Chapter 4
FOUR
Deke
I’m even more of a bastard than I realized.
This girl is twenty. I’m forty-two.
My cock should not be harder than reinforced concrete right now.
It’s not just her hot little body upending my good judgment, either. It’s her attitude.
Goddammit, I love her attitude. Every time she opens her smart mouth or gives me one of those snippy looks over her shoulder, I fall deeper into curiosity about her.
And believe me, I had zero plan to end up here.
Protecting her. Talking to her. Parking her on my lap, that tight ass pressed up against my package. Throbbing for her.
When I saw the men harassing June and decided to intervene, I had no intention of her ending up on my lap.
I truly didn’t. This was a gradual progression into madness, and the more she melts against me, the harder it is to imagine ending the night without her raking her fingernails down my back, that brat mouth screaming for God.
But that isn’t happening. Absolutely not.
I’m a lot of things—a burnout, an asshole, an unrepentant drunk—but I draw the line at being a creep.
Not to mention, her uncle is a damn fine man.
I’ll never be able to look him in the eye again if I creampie his niece.
Unfortunately, now she knows I’d love to bang her into next week. She feels how aroused I am.
Her ass rubs right to left, as if to confirm, and I hiss a sound.
Leaving the bottle of Jack wedged between her thighs, I wrap her hair around my right fist and tilt her face up the ceiling, my mouth open against the side of her face.
“You couldn’t handle that dick, little girl.
It requires a woman with a lot more experience. ”
The sound of her swallow reaches my ears. “You don’t know anything about my experience.”
“I don’t want to know,” I lie through my teeth.
“Good.” She yanks her hair out of my hand, spitting venom up at me through her incredible green eyes. “God. What turned you into such an asshole?”
I’m not expecting the question.
No one asks me why I’m such a jerk. Everyone just puts up with me. They have to because I’m paying their bills by employing them.
“You just met me today, June Bug. How do you know I wasn’t always like this?”
She turns slightly in my lap, looking up at me through wide eyes. “Because I know. I know you used to be kinder. You enjoyed being a singer. You valued country life—”
“How do you know what the hell I enjoyed or valued?” I fairly yell at her.
“Because I could hear it in your music. I can’t hear your enjoyment anymore.”
That stings like a son of a bitch. “Are you criticizing my music? To my face?”
She lowers her voice to a murmur, as if she senses she’s gone too far. She has. And I’m pissed the hell off about it. Who does this twenty-year-old think she is? “No, I’m questioning the spirit of it,” she whispers. “The music is good, but your soul…”
I’m breathing hard.
She’s hitting way too close to home.
“My soul what?” I ask, not really wanting to know. But simultaneously wanting to punish myself by being called out. Or confirming what I already know. What I’ve been feeling for years of going through the motions.
That I’m nothing but a hollow shell.
She shakes her head, lips pressed together.
“No, you finish the conversation you started, little girl. My soul what?”
“You don’t have one anymore,” she blurts in a whisper.
I think I’m prepared to hear her answer, but I’m not.
For some reason, hearing it from this girl is a dagger to the gut.
Maybe because she’s smart and I sense she knows what she’s talking about.
“I didn’t sell it to the devil, if that’s what you’re thinking.
He came and took it from me. In the form of the public. The so-called fans.”
“What do you mean?”
All right, I’m going to shut up now. There is no point in talking about this.
I don’t talk to anyone about this shit, because it’s nobody’s business but mine.
No one’s hangup but mine. There is something about the way this girl is looking up at me, though, like she needs to know.
Like she’s asking for an explanation because it’s important to her.
I guess that’s how I end up saying things to her that I’ve kept trapped in my head for years.
“You don’t know what it’s like. One minute, they celebrate you and swear to love you forever.
But when you pour your blood and sweat and tears into the next album and the one after that, but they’ve already moved on to someone else.
They don’t even know your ass anymore.” I take a long pull of Jack Daniels, knowing I need to stop now that I’ve gone well past drunk.
“This industry is fake and fickle. Ninety-nine percent of this job is trying to prove you still deserve to be on stage, these people judging you with their total lack of experience. All the people who were with me in the beginning—my friends, managers, agents—they sucked the blood out of me and moved on to someone younger, shinier. What soul should I have left when they ripped away pieces until the whole thing was gone? Answer me that, June.”
There’s a sheen in her eyes by the time I’m finished. “I’m sorry.”
Oh man. That was the dead wrong thing to say. I don’t want her sympathy, because it makes me feel something. A stirring among the numbness I’ve been living with for a long time. It makes me feel like I’m a real person, instead of some famous guy on a poster.
