Rock All Night (The Rock Star's Seduction #2) (27 page)

I woke up the next morning feeling like someone was taking a baseball bat to the inside of my skull. My stomach was doing slow, nauseating somersaults, my body was bruised from our sexual rampage the night before, and my lady parts were tender and sore.

I felt like slipping back into unconsciousness for another week. Maybe two.

I propped myself up on one elbow and surveyed the wreckage.

Damn
we’d broken a lot of hotel property.

The only reason I dragged my ass out of bed was that I had promised Shanna I would see her off before her early flight back to New York. So I left behind a gorgeous, naked, sleeping man and got into the shower, hoping that the hot water would wash away my alcohol poisoning.

Nope.

I got dressed, put on minimal makeup, and watched my boyfriend as he slept. He was lying on his front, and the covers were draped halfway off his sculpted ass.

What a view… I just wanted to reach out and
touch
it…

But obligations called. And if I woke him up by fondling his butt, there was a good chance I might not make it down to breakfast.

Not to mention my head, stomach, and naughty bits might not be able to take another round right now.

I reached the hotel restaurant at about half past nine. Shanna was sitting by the window, already looking put-together and mostly recovered. As I recalled from college, she had that gift. On the other hand, she also had
lots
of practice.

“Mornin’, sunshine,” she said cheerily as I slumped into the chair opposite her. She touched the massive Bloody Mary next to her plate and asked, “Want a little sumpin’-sumpin’?”

“God, no,” I said, my stomach threatening to leap out of my throat at the thought.

“Best remedy for a hangover ever. Well, no, that’s not true. Best way to never get a hangover is never stop being drunk.”

“Is that your secret?”

“Hell yeah, bitch. Always has been. I’m ridin’ the buzz I woke up with all the way back to New York. Sooooooo… what did
you
do last night? I know
who
you did, I’m just curious about the details.”

“Wrecked a hotel room,” I said, and couldn’t help but grin.

“Reeeeeaaaally.” She leaned forward eagerly. “I’m assuming we’re talking a lot of extreme sports sex, and not some kind of wall-punching rock star freakout.”

“No. I mean, yes – the former, not the latter.”

“I’m so jealous…” she sighed, then got a mischievous look on her face. “Last night was just like old times: I wind up passed out, and you end up with the hot rocker.”

“Hey, that was your own fault,” I said as I sipped a glass of ice water.

“What, you ending up with the hot rocker?”

“No, you passing out. Why didn’t you try to sleep with Ryan?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. Are you seriously going to go there?”

“What, he’s not good enough for you?” I asked, a little offended on Ryan’s behalf.

“No, he’s hella fine. But he seems to be carrying a certain torch for someone who shall remain nameless
hack hack Kaitlyn,”
she coughed into her fist.

My already overwrought stomach was doing triple cartwheels now. “No – that’s – unh-unh – ”

“Oh
please.
He’s so into you, I couldn’t have won him over if I’d been offering free blowjobs and lollipops. Which I was. And it still didn’t work.”

I squinted. “…what does that even
mean?”

“It means – fuck what it means. The point is, you’re hogging all the men, Kaitlyn.”

“I am not.”

“Okay, the hot, rich, rock star ones, then.”

“I am
not
.”

“Okay, just the lead singer and the bassist of Bigger, then.”

“I am NOT!”

“Whatever, Ms. ‘De Nile Ain’t Just A River In Egypt.’”

“Can we talk about something else?” I fumed.

“Okay… how’s the article coming?”

I groaned. “Next topic.”

She waved her hand. “I get it, I get it – you’re too busy ‘researching’ right now. You can write it when you get home. When are you headed back?”

Again, my stomach started roiling – but for a different reason this time. “I… don’t know.”

“Well, you can’t stay in Never-Never Land forever, Tinkerbell.”

My immediate reaction – from the depths of my subconscious – was,
Why not?

But I didn’t say anything.

She frowned at my silence. “Kaitlyn… you’re going to have to come back to real life sooner or later.”

“I know,” I grumbled.

She continued offhandedly as she took a bite of French toast, “And he’s going to go back to his.”

“What does
that
mean?”

She gave me a
You’re an idiot
look. “Seriously?”

“Yes.”

She doubled down on the look. “You really need me to fuckin’ spell it out?”

Now my hackles were up. “Yeah. Fuckin’ spell it out for me.”

