by Katie Porter
I look over my shoulder as if I can see the time on my computer from here, even though that’s silly. The screen is glowing but it’s entirely too small. “It’s two, right? Late rehearsals?”
“We went over.” He rocks forward on his toes as if he still has energy to burn. “It went smashingly. The first few sessions were good. Solid. But tonight we were on fire. Everything flowed. Everyone worked together. I think we ran through every good song we’ve ever written.”
I grin, taken away by his enthusiasm. He’s like a child who’s been given their first taste of ice cream. “You think it’s going to work?”
“I think it’s going to be fucking brilliant.” He shakes his head as if he’s a little astounded at his own audaciousness. “I know it’s only about the one show, the charity gig. But this is what The Skies should have had all along. A proper finale and ending things as friends. We’d been close, a long time ago. It feels like we... Like we could be again.”
“That’s really awesome to hear.” And it is. Maybe some misbegotten part of me thinks I should be loyal to my dad, and even wish The Skies will do badly, but the conviction isn’t there. I lean my head against the door’s edge and grin up at Alec, probably looking terribly besotted. At this moment, I am. His buzz is infectious.
“We’re going to do a practice gig in three weeks. A fan thing before the big show.” He swipes his hair, pushing it back from his forehead. I get the feeling that he’s building up to something. “The last of the details were sorted out tonight. Can you come?”
Yup, that was a hard ask. I lock down my grip on the doorknob. I glance down as if I can see through the floor to my dad’s room. As if we could be overheard from here.
“I’ll... think about it.” I hate that I can’t give him an unqualified yes. Things aren’t that simple though.
I thought he was going to ask and leave, but he makes no move that way. He stays. I’m caught in his web, but I’m not trying very hard to get away.
“You could have asked tomorrow,” I say. “Why are you here now? This late at night?”
He comes closer, until his toes are on the threshold of my doorway. He puts a hand on the doorjamb, but he doesn’t come over the edge. Like he’s being held back by magical force. His force of will, most likely.
“I miss the way you taste.”
Arousal is a freight train sometimes. I can see it coming miles away, but that’s nothing compared to the full-body sensation once it hits. Claxon horns and throbbing engines straight down my veins.
I could stop this all. I could hit the brakes.
Instead I back up and open my bedroom door wide.
I’ve deliberately stepped onto the tracks of that freight train. He slams into me with barely controlled ferocity. His mouth takes mine—not a kiss, a taking. Tongue plunging deep, teeth clicking, my neck bending back. He lifts me off the ground with his embrace. I find balance on his shoulders and I dig in tight.
He pushes us deeper into the room and kicks the door shut behind us. I laugh when it slams—I’m made of nerves and halfway to giddy—but he swallows the sound with another kiss. He’s got me reeling. I’m drunk on his assault. We kiss and retreat, retreat and kiss, each round like the sweetest battle. My king has arrived to conquer.
My hands flutter over him. Over his head, his back. Touching everything I can reach. He’s surer than I am. He goes straight for my ass, grabbing on and holding tight. He squeezes, and his fingers flirt with the cleft in a way that makes me tingle. I hold on for the ride. Wherever he wants to take me, however he needs me, I’m ready to be his.
Only tonight. It can only be for tonight. I slam on that mental brake at the same time that I throw myself headlong into the physical. This is what I can do. What I can agree to.
He puts me back down on the ground, with feet at the foot of my bed. He nudges the hem of my shirt. I take the hint and strip the long-sleeved T-shirt over my head. My casual pajamas have never been what I term sexy. But it’s late and I’m not wearing a bra underneath. He’s looking at me with the same hunger as when I’d been wearing Agent Provocateur.
He cups my breast with a casual, commanding move that makes my body flood. My nipple peaks to attention for him. “What a rude girl you are.”
“Rude?” My fingers catch in the tie of my pajama pants. I’m surprised to realize I’m trembling. “Considering the situation, I think I’m being accommodating. Convenient.”
He chuckles and swipes his thumb back and forth over the happy tip of my breast. He dips and sucks it into his mouth. I gasp. And then I’m really fucking sad when he lifts his head, even though he looks so damn gorgeous when he looks up at me through the fall of his long bangs.
