Wild Star: Under the Stars Book 3 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  More 5*Star

  More from Raleigh Ruebins

  Social Media

  Wild Star

  Raleigh Ruebins

  This is a work of fiction. Names, businesses, places, and events are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 Raleigh Ruebins

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Cover design by AngstyG

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  More 5*Star

  More from Raleigh Ruebins

  Social Media

  Prologue

  Adam

  “Do you mind?” I said to Grey, putting a hand gently on his shoulder.

  I was probably a little too tipsy—the rum he’d brought me was delicious, and even without the alcohol, I could hardly resist putting my hands all over him. But he kept rubbing his shoulder like he was in pain all night, and I couldn’t help but want to release the tension for him.

  “Of course not,” he said, slipping his hand away from his shoulder and turning so that his back was toward me.

  I lowered my other hand onto his shoulder and began to massage him. We were out on my back deck, and his skin felt so invitingly warm in the cool night air. The second I touched him, I could feel my cock responding under my pants. I’d wanted to feel him for weeks, and now he was right here under my palms.

  “Oh God, that feels incredible,” he uttered, still clutching his own glass of rum in his hand.

  I kept working over the spot of tension in his right shoulder, in slow and methodical strokes, listening to his even breaths.

  “Jesus, how are you so good at this?” Grey mumbled, his voice relaxed and dreamlike.

  “I’ve had a lot of odd jobs over the past couple years,” I said. “One of them was working at the front desk of a massage clinic. I never actually got formal training, but my coworkers practiced on me sometimes, and I asked them to teach me anything they could.”

  “Well they did a pretty fucking good job,” he said, his head dropping backward as I rubbed near his neck.

  “You really do have a lot of tension here,” I said, and then I found myself feeling bold—maybe from the alcohol, or maybe from how fucking beautifully he was responding to me. “Full honesty,” I said, “I offered to do this because I wanted to touch you, but this muscle is so knotted.”

  He moaned a little.

  “I know,” he said. “I’m aware that I probably need weekly massages, but not exactly in my budget.”

  “Just come see me, then,” I said softly, roaming my hands firmly across his upper back, across his shoulders down at the sides of his spine.

  He let out a slow laugh. “The things you do for me, Adam, I can’t ask you to do this, too.”

  “I would, though,” I said, lowering my hands to his mid-back. “You need it bad, Grey.”

  He let out a sort of strangled sound, like a half-moan half-whimper. It was absurdly sexy, and if there’d been any doubt about how much I wanted him, it was only confirmed when he made these sounds that went straight to my cock.

  Grey gave into my touch as I worked my hands down lower, to the small of his back just above his hips. He leaned backward, lowering his head back so that it rested in the crook of my shoulder, so vulnerable and open.

  “No one’s touched me like this in so long,” he said, his voice soft.

  “That is a goddamn shame,” I said, low and near his ear. And it really was—Grey was so beautiful, so wound-up tight and just begging to be touched, that I couldn’t believe what he was telling me.

  I had to feel his skin on mine. I reached down to the bottom hem of his shirt, and finally moved my hands up underneath the fabric and massaged the bare skin of his lower back. He was burning hot under my hands, and as I touched him there, he pressed his body back fully against me, his ass pushing up against my groin.

  And he must have felt how hard I was, because he quickly leaned forward again, pausing, like he’d made a mistake. I stilled my hands, as well, not wanting to take this too far if he didn’t want me to.

  But oh God, did I want to take it further. I wanted everything: him naked in my bed, my tongue on his skin, my lips on his mouth, my fingers inside him. I would take anything he would give me, and I’d wanted it since the minute I’d met him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice so quiet and weak. My hands were still steady on his back, but unmoving.

  My cock was aching for him. But I had to be sure.

  “Grey,” I said softly at the back of his neck.

  “Mm?” he hummed.

  “I have to say something,” I said, my heart pounding.

  “Please do.”

  “I’m really afraid of making you uncomfortable,” I said.

  There was a quick pause.

  “Well, you’ve pretty much been doing the opposite of making me uncomfortable, Adam.”

  I let out a small groan. So he was enjoying this as much as I was. And so I told him the truth.

  “I… want to give you more than this,” I told him, keeping my voice low and leaning toward him again, pressing my chest to his back. “I want to take you inside and make you feel good, and I want to use more than my hands.”

  “Oh my God,” he whined, and all at once he sank the weight of his body against me completely. There was no question that he felt my erection, now—he was practically grinding into me, and it was utterly perfect.

  I leaned away slightly, my hands still gripped on his hips.

  “But I really, really don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable,” I said again. “Because if you aren’t interested, if you’re not into this, all you have to do is tell me. Any time. I will stop if you say so.”

