Fill Me by Michelle Hazen (rm book recommendations .txt) 📖

“Feet off my fucking furniture, dickhole.”

“Sure enough, Martha.” His feet don’t budge as he grabs the beer he dropped on the coffee table before he followed Jera down the hall. Hooking his middle finger around the neck, he tips it to his lips. Cool and casual like nothing has ever bothered him for a second in his life.

His Adam’s apple bobs, and as he lowers the bottle, he puckers a kiss at me without looking away from the screen. I glance away, annoyed at having been caught staring.

Jera crawls up and grabs another controller from the drawer under the TV. We add a player, and for a while, the only sound is the mechanical soundtrack from the TV, the clink of beer bottles against my coffee table. Still, all I hear is my own guitar, that one perfect solo pouring from my throat during “Disturbed.”

“Can I tell you guys something?” My voice sounds odd interrupting the video game: too quiet, or something.

“Don’t worry, you’ll get your period soon enough,” Danny says.

Jera reaches across me and gives him a deadleg punch in the perfect center of where I smacked him a minute ago. He actually flinches a little from that one, frowning at her, and I smirk.

She high-fives me, dropping back to her butt and grabbing her beer. “You can tell us anything you want, Jax. And Daniel is going to keep his trap shut unless he has a masochistic streak, because he knows I’ll beat him like a red-headed stepchild.”

Danny pauses the game and links his hands behind his head. “I think I’m a little closer to a sadist, actually.”

I twitch and nearly sprain an eyelid trying not to look up at him. Is he stupid, hinting at his club life like that? Or does he sort of want her to guess? I always thought it was weird, him keeping that one thing secret when they know every other tiny detail about each other.

Also, I may not be a BDSM Jedi knight or whatever the fuck like he is, but I understand enough to know Danny doesn’t get off on anyone’s pain. What he gets out of that shit is way deeper. Maybe darker.

“Subjecting us to your sense of humor is pretty fucking sadistic.” She flicks a loose penny at the bassist, squinting her hazel eyes at him as she makes a “zip it” motion across her own mouth before she turns her full attention to me.

I scrub a hand through my hair, feeling stupid now that everybody’s looking at me. “It’s just...my day job, right?”

“UPS?” Jera shrugs. “What about it?”

“I kind of...” I glance away. “Like it.”

Danny opens his mouth and Jera hurls the TV’s remote control at him without looking away from me. The crack of plastic on bone tells me her aim was its usual bullseye, but he doesn’t make a sound.

“That’s cool, though, right? What do you like about it?” she asks, obviously still on her best behavior since our fight earlier.

I pull my knees up, propping my arms over them and grabbing one wrist. “I don’t know, like today. I—it would take me a long time to explain it all, but I solved a problem. A big one, that’s been screwing everybody up for a while. I saved a lot of money and a shitload of time and...” I take a breath. “It felt good. When I got out of work, it didn’t even matter if I did anything else today because I was happy, you know? Chilled out.”

Jera nods, her face a little too smooth as she fights not to look confused. “Uh huh?”

“That’s a damn good day job, man.” Danny tips up his beer and takes a drink.

I glance up at him, because I’ve seen him work, and I think that might be how he feels about tattooing. A nice, quiet kind of peaceful. Which makes me all the more curious about what he’ll think about what I have to say next.

“But then I got all stoked about the show, and once I got up on that stage...” I suck in a breath through my teeth, shaking my head. “It was so much better. Better than everything, this wild crazy rush in every part of my body.”

Jera grins, nodding now that I’ve finally said something she can connect with. “God, yes. It’s just like that.”

“Afterward, though, I didn’t feel all calm and perfect. I was still raging, kind of dizzy and off-balance because I wasn’t ready for it to be over.”

“Who could ever be ready for that to be over?” Jera’s eyes go unfocused for a second, and then she shakes her head quickly, as if to clear it. She picks up her beer. “It was a good show, you guys.”

“I know, it was. It really was.” I fumble, hesitating. I haven’t quite said what I wanted to say yet, but I’m not sure I have the words. “I just got to thinking, I mean...maybe this band thing shouldn’t just be for fun. Maybe we could be big, famous even.” I stop for a second. “Maybe we’re supposed to be famous and that’s why everything else feels so—”

Not enough. I don’t say it, but the room all but echoes the emptiness back to me, and I know I’m not the only one feeling it. Even Danny, I think, because he keeps shifting his weight when Jera’s not looking, like he can’t quite get comfortable.

Jera snorts, her voice forced a little too loud when she says, “Or you could man up and learn how to attract girls without warming them up on our subwoofers. I’m pretty sure we’re not the only garage rock band to wish we were the next big thing. But yeah...” She laughs. “A platinum record would pretty much fix everything that’s ever been wrong in my life.”