“I mean rude as in dirty. Naughty,” he says, and then goes back to the beautiful things he’s doing to my breast. He takes the other in a firm grip, and he tweaks and plays.
I clasp him to me. “Guess I shouldn’t mention I’m not wearing panties?”
That makes him bite. Not in a mean way. Well, not excessively mean. Sparks of sensation fly down my spine. I hadn’t thought I could get wetter, but my body proves me wrong. This is positively insane. It doesn’t help when Alec drops to his knees.
He grabs my hips, his grip sinking into my flesh, and he turns me over roughly. I didn’t expect it so I lose my balance. I bend at the waist and grip the end of the mattress. The dark purple comforter slips under my grip. I lose my air when he yanks my flannel pants down. They fall to my ankles, an ignominious puddle that has no place here.
I bite my lip and close my eyes. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt so exposed. My cheeks are hot. I think I’d be blushing if anyone looked. Sure, my wet and pink pussy is right there, but also so must be the pucker of my ass. I guess maybe I’m not quite as liberated as I’ve always thought. I have to bite back a nervous giggle.
He runs a hand up the length of my leg, from knee to the taut curve of my ass. He squeezes tight there at the top. I think maybe I can get over my embarrassment after all. His fingers delve into the center of my body, a bold touch with barely any warning before it goes away again.
The briefest pause, and then he says, “Yes. You taste like honey. I wondered if I was lying to myself.”
Oh, fuck. My knees buckle. My elbows fold and I drop closer to the bed. He touched me only to taste me, to put his fingers in his mouth. Combined with the dirty talk, I’m such a mess. Then it doesn’t matter, because he’s back, this time with his mouth on my flesh. The blazing path of his tongue is going to make me lose my mind. In the best kind of way. His mouth is all over me—and Christ, I mean all over. The man has no boundaries. It works. Fuck, does it work.
He holds me up with one hand wrapped around my hip. Thank god for that, because I’m coming apart. I grip the covers. Sweat breaks out across the backs of my knees and the small of my back. The sensations start deep in my body and keep crashing over me in waves, and I haven’t even come yet.
I realize I’m whining and pushing up on my toes. Trying to get away from him? This is going to be intense and I don’t honestly know if I’m ready. But the hold he has on my ass and hip is too strong to break. He doesn’t change a thing when I’m shoved over the edge to orgasm. It’s his relentlessness—the way he doesn’t change. Doesn’t stop.
It begins in my core. Clenching, tingles. A hard push sweeps me into the nothingness of coming. I’m dying in the best way. The soles of my feet tingle and it zooms up my legs. I’m lost and found all at once. My breathing comes in great, sweeping gasps.
I sob out my pleasure and I cry his name, but he doesn’t answer. He’s too busy ruining me.
Chapter Nineteen
Harlow
I DON’T KNOW WHETHER to be relieved or terrified when he doesn’t stop. Isn’t it supposed to be easier than this? An orgasm for you, an orgasm for me. Politeness all around. But he doesn’t stop the licking and sucking. His hands are all over me. He paws me as if he owns me, and by the way he’s made me come, maybe he does.
Maybe I’ll hand
everything over to him. I’ll stay here in the bubble of his world—the pretend world where he makes everything okay.
I come down off the peak because he lets me. He soothes me with his tongue. Soft strokes. A gentling that gives me room to breathe again. My heartbeat slows into something with individual patterns, not just one streaming pulse. I press my face into the bed. I don’t know how red my cheeks and forehead must be. It doesn’t matter.
“I was thinking of you, of this, the whole last hour while I was singing,” he tells me. He saws the edge of his hand crudely over my slit, then follows the path with another lick. “By the end, I felt like I could taste you.”
“Any time you’d like a reminder.” I’m annoyingly breathy. I swallow and try to catch some air. It’s hard to do. “I’m always right here.”
He makes this chuckling, near-purring noise that makes my toes curl. I look down between my knees, but I can only catch glimpses of him. The white shirt, the slim-cut jeans. So proper and yet so filthy to see between my legs.
“You’re a treat, Harlow.”
