Rockstar Romance: Julian (Contemporary New Adult Bad Boy Rock Star Romance) (Hard Rock Star Series Book 3) (79 page)

“Shit,” she muttered. “What do we do?” Dylan looked from one group to another.

“Keep fighting. Try and snatch a knife. Protect your middle.” Brock’s henchmen surrounded them in the space between cars, and everything became a blur to Rachel. She kicked, she punched, she grabbed for flashes and glints of metal. Next to her, she heard Dylan’s grunts of effort, crunching sounds, gasps. She clenched her teeth as she felt a burning, searing pain along her hand, and the next moment, it seemed her hand was full of something hard and cold—a knife.

Figures crumpled around them, to be replaced by other figures, and Rachel struggled to stay upright as she felt blows land along her ribs, against her arms and legs. She felt hot, sticky blood—her own, and that of henchmen—as she fought to keep her organs protected, as she dodged and collided with phony ticket takers and Dylan alike. She felt the train shifting underneath her, slowing down—it was coming into the station they were going to change at. “You okay?” she called out to Dylan.

“Keep it up,” he told her. “I’m still alive and so are you.”

“That’s something at least,” she agreed, slashing at yet another phony ticket taker. How many of them were there?

The train’s brakes squealed, and through the window Rachel saw the station flashing into view. More people were arriving—but they were not in phony uniforms. “We got you; we’ve got you. You’re all right.” Rachel felt her head swimming as the world spun and swooped around her and wondered just how many times she had been cut, how much blood she had lost. She staggered against Dylan and struggled to keep her eyes open, to know just what was going on as they arrived at their destination. A bland voice announced their location in both French and English. Rachel realized that the people who had come were the backup, the extra security that James had sent to tail them, as a failsafe.

“Took you long enough,” she said, as darkness swirled around her. “Dylan, you okay? Dylan?” There was no answer from the man and she tried to pull him around to see his face, but her hands were nerveless and heavy. As the train came to a stop, the floor seemed to rise up underneath her even as her knees turned to jelly.

“I’m okay, Love. Let’s get off this damn train.”

Epilogue

“Is it incredibly cliché of me to notice how incredibly green everything is here?” Rachel asked, turning to look at Dylan; he lay on a dinosaur of a couch, sprawled and looking as at-ease as ever.

“Even if it is, it’s not like it’s a cliché for no reason,” Dylan pointed out. He opened his eyes and looked at her, smiling slowly. Rachel felt a rush of heat flash through her at the sight of the smile, accompanied by the tantalizing view of his nearly naked body, barely covered by a blanket.

They had arrived in Ireland a week before; it was, as Dylan pointed out, the safest place for them to wait things out. After the narrow escape on the train, they’d both had to spend a little time at a tiny hospital in Belgium; the struggle had earned Dylan another cracked rib, and a few broken bones in his hand, and a few of the cuts that Rachel had received had required stitches to heal properly. But between them and the backup that James Whitley had set up, they had more than enough evidence to link the henchmen—dead and alive—to Jeffrey Brock, and enough witnesses to attest to multiple crimes. The henchmen who were alive were rotting in a Belgian jail, while Brock himself had gone into hiding.

When it hit the presses, James had called Rachel directly. “You and Dylan should go to Ireland,” he had suggested. “Dylan has informed me he still has friends there, and you could lie low while I sort out the rest of this mess.” Rachel had only been too glad to get moving again.

“You’ll catch a chill like that, Love,” Dylan said from the couch, extending one arm invitingly towards her. Rachel reluctantly left the window, walking across the living room to where Dylan sprawled. She sank down onto her knees next to the couch, looking at him intently. Dylan coiled his arm around her, drawing her closer, his hand sliding up along her back to cup the base of her skull.

“You’re going to hurt yourself,” Rachel murmured, though she didn’t resist his move to kiss her.

“Not if you’re careful,” Dylan countered, claiming her lips. He lifted her carefully and Rachel found herself standing, climbing onto the couch, straddling his hips slowly and carefully as the kiss deepened, Dylan’s hands wandering over her half-clothed body.

“Has anyone ever told you that you have a one-track mind?” Rachel asked, barely breaking away from the kiss. Dylan chuckled lowly, his hands sliding up underneath the loose sweatshirt she was wearing to cup her bare breasts, giving them a lingering squeeze. Rachel’s nipples began to harden to his touch, a rush of heat flowing through her in automatic reaction to the caress.

“A few busted ribs… are not going to stop me,” Dylan murmured, his fingertips wrapping around her nipples, teasing and rolling them slowly. Jolts of hot-and-cold pleasure crackled through Rachel’s body and she felt herself heating up from within, her pussy starting to feel slick. “I need to make up for lost time.” He pulled the sweatshirt up, over her head, and tossed it across the room, his hands falling to her hips.

