The Rock Star Next Door #1
Read The Rock Star Next Door #1 Online
Authors: Starla Cole
Tags: #series, #rock star, #erotic romance
The Rock Star Next Door
An Erotic Series with Star Power
Volume 1
by
USA Today Bestselling Author
Starla Cole
Summary: When hit singer Rage McDaniels realizes he’s in over his head with his new record label, he calls on the one person he still trusts — the sweet all-American girl who used to live next door.
(c) 2014 by Starla Cole
Learn more about photographer and erotica writer Starla at
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The concert arena throbbed with loud, pulsing sound. Blazing spotlights crisscrossed the crowd as Jewel pushed her way to her seat.
Not that she could sit down. Her lifelong next-door neighbor James, or “Rage,” as she guessed he was known now, had sent her front-row tickets to his show. But the chairs themselves were lost to the teeming mass of fans pressing up against the barricade in front of the stage.
She was late, delayed by a series of flight mishaps, but she had made it. She wouldn’t let James down on the first stop of his tour, not when he’d bought her a plane ticket from London to Sacramento. Not to mention the driver with backstage passes sent to fetch her. She owed him that much.
Rage had the crowd in his palm, his guitar slung around his back, one arm in the air, belting lyrics that were as indecipherable as they’d always been to her when he’d practiced in his garage. He wore a slashed white wife beater and tight black vinyl pants with silver links and studded belts slung across his hips. He wasn’t the scrawny boy she remembered whatsoever. In the three years she’d been studying abroad, he’d definitely filled out. Biceps bulged as he reached around for his gleaming black Fender, and his thighs were twice the girth they’d been when she’d last noticed.
He banged out a screaming riff on the guitar, and the crowd roared around her.
She had to hand it to him, he’d arrived. While Morena Center wasn’t the grandest arena in town, it was big enough. The fact that they could sell this many tickets was a good sign that Rage in Chains was going to have a decent ride for a while. Jewel just hoped they were managed well, and that he hadn’t gone off the deep end into the rock star life.
The music started to penetrate and she closed her eyes, listening to James — Rage — bring it all down, slow the pace, lower the decibel, and sing something she could actually understand.
They say that we’re a bastard pair
We’ll do whatever the hell we dare
When Jewel looked back onstage, Rage had found her, a big smile crossing his face. He motioned her forward and even though she couldn’t get to the stage due to the barricade, the crowd let her come to the front, and he squatted down to sing to her.
They all say I’m just nineteen
And try to get up in between
We’ll take our time and spread our wings
Blow off this pathetic scene
And just be
The cymbals crashed then, and the drums took over as the song went back to its thundering crescendo. Rage jumped into the air, slamming chords on the Fender, and Jewel had to admit, she was starstruck.
For the first time, she got the obsession some girls had over musicians. It was powerful, the way they could move you, and if one singled you out and shined their light directly on you, well, there was no way anyone could resist that. Even as the older girl who had always viewed James as the pain-in-the-butt kid next door, her heart was racing and she could feel heat in all the key places.
The girls around her were dying to get the attention he’d shown Jewel. One had gotten up on the shoulders of her date and was tearing her shirt apart, tossing bits of it on the stage. Jewel glanced down at the guy, who was screaming lyrics, and she guessed he was okay with that. Maybe it was acceptable to sacrifice your woman to the rock gods. Or perhaps they were just friends attending the show together.
The band didn’t even pause as one song wound down and they counted off another. Their sound had really come together. Jewel peered at the other members. Crash was still in the band, also looking way more mature than the bean pole kid she’d last seen, as skinny as the bass guitar in his hands.
Metal looked about the same, splintering drumsticks and tossing them behind him, crazy curly hair smashed down by a sweatband. Jewel swore that was the same neon green terry band he’d been wearing for years.
Rage was swinging his guitar over his head, waiting out the drum solo. His pants were so damn tight, she could see muscles bulging as he moved. He probably had a thousand girls throwing themselves at him now. He hadn’t even been with one yet when she lived at home. Their mothers had been friends, so she knew these things.
She glanced at the girls near her, all screaming and holding out their arms for him. Jesus. This was sort of bizarre. He had come to her once, when he was sixteen and she was nineteen, on a rare visit home from college. He was upset over some girl who wouldn’t go out with him. Jewel had told him then the right one would come along. To just be patient. He didn’t have to wait anymore. He had his pick.
One of the guys near her caught sight of the laminated all-access pass around her neck. “Two hundred dollars for that,” he yelled over the music.
Jewel clutched it and shook her head. She stuffed it down her shirt. Imagine. Someone paying to go see this pipsqueak who used to pee in her mother’s rosebushes. She wanted to laugh out loud.
Rage caught her eye several times as he sang the next several numbers, as if to make sure she was there. Jewel smiled and waved although truth be told, her overseas flight and mad dash through the airport to find the driver Rage had sent were catching up with her.
During a bass solo, Rage walked off stage for a moment. Not long after he returned and started singing again, a beefy security guard came up to her. “I’m to escort you back now,” he said.
Jewel nodded and followed the man. As much as she loved watching Rage sing, she was ready to sit down somewhere. I’m an old lady at twenty-two, she thought.
