Hollywood Hearts (A Bad Boy Love Triangle Romance): (Hollywood Hearts Book 1) (2 page)

“Go up and say ‘Hi’ after the show then, you dork. It’s Hollywood. Chill.”

“No way. I look like shit and gentlemen obviously
don’t
prefer girls with a little bit of something to hold.”
 

“Riles, holy shit. Chill. Wait until after the show and go talk to him,” Astrid patted my arm affectionately and went back to serving. “Let’s get back to work.”

The final wave of customers came up for last call drinks during the final set. I watched Rafe’s neatly-combed fair hair exit out the front door. Astrid nudged me aggressively to go take a break and follow him. I rummaged out a cigarette from my purse and stalked up behind him and his date, feeling like a total loser.

As soon as I stepped out of the door, Gunner intercepted me and placed his big arm on my shoulders.

“Love of my life, you comin’ out after all, hey?”
 
I never lost sight of Rafe who stood there with his date and a group of other people just as attractive as the next.

“No, just came out for a smoke.” Gunner offered me his light and I accepted.
 

My feet shifted. I debated in my head that this was my one chance to talk to Rafe outside of a nerd convention where I would be just another obsessive fan. But if I went up now, I would sound like the biggest tool. Plus I’d have to completely interrupt the whole group’s conversation…The idea was a complete bust. I didn’t have that kind of confidence.

“Who are you?” Some guy yelled at me from beside Gunner. It was the jerk who’d thrown the money at me earlier.

“This here’s Ellie. But she’s taken Hunter, don’t be a fuckin’ creep.”
 

Hunter surveyed me up and down like the girls at the audition while puffing on his joint. I cowered a little bit.

“Taken by you fatty? I don’t think so big guy. Name’s Hunter,” he reached out his hand to shake and I tentatively obliged. It took a while to click that he wasn’t calling me fatty, thank god. My whole life though I’d grown to assume when people called someone that name they were by default talking about me.

Hunter was hunky and completely alpha but his rude, aggressive attitude had left a sour taste in my mouth.
 

“You wanna come out for drinks with us, hun?” Hunter said.
Hun?
Who was he to use his terms of endearment on me?

As I tried to form a response, someone bumped my shoulder and I lurched forward. It was Red Head and Rafe brushing by, or rather, through me to leave.

“Excuse us,” Rafe said politely, grabbing my elbow to help me regain balance. Red Head kept on walking without any acknowledgement. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t access the confidence this time to say ‘Hi’ and I lost my chance.

I watched the biggest crush of my life walk away across the street, taking Red Head’s hand in his. How I longed to be in her position. Reality sucked compared to my fantasies where he would’ve grabbed my elbow, smiled that smile, dipped me over his knee, ran his hands down my neck, teared my top off and had me right there in front of everyone.

“Hey, hellooo.” Hunter waved a hand in my face and I snapped back to reality.

“Oh yeah, sorry. Um, I don’t get off for another thirty so I don’t--“

“You’re comin’ with us, Riles. You needa get out more.” Gunner said. “We’ll wait for ya.”

A few hours later, in Bar 5, I sat wedged uncomfortably tight between Astrid and Hunter in a booth of boisterous, drunk men. Three bottles of champagne and countless empty beer bottles sat on the table in front of us. The place was sleazy. The smoke machine gave a certain dampness to the room, combined with the sweet stench of sweating males and girls wearing too much self-tan and cheap perfume.

“I want to go home,” I nudged Astrid in the ribs but she brushed me off, too busy chatting up one of our regular customers who’d come along with us.

I began covertly scrubbing each inch of my hand and fingers with some hand sanitizer from my purse. Places like this sparked up my OCD tendencies more than anywhere else. Every girl in the place was dolled up in their tight dresses and heels, some so drunk it was as though the ground was falling out from beneath them. Then there was me, hunched here like a frumpy dumpling in my dirtied black work jeans and t-shirt, hair tightly back in a ponytail and makeup that had long since melted from my face.

“Let’s go out for a smoke.” Hunter’s warm whisper entered my ear. I nodded, surprised. Anything to get out of here right now.
 

