Free Unplugged: A Bad Boy Rockstar Romance by Sienna Valentine Page B

purpose to stay calm. “I grew up in a family
completely different from me. Conservative… religious… boring, ” she said
with a self-effacing laugh. “I was the black sheep. We didn’t hate each other,
but I just never belonged. And I always promised myself I would get out and
make something of myself on my own terms. I got this tattoo to make myself
remember… so that when things got dark and I got scared, I’d remember…”
    “Remember what?”
    “Remember that as complicated as things seem, there’s
only ever really two choices. Leave what you’re doing if it’s wrong, or live
and die with it.”
    My heart actually ached, listening to her talk. She
understood so much of the isolation I had felt in my life.
    “I love that,” I told her. “That’s really fucking
beautiful, Laurel.”
    She shrugged and took a drink of beer. “Yeah, everyone
says that.”
    I frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    She looked up at me with worried eyes. “I just mean… I
don’t know. I don’t want to offend you.”
    “Try me,” I said.
    “I’ve just heard that a lot before,” she said, the
exhaustion in her voice more than apparent. “Guys are always very impressed
with my… fire. My drive. My ambition. At least, impressed enough to flirt and
fuck me. It doesn’t seem to impress them very long, though.”
    She had to be exaggerating. Was she seriously trying
to tell me she couldn’t get a guy to stick around? “Are you joking? You’re
telling me, with the way you look, the way you fuck, and all the awesome shit
you’re into, you have trouble getting dudes?”
    She shrugged again and took the joint from my fingers.
She held the drag in her lungs longer this time and blew it out slowly. “It’s a
mystery for the ages.”
    “It’s no mystery. The men you’ve met are fucking idiots,
obviously.”
    Laurel laughed, but it was quiet and a bit sad. She
passed me the joint and leaned her blonde head against my chest, tucked under
my chin. “Eh, it’s fine. I have other things going on, and dumbass dudes only
get in the way of it, anyway.”
    I smiled and kissed the top of her head. “I think
that’s sexy as fuck.”
    “You do?” She didn’t look up at me, but I could still
feel her face twisted into some disbelieving frown.
    “Yeah,” I said. “Most of the women I interact with are
just… passive. They swim behind other people until they get swallowed up by the
sea. But you, shit… you’re a shark.”
    She looked up at me this time, and I met her eyes with
a serious face. She stared at me, like she was trying to decide if I was full
of shit.
    “Most people are afraid of sharks,” she said quietly.
Her eyes fell.
    With one hand running through her soft hair, I said, “Because
they don’t understand them.” Then, for good measure, I added, “And I’m not most
people.”
    Laurel’s smile glowed up at me. “No… you’re not.”
    “I feel like I never meet anyone who wants to live,” I
said. “Everyone is so fucking eager to settle down and get their routine going…
that schedule they can follow right up to the cemetery gates.” I put the joint
carefully in the ashtray on my bedside table and wrapped both my arms around
her. “I think your fire is beautiful.”
    Laurel’s face softened. She crawled up my body until
her lips were over mine, and she kissed me with a heated tenderness that made
me ache. I wrapped my arms around her body and pulled her into me.
    With the quiet storm pattering outside and Laurel burning
in my arms, everything else in the world faded into nothing.
     

 
    ~ NINE ~
    Laurel
     
     
    Hours
passed, and Noah and I didn’t seem to want to do anything except talk and fuck
and touch each other. The driven part of me felt guilty, because I didn’t feel
like I was at work anymore. I felt… different. Like I was just out with someone
whose company I enjoyed, and who happened to be a stone-cold fuck-machine.
    After we got tired of lying in his huge bed, I got