She un-pauses the game, as if that’s the end of it.

“Maybe it would, right?” I say softly, still staring at the screen and seeing the lights of a much bigger space. “Maybe it could.”

~

THANK YOU FOR READING Fill Me! Want to read how Jera found love? You can one-click A Cruel Kind of Beautiful to start reading now!

~

A Cruel Kind of Beautiful

IF YOU CAN’T GET TO the Big O, can you get to the happily ever after?

Jera McKnight loves music, swoons for hot guys, but sucks at sex. Jacob Tate is her perfect storm: a pun-loving nude model with a heart as big as his record collection.

When a newspaper-delivery accident lands him in her living room, he’s almost tempting enough to make her forget she’s never been able to please a man—in bed or out of it. Sure, he laughs at her obscure jokes, and he’ll even accept a PG-rating if it means he gets time with her, but he’s also hiding something. And it has everything to do with the off-limits room in his apartment.

Jera pours all her confusion and longing into her drum kit, which pays off when her band lands the record deal of their dreams. Except just like Jacob, it might be too good to come without a catch.

She doesn’t know if her music is good enough to attract a better contract, or if she’s enough to tempt a man like Jacob to give up his secrets—even if they could fix her problems between the sheets. But if this rocker girl is too afraid to bet on herself, she might just end up playing to an empty house.

AVAILABLE NOW!

Click here to instantly escape into the world of Jera & Jacob’s romance...

Keep reading for a sneak preview of

Book 1 of the Sex, Love, and Rock & Roll Series

Sneak Preview:  A Cruel Kind of Beautiful

Jera

When the newspaper broke my window at four in the morning, I didn’t stop to think about the fact that I was wearing sweats. Not thin, make-your-butt-look-cute yoga pants but old school sweats: cuffs cinched tight around my wrists and ankles like rib-knit shackles, plus deflated airbags of material sagging at my crotch and knees.

This is definitely something I would have considered if I’d known I was going to open the door to biceps like his.

Turns out my renegade paperboy isn’t a boy at all; more like six feet two inches of pure man-candy. With his fist raised to knock, all his muscles stand out in exquisitely stark lines, and I’m definitely not staring. Or maybe I am, because he takes a step back and drops his hand, brow furrowing.

“Shit,” he says. “Shit.”

I quirk a brow. I’m five foot flat on a good posture day, so it must be the atrociousness of my sweats that’s putting the fear into him.

“Don’t tell me this was a revenge window-breaking and you got the wrong house.” I nod toward my neighbor’s place. “Did Mr. Schmelzly steal your girl or something?”

His eyes dip below my collarbone for a second, but I’m not exactly worried about my lack of a bra. This sweatshirt is so baggy I could be packing the curves of Santa Claus or Kim Kardashian under here and he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

“I wish I could claim it was revenge. More like a total failure of motor skills.” He grimaces. “I’m so sorry about your window. They give us a half day of training, which felt like four hours more than anybody should need, but right now, it’s looking like I could have used five.” His shoulders hunch as he gives me a sheepish look. 

My annoyance melts, and I offer, “In your defense, it was the Thrifty Tuesdays paper. Tuesday has some serious heft in tampon coupons.”

“Plus, the supplemental entertainment section.” His face relaxes into a smile. “If it’d been a Wednesday, you might have been safe. Here, can I at least help you clean up the glass?” He steps forward.

“Uh...” I hesitate, surprised that he’s offering to do housework. Not to mention he probably has another twenty miles to pedal to finish his route, because who the hell gets newspapers delivered these days? Though I guess if anybody did, it would be this neighborhood, where I’m the youngest by four or five decades. Not exactly the iPad generation.

“I’m sorry, you probably don’t want a strange guy in your house who just broke your window. Trust me, I’m not a serial killer or anything. If I were going to kidnap you, I’d like to think I’d be a lot smoother about the whole thing.”

“Good to know. There’s nothing I hate more than an inept kidnapper.”

His eyes lighten at my response. “That doesn’t seem fair. Shouldn’t you hate successful kidnappers more? There’s the ride in the trunk and the whole ransom debate...it’s probably a real pain.”

“Nah, people love successful kidnappers. Because Stockholm Syndrome.” A smirk tugs at the edge of my mouth. “Shouldn’t you be convincing me to trust you, not defending kidnapping fails?”

“Right. I’m batting a thousand this morning, aren’t I? Sorry again.” He blushes, actually blushes.

He’s like a walking sex dream with close-shaved hair and a cologne-commercial jawline, and I have no idea how a guy can be this hot without a trace of cocky to go along with it. Abruptly, I realize I’ve been holding those delicious dark-chocolate eyes for longer than I have any right to when