“He’s a
rock star,
honey. And a scorchin’ hot one, at that. You’ll go home, back to your life, and write a great article… and he’ll go back on tour, singing to throngs of adoring models and groupies every night… and… doing what rock stars do with models and groupies.”

She edited the end of that sentence out of deference to me. She must have seen the pain on my face.

“I’m not saying you guys won’t hook up every once in awhile and have an incredible weekend,” she continued in an effort to soothe me. “I’m not saying he won’t fly you out to the occasional show, and you won’t still have mind-blowing sex and a lot of fun and – ”

“You’re wrong,” I said, my voice low and angry.

“What, you won’t have mind-blowing sex and a lot of fun?”

“It could work,” I insisted.

“What could work?”

“A… a relationship.”

“Yeah, if you’re all three of those ‘See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil’ monkeys rolled into one,” she snorted. “Although I guess it’d be more like ‘See No Sexin’, Hear No Sexin’, Speak No Sexin’.”

When I didn’t hit her with a comeback, she stared at me for a moment – then looked around like she was searching for a hidden camera. “Wait a second, am I being punked? Are you the same Kaitlyn Reynolds who almost didn’t come out here because Derek Kane is a man-whore who uses women by the dozen – excuse me, the
hundreds?”

I bristled. “I was afraid about crossing a line – as a
journalist
. And about everything I might have lost when I walked away from him in college. And if I
did
sleep with him, maybe I’d built it up too much over the years and it would never match up to reality – ”

She rolled her hand in the air like
Come on, keep going.
“…aaaand I seem to recall something in there about him sleeping with lots of other chicks.”

“I was wrong.”

“What, that he slept with lots of other chicks? And that he’ll
continue
to sleep with other chicks? No, I don’t think you were wrong about that one.”

I gritted my teeth and didn’t say anything.

She sighed again and reached out across the table to touch my hands.

I pulled my fingers back as though her touch had scorched me.

“Kaitlyn,” she said in a kind but tired voice, “I would love nothing more for you than for Derek to fall completely in love and give you everything you want, which I assume is a big-ass rock on your finger and him never looking at another woman’s ass till death do you part. But honey… you’re not looking at this realistically – ”

“He said I was his girlfriend,” I blurted out.

That stopped her.

For a second.

She raised one eyebrow. “…really.”

“Yes.”

“He said the actual word ‘girlfriend’? About
you?”

“Yes,” I snapped. “Is that so hard to believe?”

“No, no, I just… did he use the ‘L’ word?”

I froze. The fact that he hadn’t yet… bothered me.

“…no.”

“Were you guys arguing at the time, maybe?”

I didn’t say anything.

She narrowed her eyes, seeing she had hit pay dirt. “And was anybody naked at the time, or did a certain someone want to get naked, and the other someone didn’t?”

My memories of that night were scrambled and hard to pin down… but more than anything, I remembered the trancelike sex and the many, many orgasms.

I looked down at the table in silence.

“Kaitlyn… I’m not saying he didn’t mean it… but you know his past. Do you really think he’s going to change his spots just because of you?”

I glared at her – mostly because she was voicing every insecurity I had. “You’re saying it’s impossible?”

“No, I’m not – well, yeah, sort of. Guys like Derek Kane don’t change everything about themselves like that. They might say it, and they might mean it, and they might actually follow through for awhile… but… in the end… Derek’s Derek. He is who he is.”

“What does
that
mean?”

“It means he’s a player.”

“So what does that make
me?”

“A fuckin’ pendulum. You swung from one extreme of ‘No no no no no’ to the other extreme of marriage and houses and 2.5 kids – ”

“I’m not thinking about those things,” I hissed.

“Okay, then, you’re just thinking you’ll be the long-distance girlfriend of a guy who’s slept with way more people than I have, which is saying something. And you think he’ll be loyal, and faithful, and never
ever
step out with one of the supermodels on the
Sports Illustrated
bathing suit cover who’s throwing herself at – ”

“
You
were the one who said I should come here and sleep with him,” I interrupted.

“Yeah –
sleep with.
Have a good time. Get your rocks off. Not fall head over heels in love and expect a future full of roses and ponies.”

“So what are you saying I should do?” I asked coldly.

She shrugged. “Enjoy the ride. Enjoy the hell out of it.”

“And then?”

“And then… come back to reality, babe. ‘Cause wherever your head is right now, reality ain’t it.”

