Unplugged: A Bad Boy Rockstar Romance (7 page)

She had to be exaggerating. Was she seriously trying
to tell me she couldn’t get a guy to stick around? “Are you joking? You’re
telling me, with the way you look, the way you fuck, and all the awesome shit
you’re into, you have trouble getting dudes?”

She shrugged again and took the joint from my fingers.
She held the drag in her lungs longer this time and blew it out slowly. “It’s a
mystery for the ages.”

“It’s no mystery. The men you’ve met are fucking idiots,
obviously.”

Laurel laughed, but it was quiet and a bit sad. She
passed me the joint and leaned her blonde head against my chest, tucked under
my chin. “Eh, it’s fine. I have other things going on, and dumbass dudes only
get in the way of it, anyway.”

I smiled and kissed the top of her head. “I think
that’s sexy as fuck.”

“You do?” She didn’t look up at me, but I could still
feel her face twisted into some disbelieving frown.

“Yeah,” I said. “Most of the women I interact with are
just… passive. They swim behind other people until they get swallowed up by the
sea. But you, shit… you’re a shark.”

She looked up at me this time, and I met her eyes with
a serious face. She stared at me, like she was trying to decide if I was full
of shit.

“Most people are afraid of sharks,” she said quietly.
Her eyes fell.

With one hand running through her soft hair, I said, “Because
they don’t understand them.” Then, for good measure, I added, “And I’m not most
people.”

Laurel’s smile glowed up at me. “No… you’re not.”

“I feel like I never meet anyone who wants to live,” I
said. “Everyone is so fucking eager to settle down and get their routine going…
that schedule they can follow right up to the cemetery gates.” I put the joint
carefully in the ashtray on my bedside table and wrapped both my arms around
her. “I think your fire is beautiful.”

Laurel’s face softened. She crawled up my body until
her lips were over mine, and she kissed me with a heated tenderness that made
me ache. I wrapped my arms around her body and pulled her into me.

With the quiet storm pattering outside and Laurel burning
in my arms, everything else in the world faded into nothing.

~ NINE ~

Laurel

Hours
passed, and Noah and I didn’t seem to want to do anything except talk and fuck
and touch each other. The driven part of me felt guilty, because I didn’t feel
like I was at work anymore. I felt… different. Like I was just out with someone
whose company I enjoyed, and who happened to be a stone-cold fuck-machine.

After we got tired of lying in his huge bed, I got up
and wiggled my ass until he followed me into the shower. Under the stream of
hot water, Noah wrapped his arms around me and made out with me like we were
teenagers, caressing my face, pressing his taut body up against me, and me up
against the wall. When he bent to kiss my neck, his beard tickled my sensitive
skin and made me shiver. My hard nipples rubbed up against the muscles of his
chest, and I sighed softly when he brought a hand up to touch them.

“You’re so fucking hot,” said Noah, desperation in his
voice. “I could fuck you forever.”

His words made my knees weak. I bit into his shoulder
and pushed my body tighter against his. “I wish you would.”

His giant dick was already hard again. I took it in my
hands and smiled as Noah shivered under my touch, bending his head into my
shoulder as I stroked him under the spray of the shower. I felt his teeth
pressing into my neck as he mauled my breasts with his strong hands while I
increased my rhythm. As soon as I felt his cock spasm and release, his hands slipped
around to grip my ass and pull me against his wet body. His cum covered the
front of my pussy and tops of my thighs, and I moaned.

“You’re something else, you know that?” he said,
cupping my jaw before he kissed me.

Noah held me under the warm shower spray and gently
cleaned me off, never making me lift a finger. He nuzzled into the side of my
neck and kissed my cheek.

When we finished, Noah wrapped me in his own gray
bathrobe and only took for himself a towel around his waist—which I, of course,
wasn’t complaining about. His hard body looked even more incredible soaking
wet, the water beading off the colors of his tattoos and rolling down his
muscles like raindrops. He took a minute to run a black plastic comb through
the bit of blonde hair on the very top of his head that wasn’t shaved close,
and I watched him with an endearing smile.

“You hungry?” he said, wrapping his arms around my
waist.

“Starving,” I suddenly realized with a laugh. “But I
also don’t want to go anywhere that would require us to, you know… put on
clothes.”

Noah grinned and squeezed my ass. “I like the way you
think. Delivery?”

“How about Chinese?”

“Done,” he said. “I’m sure I’ve got a menu buried in
the kitchen somewhere.” While he did the work of gathering dinner, I finished
drying off and hung up his bathrobe. Feeling bold after so many orgasms under
my belt, I sauntered into the kitchen, naked, and whipped Noah’s towel off his
waist while he was still on the phone with the Chinese place.

