PLAYED - A BRITISH BAD BOY ROMANCE (34 page)

“No,” she insisted,
sitting up on the couch and rubbing her eyes. “You’ll get bored of me, or
you’ll die, or something else will happen, and then I’ll have to go back to
that horrible place…”

“
Angel
,” I insisted, sitting down next to her.

She looked at me, her
eyes still moist with tears and fears. I brushed a knuckle lightly against her
cheek, sliding the wetness away.

“Let me tell you a
story,” I whispered to her. “This rockstar gig, it’s only been going well for
the last couple years. Before that, we were playing basements and bars. Places
lot like the one you used to work at… But we kept at it. We worked hard. The
four of us would pile up five grand worth of equipment into a five hundred
dollar van to drive fifty miles to make fifty bucks..”

Angel watched me
carefully as I spoke.

“And when this thing
finally took off…it changed us, that’s for sure. My band, they were never as
self-entitled as they are now. That bassist, he’s the good one…Waylon and
Dylan, those two are trouble… But me? I’m still driving around in that van,
wondering when the party’s gonna end.”

I took a second to
stare into her eyes, letting my words sink in.

“Maybe this ends
tomorrow. Maybe it lasts forever. Maybe we’ll turn into these rock legends like
the kind we played with at
RipFest
.
Or maybe not. Who knows? But I know that fear. I know what it’s like to never
know what the next day is going to bring. It’s going to be work, but you and
I…we can make this happen.”

She leaned against my
shoulder, listening to my words and stifling her tears.

“Angel…you’re
staying,” I told her firmly. “I will find a way to convince you that you’re
here for good…but tonight, you have to
trust
me
. Can you do that?”

She quietly nodded.

“That’s right…just
believe in me, in
us.
”

“Why, though?” She
asked. “Why me?”

“Because I feel
something different with you, Angel,” I told her. “If that’s not good enough
for you…you’re the first girl who’s seen the inside of this place.”

She glanced around,
clearly taken aback by the remark. “Seriously?”

“Like a heart attack…
I’m glad you’re here, Angel.”

“Me too,” she
whispered, her face finally breaking into a smile.

“That’s right. That’s
the girl I like so much,” I told her, tracing her smile with my knuckle. “Now,
why don’t you say we get upstairs and relax for the night?”

I took her by the
hand, and we slipped back upstairs to my bedroom. When we crawled back into
bed, maybe for the first time, we
didn’t
fuck like rabbits.

We lay there, holding
each other, until sleep finally claimed us together.

It just felt right.

Chapter 22

Angel

I woke up the
following morning in Trent’s arms. For a moment, I didn’t recognize where I
was, but it all started to finally come back to me.
 
He was happily snoring away, and I
smiled and just watching him from a few inches away.

He finally opened his
eyes a few minutes later, returning my smile with his own confident, cocky
grin.

“You hungry?” He
asked.

“Little bit.”

Trent nuzzled me
closer, stretching his arms out with a yawn and letting them pull me tighter
against his body. He rested on his back, and I slid into position against his
chest.

I could feel his
morning wood against me, and I wondered how his cock could stay this hard and
rigid
all the freaking time.

“We don’t really have
much,” he mentioned, staring up at the ceiling. “We need to take one hell of a
shopping trip.”

I nodded.

He lifted my chin and
tried to kiss me, but I pressed a finger against his lips.

“Mm-mm,” I shook my
head.

“What? What’s the
matter?”

I turned away. “I’m a
dragon in the mornings.”

It took Trent a
second, but he realized what I was saying. With a mischievous growl, he pulled
my face close anyway, tugging me into a loving kiss.

“Eh, fuck dragon
breath,” he laughed.

My hand brushed his
weapon, and his chuckles faded away to hungry, monstrous need.

“Nuh-uh,” I coyly
commanded, watching him carefully with raised eyebrows and a slightly open
grin. “You’re going to be good if you want
this
taken care of…”

I began to stroke him
slowly.

He started to move
forward, but I stopped.

“No…you want this, you’re listening to
me
…”

He growled hungrily,
his eyes red-hot with pulsating need that stretched all the way down to the
hammering, throbbing vein of his cock.

“That’s right,” I
murmured, stroking him harder now. “You just lay back and let me take care of
you…”

I lowered my lips to his weapon…

An hour later, we
were freshly showered – together, of course – and in his Dodge Viper
convertible. As he zipped in and out of traffic with the top down, we sailed
along towards
downtown.

 
After
phoning in an order directly to the manager, we stopped in for breakfast at a
small French café. Trent pulled a baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses on, and
we took our seat outside in the patio area.

A waitress brought us
our food, smiling knowingly.

“Is that really
necessary?” I asked him.

He flashed a small,
cocky grin.

“Act like you know
me,” he chuckled. “The paparazzi just love a random sighting on the streets,
either from a cell phone pic or their own cameras. And I have a reputation for
being…somewhat private.”

“Can’t see where
anyone would get
that
impression,” I
remarked as I took a bite out of a delicious, buttery croissant.

“One wrong move, one
word out of context, and I could be sitting on a scandal that might burn me
alive,” Trent replied. “My band is a bit of an anomaly in the pop world these
days, and the others have been getting into the wrong kind of attention. Public
intoxication. Caught on camera with a girl and a hotel room balcony. Shit like
that.”

“And you’re
spotless.”

“I’m a disaster
waiting to happen,” Trent laughed. “I could fall into a
serious
heap of trouble. Last thing I want to do is that…anything
that would jeopardize their livelihoods. So, I try to keep clean in public.
Now, within the safety of my own
home…
”

“You get filthy,” I
replied knowingly.