My goodbye to Shanna wasn’t exactly the warmest in the history of our friendship. We switched to slightly less incendiary topics – like all the drama surrounding
her
sex life, which was always a conversational winner with her – and then I saw her off to her taxi.

“You know I wasn’t trying to bust your balls, right?” she slurred before she climbed into the cab. She’d had a
couple
of ‘the world’s best hangover cures’ by the end of breakfast, not to mention a few mimosas. “You know I’m just worried about you, right?”

“Yeah,” I grumped, though I said it more to get rid of her than out of any sort of real agreement.

“My original advice still stands.”

“Which was what?”

“Go live life – and write the fuckin’ article.”

“That’s what I’m doing. Well… except for the writing part.”

“Yeah, I know. But I have a collorary… corror…”

“Corollary?”

“Yeah, that’s it,” she said, and pointed at me like I’d said the magic word. “Little fucker’s hard to say when you’re drunk… coro…lary…”

“Which is…?” I said impatiently.

“What? Oh, yeah – go live life… but make sure it’s actually real life.”

I frowned. “Versus what?”

“Versus a fantasy.” She said it like
vershus a fantasy
as she stumbled towards the cab. “Fantasies are awesome – fuck
yeah
they’re awesome – but sometimes you gotta know when to come home and write the fuckin’ article.”

“What if real life can
be
a fantasy?” I challenged her.

She paused, halfway into the cab.

“If you figure that one out, let me know how to do it,” she said, toppled into the backseat, and waved as the cab took off into the sea of San Francisco traffic.

I was pretty pissed at Shanna, and definitely riled up. I wanted to yell and vent – but the one person I
couldn’t
yell and vent to was the one sleeping in my bed.

Make that
his
bed.

That I had slept in.

See, it was already complicated.

And it was complicated even more by the fact that I was afraid everything Shanna was saying might be the truth… even if I wouldn’t admit it to myself.

If I hadn’t still been feeling nauseated, I might have gone back to the restaurant and started a bender. (A Kaitlyn-sized bender, not a Shanna or – God forbid – Riley-sized bender.) But I still felt like somebody had dumped a whole bunch of ick into my stomach, so I headed up for the band’s suite instead. I reasoned that Derek was still sleeping, and there was no way that Riley was up… so no danger there. And I might just be able to catch a sympathetic ear from Ryan.

When I knocked on the door, though, all I heard was a soft British voice saying, “Come in.”

“It’s locked,” I said.

“Just a minute,” Killian called.

A few seconds later, the door opened to a thick fug of marijuana stank and a lead guitarist in black silk pajamas – along with his omnipresent guitar and doobie.

“Mornin’, luv,” he said amiably, and ambled back to a seat in the main room.

“Morning,” I said, and looked around the room anxiously. “Is Ryan here?”

“No, he had something to take care of,” Killian said as his fingers danced across the steel strings.

My head whipped around, perhaps a little
too
sharply. “Something, or some
one?”

He smiled. “You know I don’t kiss and tell, luv. But… no. Just some sort of money thing. Banking and such.”

“Oh,” I said, and wondered why I felt a tiny bit of relief.

“You alright?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You seem a bit stressed.” He took the joint dangling from his lips and held it up a few inches from his face, as though offering it to me. “Might I suggest a bit of my favorite medicine for that particular condition?”

I couldn’t help but grin. “Thank you, but no.”

He nodded and replaced the joint in his mouth. “Suit yourself. Anything in particular got you down?”

I was about to say ‘no’ – but then I hesitated. Killian had really opened up to me on the way to Joshua Tree. I knew it was part of the deal we’d made so that he could go tripping on shrooms… but closing myself off to him now, when he was being so kind, seemed rude.

“…I just had a fight with my friend. Well, more like a… an unpleasant discussion.”

“Ah, the bird who knows her herb.”

“Yeah. Her.”

“I like her.”

I crossed my arms. “Yeah, well… I
usually
like her.”

“What’d she do?”

“It’s not so much what she
did,
it’s what she
said.
”

“Which was…?”

I stood there feeling uncomfortable.

Killian patted the cushion on the chair next to him.

I sighed… relented… and walked over and sat down.

“She said I needed to stop living in a fantasy and come back to the real world,” I grumped.

“I myself prefer fantasy to the real world,” he said, right before he took another drag.

