Savage Melody--Sample (Book 1 of The Savage Series)

Chapter 6

JB

Walking offstage during the commercial break, I felt like a huge weight had lifted off my chest. One half of it was just saying the words, the other half was speaking them directly to Holland.

If I could only find her.

“Where’s Holland?” I asked one of the people milling around backstage, as if they would know her by name.

“Babe with the red hair and tight ass?” the guy asked. My knuckles cracked as my fists turned into steely balls of fire, ready to ignite into a comet headed straight for this guy’s jaw. Fucker.

“Yeah, her,” I ground out instead, hoping the dude didn’t say anything about her perfect t**s or toned legs. If he did, I wasn’t going to be held responsible for the fury my fists could unleash on his body. My defense in court would be simple: He had it coming, Your Honor.

“She was headed toward the green room,” the man said, pointing in the general direction past the mountains of sound equipment.

I pushed past the asshole, ignoring his sound of protest when my shoulder bumped—hard—into his.

The fucker’s lucky I didn’t put my full weight behind it. I’m not buff in a ripped way like Seth or KT, but I was no slouch. I just looked thinner because of my height.

It got quieter the further I got backstage. Conan, the anemic-looking freak, was still on-air, and the other guys in the band were off getting something to drink. Which was what I should have been doing. But I was only thirsty for one thing. Holland.

I’d ignored her text messages up until now, trying to sort my s**t out before getting up on Conan’s couch, but now I was ready to talk. f**k, I was ready to do more than that, truth to be told.

I found her where the tech geek said she would be, worrying her lip with her top teeth and gripping a bottle of Dasani like it was the only thing keeping gravity in check. She looked up at me when I entered and closed the door behind me, locking it.

“JB,” she said, nodding, her eyes averted to the ground just as mine sought hers out.

“You heard?” Of course, she did, but I needed to hear it. I was fully aware of where she’d stood backstage, all wide eyes and worry lines accosting her face like the interview we gave was aging her prematurely.

She only nodded and kept her own counsel.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “If I could say that on a loop until you believed it, I would. I’d have it in skywriting across the U.S. if that would get you to understand that I was f*****g stupid back then. It was idiotic of me to just capitulate to Gary’s suggestion. I knew he had a thing for you, or at least I had a damn good suspicion. I should have known he would pull some stupid stunt. And I f*****g gave in like the pathetic piece of s**t I was. I wanted fame and folded. I’m. So. Sorry,” I accentuated.

Her eyes looked glassy, and it tore my heart right out of my chest. Holland didn’t cry often, but when she did, it always ripped me from the inside out. Just like her happiness centered me.

And f**k, it made me remember the way she looked right before she left our apartment in Tucson years ago.

“It killed me,” she said softly, unlike the normal brash Holland I knew so well. “It felt like the ultimate rejection. Like you’d rather have everything I helped give you than to have me.”

“That’s not true,” I refuted, shaking my head at her. “I wanted both, and I stupidly thought I could do it, no questions asked.”

“You could have, JB. You could have had me and the band. The fame. The notoriety. When your Mom left when you were five years old, how did that feel? Every time you thought about her leaving, didn’t it burn you up inside? Make you think there was something you did to make her leave? You’re lucky in a way. You were too young to remember much of what happened before she left you. You can’t remember the things that you thought could have caused her to leave. I remember everything. I analyzed and picked apart everything I said, anything I did, and wondered what I did wrong. What I did to push you away.”

God, this woman was killing me. It was my fault, and she’d sat there for three years thinking this had something to do with her. It didn’t. It never had. This was all me.

“You never pushed me away.” It was the God’s honest truth, and I hoped my voice spoke that plainly. “That was my mistake, and I don’t blame you. Your pride…it’s always been the one thing you held onto for dear life. I let them convince me that doing this was the right thing. I figured that even if you got upset or didn’t understand, I would be able to convince you otherwise. I should’ve known I couldn’t do that. Not when it came to us. I f*****g had everything and lost it because I couldn’t say no. I left you without even knowing it. And I lost you. I want you back, Holly. I want you back so f*****g badly right now that if you told me to leave the band, I’d f*****g go out there in a heartbeat and tell them I was done.”

Like I’d anticipated, this was not a popular idea. Holland, my lovely girl, looked f*****g horrified. Like I had asked her to slice up a newborn puppy and cook it with liver and onions.

“You wouldn’t dare!” she cried out, her anger at such an idea slamming through her. “I worked too damn hard years ago to get you here, and you made it. You wouldn’t dare leave it all for me. I wouldn’t let you.”