“You’re sorry?”
She firms her chin and nods.
No. Absolutely not.
I fist her hair again, tugging her head back with a little more force than intended. But I don’t stop there, because I need to distract her from my moment of weakness. I lean in and speak directly against her mouth. “I don’t give a fuck if you’re sorry.”
“Too bad,” she breathes, her voice catching, those green eyes searching mine.
Seeing a lot. A lot more than I’m ready to acknowledge is there.
I don’t know what happens, then. I just lose it. I lose myself in her.
My mouth is violent with hers. A pit forms in my stomach right away, because her lips are so soft and innocent compared to mine, and my treatment is too rough.
I’m licking into her mouth with too much audacity.
Ownership. Aggression. I want her to slap me hard across the face and go back to looking at me like a soulless monster, but she goes boneless, instead, her mouth parting for me like she was born to offer me her tongue.
It’s a dangerous drug, the way this spitfire surrenders.
There are flames licking inside of her and she’s allowing me to experience the burn. It’s benevolence. It’s a privilege. She tastes so fucking good, my thoughts spin out like a car on black ice, crashing into the guardrails of my mind, and my hunger intensifies.
Fuck. Fuck. I am way too old to be kissing a college girl like this, driving my tongue in so deep that she’s starting to squirm in my lap, her whimpers going straight to my head. I’m going to hell. I’m going to the deepest pits of hell.
No. You’ve been living there all this time.
Now you’re dragging her in with you.
That thought is like a slug to the jaw. The impetus I need to do the right thing and tear my mouth off hers, but now I’m looking down into her flushed, beautiful, drowsy face. She’s the picture of overwhelmed, and Jesus…she’s looking up at me like I’m her hero.
“Don’t do that,” I growl at her.
“Do what?” she murmurs, her voice dreamlike.
“Look at me like I’m a knight on a white horse. All I’ll do is trample you.”
Her green eyes dance from one side of my face to the other. “You don’t scare me.”
My heart takes an elevator to my mouth. I don’t know how this happened.
I don’t know how this twenty-year-old girl who I’ve never met before tonight can have such a profound impact on me.
I don’t like it. I don’t want her under my skin.
I want to fester in my self-imposed loneliness and cynicism.
That’s why I lean in and say the worst thing I can think of to drive her away. To send her running, because I…
I don’t know if I could run from her.
“Brave girl, are you? That’s good because the rumors about my cock are true.” My laughter is ugly, and I hate the way it dulls the light in her eyes. “You’ll need to be brave when I fold you in half and use you like just another easy cum dump tonight.”
The slap across my face echoes through the tour bus.
But the only thing I hear is the pained sob in the back of her throat.
The only thing I see is her remaining admiration of me crumble.
Of course, the tour bus arrives at the hotel at that very moment and June bolts down the walkway before I can grab her around the waist. “June Bug. Wait.”
She doesn’t listen. Doesn’t stop.
She’s off the bus as soon as the driver opens the door, running straight into the lobby of the hotel. I stare after her, wondering why I feel so fucking devastated when her opinion of me shouldn’t matter. I forced her to back off. That’s what I wanted, right?
I look down and realize she left her purse behind, she was in such a hurry.
There’s something wedged in behind her wallet. A notebook.
Before I can stop myself, I take out the little book and open it up, my stomach bottoming out when I see pictures…
…pictures of me glued to the pages. My name doodled inside of hearts, alongside June’s, at least a thousand times.
Worst of all, there are little diary entries about how we’re going to meet and fall in love when my tour bus breaks down.
How sweet I’m going to be to her. How I’m going to be her first
First…what?
Not lover.
No, please don’t let that be true.
Please.
I did not just say that vile thing to a virgin.
A virgin who has obviously idolized me for…for a long damn time. Some of the pictures in this notebook are from my late twenties, early thirties.
My goddamn throat has closed to the size of a straw.
What have I done?
When I glance up, June is standing in front of me. The rest of the bus has cleared of crew and she’s obviously returned to get her purse. She wouldn’t be able to check into the hotel, otherwise. She’s red faced and horrified to find me holding her notebook.
Reading it.
When did she start making this thing? It’s beat up and old.
An ode to…me.
This man who just bastardized every feeling she’s ever had for me.
“June…” I begin, a weight pressing down on my chest.
“Stop. It’s fine.” She snatches her belongings out of my hands. “It doesn’t mean anything. None of it was…real. It’s all just…so stupid. Forget you ever saw it.”
She grabs her possessions and runs.
Cemented to the seat, all I can do is watch her go.