How to Reprimand Your Rock Star (DommeNation #2) (3 page)

I shut the door behind me, and I leaned back against it, glad to feel something solid. I was worried my legs were going to give out. Callie looked up at me from the floor, where she sat in a deflated purple beanbag, flipping through a chemistry book.

“Damn, Thea, what’s wrong?” she asked, slamming the text shut and standing quickly. “Did Wes put the picture up? Is your knee bothering you?”

I looked around. “Is it that obvious I’m upset?” I asked, wondering if the jitters that plagued my body as I dashed back to my dorm hadn’t subsided. That man, that punk, he had really thrown me off. I almost liked it.

“You look like you saw a ghost,” she said, taking my trembling hand. “Is everything okay?” It was rare to see Callie this serious, but she was good at being attuned to those close to her. I shuffled three steps to my bed and threw myself down, exhausted but still electrified. I didn’t know what to do with myself.

“I met this guy,” I began, and she screamed. I held my finger to my mouth, worried the RA would be by. With the possibility of getting caught for underage drinking looming over my head, the last thing I’d need is the RA coming into our room. Callie had squirreled away some booze she got from her cousin who was a senior. The team would never give us liquor to keep.

“Tell all!” she shouted, hopping from my bed onto the couch, then popping back up. “No, wait. I’ll make popcorn.” Of course she would make popcorn right now. Dorm food was so bad that we pretty much packed away two bags of Orville Redenbacher’s a day.

I breathed in. “It’s not like that,” I began, but then questioned whether or not that was true. He was into me, no doubt, calling me “goddess,” “darling,” and “love.” And he definitely wanted to, well, do stuff. Considering he was talking about, I don’t know, having me tape him up in Miami. I wondered whether or not I should leave that part out. It was kind of the most interesting part, but I didn’t want to sound like a major pervert.

“So what
is
it like?” Callie asked, slamming the microwave door shut and pressing some buttons.

“I went down to the locker room to get my lucky tape and there was some guy there.”

“Ew!” she shouted. “In our locker room?” Callie’s face had gone from interested to horrified. “Who was on duty? They’re going to get their ass fired,” she said, grabbing her phone and starting to text wildly.

“Trust me,” I said with a huff, “he was supposed to be there.”

Callie frowned. “Maintenance?”

“Rock star.”

She squeezed her eyes into slits. “Come again?” The microwave dinged and she pulled out the steaming bag.

“His name was,” I said, fishing around in my brain for that weird name, “Keaton something. Keaton Down?”

A few moments of stunned silence. I could see the little hamster in the wheel turning in her mind. “Not
Keaton Lowe
 . . . ?” Callie asked with a slack jaw, pinching the corners and pulling the bag apart.

I nodded. “That’s it. Keaton
Lowe
.” I dropped my voice the way he had.

Callie screamed so loud I cringed and listened for Renee the RA to come plodding down to our room.

“Shush!” I shouted, wanting to smother her mouth with my hand. Where had that impulse come from? Probably all that suggestive, tie-me-up stuff Keaton had said. Oh no, I was starting to get tingly in my unmentionables.
Stop, Thea!

“Trickster City, Thea! Trickster-Fucking-CITY!”

I groaned. “Speak English, please.”

“Trickster City is amazing! And Keaton Lowe is only the sexiest lead singer in the last decade, woman!” she said, grabbing her hair and pacing. “How do you not know him?”

I frowned. “A four-point-O doesn’t earn itself. And do I look like I follow celebrity gossip? I could care less who he is.” That part was a lie.

She shook her head, still dazed. “Keaton Lowe talked to you? What did he say?!”

“That he wanted me to tie him up in Miami,” I said.

She spewed out a mouthful of hot kernels. “He wants to tie you up? At regionals?”

“No,” I said slowly, “he wants
me
to tie
him
up.”

She shoved the popcorn bowl into my hands and popped a few kernels into her mouth, completely ignoring the ones she had spat onto the floor. “Tell me what he really said or I will call Coach and demand that he bench you for last night’s shit show.” She crunched loudly and spit out an unpopped kernel.

I rolled my eyes. Callie was a benchwarmer, and even when her insults cut, I knew it was only out of self-consciousness on her part. “I
am
telling the truth. He’s like, weird. Kinky.” I said the word and felt it tingle through my body. I had never thought of tying anyone up, or using tape for any purpose outside physical therapy. But the way his hands looked bound behind his head, and the way he said with such certainty that we were going to “continue” what we had started, I couldn’t help but get goose bumps. For some reason, an image of the Red Devil flashed through my mind.

Callie put her hand over her mouth and started panting. “Shut. Up.”

“I swear on the great Husky,” I said, placing my hand over our team mascot on my jacket.

“How did you not know who he is?!” she shouted. “He’s dated and dumped dozens of celebrities.
In Touch
calls him the Heartbreaker of the Century.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, not really knowing how to reply. It bothered me a bit that he was a man-whore, but it also made me surprised that after being with celebrities, he’d proposition
me
. Maybe that was how he got that much action—he just hit on everyone. Cast a broad net. I still felt a weird pang of jealousy. So unlike me.

“You’re full of shit,” she said, crossing her arms. “You found out I wanted tickets to tonight’s show, but couldn’t go because of having to watch the game tonight, and you wanted to tease me.”

I unzipped my bag and began to put away my dirty clothes when I saw something hanging out of the pocket of my shorts.

