Page 21 of Dirty Lyrics
Not pretty enough.
Not thin enough.
Not good enough.
A chubby inconvenience in his world of rock stars and models.
Boarding school was the first time I breathed without waiting for his disappointment. The mean girls sucked, but at least they were predictable. I found friends.
Books. Music.
I discovered that while I wasn’t meant to be on stage, I had words that mattered.
I could write.
And I owned that.
It was enough for me. I was happy on the sidelines, lost in the lyrics that came to me when the music played.
Until Rico.
Because Rico is everything a star should be.
The looks. The talent. The raw bad-boy magnetism.
Even his flaws—the temper, the reputation, the careless charm—fit the role.
He is the music.
And me? I’m just the girl who thought maybe, for once, it was different.
So when he pursued me, I let it happen. I fell into bed. Into sex. And it was—everything you could imagine.
My throat tightens as the memories threaten to drown me.
I open my mouth to ask him—to beg him to tell me what he wants of me, why he dragged me here, why he still looks at me like I’m his when I know this is just about giving the baby a name.
“Wait till we get inside,” he says, his voice rough velvet, cutting through my nerves like he can read my damn mind.
I close my mouth.
Obedient. Silent. And yet, not calm at all.
Jolts of awareness zip through my veins, sharp as static.
Rico is always so bossy. He likes to be in charge. Craves it. Demands it. Maybe because so much of his life and his career is out of his control.
There was a time when I liked it.
When his dominance felt like safety, when letting him take the reins felt like freedom.
And the worst part? Some traitorous, needy part of me still likes it.
I press my back against the elevator wall, heart thudding. My thighs clench as his gaze flicks toward me, dark and unreadable, and the memory of his hands on me—his mouth, his voice whispering dirty things in the dark—rushes back so fast I can’t breathe.
“How did you know?”
“You can ask your questions inside, Songbird,” he growls, impossibly dark eyes glittering at me in the too-close elevator.