“With the proper
company, definitely.”

I sipped from my
coffee, dwelling on this.

“You’re sweeter than
people think.”

“You wanna run that
one past me again?” He tilted his head, crossing his arms and smiling cockily
at me.

“No, I mean it,” I
insisted. “That night that I watched you perform, I saw how you stepped down at
the end to let them all have the spotlight alone. And you’re careful in public
because you’re the most prominent member of the group, right? So if they get
into some small trouble, that’s just the guitarist or the drummer getting up to
mischief. But if it’s
you
, then the
paparazzi might have something juicy to seriously impact your band members.”

“Well…yeah,” he
sheepishly admitted. “Honestly, I’ve never been the type to look out for number
one
.
When I rise and reap the
rewards, I take care of my own. I’m fine being
Team Grandpa
so that they can get up to trouble that doesn’t directly
hurt the rest of us.”

I nodded as I took
another bite.

He can be a cocky bastard…

Possessive, dominating, quick to anger…

But he can also be a seriously upstanding man.

“And people say men
are simple,” I smiled.

“
People
are wrong,” he grinned back, a toothy, cocky grin stretching
across his face.

After breakfast was
over, we headed further into town on the rest of our trip. The sun was high in
the sky as he took me straight to a few luxury-clothing stores.

As he followed me
inside, I turned quizzically.

“You’re coming in? I
couldn’t imagine that watching me try on outfits all afternoon is going to be
terribly exciting. Anything in town you need to do?”

Trent smiled
wickedly, his cap and glasses still on.

“Seriously? There’s
nothing I’d rather do than watch you try on all sorts of sexy little outfits
for me.”

And so the afternoon
went on.

I piled up on
clothes, always being careful to pick only a couple of things. It was only at
his insistence that I stopped bugging out at the price tags.

As I continued being
modest, he shook his head and snatched a few tops, shorts, or leggings off of
racks and added them to my arms. When it came time to try everything on, the
garments he had chosen looked great on me – and they were even the right size.

He certainly had a
good eye.

I’d always been way
more
jeans and a tee
than
cute sundress
, but I had to admit that I
liked how these outfits hung on my body. It was something special to see myself
change under the mirror to someone who could embrace who I was, rather than
improvise with thrift store jeans and old shirts from years ago.

I poked out from the
dressing room, doing a slight twirl for him in a silky black dress he’d plucked
from a rack.

“How do I look?”
 

“Positively
ravishing,” he nodded. “I’d tear into you right here and now if I could.”

I could feel myself
blush a little.

I still wasn’t used
to so much attention.

“He’s right,” a
passing attendant commented. “That’s a fantastic look for you. Although…I would
prefer that you didn’t do that in my store.”

Trent and I shared a
smile, and the attendant started to walk away before she paused, peering at him
closely. Recognition flashed across her face, all of a sudden.

“You’re…Trent
Masters?”

Trent instantly
looked displeased, glancing over at her from beneath the concealment of his
glasses and hat.

“I’m very surprised
you noticed me.”

“It’s the voice,” she
smiled. “Although you always wear the same hat and glasses everywhere, so you
kind of stick out.”

He grumbled, and I
stifled a laugh.

“It’s a huge pleasure
to meet you. I’m Jamie – I’m a really big fan of your band! I just love
Extra Kings
from your EP!”

I disappeared back
into my dressing room as they briefly chatted, although Trent looked highly
uncomfortable to have been spotted.

I went ahead and
redressed in my street clothes, packed everything up, and stepped back outside.

He turned and rose to
smile at me, but I spotted the attendant a short distance away. She was trying
to inconspicuously snap a smartphone picture of us.

“Wait… that girl…”

Trent followed my
line of sight, and caught her fumbling to hide the phone. Angrily, he stomped
over towards her and held his hand out.

“Phone.
Now
.”

She looked like a
deer, caught in headlights.

“I don’t know what
you’re talking about.”

“I saw you,” he
explained. “
She
saw you. Delete
whatever pictures you just took of us, right this fucking minute...or I’m
finding the number to your district manager.”

“Okay, fine, fine,
calm down,” she muttered self-importantly, pulling her phone back out. She
swiped to her photos app and showed us the pictures.

It was four or five
shots of him sitting there, and then one of me coming out and him standing. His
hat had slipped a little, exposing enough of his hair to reasonably identify
him.

“Delete them,” he
growled.

“Maybe I don’t want
to,” she insisted suddenly.

He whipped his
glasses off, glaring down into her eyes. I could see her visibly shrink under
his fiery gaze.

“Delete them right
this fucking minute, or I’ll have your goddamn job in under five minutes,” he
glowered. “You had
one chance
to meet
your idol, as you so put it a few minutes ago, and you royally
fucked it up
. Now I know who you are,
and I’m
pissed
.

“So, delete those
fucking pictures in front of me or, so help me god, I will show you why you
never
want to meet your heroes.”

Her lower lip
trembled.

The poor girl looked
like she was about to break down into a heaving fit of tears.

Instead, with
trembling hands, she deleted the pictures in front of us.

“Good,” he finally whispered.
“The worst part was, I was gonna hook you up with some backstage passes for the
next tour. But now? Fuck it, and fuck you.”

She was still
standing there, speechlessly, as we strolled towards the nearest counter. As I
walked quickly beside him, holding what was probably thousands of dollars in
clothes, Trent slipped his glasses back on without a single word.