A ticket. That cheeky bastard slipped me a ticket to the show. I was delighted and pissed at the same time.

I pulled it out and handed it to Callie. “Go.”

She looked at me in awe. “No way.”

Pressing it into her palm, I steeled myself. He was a heartbreaking asshole and I didn’t want any part of it. So by giving this ticket to Callie, I’ll have rid myself of him and the raging fantasies that were still going on in one part of my mind. He wasn’t good for me and that was that.

“I said no way,” she said, recoiling as though the ticket were hot. “This is yours. Your chance to go bang the most gorgeous celebrity bad boy in history! Fuck, I want you to live tweet that shit!”

I frowned. “I don’t tweet, and I don’t fuck bad boys. Take the ticket and enjoy the show.”

“Nope. Not going to do it. You go.”

“Technically neither of us can, we have to watch the game with the team.”

“True,” Callie said, tapping her foot. “So you wanted me to go and get in trouble with the captains so the pressure was off you?”

I jokingly pinched her. “Bitch.”

“Psycho prude.”

Shoving a mouthful of popcorn into my mouth instead of retorting was my way of admitting defeat. I lost the last game for us, so no way could I act on my desperate and decidedly not-prudish impulses and go see him.

Winning was more important. Right?

THE UPPERCLASSMEN ON THE TEAM
all lived together down the road from campus. Callie, myself, and a few underclassmen would make the trek there often to watch games and talk shop. Or, in our case, sit there and listen to what the older teammates had to say. Sometimes I thought they were total robots, doing nothing but talking about the game. I mean, there were other things in life, right? What about class? Families? Dare I say boys? At that thought, I felt my stomach tighten and Keaton’s Lion Gate tattoo flashed in my mind. Why would he have a symbol of the Peloponnese tattooed on his shoulder? He didn’t look Greek. Then again, he didn’t make a face at my last name, which usually made people grimace with its length and complexity.

As I walked through the door of the captains’ town house, my eye flitted to an open cardboard box in the foyer. It said S
CARLETT
H
AVEN
, and there was something long and black poking out of it. It looked like a leather-wrapped stick with two ends, split like the tongue of a snake. Callie ventured down the hall toward the apartment, but I knelt and touched this strange item. I was drawn to it. Worse, it made me think of Keaton. Great, something else to make me think of him.

“Curious, eh?” I heard from above me.

My body jolted up, and yet my hand clutched the leather . . . thing. Oh God. It was Red Devil. And I was holding her . . . whatever the hell it was.

“Um, I’m sorry. It was sticking out and . . .” I trailed off. A grin appeared on her full lips, which were painted a deep burgundy. They were so shiny I thought of vinyl and blushed, remembering the kinky images that came into my mind every time I thought of Keaton.

“This is a tawse,” she said, almost answering my question. Her voice was silky and had an edge to it, like dark chocolate. “Do you know what it does?”

I shook my head no, mute from awe and embarrassment.

She slipped the leather stick from my hands and slapped her palm. “It stings.”

My mouth fell open and she laughed. Something about her mirth reminded me of Keaton. I blushed. “Okay,” I said. I didn’t know if I meant I was okay with the answer or if I wanted to know more.

She quirked an eyebrow and smiled. “Well, if you find anything else
sticking out
, and don’t know how to use it, come find me.”

I buried my face in my hands and continued to the apartment, peeking through my fingers to find my way. I was so completely mortified. Blaming my space-cadet behavior on a combination of Keaton’s influence, fear about Wes’s photo of me, and overall anxiety about the game made me feel just a tad better. I still mostly felt like a total ass.

I let myself in and the team barely acknowledged me. They were glued to the set. “Hi guys,” I mumbled, and a few hands shot up in salute, but nobody actually made eye contact. I sat on the couch and proceeded to brood with Callie by my side, braiding my hair. I didn’t tell her about my embarrassing moment just now, and how good that tawse thing felt in my hands, but I did gush about wanting to actually see Keaton in concert. Quietly, of course. I suppose that the one good thing about being ignored was that you could get away with whispering since nobody noticed you.

“Maybe the game will be over early and you can slip in for the last song,” she whispered. Our team captains, Donelle and Reese, glanced back at us angrily. There goes our anonymity, I guess. Reese held a finger to her mouth and gestured to the TV. Vanderbilt was up at the half by ten. They were good.

I shrugged and slipped my hand into my purse, stroking the ticket idly with my finger. I sat with my leg extended, knee taped up reluctantly, since part of me only wanted to use that tape for one reason. The other, rational part of me told me I was losing my mind. Who was I to swoon over a rock star? Hell, I’d never even heard his music. On the walk to the apartment, Callie had done a few renditions of Trickster City’s top hits, but I didn’t recognize a single note. The music was fast, energetic, and really fun, but I couldn’t tell if it was any good since I never listened to punk rock. For all I knew, he was a hack. Or a pervert who liked luring college students into playing his kinky games. His own bandmate suggested as much.

“If you do kiss him, I want to know eeeeeverything,” Callie lamented, head drooping on my shoulder in a sad snuggle.

I patted her head. “You know we’re not getting out of here.” There was at least another hour and a half to the game, and the concert had already begun long ago. I resigned myself to the fact that I would not go out chasing boys tonight. It was silly and would probably aggravate my knee.

But oh, the thought of chasing and catching him. Sneaking backstage and pinning him against the wall. Making out after he was all sweaty from his performance. I worried my heartbeat was so loud that the team could hear.