by Amber Burns
Actually I’m not saying much.
When Astra talks it’s after she’s flicked on the switch to the old chandelier in the den. I take the couch facing the old TV in the corner. My arm brushes the dusty plant in the corner and I wonder how at odds the room is compared to how Astra presents herself.
I expected traditional rugs, warm accents and colors, a den that could have been closer to a family room with only touches of modernism’s influence. Sort of like her pencil skirts and blouses clashing with that funky, cheetah print purse and the loud colors.
And she did mention that the guest room was doubling as storage.
As if sensing where my thoughts have led, or maybe it’s just the thing to say to a stranger checking out your digs, Astra apologizes, smoothing her hands over her skirt and crossing her ankles; she’s coming across self-defensive.
Curiouser and curiouser.
I’m finding that humorous as I sit up to hear what she has to say in her defense.
Why can’t I shake the vibe she’s passing through?
“I haven’t gotten around to decorating much. I’ve been busy settling in, and that stage is taking longer than I anticipated.” She locks her hands together, brows knitting. “So, what do you do? If you don’t mind me asking…”
“I don’t mind you asking.” I drum my hands over her armrest, bringing one leg over my knee. “I make music for a living.”
“Rock music. That’s why Liam called you a rock star,” she fills in.
I bob my head once, solemnly. “Like I said, I prefer musician but yeah, my – Tense Finger is rock, alternative, metal, or whatever you want to call it.”
“Tense Finger?”
“Our band,” I extrapolate, wondering how she could have gone without hearing about us and then I realize that does fit her image. Astra and metal, I smile at the thought.
She asks a couple more questions, focusing on the business aspect of the music, although I give her a bit more history behind the band.
“You all must be close,” she says after I tell her how the first Tense Finger concert, in a college dive bar, happened seventeen years ago. Standing, she meanders out of the den, mentioning fetching accoutrements for my sleepover.
Astra is bearing two blankets, one lighter, one thicker, and a pillow on her return, the stack towering over her head. I’m up and helping her as soon as she rounds the corner from the stairs and into view.
“Easy,” I warn. One of my hands falls over hers under the blankets and we stand still. I find her face to the side of the blankets, her deep brown eyes centering wide pupils, her lips wind-chapped red from our upwards twenty-minute walk to hers.
“I’ve got it.” My voice is raspy even to my ears.
I don’t get a response. It seems I won’t until we move, and that’s looking like it isn’t going to happen on either end. There’s a link, a deep-rooted lust binding, connecting us.
It’s the kind of connection that keeps us mesmerized until one of us blinks. Astra does the blinking and she slips free, not forcibly. There’s a lingering quality to her freedom.
She’s wishing me a good night when I call her from the doorway.
I move in her direction. Glad she’s standing her ground, making it easier for me to get my hands around her. Her waist is slim compared to her wide hips as I follow the curve in and then out, out, splaying my palms over her hipbones, my fingers grasping the stretchy polyester of her skirt.
The snapping of her skirt over her thighs provoke a gasp from Astra, that and the resounding slap reverberates through the room, surrounds my dick and squeezes it through an invisible cuff.
“Ryker,” she runs a hand over my head as I duck into her shoulder, kissing her through her blouse. I shift my head and lock my lips to the side of her throat, working up to her pulse where I amble to trace circle with my tongue.
Tilting back on a long, breathy moan, I give into the temptation to nibble on her, latch my mouth over the sensitized area and feel her knees give out on me. I hold her up, hands cupping her ass and pushing her against the evidence of my desire and delight.
“Oh,” she’s gasping on a succession of hitched breaths. I want more of that wonderful friction. Her skirt is making it impossible to get traction to draw her leg up and get ultimate access to her core.
I’ll just have to change that.
I don’t move my mouth, or change the pressure of my sucking, but my hands reluctantly slide up to locate what I want. I find her zipper easily, pulling it down and separating from the embrace to nudge the fabric down her voluptuous legs.
Astra wearing my love bite and black underwear is a good look for her…and for my hard-on.
“May I?” she accepts my hand to help her step clear of the skirt pooling around her heels. She pauses to step out of the shoes and particularly launching into my arms as I drop down onto the couch beside the forgotten blankets and pillow.
Her legs on either side of me, I slip my hands under her blouse and cup her breasts. Covered though they were, I feel her warmth, the heaviness of her globes, and imagine her nipples tightening under the soft, cushiony fabric.
Astra forces my hands away as she leans back, fingers struggling with buttons until I chuckle and help her free the top. We meet in the middle and I let her do the honors of the last button. The parted blouse is too much for me to restrain myself. I pull it off her shoulders, losing the slippery silk to the floor.
The matching black bra has to go next.
