Roadie (Rock-Hard Beautiful, #2)

by C.M. Stunich

Ransom is behind me. “Are you sure you want more?” he asks before he does anything more but lay his hands on the tight sweaty expanse of my skin. I feel like I'm trapped in it again, inside a vortex of want and need. “I need more,”

“You're such a beautiful girl, sweet thing,” he tells me, filling me slowly, pushing inside of me with a single breath. “Such a beautiful fucking girl.”

“Oh, shit, baby girl,” he says, and I swear there's a sob inside of his voice. But when I stand up and turn around, his dark eyes are dry and he's looking at me with a small smile.

“I should go back to the bus and shower,” I whisper, but Ransom is grabbing me by the arm. “After that, you have to see us play,” he says, mouth twisted to the side in a crooked smile as he tugs me into his arms, against the soft sweet smelling fabric of his sweatshirt. “Don't you think you deserve a good show after all that work?” “I'm …” I swallow a little and reach back to play with my hair. It's a little tangled from the wind … maybe from rubbing up against the wall, too. “Well, I don't think boys quite get how messy sex is for girls.” “Oh, it's messy for us, too,” Pax says, his wicked smirk hot enough to burn. Even after all that, I can barely look at him. Hell, it's kind of hard to look at any of them. I mean, I just went and had sex with five men in a row, one after the other. And I loved it. Mine. My rockstars.

“But that's why you and Paxton would never work. He's carrying around a lot of pain, and he looks for it in everyone he surrounds himself with. He'd ruin you if you ever got together. He needs to be around people that … are missing as many pieces as he is.”

“A happy person, a whole person, keeps all their pieces, holds the complete puzzle of their life in their hands. A broken person tries to give those pieces away because they don't like what they see. They fill in all those missing spots on the broken people around them, and in turn, they take some of those people's pieces.”

“They'll never be whole, but at least their pictures will change, until maybe they see something they like a little better than they had before.

Ransom smiles sharply, the expression this deep dark thing just carved raggedly into the scarred planes of his face. I stare at him for a really long time, this strange gaping emptiness inside of me that I blame all the hell over Lilith. How can I just sit here and watch some crying, blushing grieving girl and not feel her tears loosen up the glue that's holding me together? I've been a right git, I think, this uneasy feeling taking over my body. I've been a rancid prick. Ransom … Jesus bleeding Christ. I look away again and find Lilith staring at me, her eyes like two dark emeralds surrounded by thick black lashes. “Can I ask you a question?” she says and I feel my mouth twist up to the side in a smirk. It's my go-to expression, that smirk. I can wear it morning, noon, and night, and get away with whatever I want. The only people who could get me to smile for real were Chloe, Harper, and Ransom. Two of the fuckers on that list are dead and gone, and the other … I'm done staring at that arsehole right now. Fuck him.

“About?” I ask, because there are a lot of questions I don't want to answer, not even for my new girlfriend. Hmm. My girlfriend. This is certainly an unexpected development. I must be completely mental to not only date some girl I just met, but to share her with my fucking mates. Somehow though, that makes this easier, not harder, like the pressure's not just on me. And the sex? Well, shit. I haven't met many girls who could satisfy me by themselves let alone me and four other guys without batting a lash. When she's fucking us all, she gets this wild look in her eyes, like she's not entirely human. I love that, that feral gleam. I can't wait for her to meet my fiancée.

“That song you opened the show with tonight, what's the name of it?” “After All There's Us,” I say, sitting back up and grabbing a pair of chopsticks with my right hand, tapping them against the surface of the table as I return Lilith's stare and pray that that's the end of this conversation. I don't want to fucking talk about my music, any of it. It's all too personal, too full of pain, too rife with meaning. “The song says his eyes, but your chest says hers,” she continues and I feel my breath escape in a rush. I pluck some crab sashimi from a plate and pop it into my mouth, trying not to grit my teeth or clench my jaw. “Is it about Ransom and Chloe?” she whispers, leaning forward across the table. The other three guys are talking, but I bet Mikey can hear her. “This is a bloody boring conversation,” I say as I feel my heartbeat start to pick up inside my chest. Sure, maybe Lilith is right? Okay, fuck, she definitely is right. That song is about Ransom and Chloe, the betrayal I felt when they confessed their attraction to each other … and the pain I felt that night when I essentially lost them both. “Why don't we talk about your dead dad instead?” I ask and Michael narrows his eyes at me and scowls. “Goddamn it, Paxton, what the fuck is your problem?” “Leave us the hell alone,” I say, pointing at him with the chopsticks, thinking how ridiculous he looks with his tattoos and eyeliner in the middle of this sleek white and silver restaurant. I'm the only one dressed for the...

