ARROGANT BRIT (A BRITISH BAD BOY ROMANCE) (51 page)

“
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.