“Well,
yeah.
You’re a rock star.”

“Being a rock star has nothing to do with it,” he said, in that voice pot smokers use when they’re trying to keep as much smoke in their lungs as possible.

I frowned. “Isn’t that the fantasy world you’re talking about?”

“Oh no. Being a rock star is more of a nightmare than a fantasy.”

I stared at him. “What?”

He shrugged. “In some ways.”

This was not computing.

“But – you
love
music – ”

“Ah, you said being a
rock star.
You said nothing about being a musician.”

“Isn’t it the same thing?”

He laughed, a funny little snort. “Hell’s bells, no. The rock star bit is pageantry. The music… that’s real.”

“What about playing for the crowds?”

“What about it?”

“Don’t you like it?”

“Of course. But I did that back in Hackney.”

“What?”

“Neighborhood in London. Where I grew up.”

I frowned, still not quite understanding.

He realized that, and smiled. “Meaning that I’ve
always
been a musician, even when I was that five-year-old who nicked his mum’s paycheck and bought a guitar from the pawnshop. This rock star nonsense, that’s just been the last couple of years.”

“Oh. So… is there any part of being a rock star that you
like?”

He paused and thought. “I’d say playing with other rock stars… but we were all just musicians when we first got together, weren’t we? The rock star bit just happened along the way.”

“So you’d be okay just going back to Athens and playing the clubs there, then? Nobody knowing who you are?”

He shrugged.
“I
know who I am.”

Whoa.

I hadn’t planned on getting this deep at ten-thirty in the morning.

Killian realized how he sounded, and smiled genially. “As long I’ve got my guitar and my herb, luv, I’m a happy man. But that’s enough about me. I seem to remember the conversation started off about you.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

He continued right past my objections. “And what was this fantasy she was so adamant you leave behind?”

I debated saying anything… and kept quiet for five, six, seven seconds…

Killian just waited patiently, strumming away quietly at the strings.

“She says that Derek’s going to cheat on me, and that he can’t be faithful,” I finally blurted out.

“Oh,” Killian said, and settled back in his chair.

He even stopped playing his guitar.

That
‘Oh’
just hung there in the silence like a sword over my head.

“‘Oh’?” I said incredulously. “That’s all you’ve got to say – ‘oh’?”

He winced, then started picking at the strings again. “Perhaps I shouldn’t get involved.”

Now I was getting pissed again.

“Oh, you’re already involved,” I said, irritated. “You got involved the second you got me to sit down and spill my guts.”

He sighed. “You seem like a nice bird, Kaitlyn. And I’m quite fond of Derek. Besides being a hell of a front man, he’s a good bloke.”

“I sense a ‘but’ coming.”

“But… I’d have to agree with your friend.”

It was like he’d knocked the air out of me. It took me a few seconds to respond.

“Agree with her about…?”

“From all the evidence I’ve ever seen, Derek’s not a one-woman chap. He’s a bit of a… free spirit, you might say. He’s just wired that way. It’s in his nature.” He pronounced it very British:
nay-chuh.
“And it’s in your nature to…”

I waited, on the edge of my seat.

He didn’t finish his thought, but sat there looking like he was thinking hard.

“It’s my nature to
what?”
I said, a sliver of aggression in my voice.

He made a face, like he knew he’d stepped in it, and now he regretted going out for a walk in the first place. “Have you ever heard the story about the scorpion and the frog?”

“What? No – what’s that got to do with – ”

“So there was this frog, see, on the riverbank. And he’s just about to swim across the river when this scorpion comes along and says, ‘Hey, mate, can you ferry me across the river on your back?’

“And the frog says, ‘But you’re a scorpion.’

“And the scorpion says, ‘So?’

“And the frog says, ‘You’ll get me halfway out there and sting me, you right bastard.’

“And the scorpion says, ‘No I won’t – if I sting you, you’ll die out there, and I’ll drown along with you. I’m not gonna sting you ‘cause it’ll be the end of me, too.’

“The frog thinks about that for a moment and finally says, ‘Alright, then, I guess I’ll take you across.’

“So they’re halfway across the river when suddenly the frog feels this horrible pain and realizes the scorpion’s gone and stung him. And as he starts to go numb and can’t work his legs anymore, he croaks out, ‘You stupid git! Why’d you sting me? Now we’re both going to die!’