“You’re insane,” Rachel told Dylan, kissing him on the lips lightly. He shifted underneath her, groaning slightly; his ribs were healing, but slowly. Rachel squirmed against Dylan’s hips as she felt the blanket that separated them slipping out from underneath her.

“You love it, really,” Dylan countered, and Rachel felt the heat of his erection pressing against her slick folds as he moved her body on top of his. She moaned as his cock slid and slipped along her labia, tantalizingly close but not exactly where she wanted it. “Let’s just take it slow,” Dylan suggested, rocking his hips up against hers. Rachel nodded, for the moment too turned on to speak; she caressed him carefully, holding herself up on her knees, balancing her weight on her hands above his shoulders. Dylan’s fingers slipped down between their bodies and Rachel moaned out again as he found her clit by touch, stroking her teasingly.

“Slow is good,” Rachel managed to say, shivering as Dylan rubbed the bead of nerves, rocking his hips steadily to rub his cock along her slick labia. “But if you don’t—if you keep teasing me like this—it’s not slow, it’s just mean.”

“Can’t have you thinking I’m mean…can we?” Dylan’s fingers retreated from her pleasure center and Rachel gasped as she felt him guide his cock up against her, as he thrust his hips upward, sliding inside of her inch by inch. She pushed down to take him in deeper, opening her eyes to look down at his face. Dylan’s dark eyes were nearly black with desire, staring up at her with undisguised need as they began to move together, friction building up between their bodies enough to make Rachel sweat in moments.

She rocked and twisted her hips, rising and falling, as Dylan’s hands danced all over her body, caressing and teasing her. He cupped her breasts, bringing them up to his mouth to claim each of her nipples in turn with his lips and tongue. Rachel felt the tension mounting in her moment by moment, felt her body heating up, her muscles flexing in spasms around Dylan’s cock as she became more and more turned on. Dylan’s hand slipped between their bodies once more and as he thrust deeper and deeper inside of her, Rachel cried out at the feeling of his fingers playing against her clit, sending jolts of pleasure shooting through her body in crackles that lit up her nervous system.

She struggled to hold back, wanting to savor the closeness of their bodies, wanting the moment to go on forever; but as Dylan pulled her face down to kiss her hungrily, his tongue probing her mouth as he thrust harder and faster inside of her, Rachel felt her self-control breaking. She held herself up off of his injured body with an effort, shifting her knees up to take him deeper, pushing herself down onto him harder as she moaned against his lips. In a matter of moments, it was nearly impossible for her to hold back her climax anymore, and Rachel grabbed at the pillow underneath Dylan’s head, every muscle in her body clamping down as the first wave of her orgasm jolted through her.

Dylan kept himself under control, holding back, and Rachel’s climax deepened, pleasure rippling through her as he slowed down and then sped up once more, his hands wandering over her with possessive lust. Her spasms began to abate and Dylan continued to touch her, working her out of satisfaction and into renewed need. He groaned as her body heated up again, hands tightening on her, and Rachel found herself moving to his rhythm, falling into his movements as readily as a dance, as aftershocks crackled through her nerves and she felt the tension mounting once more.

Her second orgasm crashed through her as abruptly as the first, and Rachel fought to keep from collapsing onto Dylan’s body, supporting her weight on arms that felt like jelly and legs that seemed more and more unreal with every driving thrust of Dylan’s cock inside of her. This time, they reached their orgasms together—and Rachel swallowed down Dylan’s moans hungrily as she felt his warm gush flooding into her once, twice, a third time.

She carefully picked herself up off of Dylan’s body, and he shifted on the couch lazily, pulling her around and cradling her next to him. Their bodies were slick with sweat, and Rachel thought hazily that they’d both want a shower in a matter of minutes, but she was too satisfied to move.

They would stay in Ireland for a while; James was still working to regain full control of his company, and to clear up her precarious legal situation. But upon their arrival in Ireland, Rachel had not been at all surprised to find that her bank account showed a balance of nearly ten million dollars, with a note on the bank transfer that brought her to that balance telling her to enjoy herself. “We could just stay here, you know,” she said to Dylan, reaching up to swipe a lock of his hair away from his face.

“We could do that. Or we could go back to Rouen and work on your French some more.” Rachel rolled her eyes, swatting at him playfully, careful not to hit him where he was injured.

“As long as I’m with you, I don’t care where we are,” Rachel said quietly.

“I told you: you’re not getting rid of me. I’ll follow you anywhere, Rachel,” he said, tucking a wisp of her hair behind her ear. “I love you.”

THE END

“So, hopefully, with this feature, we’re going to see a real growth in new accounts at IQID, and thus be able to start building toward our goal of being able to tailor responses to client need. And remember, we need more clients for more capital… So what are we focusing on?”

