Vindication: A Motorcycle Club Romance (23 page)

The Jameson burned softly down my
throat as I scanned around the room, ready to be disappointed and, eventually,
drunk. The lights near the stage strobed and swung, making it difficult to
really get a handle on anyone’s face, at least until the band stopped and sets
changed.

The old bartender returned with my
beer and a smile. I took a big drink and looked back toward the crowd. The band
wasn’t bad, young guys probably just starting out on the local circuit, but
something about them had the crowd going pretty fierce for a tiny underground
show. This wasn’t a show for the suburbanites, the ones who pay triple digits
for nosebleed seats every five years when Neil Diamond comes to town. This was
a place for the loyal dogs.

It was halfway through my beer when I
spotted him in the mosh pit. Really, it was a fucking wonder I hadn’t seen him
the second I opened the door to the club. Say what you want about the dude’s
reputation or his music—but Noah Hardy is a built, attractive man that stands
out in a crowd. Like a wolf among lap dogs.

Noah Hardy, the world-famous rock
star. The bad boy. The drunk-in-public, fight-picking, womanizing lead vocalist
of Cut Up Angels, right here, ten feet from me in some hometown mosh pit.

The light glowed across his bare
chest and shoulders, exposing his tattoos in little swatches, like works of art
being uncovered from the dark. Sweat coated his skin, making his muscles
glisten. With his strawberry blonde hair and shaggy beard, his firm muscles,
and his whittled waist, he looked like some gorgeous Irish bareknuckle boxer.
Like he belonged in some tougher, more violent century.

Good God, he was the hottest fucking
thing I had ever seen in my life.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen Noah
before. I’d been to his shows, of course—who hadn’t, at this point? But this
was something else. I felt like I was seeing him naked. As he raged in the mosh
pit with the rest of the hardcore crowd, it was like I was privy to some
intensely private side of Noah Hardy that I hadn’t even known existed.

When the festival news hit, so did
the public speculation. Because Noah had bona fide baller status, most assumed
he and the others had jetted off to some private sunny resort to wait out the
storm. But that hadn’t felt right to me. The looks I got from around the room
when I spoke it out loud almost gave me pause, but I held the line and asked
for a flight to Seattle. Something in my gut told me that, in this darkest
time, Noah Hardy was going to run home. And I had been right.

How had I known that?

I tried not to stare, but I couldn’t
keep my eyes off him as he shoved and pulled his way through the band’s set. If
anyone in the crowd knew who he was, no one seemed to care or pay him special
mind. Just like everyone else in the pit, he got pushed, and he got helped back
up if he lost his footing. Watching his firm body move in the strobing lights,
hearing the primal pounding of the drums… it was all getting my heart pumping
in a way I hadn’t anticipated. Anxiety was quickly being replaced with
something hotter, and in that moment, I felt ten years younger.

I finished my beer in two huge
swallows and immediately ordered another round. My gaze drifted away from the
mosh pit, but not without a fight. I tried to stare at the bottles lined in a
row against an old dirty glass mirror behind the bar. Tried counting them,
reading the tiny print on the labels, anything to keep me from looking back
over at Noah in the crowd. His mind-numbing hotness notwithstanding, I had a
goddamn job to do. I spent all night hunting him down, and here he was. I
couldn’t blow it now.

“This is our last fucking song,”
yelled the band’s vocalist into the mic.

Shit, of course it was. That meant I
had two, maybe three minutes to figure out how I was going to make this
approach. Several plans were on the table, but things like this were like going
into a war zone—you just never knew what it was going to look like until you
got dropped in the middle of it. The rumors had told me Noah was looking to
recruit a new band—a fitting sign that Cut Up Angels might actually be done
with thanks to this new scandal. Introducing myself to Noah as a potential
replacement musician had been plan A.

But he didn’t look like he was
recruiting tonight. He just looked like a regular dude, enjoying a show. Plan A
now looked weird, paranoid; he’d wonder where I had heard the rumors about
recruiting, why I was asking. This would be over before it began.

So I guess I just needed to look like
a regular chick, enjoying a show, too.