There was my girl. Feisty and angry and always looking out for my best interests. I missed that, missed everything about her. Even her borderline OCD rants on plastic surgery and her editorial monologues on almond milk versus soy.

She was pro-almond milk, by the way.

“I know you wouldn’t, baby. But I’d do it anyway if that was what it took to prove to you how much I need you, how much I’m lost without you.” I moved a few steps closer, ready to pounce on her if she tried to exit without hashing this out finally. “Do I need to do that? Make some sort of grand gesture in front of all those people out there just to prove it to you? Say it now, because if so, I’m done with the uncertainties. It’s the truth and nothing but from here on out.”

She looked up at me, her lower lip scraping against her teeth. She always did that when she was on the fence about something. And I didn’t want her on the fence about this. Not about us. I needed her in this with me. Whole hog. The full nine yards. Whatever other terminology there was to explain being completely dedicated to something.

Until death do us part.

Yeah…something very much like that.

She studied me, my face. Up and down, side to side, looking for the slightest indication that I was pulling her leg. I took a step back, trying to appear as if I was heading for the door to make good on my threat. Her brows flew up to her hairline, and I relaxed as she took a step forward. The most important step she could take. Towards me.

“No, wait,” she said. “Don’t do it. I believe you.”

Tension rolled off my shoulders as a wave of relief passed through my system. We were finally getting somewhere. I had more to prove to her, but I was willing to take the time. I didn’t have to be anywhere except for the sound studio for the next couple of months, and if it took every spare second I had, I was going to prove to her that I wasn’t going anywhere.

Prove to her that she was it for me.

Holland

He was sincere, that much I could tell. JB didn’t f**k around with his career. He’d made that painfully obvious three years ago. The wound he left still stung, and it was like every other laceration. It took time to heal. Time and care.

His eyes questioned me, needing more. I know he did, but I wasn’t there yet. My toes were only on the starting blocks and I was poised, waiting for the gunshot to go off that started the race. I was ready to leap forward.

It was the closest I had gotten to feeling like myself again.

“Can we start over again?” JB asked. I knew he needed an answer, and I wanted to give it, but I didn’t have the words. So, I nodded, my eyes fixed on the space in front of his boots.

I was quickly slammed into a hard, lean body, the muscles of JB’s chest expanding as he pressed up against me. His hand was on my waist, his fingers curling there as his head buried itself in my hair.

“I missed you. So f*****g much it was physically painful.”

I erupted in salt water and soft shudders. f**k this. I’d always become emotional when it came to JB. He was my weakness. I tried to stop it, to slow down my breathing to catch myself from falling—metaphorically speaking. There were too many raw emotions. They were laid out like slides on an episode of Dexter. Each drop of blood represented not one person, but a little piece of myself that I had lost in the ensuing years. Then, up until now.

With his lips pressed against my forehead, I reminded myself of all the women that he’d been with between then and now. JB could be a walking CDC case, and if we were going to do this, if we were going to be together, we needed to draw some lines.

“I won’t sleep with you,” I began, hearing a tortured groan bubbling up his throat. “Not until you get tested. Lord knows what vermin you could have caught from your revolving door of one-night stands and rabid groupies.”

“Done,” he said immediately, the subject of our discussion hardening against my stomach. “I’ll make an appointment on Monday. They’ll get me in on the fly and have the tests rushed if I pay extra.”

“And I don’t share well, as you know,” I added, my voice muffled slightly in his leather jacket-clad chest.

“Good thing, too,” he murmured into my hair. “I don’t share well either. I don’t intend to start.”

“You’re on a trial basis, mister,” I told him. “You f**k up again and we’re through.”

“I won’t, baby. I won’t.”

I looked up at him, leaning back slightly. The man had almost 9 inches on me—height-wise, perv—and my neck ached as I tilted it to look him in the face.

“And you can’t kill Seth.” It was thrown out like an ultimatum. His eyes darkened for a second.

“Can I just maim him a little?” he asked, one corner of his mouth twitching up. He had to be joking.

“No.” I was firm. “There will be no maiming, decapitating, slaying, or any other physical violence happening. I need you to keep a clear head. Chase is one thing since he’s out of the band and in rehab. Having inner turmoil while spouting lies isn’t going to help. You need to form a united front, and Seth showing up on the cover of some trashy mag with his lip split open is only going to bring more of the paparazzi out of the woodwork to dig.”

“What if I only rip off his d**k? No one will see that in the tabloids.”

“JB.” My tone was admonishing.

“Fine,” he acquiesced, sighing. “Now kiss me.”