I want to say something witty, but he puts his mouth to me again, so all that comes out is, “Fuck!” Even that devolves into an undignified squeak.
I have to lock my knees and fist the bedclothes to stay standing, but I’m willing to make that sacrifice. After all, he’s willing to let me ride his face as I rock back on my heels. He drives me up and up to another orgasm.
His mouth works over me, but that doesn’t mean his hands are idle. He pets me and strokes my hips and legs, sometimes squeezing my ass and sometimes spreading his wide grip over the front of my pelvis. It’s like he’s pushing all my nerves up toward what he’s doing with his mouth. Fucking wizard magic stuff.
That doesn’t include when he presses against my tightest pucker, teasing me. Tempting me. Does he want that? Does he want me there? Do I want him there? My insides take an acrobatic whoosh that only intensifies the sensation he doles out. He wets a finger in my pussy, then switches so that his fingertip is at my asshole. As he sucks my clit between gently nibbling teeth, he insistently, slowly sinks his finger into me.
I come. Again. This is brain numbing levels of messed up. Not the act—that’s kind of vanilla despite the novelty—but it’s messed up that he can get me here so fast. I’m on a weird double timeline. Even as I’m flushed with a full-body orgasm, with my eyes jammed shut and my heartbeat jacked and my pussy squeezing tight, it’s also like I’m standing outside myself. Watching us both, astonished.
I want to give him gold stars. I want to give me a big congratulations. I want to keep him forever.
Forever isn’t for someone as messy as I am.
I manage to keep breathing and ignore my urge to laugh. He gentles me through the last of my comedown with long, soft sweeps over my flanks and waist and legs, but I can feel impatience gathering in his touch. He wants inside. He’s still hungry for me, but in a different way.
I reach back, grab his hand. I pull him up as I stand up straight and turn around. I kiss him and taste myself on his lips.
“You’re right,” I say. “Sweet.”
“I often am.”
“Arrogant ass. But my knees are still water, so you can say things like that.”
“Then say you’ll come to my show.”
The room isn’t so dark that I can’t see expression. But I still can’t read him. His eyes are shaded, his mouth fixed but wet because of me. He’s not smiling. When I don’t answer, he moves past not smiling. It’s not quite a frown but I can read his displeasure.
I lick my bottom lip. “Where is it?”
“Paris. A two-hour train ride.”
“I don’t know how to answer.”
“Say yes.”
There are so many things I want to say “yes” to for this man. Going to his gig... Leave it to Alec to ask for something more complicated than fucking or even a simple date.
I swallow. “Yes,” I whisper.
Satisfaction is the only thing that ever softens his sharp features. It rounds his cheeks and blunts the sharpness of his jaw. “Good.”
He tucks his face into the crook of my neck, but I don’t think he’s hiding. He drags his teeth over my skin. I shudder and clutch his forearms. He’s so sweetly cruel. I angle my pelvis, driving against his hard cock. I don’t think I can come again, but I need the connection of having him inside me. I need that sort of satisfaction.
He turns me to face the bed again, with my back firmly against his front. He spreads his hand across my stomach. His fingers are long enough to span from my ribs to the top of my pelvic bone. I suck in a deep breath. There’s no way to mask what he does to me. I don’t think I want to.
He strips his clothing efficiently. Then he returns to me and we’re bare skin to bare skin for the first time tonight, and suddenly I’m glad he turned me back around. I think it would be too much to see him and feel him all at once, after all the sensations he’s dragged from me. His skin is so different than mine. Rough in the most delicious way. The hair on his leg rubs mine when he pushes between my thighs.
My knees buckle and I ride his lean thigh. I’m so swollen and sensitive that I gasp from the jolt of sensation. His cock is a hot bar against my ass. Insistent. A reminder. His indulgent treat that’s being kept out of reach.
He nuzzles my temple, but I’m not stupid enough to think this is affection. He holds the compact wrapper of a condom between pinkie and ring finger, even as he uses his thumb to tease one of my nipples with the same hand. The absurdity pushes me even farther toward laughter. This man is very adept at the intricacies of safe sex deployment, and yeah, I’m happy for that, but at the same time it reminds me that I’m playing out of my depth. For all that he seems to be an exemplar of self-control, he didn’t used to be. He’s the lead singer of a rock band whose star dimmed—not for lack of talent but excess of celebration.