In that case…

I turned back toward the stage. Hell,
maybe I would even enjoy myself for real tonight. The pit had died, but the
vocalist was in the audience now, and a handful of dudes—including Noah—were
gathered around him in a huddle, screaming lyrics into the mic together,
butting heads and sweating all over each other. Sweat dripped down Noah’s back
tattoos and disappeared down his tight black jeans. Heat rumbled inside me, and
I tried to quench it quickly with a swig of beer. Noah Hardy was supernatural
levels of hot. Suddenly all I could think about was running my hands up the
taut muscles of his back.

The song came to a smash-cut end, and
the crowd erupted into howls and clapping. House lights flicked on, and
somebody turned on an old Fugazi album as background music.

My eyes were still on Noah when he
came out of his show trance and started heading toward the bar, where he had
left his shirt in a crumpled black heap next to a half-finished beer. The shirt
and beer I was slowly realizing I had sat next to when I came in.

Well, shit.

He came around the corner of the bar
and stopped for a moment, looking at me. At first it was surprise on his face,
like he hadn’t expected to see anybody when he looked up. But surprise quickly
melted into something else—something softer. I watched his eyes as his gaze ran
slowly, painfully slowly, down the length of my body and back up to my face.
They stayed there, locked on my red lips, and he licked his own as if he were
imagining them.

A sexual spark lit between my legs. I
couldn’t remember the last time anyone looked at me that way—let alone a man as
gorgeous as Noah Hardy. I smiled back at him reflexively.

As he took the last few steps toward
me in a much more confident, cocky stride, I realized with a sudden mix of
terror and excitement that I had just given myself my “in” to get close to
Noah. It hadn’t been my plan—it was
never
my plan, for this or any job.
It was bad form, not my style, but Noah—here’s a guy who was used to taking any
woman he wanted backstage and having his way with her.

Judging by the look on his face,
tonight, that woman was me.

~
THREE ~

Noah

Sometimes it feels like I don’t have a shred of
fucking luck left in my miserable life. But other times, it feels just the
opposite. Maybe I was just desperate for some luck to count this as a win.
Maybe it was just the leftover adrenaline and oxytocin from moshing my fucking
heart out to some juicy underground hardcore, giving me a natural high. Maybe I
just wanted to lie to myself to get out from under the pile of hot garbage that
was my life outside of this club.

But I didn’t expect to come out of
the pit and find her sitting there, like she was waiting for me. I didn’t know
who she was, never seen her gorgeous face before in my life, but for a split
second, I actually had this thought that someone had pulled the image of the
perfect hardcore girl right out of my brain and brought her to life. And here
she was, sitting at the bar of the Graveyard Club, eating me up with her eyes.
She gave me a shy smile and turned back to her drink, and I took that as a
challenge.

I pushed my sweaty hair out of my
face and came up to the bar where I’d left my stuff. I kept my eyes on her as I
grabbed the half-full stein of draught and drank it down in two thirsty gulps.
I never took my eyes off her, watching, hoping to catch a glimpse of her
checking me out. A side-eye sneak.

Groupies, they ran right up to you.
There was no game in it, no challenge. It was like filling up a plate from a
buffet and hoping none of it was left out too long to give you food poisoning.
They served a purpose, sure, but who wants to eat at a buffet all the time?

This woman, she wasn’t that. I was
almost sure she recognized me, but she wasn’t a groupie. Not a chance. This one
wanted to be hunted.

Lucky for her, I’m one hell of a
hunter. And I don’t mind chasing down my dinner.

Kevin saw me sit down and immediately
put another full beer in front of me like the champ he is. Then he glanced over
to the beauty at my left and asked her if she needed another.

“Get her whatever she wants for the
rest of the night,” I answered. “On my tab.”

She gave me that side glance I was
waiting for, that sassy, non-committal interest that made my dick twitch in my
jeans. Her pouty, gorgeous red lips twisted into a smirk. To Kevin, she said,
“Shot of Jameson and another pint, please.”

Fuck, even her drink order was hot.
Kevin put the shot down on the counter and she threw it back without a hitch. I
took another glance down her body, not bothering to hide my interest. She was
skinny, but still had a nice, plump pair of tits that I couldn’t wait to put in
my mouth. More interesting at that moment was the shirt she wore.

I leaned closer to her, and felt our
thighs connect beneath the cramped space of the bar. She didn’t move away. “I
like your shirt,” I said, close to her ear. Her flowery scent hit my nose like
a dream.

