Risky Rockstar: A Hero Club Novel, стр. 32

and writhing beneath me is a bad thing—it’s a fucking incredible thing—but this is the second time in as many hours, and each time I wake up with my dick as hard as granite.

I’ve really got no one to blame but myself. I haven’t been able to get Hayley out of my mind since we worked on “Persevere” together. The way I’d felt collaborating with her, making music with her, seeing how passionate she is about the music, awoke something in me that I’d thought was in hibernation. Forget hibernation—I thought it was fucking dead.

When I say “used to be,” I mean, I used to live and breathe songwriting. Before Emily broke up with me, I woke up every morning with new lyrics to a new song running through my mind. I’d find inspiration in the smallest things and lived on the high making music gave me. When she left, it had taken a good few years to get past the searing pain that accompanied me wherever I went. Waking up in the morning with a raging hangover, and a feeling like having my heart ripped out of my chest, replaced the meaningful lyrics that were my constant companion.

Sure, during that time we wrote a ton of incredible music. I bled through my art. Ripped myself to pieces every time I wrote a song. The first two albums post-Emily were raw and intense and lit the charts on fucking fire. But with every song that came from that pain, a piece of my passion died. I no longer made music out of beauty and desire, and I no longer made music that inspired me. Instead, I gave people music they could relate to, but it wasn’t the music my soul burned to create. I was no longer capable of doing that. I found myself living through other people’s art. I joined Breakout, a reality TV show where talented artists compete for a record contract, and mentored musicians to make music the way I used to. The way I no longer could.

Until Hayley.

Something lit in me the day at the studio, and every time I think about her it burns stronger, taking hold of me and ripping through me like a brushfire. For the first time in five years, I feel passionate again, and not only about music.

And then I had to go and reach out to her when I knew it was only going to intensify those feelings. I’d thought of every excuse in the book to contact her, but I just couldn’t justify it. Until she proposed the album. The guys had been as enthusiastic as I was to sign with her (maybe not for the same reasons), and there it was—her number was on the bottom of the contract. I couldn’t resist the urge to message her. I’d even handed her my balls when I told her I couldn’t stop thinking about writing a song with her, and I haven’t been able to think of anything other than her the whole night.

I’m not gonna lie: tonight Hayley told me she and Kevin were “coming out” to her fans, and frankly, the situation with her and Kevin has confused the fuck out of me. On the one hand Hayley tells me she and Kevin are coming out about their relationship today, but on the other, the press is talking about him messing around with a girl from South Africa. I know better than anyone that listening to the press is the worst way to get your facts; besides, it’s none of my business, but I’d hate for Kevin to be an undercover douche. Not that I’m any better—I’m over here with a raging case of blue balls because I keep falling asleep and dreaming of his girl.

When Hayley told me that she and Kevin were going to “come out” to everyone at her concert tonight, jealousy had hit me square in the gut, and it had taken every part of the decent guy in me to tell her they looked good together. They do look good together, Hayley looks fucking stunning with anyone she’s with, but I don’t want her to look good with anyone but me. And that is a big fucking problem.

When I woke from the first dream of Hayley earlier, I’d tried writing as a distraction, hopeful that getting how I was feeling onto the page would be cathartic. It was a bad idea—it only seemed to heighten everything I was feeling, and I ended up nearly going out of my mind. I tried a cold shower, but that didn’t work either. Eventually, I fell back asleep only to go straight into the same dream of Hayley again.

I reach for my phone on my nightstand to check the time but don’t get that far. The cool sheet rubs along the head of my cock, and I groan in frustration as my aching balls grow even more painful. I’ve tried everything I can think of not to rub one out because I know I’ll fantasize about Hayley, and that’s just wrong. But unless I get rid of this hard-on, I’m not going to be able to get any sleep, and I’m definitely not going to be able to stop dreaming about Hayley.

I don’t have a headboard, just a floor-to-ceiling window that separates me from the beach. I like sleeping with my back to the ocean; it makes me feel small and insignificant when the world wants to make me seem larger than life. I sit up and lean against the cool glass, the ocean behind me thundering nearly as loud as my heart. I move the sheet down and curl my fist around my cock, stroking upward, gathering the bead of precum and rubbing it around the head. I hiss out a breath and arch my back as my thumb brushes over the hypersensitive flesh.

“Ah, fuck!” The groan slips from my lips as Hayley’s face fills my mind. I stroke slowly, wanting to come but savoring the