“With those w***e’s lips? Who knows how much infested p***y you’ve had on them in three years?” I asked, my lips ticking in irritation.

“None,” he immediately denied. “I don’t eat p***y I don’t trust completely. The last one I licked was yours, and you know how much I enjoyed your sweet cunt as it came all over my face.”

“You poor thing.” I smirked but was inwardly pleased.

“And I always wore a condom,” he said. “None of them broke either. Made sure of it. Inspected the f**k out of them before and after. I’m still getting tested, though.”

“I will too,” I said. “It’s only fair since I haven’t become a nun since being with you. I always used protection, but I suppose I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

“You still on the pill?” he asked, cupping my chin with his hand.

I shook my head. “Depo shots.”

He hummed, tilting my head even further back as his face came closer to mine, his lips brushing my skin.

“I don’t want to wear condoms with you. I need to feel all of you when I’m inside that tight little p***y of yours.”

My womb spasmed as the top of my head damn near flew off like the north face of Mt. St. Helens circa 1980.

Kaboom, people.

“Okay.” I was submissive. Totally unlike me. I blamed my weakness for JB on that. He said “jump” and I replied with “off which bridge?”

His mouth fused to mine, stealing my breath, my thoughts, my motherfucking soul. It was the JB-effect. He undid me like no other, and I melted into the kiss as my hands reached around to cling to his neck.

His d**k branded me when he drew me in closer, and soon his mouth and hands were everywhere. My back, my thighs, the curve of my ass. It was like he had tentacles and was sucking at my skin, every sensation heightened until I was sure the panties I wore needed to be burned in some sort of Greek rite in honor of Priapus.

Thoughts were fleeing my brain at an alarming rate, and I was thinking with my waist down, though my n*****s seemed to be attached to my clit and were hard little points rubbing against his lower chest.

“f**k, I might rethink the whole condom thing,” JB rasped out, breaking the kiss. “If I could get in you within the next twenty minutes or so, I’d don two of them just to be on the safe side.”

I giggled into his mouth. I wasn’t a great giggler, and the sound was nearly foreign to my ears. JB smiled against my lips, brushed them softly with heated air and warmer flesh.

“I love that sound,” he said. “I’ve missed it for three years, that giggle. Makes me even harder.” He ground his c**k into me, the stiffness prodding at me insistently, like it could melt away our clothing. It certainly attempted to do that to my panties, which threatened to slide off my skin and disappear into thin air. Poof.

“JB, we should get going. The guys—”

“They can wait,” he interjected. “I’m not done with your lips yet. If I can’t have your p***y, I’m going to have all I want of your lips.”

I wasn’t stupid enough to say no to that.

He pushed me up against the wall, ravaging me with a hot, needy mouth and tantalizing tongue action as he speared between my lips like he was f*****g it. It almost felt as if he was as it swooped and swirled, licking every inch inside of me that he could reach.

That was until the doorknob jiggled and a muffled voice called through the door to us.

“JB? You in there?”

I could hear JB mutter. “Cockblocking little...” He paused and took a breath. “What do you want, KT?”

“They’re rounding people up for the ending or whatever they call it,” he said. “Where’s Holland?”

“In here with me and pressed up against my stiff d**k,” he mumbled under his breath. “I’ll be out in a minute,” he added louder so that KT could hear him, completely ignoring the question he asked.

“Alright.”

Footsteps walked away, and JB pulled away from me with great effort, slicing a hand through his unruly hair in frustration.

“I want you in my bed tonight,” he said, his face turned away. “Not to f**k. I just need to be pressed up against you, feeling you.”

I thought for a moment, mind sputtering back to the land of coherent sentences in the wake of his drugging kisses.

“We can go to my place if you want. I live alone,” I told him. I hadn’t needed a roommate in two years after my last one went to rehab. She’d been an aspiring actress and successful cokehead. I’d say it was the coke that made her dumb, but I had known her before she was snorting it off the chiseled abs of stuntmen between takes of shitty action movies where she played an unnamed extra. I had thought of getting a new roommate to save on money since then, but every one of the applicants were either so doped up they couldn’t remember their own social security numbers, or too much of a hippie for my taste. Too much of that and I would’ve made them choke on their own granola or drown them in a vat of boiling patchouli oil.

“You drove here?” he asked. I nodded.

“I took an Uber here with the guys,” he said nodding back. “They can find their own way home. Let’s go.”

He didn’t grab onto my hand, but it was a close thing.

And I knew if he had, I wouldn’t have been able to let go.

Up sooner than anticipated!

Savage Melody, the first in a five-book series is now live on sss. 

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