That half-grin appeared on her lips
again, and she tilted her head toward me. When she finally met my gaze, I
wasn’t ready for it; not for those big, full blue eyes, like enormous crystal
pools you could dive right into. Coupled with her pale skin and bright red
lips, she was like a doll come to life. A shock ran down my spine and between
my legs. For a moment, my chest was actually too tight to draw a breath.

She ran her eyes over the tattoos on
my bare chest and replied, “I like yours, too.” Her grin went from something
shy and curious to a full, seductive come-on that only made me harder than I
already was.

I smiled back at her, and the pale
skin on her neck and chest flushed with heated arousal. A delicious future was
laying itself out in front of me in my mind. “That’s from their ’99 tour,
right?”

She nodded immediately. “I still have
my disposable camera photos. Our stop was the first one after Kip set his hair
on fire trying to do that drunk fire breathing bullshit, so he looks like a
charred corpse in all of them, but he said it was worth it.”

Whoa. I did not see that coming. The
Rising End was a foundational band, underground but still big enough that
normies knew their name. Part of me expected to hear she just swung by Hot
Topic two weeks ago to pick up some knockoff version of it. But not this chick.
Looking closer now I could tell the shirt was old, loved, well-worn; faded from
years of washing; a few tiny holes near the seam where she’d probably had to
pull it down when it got messed up in a pit.

She wasn’t a groupie, and she wasn’t
some bullshit poser. This chick was the real deal.

She had no idea how excited and
blazingly horny I felt listening to her talk about my scene like that. I rubbed
my thigh against hers, and smiled to myself when the slightest pressure
returned. “I would really love to see those pictures.”

She looked over at my face again and
smiled, a sweet one this time. “Is that you inviting yourself to my place?
Pretty ballsy.”

“Oh, I don’t think we need to go that
far out of the way to take care of business, do we?”

Heat rose in my loins when she didn’t
retract, but flushed red, her smile growing. She turned back to her beer, quiet
for a few moments, like she was thinking.

She got me rock hard when she replied
in a throaty voice, “It has been a while since I fucked in a club.”

That was it. I had to have this
chick, and I had to have her right fucking now. My dick could barely stand her
hotness, the feel of her soft, thin thigh against mine. I stared at her until
she turned back to look at me.

“What?” she said, self-conscious, as
I ran my gaze all over her face and neck. When I stopped on her ruby red lips,
they pursed in a delicate little o-shape as she let out a knowing sigh.

I didn’t have a rational thought in
my head. I took one of my hands and cupped her jaw underneath her hair. When
she didn’t pull away, I urged her toward me until those gorgeous lips met mine,
open ever so slightly, teasing me with her hot breath and soft, wet tongue.

Her kiss sent something rocketing
through my nerves that I had never felt before. Not with past girlfriends; not
with the hottest groupies. In a millisecond my kiss went from a teasing preview
to hungry devouring, like I had been starving for her taste my whole life and
never known it. Judging by how fiercely she returned it, I wasn’t the only one
who felt it. I ran my left hand up her denim-clad thigh, reaching almost to the
soft heat between her legs. I felt her gasp against my mouth, felt the
vibrations of a moan in her kiss. It only made me moan back at her and squeeze
her thigh with aching hunger.

When we pulled away, it felt like we
had been kissing for hours. Her pale skin flushed with heat; her big blue eyes
were bright with anticipation and arousal. “I’m Laurel,” she said quietly

“Noah,” I said, though she probably
already knew that. I ran my thumb along the skin at her jaw. It was like
porcelain.

“You’re a damn fine kisser, Noah,”
she said.

“I’m damn fine at a whole range of
other things, too,” I said. I could hear the lust in my own voice as I pulled
her face close to mine again. “I’d love to show you just how good.”

Laurel looked in my eyes and smiled.
“Oh yeah?”

I grinned back at her wickedly. I ran
my hand up her thigh again, slower this time, purposely grazing a finger over
her pussy with enough pressure that she could feel it through her jeans. Laurel
moaned and closed her eyes under my touch, and made my dick so hard it ached.

I pulled her lips against mine for a
smaller kiss, and then whispered, “Meet me in the green room in three minutes.”