  He swallowed, and finally turned around, twisting in my grip so that he was facing me. I stared down at him, and I saw that his eyes were just as lustful as mine, half-lidded and pupils wide. He looked like he wanted to absolutely devour me, wild and gorgeous under the moonlight.

  He met my eyes. “Of course I fucking want you, Adam.”

  And that was all I needed to hear.

  One

  Adam

  Life comes into sharp focus when you wake up alone in an abandone
d school bus parked on the side of an organic farm.

  It makes you realize things. Subtle, deep truths that float through your head as you slowly wake up in stages, remembering where and who you are:

  Do all school buses smell like this?

  Can my back seriously even hurt in this many places?

  Jesus, am I technically in my ‘late’ thirties now, instead of ‘mid’ thirties?

  And then, naturally: I am getting too old for this shit.

  Granted, waking up here was better than the time I’d had to sleep in the park in New York City for three nights. Better than the hostel in Amsterdam that had more bugs than it had people. And yeah, definitely preferable to even the rich wood four-poster canopy bed with a plush pillowtop king-size mattress that I stayed on last time I visited my mother. I’d finally learned that no amount of good sleep could make visiting her tolerable.

  I’d spent years in chaos. And I’d loved every minute of it, until somewhere along the line, it started to feel hollow. Like it wasn’t fun not to have a place to call home anymore.

  But this morning, I woke up in a school bus that belonged to my friend David, with a crinkly blue tarp thrown over my legs and a small bird above me, perched on a half-open window, twitching its head and watching me with what I interpreted as a vague sense of pity.

  The alternative to David’s school bus would have been sleeping in the front seat of my pickup truck. I’d been working my way up from San Diego, to northern California, then to Oregon; now, finally, I was in Washington State, and I’d called David as soon as I’d gotten into town. He was an organic farmer and an artist, and the only friend I knew in this area. He’d purchased the old school bus for $600 and converted it into his mobile home.

  I was glad he let me stay with him for a couple weeks until I got a steady job sorted out—not an easy task in the weird, middle-of-nowhere land between Portland and Seattle.

  But now I had a job. I was the newest member of Mimi’s Cleaners, the best and only all-purpose cleaning crew in the area. It felt strange to essentially be a maid, but I was no stranger to odd jobs. And it was a job I desperately needed.

  So when I checked my phone and saw that a landlord was renting out a tiny apartment in the nearby town of Fox Hollow, Washington, I literally leapt out of bed. Or, more accurately, I leapt off of the wooden plank that David had covered in a sleeping bag for me, accidentally knocking over a pyramid of empty tin cans on my way up.

  I tugged on my boots and made my way to the front of the bus, briefly glancing at my reflection in the weathered, dusky mirror up front. I looked like shit, and I needed to shave, but that was to be expected after being in a bus for any amount of time.

  I found David crouching near one of his goats at the edge of the empty green field.

  “Oh, Adam, you’re up,” he said, with his signature warm smile. He squinted up at me. “Great news. Wendy, Millie, and Silky all laid eggs this morning. They’re beautiful, man. Omelettes for dinner tonight, for sure. If you want to go over and say hi to the girls, they were squawking away for you earlier.”

  “I’m probably gonna have to miss the chickens today,” I said, crouching down near him. “The landlord I contacted has a place to show me.”

  “Ah,” David said, with a calm nod. “I knew you’d be movin’ on soon, buddy. All the best to you, brother. You’ve been nothing but good to me. I’ll be rolling south for the fall soon anyhow.”

  I pulled him into an awkward side-hug and patted his shoulder. He smelled like patchouli and soil. “Thanks, David. These last two weeks have been fun.”

  I’d said it more to be nice than anything else.

  In reality, I wouldn’t be thinking about David, the farm, or the school bus at all after that morning.

  Because later that day, I met Grey.

  “Well, this is it.”

  Curtis, the landlord, dropped a manila folder on the kitchen table with a slap. “This little bungalow is the only one I’ve got in your price range. Cheap as hell, but as you can see, it’s pretty damned small. Yours if you want it. You said you work at Mimi’s?”

  I checked the inside of the fridge, the stove, and the cabinets. Everything was at least ten or twenty years old, anything once white now resolutely cream, but at least all the appliances seemed functional and clean.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said, closing a drawer and turning back to Curtis, who stood leaning against the kitchen counter, beer gut protruding. “I just started work with them.”

  “Best cleaners in the county, I’ll tell you that,” Curtis said, with a sharp nod. “Better’n any of the folks I’ve ever hired to come up from Portland. Mimi’s crews always get my units spotless within hours. No bugs, no hair, no nothing. Never had a better cleaning crew. Mimi’ll treat you well, Adam.”

