Page 10 of Worth Your Wild

This girl is twenty. I’m forty-two.

My cock should not be harder than reinforced concrete right now.

It’s not just her hot little body upending my good judgment, either. It’s her attitude.

Goddammit, I love her attitude. Every time she opens her smart mouth or gives me one of those snippy looks over her shoulder, I fall deeper into curiosity about her. And believe me, I had zero plan to end up here. Protecting her. Talking to her. Parking her on my lap, that tight ass pressed up against my package. Throbbing for her.

When I saw the men harassing June and decided to intervene, I had no intention of her ending up on my lap. I truly didn’t. This was a gradual progression into madness, and the more she melts against me, the harder it is to imagine ending the night without her raking her fingernails down my back, that brat mouth screaming for God.

But that isn’t happening. Absolutely not.

I’m a lot of things—a burnout, an asshole, an unrepentant drunk—but I draw the line at being a creep. Not to mention, her uncle is a damn fine man. I’ll never be able to look him in the eye again if I creampie his niece. Unfortunately, now she knows I’d love to bang her into next week. She feels how aroused I am.

Her ass rubs right to left, as if to confirm, and I hiss a sound. Leaving the bottle of Jack wedged between her thighs, I wrap her hair around my right fist and tilt her face up the ceiling, my mouth open against the side of her face. “You couldn’t handle that dick, little girl. It requires a woman with a lot more experience.”

The sound of her swallow reaches my ears. “You don’t know anything about my experience.”

“I don’t want to know,” I lie through my teeth.

“Good.” She yanks her hair out of my hand, spitting venom up at me through her incredible green eyes. “God. What turned you into such an asshole?”

I’m not expecting the question.

No one asks me why I’m such a jerk. Everyone just puts up with me. They have to because I’m paying their bills by employing them.

“You just met me today, June Bug. How do you know I wasn’t always like this?”

She turns slightly in my lap, looking up at me through wide eyes. “Because I know. I know you used to be kinder. You enjoyed being a singer. You valued country life⁠—”

“How do you know what the hell I enjoyed or valued?” I fairly yell at her.

“Because I could hear it in your music. I can’t hear your enjoyment anymore.”

That stings like a son of a bitch. “Are you criticizing my music? To my face?”

She lowers her voice to a murmur, as if she senses she’s gone too far. She has. And I’m pissed the hell off about it. Who does this twenty-year-old think she is? “No, I’m questioning the spirit of it,” she whispers. “The music is good, but your soul…”

I’m breathing hard.

She’s hitting way too close to home.

“My soul what?” I ask, not really wanting to know. But simultaneously wanting to punish myself by being called out. Or confirming what I already know. What I’ve been feeling for years of going through the motions.

That I’m nothing but a hollow shell.

She shakes her head, lips pressed together.

“No, you finish the conversation you started, little girl. My soul what?”

“You don’t have one anymore,” she blurts in a whisper.

I think I’m prepared to hear her answer, but I’m not. For some reason, hearing it from this girl is a dagger to the gut. Maybe because she’s smart and I sense she knows what she’s talking about. “I didn’t sell it to the devil, if that’s what you’re thinking. He came and took it from me. In the form of the public. The so-called fans.”

“What do you mean?”

All right, I’m going to shut up now. There is no point in talking about this. I don’t talk to anyone about this shit, because it’s nobody’s business but mine. No one’s hangup but mine. There is something about the way this girl is looking up at me, though, like she needs to know. Like she’s asking for an explanation because it’s important to her. I guess that’s how I end up saying things to her that I’ve kept trapped in my head for years.

“You don’t know what it’s like. One minute, they celebrate you and swear to love you forever. But when you pour your blood and sweat and tears into the next album and the one after that, but they’ve already moved on to someone else. They don’t even know your ass anymore.” I take a long pull of Jack Daniels, knowing I need to stop now that I’ve gone well past drunk. “This industry is fake and fickle. Ninety-nine percent of this job is trying to prove you still deserve to be on stage, these people judging you with their total lack of experience. All the people who were with me in the beginning—my friends, managers, agents—they sucked the blood out of me and moved on to someone younger, shinier. What soul should I have left when they ripped away pieces until the whole thing was gone? Answer me that, June.”