I stood up and he immediately placed a light hand on my ass to guide me through the crowd. Shocked, I batted it away. He tried again for my lower back and I did it again. What was this creep up to?

The cold air outside allowed me to finally suck in a quality breath of oxygen despite the billows of cigarette smoke wafting skyward. I cradled my forearms and shivered at the chill.

“Here,” Hunter put his warm sweater over my shoulders which allowed me to briefly admire his strong arms and how good they looked in his t-shirt. His hand rubbed down my waist to pull his cigarettes out from the pocket. “You want a spliff or a regular?”

“Regular’s fine for me, thanks.”
 

“You sure?” I shivered again and he rested his hand on my back. “Let’s have some fun.”

“No, I’m good. Really.”

“Alright, kill-joy. Well I’m buying you some shots back in there so deal with that.” He placed a cigarette between my lips and lit it. I inhaled deeply and began coughing loudly at the sickly taste of marijuana burning down my throat.
 

“What the fuck, dude?” I tossed it onto the floor and he started laughing, handing me a tobacco one instead. “Don’t fucking do that to people.”

“Okay, okay,” he said as his attention became diverted by a group of lanky girls in their tight jeans and stilettos who were clip-clopping by. “So how long you been working at Bangarang's?” His eyes stayed on them, even when he bent down to pick up the joint I threw on the ground.

“Um, like two years,” I replied, though I really didn’t want to give this guy the time of day.

“You like it? You look happy there.”
 

“I’m glad my charade is working then.”

“You’re not happy?”

“I’m not
not
happy,” I breathed in another drag of the cigarette.

“You’re here for acting though, right?” Finally he looked at me with his dark bedroom eyes. I nodded slowly and blew my smoke out. “You’re cute enough for it.”
 

“Wow, you’re not gonna say I’m too fat for it?” I blushed and peered down at my feet. My head felt cloudy from the single puff of weed combining with his second hand smoke.

“Shut up. You’re gorgeous and you know it,” he said, nudging me flirtatiously. “You feel better? Warm?”

“Yeah, thanks,” I said and checked back to see if his face suggested he might be playing games with me. Despite him seeming serious still, I couldn’t believe him. Hell, I couldn’t believe anyone in this town who told me I was beautiful.

We finished off our vices and he held my hand in his to take me inside, deciding not to pull away because his grip was comforting in the cold.
 

Astrid had already found a new tall, dark stranger over on the dance floor who was grinding up on her leg as they made out. The frequent customer she had been talking to seemed to have vanished and the rest of the group had dissipated a little bit.
 

“Two Jagers, man,” Hunter told the bartender.
 

He poured them up in front of us and Hunter gestured at me to shot it back. I obeyed, wincing at the taste. He gestured again. I tilted the other shot down my throat.

“Good girl,” I thought I heard him say and he put his hand on my ass again. This time, I didn’t bat it away - I needed these drinks to get me through the night.

He tapped the bar and the bartender poured us two more as we both drank them back this time. I removed his sweater from my shoulders and handed it back.

“No, you keep it,” he told me.

I’m not your fucking sweater hook,
I thought, and flung it over the bar without him seeing. Just because he complimented me didn’t suddenly make me a slave to him. He grasped my hand again and led me to the dance floor.

With one hand lifted and linked into mine, the other placed tight around my thick waist, he began to move me around the dance floor in this beautifully fluid way despite the cheesy pop music that was blaring over the speakers. He’d dip me with an ease of effort, spin me, hold me, sway me, move me; dominating me with his confident dance abilities and strength. Not usually the one for dancing, I let him indulge in possessing me as his talent allowed even me to appear like I had some natural ability.
 

The shots were moving swiftly to my head, making the constant spinning a bit harder to deal with. He switched my hands above his head, twirled me round and dipped me where I obligingly collapsed into his embrace.
 

His lips grazed my ear. “You like surrendering to me.”

Abashed, I tried shoving him away from me but he overpowered me with his brute strength, pulling me in even closer. My lips parted as he pressed his hard-on against my leg. My face flushed red when I realized this kind of authority he had over me was turning me on too. He spread my legs with his, moving his thigh between mine and pushed up into my crotch until my feet barely touched the floor. My face leaned into his chest where the smell of his masculine body odor fusing with his cologne left me more intoxicated than the shots did.
 