The guard walked her through the chains at the sides of the stage, beyond the reveling fans, and they followed a corridor until the sounds of the concert were a dull echo.
He opened a metal door. “You can wait here in Rage's dressing room. Help yourself.”
A buffet table full of food was like a mirage. Jewel hadn’t eaten in fourteen hours, at least nothing more than the crackers and cheese the flight attendants had passed out, having waved off the unsightly chicken dinner they’d tried to foist on her.
She grabbed a plate and piled on fruit and bread and veggies and dip. She sank onto a corduroy sofa and ate greedily. The concert was piped in and she heard Rage saying good night. They’d do at least one encore, she figured, so she had time to eat a little and locate a bathroom.
And, apparently, wait to find out why Rage was so hot to have her fly all the way from London to California to attend his concert.
Rage snatched a towel from a roadie whose name he couldn’t remember — this was all so damn new — and led the band down the back hall. He hadn’t planned on a second encore but Metal and Crash were so pumped, jacked sky high on adrenaline and no telling what else.
Now he had to meet the press and no more got halfway down the corridor when lights started popping. He smiled and raised his arms in the air, flashing what he assumed was a suitable rock ’n roll look.
“Stop! Right there!” A super hot photographer in tiny jean shorts and a halter top dragged a camera to her face. She clicked a few more times and then pulled the lens away to wink at him over bright red lips, her honey blond hair pulled into two tight spriggy ponytails.
He’d never seen a photographer who looked like THAT. Normally he might have stopped to give her some attention, but not tonight. He was anxious, both for the press, and the reviews, and for Jewel, who he knew was waiting for him somewhere in this rat maze. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought her yet, not the first night, but he’d wanted her. He needed the edge seeing her would give him.
Rage waved at the girl and moved on down to the Green Room, still thinking of his old neighbor. He’d thought she wasn’t going to make it when her chair stayed empty as the opening band finished up. He’d managed to crank up the energy anyway, but nothing like how he’d soared when he’d spotted her in the crowd. The damn lights had made it near impossible to see, but that combination of alabaster skin and dark hair and eyebrows helped him find her even in a crowd.
The security guard he’d sent after her held open the door to the Green Room. A banquet table held a bunch of food, which three or four reporters were helping themselves to. A couple other photographers hung in the corners, popping flashes. He’d have to get used to that.
Arnie, his manager, came forward. “Rocking show, Rage. We’ve got a couple people to talk to.” He lowered his voice. “Not as many as I’d have liked but good ones.”
Rage shrugged. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about press or any of that as long as he got to record another album. He already understood that the process would never be as sweet as the first time, when everything was new and out in front of them. The next one would be rushed and pressured and under threats of contracts and sales goals and all the bullshit that had nothing to do with the music itself.
He perched on the edge of a chair and tried to listen to the questions thrown at him and hoped he didn’t sound stupid. At one point the door opened and some girls trickled in, no telling who they were, and the photographers shot pictures of them hanging on him. What fucking ever. This was going on too long now and he wanted his own room, where Jewel was waiting. He wanted to hear what she thought, for her to listen to him, and to be that person she’d always been — somebody on his side.
He cut his eyes at Arnie, who nodded and clapped his hands. “We about wrapped up here? These boys have to travel to LA tomorrow.”
The reporters looked longingly at the booze, and Rage gestured toward the table. “Feel free. It’s time to party!” He grabbed a beer from a bucket and acted like he was going to stick around but as soon as everyone’s attention was elsewhere, he headed straight for the door. To Jewel.
Ha, she’d conked out.
Rage closed the door quietly, relieved to find her alone. He’d half expected some girl to have snuck in here to pounce on him. But maybe the rocker myth was just that — more bullshit. Nobody was sticking keys in his pocket or staking out his car, not yet. Who knew. Maybe now that the tour had started, it would happen.
Didn’t matter. The girl he wanted with him was already in the room.
He walked up to her, curled up on a navy sofa, her brown hair spilling around her pale face. She’d always been able to sleep like that, pretty much anywhere. He’s been friends with Jewel’s younger brother Matt, and growing up it wasn’t unusual to find Jewel out cold on random furniture.
As Rage got older, he and Matt weren’t anything like each other and probably wouldn’t have stayed friends. But Rage kept the relationship going to nurture his crush. Jewel was this exotic older woman. When they were little, she was the one who picked him up and dusted off his knees. She was always the senior to his freshman, the college girl to his gangly adolescence. He wasn’t that old now, still nineteen, and he knew that. But these feelings he had for her were the oldest, most familiar of all.
Rage knelt next to Jewel on the sofa. She’d always been and still was the smartest, nicest, most level-headed girl he knew. He didn’t care so much for her mom, who’d never liked him and tried to convince Matt not to hang around with him and his musician friends. Probably she saw Rage looking at Jewel and didn’t like that either.
But here she was.
She wore a pair of jeans studded with little rhinestones and a simple pink cotton tee that read “London” across the front. He had a crazy urge to trace the letters on her chest, but focused on her face instead, relaxed and pale, with the sharp contrast of arched eyebrows and lashes.