I planted one more kiss before she
could reply and then stood up from the stool, stealing one more glance her way
before moving around the bar to look for Kevin. Laurel stared at me, smiling,
her eyes devouring the muscles on my back and shoulders. I winked back and
disappeared into the back room.

Kevin was kneeling on the black
rubber mats on the tile floor, struggling with a new keg that had been dented
by the idiot delivery guy and wouldn’t stand up on its own. Immediately I got
down and helped him secure the draft line on the spigot and get the stupid
thing wriggled into its place under the counter. He patted me on the back as we
stood up.

“I need a favor,” I said.

“Anything, dude, what’s up?” said
Kevin, wiping his hands on the towel that was perpetually across his right
shoulder.

“I need the green room and, like, an
hour of privacy.”

Kevin smiled at me like I was a dog.
“Not even home two weeks and you’re already gonna soil my green room with your
conquests?”

“Would you seriously say no to that
girl?” I challenged him with a laugh.

“Not on your fucking life,” he said
with raised eyebrows. He dug in his pocket and handed me a key ring. “Last
band’s about to go on, so they shouldn’t give you any grief about kicking them
out.”

“Like I’d give a fuck if they did,” I
said, jingling the keys in my palm. “Thanks, Kev, I owe you.” I turned to leave
the kitchen.

Kevin’s voice followed me back out
into the bar, a little too loudly. “Probably condoms in the drawer!”

I rolled my eyes and continued on my
quest. The Graveyard Club was a shithole, but even the worst of them had a
spare room where bands could keep their gear locked up while they were here,
and catch some peace and quiet before they all had to get crammed back in their
tour buses and vans, smelling each other’s BO for weeks on end. Maybe the big
rock star life had made me softer than I thought, but I sure as fuck did not
miss that—or the leg cramps, or having to trade precious joints to the other
dudes in the band to negotiate some time to fuck a groupie in the back without
being messed with.

I knocked on the green room door
before I used my key, as a courtesy. Some skinny, dark-haired kid opened it up,
and a cloud of pot smoke came wafting out from behind him. It made him look
like he was a wizard teleporting into existence. “What?” he said, and then his
eyes widened when he recognized me.
That
never got old. “Oh, fuck,
dude.”

“You guys are on in ten,” I said in
my best authoritative voice. “Mind clearing your shit out of here?”

The dude just stared at me for a
minute like he was looking at a ghost. No one had seriously fucked with me yet
or mentioned the festival, but this wasn’t the first time I’d seen fear on the
face of someone who had no reason to fear me. It was more than annoying—it was
insulting.

I snapped two fingers in front of his
face. “Yo, Cheech. You fucking hear what I said?”

“You’re Noah Hardy,” he said.

“Holy Christ.” I rolled my eyes.
“Welcome to the present. Now gather up your band and clear the fuck out of this
room.”

“But we haven’t gone on yet!” said a
high-pitched voice from inside the room. I looked over the kid’s shoulder and
saw another skinny, brown-haired version of him on the couch holding a smoking
joint.

Fine. You assholes wanna play? Let’s
play. “You have exactly three minutes to get your shit on that stage and start
your set, or there’s going to be a problem.”

That might not have been my finest
moment. Already I could hear Gavin’s scolding voice in my head, reminding me
that threatening teenage hardcore bands was not the way to gain public
sympathy. But the words were already out. It’s not the first time I spoke first
and thought later. They only considered the stern expression on my face for a
moment before deciding not challenge me. After that pause, they scrambled to
life and started yanking guitars and drum thrones into their arms. One by one
they filed out past me without looking me in the face again. I wasn’t too proud
to admit that still felt pretty good.

With the band gone, I did a quick
sweep of the room, throwing their haphazard clothes and backpacks into corners
and off the couch. The room’s ancient décor was from the 70s with its tacky
leopard-print walls and enormous mirrors. I normally wouldn’t have even
considered fucking anyone here, let alone someone as gorgeous as Laurel, on the
cesspool of a couch that exists in a room like this; but desperate times called
for desperate measures, and there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to pass up
my chance to score with Laurel. Besides, the faded black leather seemed like
the newest thing in this room, even if it would probably light up like a
Christmas tree if we ever turned on a black light in here.