I’m the young fool who’s feeling too much for him.
I shove it all away. There’s only now. I don’t get to keep Alec Davies, not for real. Not for long. The chasm between us is too great to cross.
I close my eyes and let my body take over. If feeling is all I’m allowed, I’ll indulge. I think he likes the way I melt against him and let my head drop back to his shoulder. He smooths a hand all the way up from my stomach to my throat, in one long and dangerous movement. Guitar callouses at his fingertips scrape the tender skin beneath my chin. I shudder and he holds me closer.
He rips open the wrapper and rolls on the condom. His knuckles brush my ass. I reach behind and hold his hip. I don’t want to be alone even for the moment it takes to get safe. I don’t think he does either, because as soon as he’s sheathed, he’s with me again.
He tips me forward. His cock slips between my thighs, then into the wet heat at the top, where I’m swollen and slick. He holds me with one arm around my ribcage, beneath my breasts, and the other hand at my pelvis. His fingers are positioned at my clit.
He slides inside me and I cry out. I can’t help myself. He groans, and the sound resonates in my ear and in my chest. This position is almost too much. The filthy and the wrong are now exactly right. He fucks into me from behind and holds me still from the front and I’m wedged in between. Ecstasy.
My lungs are twisted and it’s so good—almost too good. I can’t breathe. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just ride this, ride him? Let him fuck me. I clutch his wrist where he holds my ribs. “Alec. Alec.”
He stills. His lips brush over my temple. “Shh. It’s okay. What’s wrong?”
“I can’t,” I say. “I can’t come again.”
I fancy I can feel a ghost of a smile against my cheekbone. He leaves a line of soft kisses. “Why not?”
I want to lie again, to tell him that it just won’t work. I’m not built that way. Or I’m too sensitive. Or I’ll gladly give him a blowjob. Whatever will work. But I open my mouth and instead of lies, some measure of truth falls out. “This is too intense. It’s too much.”
/> Instead of dropping me and pulling away, he finds some fraction of distance between us—then closes it. He draws me even closer and thrusts hard. Inside me, his cock jolts in a deep body surge of satisfaction. He licks my neck. It’s no little lick, no polite dabble of the tip of his tongue. It’s lewd. He finishes off by biting my earlobe.
“Sometimes too much isn’t enough,” he purrs in my ear.
Then he takes me. I know it’s only sex. But it’s more. His prick in me, his hands on me, his mouth owning me. I’m lost. I’m gone. He fucks me until we’re both making animal noises. I’m crying out and saying his name, and he’s making those rough male sounds that have no good name. Groans, but rawer. Grunts, but prettier.
I only catch glimpses of his expression from over my shoulder. The intensity burns. His arched lips are flattened, his cheeks hollowing. Dark hair brushes against my cheek.
I keep my grip on his wrist, not because I want to stop him anymore but because I want to hold onto something solid. I want to make sure it isn’t a dream. Alec is solid.
He starts to come first. I’m almost relieved because I think I’m going to escape from all this with a fraction of my soul. He’s not going to own every bit of me. Only the blunt noises, the grind and force of his hips, the jolting power of his cock, the bruising grip on my ribs—it combines into an unavoidable crash of sensation. I come again, and I come so hard my cries turn into sobs.
I dig my nails into his forearms and train my gaze on the crown molding at the ceiling. I hiss air through my teeth, trying to ignore the exploding nerves in my pussy. This is an orgasm. I breathe. I let the tingles run down my limbs, through my chest. I can’t make them go away, but I can promise myself this doesn’t mean anything.
It doesn’t mean love.
Chapter Twenty
Alec
THE NEXT FEW PRACTICE sessions don’t go as swimmingly, and while I don’t consider myself a superstitious man, I wonder if I’ve caused it. Maybe this new discord is because I can’t stay away from Harlow. I’ve cursed The Skies by diving headfirst into reckless abandon. It’s a different kind of addiction than what ruined me the first time around, but that doesn’t make it any less potent. Thoughts of Harlow slip into every open crack between breath and bone. I’m fixated.