  I nodded, still scanning the kitchen. It was certainly small—barely any counter space, with a small 2-seat kitchen table and a rickety door that led out to the back deck. But there was also something uniquely charming about it, a 70s nostalgia that had aged pleasantly instead of just looking old. In short, it had character, in a way my home growing up never had.

  “You worked cleaning jobs your whole life?” Curtis asked before breaking into a short, hacking cough.

  “Nah,” I said, glad to discover that he apparently had no clue about my years in 5*Star. It made sense—Curtis didn’t exactly look like the age and demographic that would have listened to a boy band from years ago. “I’ve never worked on a cleaning crew before, actually. I’ve had… a lot of odd-jobs throughout my life. But Mimi and the rest of the crew have been showing me how it’s done. I’ve tagged along to deep clean some stores and a couple apartments already.”

  I always found it easier to just tell people I’d “had a lot of odd jobs” than say the truth. “I made a bunch of money in a boy band called 5*Star but spent it all traveling around the world” tended to be jarring.

  I walked over to the door that led out to the backyard, peering out through a screen that was littered with holes.

  Immediately my eyes were drawn to a young man, standing on the deck of the house next door. There were no fences between the yards of each home, so I could see him clearly. His body was pulled taut, hands shoved into the pockets of a denim jacket, and he was staring upward. It was a little odd, honestly, and I couldn’t tell if he was looking at the overcast sky or at the tall evergreen trees that lined the yard.

  “Oh, yeah, we can go out to the yard, I’ll show ya,” Curtis said, lumbering over and pushing right past me, barreling forward through the doors and waving me out onto the deck.

  I stepped onto the weathered wood and allowed myself to look toward the young man.

  He met my eyes, startled as he saw us come out of the house like he’d been broken from a trance. Clearly he had preferred being outside alone. His face was still, and frowning faintly, and I knew I shouldn’t stare but I couldn’t pull my eyes away from him. His hair was a wavy black untamed mop, but his face was chiseled, and striking even from far away, the kind of face I’d sooner expect to see in New York City than the middle of nowhere, Washington State.

  “See this here?” Curtis was saying, kicking at some loose piece of wood on the deck. I momentarily looked down as Curtis assured me he’d definitely be repairing the loose plank soon. I itched to look back over next door but when I finally did, all I caught was the dark impression of the man’s silhouette walking back inside, then the door slamming behind him. He was gone.

  A loud train whistle blew in the distance and in a few more seconds, the train came rumbling down tracks just past the thick line of trees at the perimeter of the yard.

  “Hope the trains won’t bother ya too much,” Curtis said, waving a hand in the direction of the railroad.

  The sound receded along the track. “Always kinda liked the sound of trains, actually,” I said.

  Curtis gave one final kick to the wood of the deck and then turned to me, his arms crossed. “So? What do you think, Mr. Fara?”

/>   I nodded slowly, glancing around at all the evergreen trees, the dusky sky, and the stunning mountain range hovering in the distance. The apartment was tiny, but the scenery was likely the most striking I’d ever seen. There was a reason I’d chosen my destination as Washington State—the scenery absolutely transfixed me, and this was no exception. It looked more like a painting than real life, utterly gorgeous.

  “I’ll take it,” I said, looking back to Curtis.

  He gave a little whoop sound and clapped his hands together once. “Great to hear, Adam. We can go sign the lease, and if you can give me your deposit up-front, you can move on in whenever you’re ready. Place has been vacant for weeks.”

  I went back inside, signed the lease, signed a check, and Curtis handed me a key. The process was so easy it was almost alarming.

  “So, when you think you’ll be movin’ in?” Curtis asked as he headed toward the front door.

  I looked around at the nearly empty room and shrugged. “Um… now?”

  “Oh, are you gonna go back and get all your stuff tonight?”

  “I’ve got all my stuff out front,” I said. “It’s all in my truck.”

  “Oh,” Curtis said, his beady eyes going wide as he realized I didn’t have any more stuff than what I’d brought with me in one truckload. “Well… okay then. I’ll leave you to it. Call me with any concerns. Welcome home, Adam,” he said, with a slap on my shoulder.

  The first few nights in the little house went exactly the same.

  I woke up early to go to work, came home in the afternoon and cooked a meager dinner, then read or messed around on my guitar until I fell asleep. I also steadily unpacked the various things that could make the house feel less bare and anonymous. I adorned the walls with artwork I’d collected and threw as many of my blankets and tapestries around as possible. I was still using a sleeping bag in the middle of the living room, but as soon as I’d saved up a few weeks of paychecks, I knew I’d finally be able to get a bed.