Her breasts bounce free above me, my hands barely retracting from flinging her bra to the ground before trapping her red-brown nipples between my pointers and thumbs.
“So fucking beautiful,” I roll my thumbs over the sensitive, hard nubs. Back and forth, waiting for her to come undone and beg for release from the foreplay. That doesn’t take long.
I laugh at the realization of being clothed.
“What’s missing from this picture?” I meet her surprise kiss, groaning at her hands curling over my hem. “I’d ask you to help me,” I murmur, chuckling as I lean back and draw my arms up for her moving the shirt off.
The jeans require pushing her to the side. I’m barely out of the jeans when Astra crawls onto my lap, towering over me, naked save for her panties. She bends, curtaining us under her russet waves, bruising our lips until we have to come up for air.
She lets me know she’s ready at her rubbing against my shaft, our underwear keeping us apart. I tug my shorts down and free myself, erection sitting in front of her still clothed mound.
Astra breathes hard, my name falling off of her tongue. “Ryker,” her fingers dancing over my shaft, trailing veins I can hardly see past her glossy mouth and distracting digits.
“Enough,” I shift up the couch, knocking her hands off and get to the end of the beginning of our fun.
Ready to be rocked, baby – hard.
Too far gone by this point, I don’t bother to get her underwear off.
I move the fabric of her panties to the side, revealing her sex and angle to settle her over my erection. Down she goes, taking me inside of her, stopping shy of bearing balls deep, I wait for her to adjust.
“Relax,” I soothe. My fingers enjoying the downy-like touch to her hair, my lips brushing her and sussing out a game of tongue tag in her mouth, and it reminds me of how she comforted me outside.
Different scenario, same emotion, the thought fades when Astra claws her nails down my chest, locking onto my shoulders at the first thrust. Soaring up on a moan, Astra’s sweet vagina clenches around me, demanding more.
“Like this, babe,” I thrust and she wails. The next lurch upward has her arching back further, seeking more of me despite our thigh-to-thigh connection. Her tits are in my face though, and I can’t complain.
I suck one nipple, slurping and nipping her to the tune of her squeezing cunt. Switching nipples, I lavish the same cruel pleasure on the other, until I sense the impending wave.
“Ahh, mo-ore,” she pants, meeting my hips, thru
st for thrust.
She holds out on my name, arching further, dragging me with her physically and mentally into the fuzzy whooshing motion pouring out of every orifice. Astra milks me dry, leaving me dragging out heavy breaths yet feeling like there isn’t enough air entering in my lungs.
“Astra?” I search for her in the haze. Navigating her head to my chest, her own heavy breaths wash over my chest, warming my blood all over again. Hugging her to me, I settle in for…well, for however long she wants me to hold her like that.
“Astra, babe?”
“I’m okay,” she says, like she’s reading my mind. My cock still twitching inside of her reminds me –
“Are you on the pill?”
“Yeah,” she yawns. I relax, ignoring the odd pricking sensation and the angle of my thoughts had she said she wasn’t on any contraceptive. Would I have helped her find an emergency pill?
A small part of me toys with the idea of babies with my dark eyes, her reddish brown soft hair, and chubby cheeks as rosy as their mother’s.
Shrugging that image away, it’s all I need to relinquish the weight of wakefulness. I hear Astra’s good night, but I’m unsure if I return the favor. My last waking thought is how the couch has become both of our beds tonight.
I do know she has a heck of a way to wake up a man.
“Good morning, sexy,” I grunt.
“Still night,” she corrects, lightly scratches her nails over my chest, her hips are moving, her panties rubbing against my growing shaft; the sweet pressure paired with her husky voice are reviving me and fast.
“We slept though?”
She nods, kissing me quiet. I’m quick to turn the caress of her mouth into something rough, wet and messy.
“Rock star moves,” I grin against her mouth, another bruising kiss an order. “Mhm, Astra,” I wait for her fluttering eyes to stay open and falling into those liquid browns I whisper, “Rock me, would you?”
And she does.
4
St. B&J is looking lively for once.
Since my arrival I haven’t seen much of anyone around – which is kind of how I wanted it. Lola’s in the middle of her invitations and no one has a clue Tense Finger is in town.
I’m fresh from meeting up with the guys at the Lopezes. Custodio’s offer to stay at the ginormous family home was an easy enough choice for them.
They aren’t being threatened with marriage.
I drum my hands on the steering wheel, keeping an eye out for an emptying spot, pushing thoughts of smashing Custodio’s face out of my mind as a solution to my strange problem.
Finding a parking space takes longer. The upside being by the time I’m out of the car, I’m significantly cooled from the tension riding my shoulders coming from the Lopez residence, seeing to it that the other two-thirds of Tense Finger settle in for the two-week countdown to Lola’s party.