The room was too warm to be productive for this kind of meeting, he realized. When the eleven men before him responded with “more clients!” it was not only less hearty than he would have liked, several of them looked genuinely confused as to what the meeting had actually been about. Damian couldn’t talk to anyone about turning up the air conditioning without being reminded that their planet was being destroyed because of their need for ultimate comfort—at least, that was the way Brian in HR put it every month when Damian went to complain.

“Okay,” he continued. “Let’s all look forward to tomorrow’s recap email; you can shoot back any questions—”

“I’ve got a question,” said Jamie in his jagged baritone. He leaned back in his chair, his lids drooping as he spoke. “Is the retreat still going to be catered?”

At the mention of the quarterly retreat, every man in the room straightened up. This year, they would be in Maine in a luxurious resort where they could request more types of massages than they could possibly have time to receive. It was one of the perks that many higher-level employees signed on for exclusively, partially because of the parties Damian tended to fund while they were there—Damian Wyles’s parties had
always
been worthwhile in Silicon Valley.

Jamie was still speaking. “Those salmon rolls were divine last year. Most perfect things ever. I’ve been dreaming about them every night since the last one cleared my system.”

“With Lola next you?” Gary said, leaning across the gleaming table to show Jamie his roguish wink. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep at all.”

Damian closed his eyes, resisting the urge to roll them. “Guys, can we keep things professional here?”

Jamie snorted. “You wouldn’t be so eager to jump behind the wheel with Lola if you’d been on the rides
I’ve
been on,” he said darkly.

Gary’s expression turned curious. “What do you mean?”

Jamie shrugged. “My tastes are a little more vanilla, I guess. Once I start bruising, I’m out. There’s a reason Lola has so many private tennis lessons—better him than me.”

“Okay, gentlemen, it’s nearly eight,” Damian said hastily, waving his arms toward the door. “We should all head out. We can talk about the retreat as we get closer to the event.”

The men finally started to stand, but now they’d all broken out into various shades of lewd conversation. Damien pulled his blazer on and walked through the long, mirrored conference room, thankfully slipping out before Jacob could finish telling Miles about the time he and his girlfriend went skinny dipping in Majorca and nearly got arrested for indecent exposure. Someone near the door called his name before he closed the door, but they were pulled into another conversation before they could even finish addressing him, so he turned out and completed his exit uninterrupted.

The dim fluorescent lights told him it was past eight o’clock now, so the silence of the hall wasn’t at all out of place. His footsteps were completely swallowed by the plush blue carpet, the fibers reaching up to sweep the top of his gleaming black loafers. Damian caught sight of himself in the glass door of his office before he unlocked it, and he was shocked to see that his skin was far paler than usual, his wavy black hair making him look more vampire-like rather than camera ready. His legs were aching as he closed the door behind him, and he took solace in the fact that it was Friday—meaning he could sleep in as late as eight or nine if he wanted, though his body surely wouldn’t let him lay around that long.

Damian’s office sat in the corner of the thirtieth floor of a slate gray building on Palm, two blocks from the center of Mountain View’s downtown area. He could see the bay, and the windows that stretched from the floor to the ceiling of his back wall also gave him an incredible view of a good half of the city, and even parts of Palo Alto if the fog wasn’t pressing against the glass. He remembered the first time he’d seen the view from his window, four years before; IQID had just begun to come into its own, with its first televised commercials rolling out around Labor Day.

“IQID is Identification protection—that’s the
ID—
that works smarter to keep you safe—that’s the
IQ!”
Chirped the bubbly young woman in front of her laptop. The letters floated above her as she spoke, and Damien was so shocked at seeing his company name in glossy, computer-generated letters on his flat screen that he had been momentarily convinced that someone was actually pranking him. By the fifth time he’d viewed the commercial, things were starting to feel real, and his half a million subscribers went a long way toward helping that feeling solidify. Then Damian got the news that they could buy three floors of the huge building on Palm he’d strolled past a million times while he interned at Intracode, and his dream-like sensation sharpened and receded at the same time, somehow—like he was trapped in limbo, or that strange space between sleep and waking where thoughts and words drifted away and were never heard from again. He got that feeling every time he looked out the window for nearly two years; after that, the reality of the relentlessly gray life in the tech capital of the world started to dull his reactions to everything else. Damian kept his shades drawn during the daytime, especially.

A soft chime filled the room, and the cool voice of his assistant followed. “Will you be needing takeout ordered, Mr. Wyles?”

“No, Alexis,” Damian answered, “and hey—go home. Have a good weekend.”

“Yes, sir,” Alexis said, and he could hear the relief in her tone, though she tried hard to hide it. “You, too. Don’t forget to find your dress shoes tonight.”

