Exit Stage Six: A Contemporary New Adult Romance Novella

by A. J. Downey

  He crushed me to him and the tears I’d been holding in all night slipped free, tracking through the heavy makeup on my face.

  “I missed you.” I sobbed, “I think that was the hardest part.”

  “I missed you too L.B., I missed you so much…” and I heard his voice crack. We stood there and cried, clinging to each other in the opulent foyer.

  “What happens now?” I asked against the side of his neck. We were nearly the same height.

  “Now? Now I try to be a better man.” He pulled back to look at me and laughed gently.

  “What?” I asked. He cupped my face and smoothed his thumbs through the tear tracks on my cheeks.

  “You’re even beautiful when you cry,” he murmured, “But this… this is not a good look for you.” He turned me to face a framed gold record and I caught my reflection in the glass and groaned.

  My makeup cut a swath of messy destruction down both cheeks.

  “I need a shower.” I groaned.

  “Sounds good to me.” He breathed into my ear and lightly kissed the outer shell. I shivered and he walked me forward to the stairs.

  I let him do it and after a myriad of twists and turns we entered what was presumably the master suite.

  The bed was big and fluffy despite all the covers being black or gray. A single framed photo hung on the wall opposite. I blinked at it, Dorian’s vacant green eyed stare over the railing of the stairwell landing, the only spot of color in the room, the brightly done tattoo sleeve crawling up his arm.

  “I had the entire room redone around it.” he said.

  “You liked it that much?” I asked.

  “More.” He said, arms twining around me from behind, pulling me back into his warm, lean chest.

  “It’s the first one, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “First one I ever took?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, it is.” I affirmed.

  He kissed my shoulder and his lips were warm against my skin.

  “Can you get me out of this thing?” I asked.

  “You bet.” He murmured and walked us into the bathroom.

  It was large and airy inside, the shower immense. He pulled the ribbon in the back of the corset and began to loosen it. I held my long hair up out of his way and cast my eyes to the side, watching us in the mirror. His lips curved into a smile as his long fingers made quick work of things.

  “Turn around.” He murmured and I obeyed the softly spoken request.

  He unhooked the metal hook and eyes along the front, and where his fingers grazed my skin, delicious tingles spread outward lighting me up from the inside out. I watched his face as he eased the constrictive bad of material off of me and saw silent appreciation there.

  “You were lovely in the dark but you’re stunning in the light.” He murmured, pulling me gently against him. I wended my arms about his neck and he kissed the side of mine, gentle, barely there kisses that set me awash in goose bumps. His roughened fingertips ghosted down my back causing me to suck in my breath and hold it. He backed me slowly against the marble countertop that held two sink basins.

  “Hop up.” He ordered and palms flat against the cool granite countertop I did as I was told. He helped, hands on my hips and nudged my knees apart with his body. He drew back from me and I missed his warmth, the air in the bathroom chill as it was.

  “Don’t go anywhere.” He whispered in my ear and withdrew to a touchscreen panel, set into the wall beside the glass shower enclosure. Another square panel set in the ceiling began to drip, and the room filled with the sound of gently falling rain. He set the temperature and how hard the water fell all with a few gentle taps of his long fingers. I blinked slowly with shock at just how opulent the whole thing was. I grew nervous, and started asking myself what I was doing here. Anxiety unfurled in my chest but was quickly whisked away when Dorian turned to look at me.

  The light in his green eyes was one of the most intense things I’d ever seen and it made my skin grow heated where it fell. He shrugged out of his jacket and pulled his tee over his head, letting it fall beside the coat. He kept his eyes on me as he toed out of his half laced boots and I couldn’t help but drink the sight of him in.

  He came toward me, one stride, then two, closing the distance between us. My fingertips reached up of their own volition to trail down the roughened skin of his still-healing tattoo. He shivered and closed his eyes and let me touch.

  “Does it hurt?” I asked.

  “Not any more. Itches like a motherfucker though.” He said.

  “Is it supposed to be all rough like this?”

  “No. Needs lotion.” He said.

  “Do you have any?”

  “After we get out I’ll put some on it.”

  “Can I?” I tipped my head and his eyes opened.

  “Can you what?”

  “Put it on for you?” I whispered. He licked his lower lip, tongue out, pink, wet, gone and I closed my eyes. I wanted him to kiss me again, so badly it was almost a physical ache. I felt rather than saw him kneel and opened my eyes. He grasped my calf and lifted my leg slipping first one tall boot then the other off of my feet and legs. He let them drop and stood, going for his belt. I put my hands to the countertop and slid off, trapped between it and him.

  We kissed and his jeans dropped with a clatter of buckle and wallet chain to the carpet. His hands smoothed across my ribs and down my back, long fingers slipping between my panties and skin to grip my ass and pull me tight against his front. I could feel him hot and thick through the front of my leggings where they covered my stomach and I moaned, a tight spiral of sound uncoiling from the back of my throat.

