves apart for months trying to act like this wasn’t inevitable. Ian…he was just an attempt to be okay without Chase, and it never had a fucking chance in hell of working.”

“And Chase? How does he feel?”
 

“He did basically the same thing. Hooked up with some girl from around here named Tess. He was in Chicago for a show, and she dumped him, pretty much at the same time as Ian dumped me. We were both hurting innocent people with this, Anna. Tess, Ian? Neither of them had any part of Chase or me. But now that Chase and I…happened…you’re hurt. I don’t know what to do.”

“He loves you, huh?” Anna’s voice was small and tight.

“Yeah.”

Anna didn’t answer for a long, long time. “Shit. I—shit. I don’t know how to deal with this. It’s not like he’s my boyfriend and you went behind my back with him. I’m married to Jeff, and I wouldn’t change that for the world, but…it’s
Chase
. You know how hard that whole thing was for me.”

Jamie half-shrugged, sniffling back a tear. “Yeah…I know. But…you don’t know what I went through trying to act like I don’t need Chase.”

“No, I don’t, because you weren’t talking—”

“How could I talk to you about it? About him? You still care about him. I know you love Jeff with all your heart, but you can’t sit there and tell me there’s no part of you that doesn’t wonder what could have been if you hadn’t run away from him in New York. What was the right choice in this, Anna? I tried the right thing. I tried to walk away from him. I
did
walk away from him. So many times, I did, and it nearly broke me every time. That kiss in Vegas. It was one of those moments that define you, that change who you are, what you want in life…”

Anna sighed. “I know the feeling all too well.”

“Every time I saw him just made it worse. It’s not just an attraction. I don’t know what to say. It’s…
need
. I was completely exhausted last night, but I still couldn’t sleep right because he wasn’t there, and I’d only spent two days with him. It’s like…I don’t know…like he’s inside me.”

Anna stood up abruptly and walked out of the restaurant, wiping at her face. Jamie slumped forward, resting her head on her arms on the tabletop for a minute, then followed Anna out to her car. She slid into the passenger seat and rested her head on the seat back. Next to her, Anna had her forehead pressed to the steering wheel. Her shoulders shook.

After a while, Anna sat up and scrubbed her face. “I…I love Jeff. I don’t want anyone else. He’s…he’s perfect for me. But goddammit, Jay. You’re right. I do sometimes, in very pit of my heart, wonder sometimes. I ran before he had a chance to explain, and later I realized he probably hadn’t done anything wrong. But by then it didn’t matter, because I was in love with Jeff already.”

“I know.”

“But…how can I ever look at Chase without that little niggling worm of doubt popping up? How can I look at him and not see us—him and me? You’re my best friend, Jay. I want to be able to ask you about things with your boyfriend. We’re supposed to have dirty little secrets about our men together. I want to ask you…I mean, I know what Chase likes, and I’m guessing I can imagine how the weekend went, and—” Anna shuddered and ducked her head, “—But then I think of him and
you
in bed together, and I get sick. It’s not jealousy, exactly. I don’t know
what
it is, but it hurts, Jay. It hurts.”

Jamie leaned across the console between them and hugged Anna. “I don’t know, either. That’s how I feel when I think about you and Chase together. I mean, like…he’s
mine
. I don’t know what I’m gonna do while he’s on tour. I’m already going insane, and it’s been less than twenty-four hours since I saw him. And sometimes you come up, and it’s awkward. And I…I don’t know, Anna. This is what’s been tearing me apart about the whole situation. I love him so much. I’ve never been happier in my entire life than when I’m with him. Nothing else matters except being in his arms. But I have to live life and so does he, and then everything comes crashing back down around me and…” Jamie rested her forehead against Anna’s shoulder. “Reality sucks.”

Anna laughed through a sob. “Yeah, it does.” She leaned her ear against Jamie’s head. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Jay, but—fuck you for falling in love with my ex.” After a silent moment, Anna shoved Jamie away playfully. “It was pretty amazing, though, right?”

Jamie dragged in a deep breath and let it out with a shriek and whole-body freak out. “Anna, it was so far beyond incredible! I didn’t know it could be like that. I didn’t know…” She took a deep breath and tried again. “He took me places I didn’t know the human body could go.” She said this last part quietly, lending intensity to the statement.

Anna sighed, almost wistfully. “You two are perfect for each other.” She picked at her thumbnail, keeping her gaze cast down. “I never said this to anyone, or even admitted it to myself out loud before now, but I kind of felt like he wanted things I didn’t know how to give him. He was just so crazy and intense and…it was exciting and fun, but it was overwhelming sometimes. I think that’s the largest reason I ran. Emotionally, yeah, there were things there I couldn’t figure out how to face, but I think unconsciously I was a little overwhelmed by the things he wanted to do with me,
to
me.”