“And the scorpion says, ‘I’m sorry… I couldn’t help it… it’s in my nature.’”

It’s in my nay-chuh.

Killian fell silent, watching me expectantly, with only the plink of his guitar strings filling the air between us.

“I
do
know that story, Killian,” I said, fighting to keep calm. “I didn’t know what you were talking about at first, but once you started telling it, I remembered.”

He brightened the tiniest bit. “Oh, good. So you
have
heard it.”

“Yeah. And they always use it to point out how fucking stupid the frog is. Which apparently is
me.
”

He got an alarmed look on his face. “What? No – ”

“So apparently Derek’s a scorpion, and I’m the dumbass sleeping with him, waiting to get stung.”

“No, no, no,” Killian said hastily. “No, you’ve got it all wrong – ”

“Really? You mean, it’s not a parable about how idiotic it is to get involved with somebody who’s just going to hurt you, even when you
know
it ahead of time?”

“The point is, the scorpion’s not
bad,
” Killian explained. “It acts according to its nature. It’s neither good nor bad. It’s just a scorpion.”

“People generally agree that scorpions are bad, Killian.”

“Only because they get stung when they mishandle them. But people like grasshoppers, don’t they?”

“…what?”

“People like grasshoppers, don’t they?” he repeated, then added, “More than scorpions, anyway.”

“…uh… yeah, I guess – ”

“But grasshoppers are far more destructive than scorpions. Scorpions eat other bugs, but grasshoppers swarm in and eat all the crops, yes? Biblical plagues and whatnot. Whole multitudes starving to death. But people are always like, ‘Oh, nice little grasshopper,’ and ‘Nasty, horrid scorpion – ’”

I sat there wondering when he was going to get to his point.

And then I remembered that I was talking to a guy who was stoned 24/7.

“What the fuck does this have to do with anything?” I snapped.

“Just follow me for a moment.”

I gritted my teeth. “Fine.”

“The scorpion isn’t bad, in and of itself. It’s just a scorpion.”

“Okay.”

“So when it stings the frog, it’s not malicious. It’s just being a scorpion.”

“SO?! The frog still DIES!”

“Everything dies. Dying is a natural part of life.”

This really
was
like a 3AM conversation in a college dorm room with a stoned pothead – except
I
wasn’t high, so it was basically just annoying.

“But it didn’t
have
to die!”

“But, you see, perhaps the frog is acting according to
its
nature, too.”

“What, being stupid?”

“No, being kind. That doesn’t make the frog smart or stupid. It’s just acting according to
its
nature, as well.”

“So the scorpion’s not bad, it’s just a scorpion, and the frog’s not dumb, it’s just nice, but put them together and they’re both going to die out in the middle of the river. Is that what you’re telling me?”

Killian paused and looked confused.

“Alright,” he mumbled, “perhaps that wasn’t the best story to use to illustrate the situation.”

“You
think?”

“Derek’s not a bad bloke, Kaitlyn,” he said softly. “But if he does something that hurts you, try to remember that it wasn’t meant maliciously. It’s… just his nature.”

Just his nay-chuh.

“Can I give you a piece of advice, Killian?” I asked as I stood up.

“Of course.”

“Don’t use that story to comfort any other women.
Ever.
Especially when they’re pissed off.”

“…right,” he said apologetically.

I walked over to the door. The irritation I was feeling had temporarily overridden my nausea.

Maybe it
was
time to get started on that bender.

Bloody Mary? Mimosa? Straight-up champagne?

“Kaitlyn?” came Killian’s hesitant voice.

I stopped with my hand on the doorknob and turned back. “Yes?”

“Sorry about bollocksing that up.”

He looked really apologetic. Downright pathetic, even.

“…that’s alright,” I grumbled.

“I guess cocking things up is in
my
nature.”

My nay-chuh.

He said it so pitifully, so seriously – and the story had been such an ill-conceived attempt to convey wisdom or condolences or whatever the fuck he had been trying to impart – that there was no way the words could support the grave
earnestness
behind them.

It was just… ridiculous.

Or maybe I’d gotten a contact high by sitting next to him for ten minutes.

Either way, I started giggling.

He looked surprised – and then he smiled, as though realizing he might have somehow miraculously snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

“Bye, Killian,” I said, shaking my head, and walked out of the room.

“Toodles,” he called after me.

The last thing I heard before the door closed was the whisper of his guitar strings.