  He knelt, taking the leggings and lace of my panties with him. I stepped out of them and he left them forlorn on the floor. He stood and we kissed again. I couldn’t get enough of his mouth on mine, his skin against mine… My hands cradled his face while he held me against him by my hips. He walked us backwards to the shower and broke the kiss just long enough to open the glass shower door.

  I stepped up into the warm, gentle rainfall and tipped my head back, letting it beat down onto my face, the salt from my tears and makeup running together and off me. Warm soapy fingers caressed my cheeks, smelling of my familiar soap.

  “Keep your eyes closed.” He admonished when I tried to look. He washed my face twice and I scrubbed my hands over it as the water gently fell and steamed around us. I sighed feeling much better but he wasn’t done. He washed every bit of me with gentle hands, lips trailing across my skin as soon as it’d been rinsed.

  He wouldn’t let me return the favor.

  He shut off the water and dried me briskly, wrapping me in an oversized towel. I tried to do the same for him but again I was denied.

  “You’ve been taking care of me all this time, it’s time I treated you with the same consideration.” He said gently. He plucked a tub of some kind of cream out of the medicine cabinet and motioned me into the bed room.

  “Up on the bed L.B.” he said and I took the lotion from his hands and set it to the side on one of the tall end tables.

  “Stop being so damned bossy for a minute and kiss me.” I said. He smiled and pulled me to him, lips finding mine. I kept my hands to his shoulders and higher, mindful of the new tattoo on his side and back. He walked me backwards, our towels falling forgotten to the floor until we bumped into the bed. He lifted me by the hips and put me resolutely onto the high monstrosity and it was like being dropped onto a cloud.

  The bed was taller than I was used to but it had its purpose when he nudged my knees apart and stepped between them. It was the perfect height. I swallowed and he brought his mouth down over mine. My pulse raced with the ferocity of a hummingbird’s wings and euphoria swirled in my veins. He pushed on my shoulders and I lay back. He went to one knee and I watched him down the length of my body, his green eyes dilating with lust until the gold at their centers were nearly swallowed whole by the black.

  “You are so fucking beautiful.” H
e whispered in awe. His hands trailed down my inner thighs and I shivered. He gently introduced one long middle finger into my body and my hips arched up to meet his mouth as he placed it over that sensitive bundle of nerves.

  The blood in my body ignited, searing me with pleasure from the inside out as Dorian played my body more lovingly than he had ever played an instrument in his life. I fisted the comforter in my hands to either sides of my hips and cried out as he found that place inside me and exploited it to his own ends. His mouth was hot and silky and moved with expert precision and before I knew what was happening I was wailing my pleasure, my voice echoing back at me from the gray painted walls.

  He backed off, a satisfied smile curving his generous lips and stood, slowly removing his fingers from inside me. I slumped back into the bed, panting, trying to relearn how to breathe, turned into a boneless liquid grace by his hands and mouth, but he wasn’t done.

  “I love how wet you get for me.” He took a step forward and placed his cock against me, collecting the wetness there against its head.

  “Dorian please…” I gasped, and he smiled the most heartbreakingly beautiful smile at the sound of his name on my lips that I couldn’t help myself. I whispered it again.

  “Dorian…” he pushed forward and filled me with one thrust and I felt my body stretch to accommodate him. My previous arousal and orgasm had paved the way for him and he slipped into me easily. I wrapped my legs around his lean hips and he cried out, striking a smooth and steady roll of his hips, swelling and cresting before smoothly withdrawing, a sea to my shore.

  I wanted him like this forever, to suspend this moment in time and just live here.

  “Don’t stop, please don’t stop…” I pleaded and he groaned, dropping down over me, bracing himself on his hands to either side of my shoulders deepening the angle with which he took me. I rocked my hips to meet every forward thrust and he cried out. I could feel the wave building inside of me. Things low in my body tightened, growing heavy with impending release until with one final roll of his hips I exploded, going supernova, my vision clouding with white starbursts as I screamed Dorian’s name, my nails biting into his upper arms where I clutched him.

  I heard his distant shout a half a second later before he collapsed on top of me, both of us gasping for air as if it were a precious commodity in short supply.

  “I love you…” I breathed and wasn’t at all surprised to realize that I meant it.

  “I love you too babe, I meant it the first time.” He said between gasps. I pushed myself up onto my hands and felt a keen sense of loss when he pulled out of my body. He crawled up onto the bed beside me and collapsed on the side without the semi fresh tattoo.

  I was overwhelmed with emotion for a moment, tears springing to my eyes.

  “Hey, hey, hey, what’s wrong?” he asked in a soothing tone, sitting up abruptly.

  “Nothing.” I said, voice tremulous at best, I dashed at the tears collecting in my lashes.

  “Nothing?” he asked frowning.

  “Nothing,” I affirmed, “I’m just happy…”

  …and I was.

  Epilogue

  “I said, ‘you were lovely in the dark but you’re stunning in the light’ she said, ‘baby please just make it right’… I took her hand and said goodbye to the life I’d held onto so long inside…” Dorian was on stage, sultry lips pressed to the microphone. I raised the camera to my eye, focused the lens and snapped the picture. Carl grunted beside me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Glad you talked him into this.” He said.