“Take it, just enjoy it, gorgeous,” he told me and I began gyrating against his leg.

He slowly edged me in closer with his embrace, lifting my other hand and moving me in such a way that could pass as a dance all while simultaneously stimulating me with his leg. I was in sexual agony, scared of having an orgasm right there in the middle of the crowd but thrusting my hips up and down anyway. It felt so good until Astrid spoke in my ear.

“You didn’t get actor-boy but he’s pretty cute too y’know?” She freed me from the spell he had me under and I immediately pulled away from him.

Two hours later, I sat with Hunter in his car and knew both of us were in no state to drive home. There was a magnetism that kept me from leaving him just yet. I should’ve wanted to leave as I never enjoyed the end of big nights— When you’d leave the club and be thwarted by the bright lights of the street. I always felt uncomfortable, dirty and sick of the bitter taste in my mouth of having smoked too many cigarettes.

But tonight I’d laughed more than I had in months with Hunter and the others in there, danced more than I’d ever danced in my life and had a genuinely fun time despite the numerous attempts Hunter took to make a pass at me.

I hadn’t made my mind up about whether I liked him or not yet. He was hard-headed, rude to the bar staff and cocky as fuck but I’d be lying if I said that I resented his attempt to try and get me off earlier.

“I should get a cab,” I finally told him from the passenger’s seat.
 

“I’ve had one shot babe. I’m fine.” He gripped my leg firmly.
 

“Yeah and like three spliffs.”
 

“Shh,” he pinched my chin softly and guided my face towards his. “Come here.”

“I don’t think we should.”

“But we’re going to.”

How could I resist that? He pressed his pouty, soft lips to mine. My head spun and stomach lurched nervously, maybe from him or maybe from the alcohol consumption. I was too weak to resist and pressed my tongue in his mouth first. Passionate kissing was my Kryptonite. His tongue responded, luring mine further in. His hands grabbed both sides of my face and pulled me in closer.

Each nuance of his kiss - the noise, the gentle then forceful tongue caresses, this enigmatic energy he gave off - felt devastatingly sexy and were as assertive and dominant as his dance moves. He had me.
 

To gain some hint of control, I seized the scruff of his wavy, dark hair tightly and tugged him toward me a little, not letting the kiss end just yet. He smiled through it and my butterflies began batting more aggressively.
 

His lips left mine and with closed eyes, he tilted his head forward with a light exhale.

One of his hands met my neck and the other creeped up under my shirt and onto the small of my back, massaging up and down the rolls of my stomach with gentle precision. I had to hold back and not push him away, hating when guys felt what size I truly was but he didn’t make me feel self-conscious.

“You have the softest skin,” he rasped.

My body bent forward to his, as much as it could over the handbrake and I clutched at his hair with further force. He possessed me again, sucking and biting on my lower lip then dancing his tongue wildly back into my mouth.

“Come here,” he said gently and guided me on top of him in one swift, well-rehearsed, movement. “You’ve wanted this all night, I know you have.”

His hard mound, bound by his jeans, pushed hard against my crotch while I straddled his waist. His lips maneuvered over my chin and down to my throat, giving small kisses along the way. He bit lightly at my neck and I threw my head back in ecstasy.
 

He licked and sucked his way down further and further, bringing his index finger up to brush at the neck of my top. He tugged it down hard, bringing my left bra cup with it. My rosy nipple freed itself, exposed and hard; a dead giveaway to my current level of arousal. He tilted down so he could suck on it, taking it into his mouth. I grabbed tightly onto his big arms as his soft, wet lick glided back and forth in-between bouts of deep, passionate suction. I tingled, already so wet for him with every hair prickling on my skin in response to each touch.

His other hand met the curve of my neck and he squeezed. Releasing my swollen nipple from his mouth, his lips dragged back up to meet mine again and he sucked down on my lower lip again. The neck of my top bounced back up over my large breasts and I released a light whimper.

He placed both of his palms on my waist, tenderly learning each curve and I noticed my breath had grown shallow. “You’re a bad girl, huh?”