As the intercom fell into silence again, Damian felt confusion tint the words tumbling around his skull.
Dress shoes?
What did he need dress shoes for?

Damian’s eyes rose to the LED calendar he kept on the wall at the exact moment he remembered his gala. Despair flooded his weary bones, and he collapsed into the chair behind his desk as his visions of a relaxing Saturday evening at home were dispelled. He’d forgotten he bought a $20,000 table at a charity gala a month ago, and not only did he invite friends to fill the seats, the chairman of the Lupus charity was expecting him to show. That would mean a minimum of three hours of rubbing shoulders with men who would kill their own trophy wives to be able to steal his youth and vigor, and women who would smother their lauded husbands for a weekend with him—every one of them climbing all over themselves to impress or undermine him with every word. He got enough ass-kissing in his school days; he’d done enough ass-kissing, too, come to think of it.

A crowd of voices moved down the hall toward the bank of elevators around the corner from his office. His inner door was open, so their words were just clear enough to make out as they went by.

“Yeah, I’d like that too,” someone was saying. “But we already know that doesn’t work.”

“Those women went about it all wrong,” said a second voice. “You have to be accommodating and transparent every step of the way—or at least appear that way.”

“For the
shareholders?”

“No,” the second voice said mildly. “For the public. That was their downfall—the public can and will affect your success, even before you open the doors on your product.”

“How do you even call a people tracking app a product, anyway?” the man said, who sounded a lot like Gary.

“Don’t call it tracking, for one,” said the other man, who was probably Miles. “It’s surveying. Curating. Recording.”

“Stalking,” said a third man. “You can’t have an app where you review people, period. I know you want this to work, Miles, but it’s going to fail. Hell, the boss tried to do it before you did—you think you have a better shot?”

Damian rose from his seat and closed the door to his inner office before he had the time to catch Miles’ indignant reply. His face was burning, and he was struggling to contain his shame at the mention of his old project, even though the name hadn’t even been uttered aloud.
A people reviewing app.
Damian smiled, bittersweet memories rushing back as he recalled his time only seven years before.

The app had begun as a way to alert vulnerable people about abusive men in their area, aptly named Lookout4. Damian’s younger sister June had a habit of attracting men who were as violent as they were good looking, and he wanted a way to warn other women before they walked into the same trap. After a year, the app had a respectable presence on college campuses, and the then 24-year-old Damian Wyles was riding high on his own success. He felt that he’d done his duty to make sure the app was stable and functional, so when a buyer came forward with a price tag far higher than the app’s worth, he jumped at the chance. Suddenly, he had enough money to start a new business while the app he founded spiraled into a bloated platform for advertisements and pointless features that turned Lookout4 into more of a social media hangout than an alert system.

“They added aesthetic ratings,” Damian told June over the phone one night. “And stickers. You can slap on a cherry stamp or a sparkly birthday cake next to Richard Banks’ long list of domestic offenses, if you want.”

“Good thing you got out,” June said calmly. “Sounds like it really changed.”

“It changed
because
I left,” Damian replied. “If I hadn’t sold the company, who knows what it would have been.”

This wasn’t how the rest of the world saw it, however; because of media spin, the world thought Damian Wyles’s pet project tanked after a year, only to be rescued and then eventually mercy killed by Johnathan “Jack” Summers, the  investor whose managerial and operational tweaks often rescued a project that should have been dead. Worse, Jack Summers didn’t deny this rumor at all—it was better than letting people know the truth, which might lead them to realize that his success rate wasn’t as high as it seemed. Damian didn’t push the issue, because Lookout4 was long gone—plus, he really hated dealing with Jack Summers. Jack loved riding his old friends’ coattails to his destinations and then throwing them under a passing bus if it felt convenient, so they were closer to enemies than former business partners; still, Jack’s acquisition of Lookout4 made IQID possible, so Damian tried not to harbor too much animosity toward him.

Damian realized the hall had been silent for quite some time. He put away his notes and locked the drawers on his desk, pulling his phone off its charger before switching off the overhead light in his inner office. His outer office was already dark, but he knew how to locate the door handle from five years of making this exact trek in various states of darkness and daylight. This office had been his home more than the apartment he owned had been at first; Damian remembered his long nights of coding and correcting with a mixture of fondness and joy—he’d never be so young and energetic ever again, but he also was far more confident now, and his success was undeniable. He might get nostalgic, he decided, but he was definitely happier now. 

The elevator doors showed him his face again in their reflective surface as they slid closed, and he was struck by the depth of the circles beneath his eyes—they were soft and purpled, like two impressionist black holes beneath twin pools of crystal blue water. He closed his eyes again.

I need a drink.