  “I didn’t talk him into anything. It was his words all along Carl, even when it was Drake it was always Dorian’s words… Drake just knew how to put them to the music.” Of course the more time I spent with Dorian I realized that had mostly been him too. He was too much of a perfectionist, too bossy for it to be anything else.

  Elysium had risen from the ashes of Drake’s suicide after a long period of healing, some pretty explosive arguments between Dorian, Hal and Carl and an extensive search for a new bassist.

  There was no replacing Drake as a singer. Dorian had to be the one to step up to the mic.

  I had called my mother before he and I had gone to sleep that night. She had worried, and had continued to worry until Dorian and I had gone to her the next day. I never set foot in my apartment again. Dorian had paid a moving company to carefully pack everything and bring it to his house. The media had no intention of letting things go anytime soon and I was just plain safer at the mansion.

  I shuddered thinking about the few death threats I’d received from overzealous fans. The trouble with spotlights is that it’s bright on the inside to the point you can’t always see what’s lurking in the shadows beyond it. Dorian and I had an extensive talk about truth and lies, even ones by omission and I had laid down the law.

  Full disclosure. Either I knew everything or I was out. He had agreed and we’d moved forward, cautious of one another.

  We loved each other with passion and fought with one another on an equally passionate basis. Thankfully the fights we’d had were minor in comparison with the rest of our relationship. Inconsequential in the long run.

  I was the bands official photographer. It kept me and Dorian close while they were on the road and that is what we’d mostly fought about. My salary. I’d wanted one when Dorian didn’t see the need. He wanted to provide everything for me but that was not who my father and mother had raised me to be.

  I smiled as cellphone screens appeared in the crowd like mushrooms after a rain. Dorian sang on, shooting a sidelong glance into the shadows to where I stood, green eyes sparking with love and darker baser things that had me unconsciously pressing my thighs together. I snapped a few more photos.

  Our second fight had come when I had looked at my bank account after accepting the position as Elysium’s photographer. I had been grossly overpaid. Dorian didn’t want to back down but eventually I had worn him down to a realistic figure that a photographer of my experience warranted. In short, I didn’t want anything handed to me. I wanted to earn it.

  Carl sighed and shifted his stance beside me.

  “Carl.”

  “Yeah L.B.?” I smiled, everyone was calling me L.B. now, just another testament to the force of Dorian’s personality.

  “Stop worrying about whatever you’re worrying about and enjoy the show.” I said dryly. He chuckled.

  “You do realize we have something like thirty-eight more stops on this concert series right?” he asked.

  “I know.” Forty-four in all… I smirked.

  “You’re incredible sometimes.” He scratched the back of his neck and wandered away. I smiled to myself. I wasn’t bored yet… I looked at Dorian crooning to his adoring fans and smiled.

  I don’t think I ever would be.

  THE END

  Author’s Note

  On April 8th, 1994 I was sitting in my seventh grade English class when a girl across from me with ratty blonde hair in a stained black hoodie with holes in the sleeves for her thumbs started crying. I had no idea what was wrong but I wanted to fix it, so I asked.

  Turned out she was a huge fan of the grunge band Nirvana and it had just been announced that the body of its lead singer, Kurt Cobain, had been found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in his Seattle home. I was old enough to understand death and its effect on people, old enough to remember to this day, the outpouring of love and pain from the bands fans. I remember watching Kurt’s wife Courtney Love read his suicide note to an immense gathering of his fans on television from Seattle Center.

  I’ve been to his memorial bench which stands outside his home on Lake Washington Boulevard and though it wasn’t until after his death that I came to appreciate his music, I can honestly say, as late to the party as I was and am, I am a Nirvana fan too and still remain a fan of Nirvana’s drummer, Foo Fighter’s front man, Dave Grohl.

  The apparent suicide of Kurt Cobain effected fans across th
e Nation and across the world and in no way am I trying to trivialize that. My thoughts on the matter is that this was, is and continues to be a devastating tragedy that the people closest to Kurt will have to live with for the rest of their lives.

  Exit Stage Six came about when I had a very strange dream about what it would be to deal with something of this magnitude on a much smaller scale. To be someone on the outside looking in on a tragedy this monumental when it came to someone close to the person who’d gone. Dorian’ pain is a very raw and powerful thing in this aspect but Drake’s suicide reaches far beyond him and his band mates, their families, their friends and even their fans.

  Suicide is a forever decision made during a singular moment in time when things feel like they can’t get any worse… Please, if you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide seek help. Visit the National Suicide Prevention lifeline at:

  http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ or call 24/7 at: 1-800-273-8255.

  About the Author

  A.J. Downey has been a resident of Seattle, WA her entire life, that being said she has lived in many different places and many different worlds through her imagination. She enjoys music, coffee, writing (obviously) and a bunch of other boring things that you probably don’t really care about. She is ever so grateful that you either picked up her writing or that you continue to read her stuff!