The snowstorm since blew over. I’m turning up the collar of my leather jacket to the crisp evening, wondering whether I should consider buying something warmer. However thinking how permanent that sounds, I drop the idea all together. Settling down in Orange Compass has never and will never be an option.
I’m almost at the door when I spy a familiar head of red waves. The soft locks are tumbling down the back of her olive parka, the crown tucked in a trapper hat, protecting her from the sharp winds.
Seeing her forces me to a halt, the last breath whooshing from my lungs…in a good way, whatever that means. I feel a goofy smile splitting my face, and my hands curl in the pockets of my jeans, anticipating that first touch.
Two nights ago I did that and so much more. Astra becoming mine and I couldn’t shake her from my mind since. As sex typically unlocked a landslide crash-and-burn ending to my relationships, I expected the same to happen with her.
Feared it, actually, to realize all of it meant nothing because Astra Olsen and the insane lust she provokes in me isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
My steps are a little quicker, and I hardly note the cold, drawing my hands out for the surprise attack I have planned.
I hadn’t gotten to see her yesterday. The guys arrived earlier than expected and the band had a much overdue reunion that might have lasted longer than midnight if Custodio hadn’t broken it up. Then I spent the morning practicing a new song I’d been working off and on, liking the sound of it already and getting votes to add it to the list for our upcoming CD.
So Astra’s kinda my treat for being patient and nailing a song today: And I had every intention to enjoy her, and thoroughly, if she’s kind enough to let me later.
She has her collar pulled up around her ears. Even so, as I approach I double at her bundling. Her mouth and nose are obscured by a large, wool scarf rivaling the red in her hair.
“Guess who?” I clamp my hands over her eyes, her little gasp doing wonders to my cock already. I draw her closer to me, burrowing my nose into her exposed hair and drawing lungs full of her fruity shampoo and faint, floral body soap.
I meet Holly’s smirk and wink at her miming a zipping gesture over her coral pink lips. The color makes her only look younger – it’s hard to believe she’s the mother to a teenaged fan of Tense Finger. But it’s the lines creasing at the corners of her eyes and framing her mouth that give her age, the stress of single parenting, away.
Focusing on Astra, I lift my head out to press my mouth to her ear, blowing before whispering, “Need a hint?”
“R-Ryker,” she stammers.
I love the color rising to her cheeks, color I’m attributing to her reaction of my nearness than the outdoor chill.
“Good guess.” I don’t immediately release her though.
“What are you doing?”
I don’t kiss her. I’m not sure how Holly would react and Astra…I haven’t had time to gauge her reaction post the best sex of my life.
I do press my dick to the top of her rounded ass, where her crack would be if she were bare to me right then, and I’m managing discretion pretty well given Astra’s fluttery gasp and her inadvertent responding thrust back.
Covering my grunt barely, I drop my hands and back two paces from her delicious rear. Her scarf off tucked under her chin, Astra steps around to get me in her view for the first time following the early morning peeling from each other’s hot, sticky embrace. That was two days ago.
“I could ask you both the same: What brings you out this late, here of all places?” I’m asking through the tantalizing friction still crackling through my veins, making sure to include Holly in my glance. This isn’t an intimate conversation with Astra.
We’d do that later, in private – hopefully.
“PTA meeting.” Holly makes a face. “All the involved moms are doing it. Oh, and the teachers and staff who actually care what’s going on in their under aged, super privileged kids’ lives.”
“Sounds exciting.” I say, not meaning it. Holly is on to me. She taps her nose and her grin widens.
“But Astra was on fire in there – well, on fire until the PTA pit bulls peed all over her hot plans.”
Astra wrinkles her nose, all the censure in the gesture.
“Oh, yes, excuse my language. But you were!”
“I was not,” Astra shakes her head, the modesty fails when she looks like so huggable wearing all her layers.
“You were, too. Don’t deny it,” Holly wags her finger, clucking her tongue at both attempts Astra makes to say otherwise. It’s like they’ve completely forgotten I’m standing there, watching all of this unfold.
How these two women became friends, I’m not sure. Something tells me it was the fruit of a desperate situation turned good for both of them.
I don’t blame them for clinging to each other in the face of everything that is Orange Compass. If I had half the dynamic they have going for them, I wouldn’t have probably had the years of anxiety leading to my eighteenth birthday, high school diploma and first ticket out of town.
“Holly, don’t – ” Astra cuts off for
a sneeze. She opens her mouth to form a word then covers her nose again.
At the culmination of her successive sneezes, I ask, “Are you sick?”
“Just a little,” she manages to answer, her voice reedy from the sneezing fit. The tip of her nose is red and so are her cheeks – I realize the color could be due to her cold.
My brow swoops down, lips turning over from the smile, and on my tongue is the details of how when Holly the mind-reader gets to it first.