My lips purse as we continue to stare at each other, and I can't help but think of that kiss. That damn kiss. That fucking stupid arse kiss. God, I've kissed a lot of people in my life—girls, obviously—but I've never, never kissed anyone that sad, that empty, that fucked-up. Ransom is a mess, a scarred up, messed up, twisted nightmare of a man. What the hell's happened to him? To that guy who came to my house with his hair slicked back, a confident smile on his face, a yellow t-shirt on. He stood there and slipped his hands in his pockets, looking like some kind of charmed hipster asshole. Then he told me he was in love with my high school sweetheart, that she was in love with him. We got into an epic row … and the rest is history. Ransom was friends with my little sister, too. So … he lost her that night, he lost the girl he was in love with, and he lost me. Then, he found Kortney, fell in love … and I took her from him. Just because I could. Because I wanted to punish him. Because he needed to suffer the way I was suffering. But goddamn, the world has certainly given Ransom Wilder Riggs suffering in generous spades.

looking over at Lilith, at the way her wavy red hair falls over her shoulder when she leans forward to grab her drink, sitting back on Michael's lap like she was meant to be there. She looks like a fucking queen presiding over her court.

“What's your middle name?” I pause and then set my chopsticks down, my body shaking with a burst of laughter. “Cheeky bitch,” I say and then lift my chin, meeting her hardened stare with one of my own. “You said you didn't give your name to strangers. I'm not a stranger anymore. I want to know what it is.” She sips her drink with those full lips of hers, bruised from Michael's brutal kisses. I tilt my head to the side and lick my lips. “It's Charles,” I say, smiling slightly. “And yes, I'm aware that my name is English as fuck, thank you very much.” “You're welcome,” she says, and then she stands up, walks around the table and sits on my lap. I can't even begin to figure out why I'm so goddamn pleased by that.

I've never much liked museums, probably because the houses I grew up in were like museums themselves. Cold. Impersonal. Stuffy. My parents' own art collection is worth as much as everything in this building—and that's in their summer home. What I do like is seeing Miss Lily's reactions to the art pieces, seeing the way her big eyes get even bigger, her lashes fluttering as she takes in pots, paintings, sculptures, dresses, and murals with a child's sense of wonder.

Lilith lets go of me and stands up, leaning as far over the red velvet rope as the security guard will allow. They've already asked her to step back three or four times, and I swear, I thought about beating the shit out of them. How can they interrupt somebody that looks that damn eager?

he whispers, keeping his voice at that frustratingly low pitch that demands attention. If you don't give it your fuckin' all, you can't hear a damn thing the man says anymore. “You think so?” she asks, leaning into him when he slides his arms around her and closes his eyes, breathing in the scent of her hair as I watch, feeling my skin prickle with want. I want to touch them, get in there and see what happens between the three of us. And yet, I'm supposed to hate the man, aren't I? But every damn day that Lilith is on our bus, she makes it harder and harder for me to do that.

Hell, I'm drowning in pride, in hubris, in a nightmare of my own making.

“Pax, wait up,” Lilith says, jogging to catch up to me in the empty quiet of the museum. The marble floors echo with the sound of her heels as she walks alongside of me. “Are you okay? You seem a little off tonight?” “Off?” I ask, pausing and turning to look at her, loving the shape of her mouth and her eyes and her face. “How would you know? We barely know each other.”

“Hey, the tour's moving on,” Ran says from beside us, his voice as distant and dark as a ghost's. “Shit,” Lilith says, wiping her mouth, her cheeks slightly flushed with desire. “I don't want to miss anything. Which room did they go into?” “Straight ahead, to the left,” Ran tells her and she takes off back the way she came, leaving the two of us alone together in the empty hall, the dead smiles of portraits staring back at us from the white walls. “Don't tell Lilith, but I think it's totally creepy in here,” he says. I almost smile at that. Almost.

“Now that Lilith's here …” he starts, taking a deep breath, pushing his hood off his dark brown hair. It's a trust move, when he does that, bares his face. Ransom looks over at me, that jagged length of scar marring what was once a picture-perfect expression. “I was hoping we could figure out some way to be friends again.” “And why would Miss Lily change anything between us?” I ask. Of course, that's bullshit. Lilith is changing everything between us. Just like her name implies, she's a tempest tearing into our bullshit and our hurt, cutting it up into smaller, more manageable pieces. “We're in this together, Paxton,” he says, still looking at me, sharing one of the longest looks we've had since that awful fucking night. There've been times over the years where I've wanted to give up my vendetta, tell him that I'm sorry, try to get back what we had before. Ransom's the reason I'm a musician in the first place. I mean, my parents raised me to sing, to play piano, cello, violin … but it was Ransom Riggs that taught me the ugly beauty of rock, the aching agony of a metal riff. He encouraged me to explore my feelings in song, to write my own music, to start my own band. “If we both want to be with Lilith, we'll have to find some way to get along.” “And how's that? I just forgive you for murdering my sister and my old girlfriend so we can share a new one?”