Noah whirled with a surprised face, which turned into
a pretend mad face as soon as he saw me grinning at him, dangling the towel
next to my naked body. He looked me up and down, and between his legs his dick
twitched just a bit.

“Sorry, what were you saying?” he asked the person on
the phone. “There’s someone here who is in for a world of trouble if she
doesn’t stop distracting me from my phone call…”

His playfulness revved me up like nothing else, and I
took a few steps backwards, out of his reach. “Oh, really, tough guy? What are
you gonna do to me… if I distract you?” I seductively dropped my right hand
down my body and between my legs. Noah bit his lip and bent at the waist,
trying to suppress a groan as the worker at the restaurant read back his order
to him.

“Yes, that sounds correct,” said Noah, his voice
strained, his eyes glued to the hand between my legs. Already his dick was
half-hard again. “Thirty minutes sounds perfect.” He looked up and met my eyes.
“Just enough time for someone to get punished.”

If I wasn’t wet before, I certainly was after that
line. Noah ended the call and took a few hard steps toward me, lifting me off
my feet into his arms. He dragged me a few feet into the carpeted living room
as I squealed in mock protest.

Noah lowered me to the floor, but kept a tight grip on
my wrists which he held above my head as he hovered over me. He ground his
waist against mine, dragging his massive erection along my pelvic bone, teasing
my lips.

“You just don’t like taking orders, do you?” said Noah
before he bent to lick my nipples, sucking each of them into his mouth one at a
time.

“Aren’t we both in the wrong scene for that?” I
responded, lifting my hips up to meet him, trying to get his cock inside me.
But Noah moved out of the way and pushed his body against mine to hold it
still.

“I could always try fucking the insubordination out of
you,” he said, tightening his grip on my wrists.

I bit my lip, but it wasn’t enough to stop the sound
of delight that came from deep in my throat.

“That’s what you want?” he asked. I could feel the tip
of his thick cock pushing against my pussy.

“Yes,” I begged. “Please fuck me, Noah.”

He didn’t have it in him to resist any longer. He
reached over to a condom he had left on the coffee table and rolled it on
quickly before shoving his cock deep into my pussy with a guttural moan. My
legs clenched around his waist reflexively as I tried to drive him harder into
me. Each thrust pushed me against the floor, his heavy body nearly knocking the
wind out of me each time he pressed me down. His hands gripped my hair and
shoulders, using me for leverage as he pounded into me desperately. His cock
filled me up until an orgasm washed over my body, lasting twice as long as the
last one. Noah sweated and cursed above me as I clenched his hardness with my
quivering muscles, massaging his cock until he was coming hard inside me.

I could already feel the carpet rash on my back, but I
didn’t care. My body felt incredible after all these orgasms, and even more so
when I had Noah’s pressed up against me. He kissed me a few more times, and
then withdrew his half-hard dick and helped me up off the floor. We got cleaned
up just in time to answer the door for the delivery driver, Noah wearing only
the gray robe as I kept out of sight.

The day had cleared up a bit and the air was warm, so
Noah grabbed a few blankets and spread them out on the grass in his backyard.
The foliage and fence line made the place very private, so we opted to picnic
naked, spreading the little boxes of Chinese food out across the blanket.

“So, can I ask you something?” I said as I lowered
some chow mein into my mouth. “It’s kinda personal.”

“I think we’ve established something of a personal
relationship,” said Noah with a wink. His gaze fell down to my tits and I
rolled my eyes.

“Anyway,” I said dramatically. “What’s the deal with
you still being single? I could’ve sworn everyone in your band was spoken for.”

Judging by the look on Noah’s face, I had hit a nerve.
Guilt twisted up my spine, but I didn’t try to take it back.

“Eh, it’s… it’s a bit complicated.”

“Try me,” I said. “I’m the queen of complicated.” And
I meant it.

Noah took a few bites of a spring roll. He didn’t look
up when he spoke. “I just came from a rougher scene than the other guys, is all.
Quinn and Jeff know a little bit about it, and endured a lot of it with me, but
they also had better parents than I did. Parents that protected them.”

I was quiet while Noah found his words.

“It’s dumb. I’ve never been in a war, or anything as
heinous as all that, but I still… still have some of the same problems. Just
too many years in the fringes of the scene, you know? Barely finding the money
to scrape by for rent and food and a little beer, maybe sneak into a show every
couple weeks if you learned the bouncers’ schedules. Fights, cheating
girlfriends, band drama… watching friends OD or lose out to depression… having
nothing but the music to make it all feel better.”

Despite my full tummy, a phantom pain squeezed my
abdomen anyway: memories of being hungry and cold that first winter in New
York, when I had nothing and no one, just my writing and the shows and hope
that the future was going to look different than the past. Noah understood.

He scratched absently at his beard as he shook his
head. “When I really stop and think about it, it all feels a million years old,
another lifetime ago. But at night, when I’m all alone and everything’s quiet,
it doesn’t feel that long ago. It feels like it’s still happening. And… long
story short… that makes it really difficult to have anything meaningful with a
woman. Eventually, even the craziest groupies want someone stable to settle
down with.”

Ache gnawed at my heart. “You might not believe me,
but I understand. And I’m sorry to hear that.”

Noah shrugged and cocked his head without looking at
me, as if to say it was no big deal. He reached out with his chopsticks and
tossed a few pieces of chicken in his mouth. “I don’t mean to make it sound
like I never got
any
attention. That would just be a lie.”

“Well, you’re certainly getting attention from the
ladies now, hot stuff,” I said.

“Once I found my place in the hardcore scene, I
started getting a reputation for being a moody, mysterious little shit, and
that really helped me get the chicks. And it only got better when I started
bulking up. The Raven of Thornwood, that’s what they called me.”

I burst out laughing, hand to my mouth to keep a bite of
orange chicken from spraying over the picnic. I’d been around the block enough
to know a rehearsal when I heard it. “What?! You’re full of shit, no they
didn’t! Your hair isn’t even black!”

Noah’s face flushed almost instantly, but his mouth
was pulled in a full grin, like he was glad he got caught. “Well, that story
has worked on dumber women.”

Noah watched me laugh for a little bit before he
started playfully shoving me over and saying, “Okay, okay! You got your laugh
in, sugar. Not all of us can have the opposite sex at our feet all the time
like you.”

“When did you start bulking up? Kevin said you were
still pretty scrawny when he met you.”

“Been talking to Kevin about me?” he said, nudging his
elbow into my leg.

“That is none of your business,” I said, poking him
with one of my chopsticks. “Don’t change the subject.”

Noah ran a hand over his own ab muscles, like he was
still not used to having them. “I suppose I was about twenty-two when I finally
started taking it seriously. I’d learned to fight before then. Being as deep in
the scene as I was, you had to.”

“Boston had some rough years like that, too,” I
recalled. The metal and hardcore scenes were far more peaceful than outsiders
ever imagined, but we had our asshole groups that ruined it for everyone else.

“There was this one show, I can’t even remember the
name of the band now, but it was me and Quinn and a bunch of other dudes from
high school. We got jumped on-stage. They almost put Quinn in the hospital.
After that, it just seemed stupid not to try and get stronger. If this was the
world I lived in, I had to adapt,” he said.

Palm running down his colorful arm, I said, “Wow. So
this isn’t just some tough guy thing… this is you surviving.”

Noah didn’t reply or look up at me. He shifted a bit
and reached for a fortune cookie. “Tell me what your deal is, sugar. How come
I’m lucky enough to not be competing with some strapping, hipster boyfriend?”

Immediately I could feel a strange shame rising in my
blood, the same feeling I always got whenever things got too emotional or
vulnerable for me. Opening up with my feelings was not exactly my jam. But in
that moment it was like I couldn’t stop myself.

“Guys, they don’t stick around me, either,” I told
him. “I seem to be this… unicorn to them. They all think I’m great and love the
work I do, they love how deeply I care about the scene. But they only ever get
close enough to be my friends. They don’t dare come closer. And the ones that
do
dare to date me usually end up hating me because I always care about my job
more than them.” After a pause, I added, “I suppose I deserve that one.”

“I don’t get that at all,” said Noah. His eyes
wandered over my face like he was trying to commit it to memory. “You’re
exactly the girl we’ve all been dreaming about ever since we joined the scene.”

“Apparently, no one knows what to do with a dream once
they get it,” I scoffed. “Because I can’t even get myself a date most of the
time.”

“Well,” said Noah, leaning closer to me. “You don’t
have to worry about that as long as you’re in Seattle. Because I’m laying
strict claim to your time… and to that delicious pussy.”

Jolts of desire shot through my body. “Is that right?”

“Try letting anyone else near it and see,” he said. Noah
ran his palm up my calf and thigh, stopping just short of touching my center.
He smirked at me with a glow in his eyes.