“I assumed you did it to turn me into a madman.” Blake’s voice was lower, as though he were kneeling beside her. “How do you feel, Fun-Size?”
“Good. Pretty awake. At least twenty percent awake.”
“They gave you a stimulant.”
“Ah, that’s why I feel awesome. Cool. Oh my God, guess what I did?”
“What?” Blake brushed the hair out of her eyes and the sensation made her shiver. “Some guy called me a bitch on the street and I totally yelled at him.”
“Excuse me?” Blake’s hand left her hair. “What exactly did he say to you? Where was this?”
She laughed, reaching around blindly until Blake did her a favor and put his hand in hers.
“Don’t get angry,” she said. “It was just New York bullshit but that’s what I wanted to tell you, I can handle New York, now. This guy was an asshole and instead of getting upset, I just called him a cunt right to his face!”
There was a short silence. “Good for you.”
“Thanks! You know what this means? It means that New York can’t fuck with me, anymore. I still think it’s a hole full of bin juice, but I kind of like it. And when I totally freaked that guy out, I felt like it kind of liked me.”
Someone, probably the woman from before, climbed into the van and cleared her throat. “Are you…feeling okay, Ms. Reynolds?”
“Totally fine. Can I go home?”
“I should probably, um, come back in and examine you?”
“Okay,” Autumn began, then a thought occurred to her and she opened her eyes. “Hang on one second,” she yelled to the waiting woman.
The EMT turned and faced her. “Yes, ma’am?”
Autumn pointed at Blake. “Did you hear what I just said to him? About loving him? Or did I imagine saying that? You have to be honest, even if it was really embarrassing.”
The EMT avoided her eyes. “I think, um. You did.”
Autumn stared at Blake. “What the hell, man? You just ignored my love confession?”
But Blake seemed more concerned about her upcoming examination. He was eyeballing the EMT as if he might ask to see some credentials. “We don’t need to talk about this right now, baby, you’ve got a sprained wrist and ankle, and you need to go to the hospital and—”
Panic pumped through her veins, a thousand times more potent than whatever had gotten her to wake up. “Do you not love me, too, Blake? Do you not love me, as well?”
Her landlord stared down at her, his expression unreadable, and Autumn’s feeling of dread soared. Then she saw the sheen in his light brown eyes.
“Oh my God, I’m such an asshole,” Autumn said. “We don’t have to talk about it now, we can wait, I can wait. As long as you need.”
“How can you…” Blake broke off, shaking his head.
“What?”
He took her hands in his. “Do you know how I felt when I heard you’d been in an accident?”
“Sad?”
A humourless laugh. “Try frantic. I thought I’d lost the girl of my dreams. I thought I’d—” He broke off, shaking his head. “Of course I love you, I’ve loved you from the moment I laid eyes on you. You made me want to be in the sun again. You made me want to be the one who…gave you the sun.”
Autumn felt the backs of her eyes burn. Words might not be Blake’s strong suit but he could string them together perfectly when he wanted to. She reached up and touched his stubbly jaw, reveling in the feel of her big lovely man. “You don’t need to say any more. I love you, too. Plus, I knew how you felt about me the second I saw The Little Princess.”
He stared at her. “How did you get that? I got rid of it.”
Autumn smiled through another yawn. “Turns out the rest of the tenants want us together as much as your friend Elaine does. She texted me from your phone, by the way. That’s why I was coming to the block party.”
“I know,” Blake said, looking ominous. “I found the message she sent after I got here. I’ll be having words with her.”
“Don’t be mean. She helped bring me back to you.”
Blake’s hard expression softened. “You’re right. Are you sleepy?”
“A bit,” Autumn said, closing her eyes again. “I have a sprained ankle, huh? Maybe we can incorporate it into our role play, pretend like you did it to me to keep me from leaving—nah, that’s way too dark, hey?”
“Yes.” He leaned down and kissed her mouth softly, dropping his voice low. “We might have to take things slow for a little while, sweetheart, but we’ll get back there, I promise.”
Autumn smiled. “Blake…?”
“Yeah?”
“When I was a kid, I pretended I was the little princess, like this magical special girl that no one realizes is a princess until the end, but I was wrong, you’re the little princess. You’re the magical person who looks like a hobo, and I helped discover you and reveal you to the rest of the world.”
Blake chuckled. “I’m glad to hear that. I think.”
“You should be, all the tenants really care about you and so…” she yawned again, “do I.”
“Thanks, Fun-Size,” he said in a voice so soft she could barely hear it. “You’re…”
He whispered something she couldn’t quite make out. Sleep was rising up like a velvety shroud, covering her. “Will you stay with me? Make sure that no one steals my watch or makes me pay for a helicopter or something?”
The lightest of cheek touches. “Of course I will. Sleep well.”
Then he leaned in close and said it again, the thing she missed before.
“You’re everything to me, Autumn.”
EPILOGUE
Blake stood in the doorway to the green room, giving himself a moment to study Autumn without her being aware. Goddamn, he was a lucky man. The luckiest. How had he gone from a solitary, anger-fueled existence to this? A man watching his beautiful girlfriend pore over notes for her first open mic. Her Casio lay propped against the ratty couch where she sat, her mouth moving along with the words she read. Blake knew them by heart, since she’d been rehearsing them in bed for the last month—they accounted for some of the best moments of his life.
“Pretend the crowd is in their underwear. Isn’t that the old trick?”
Notebook in hand, she’d knelt in the center of the bed. “Pretending is no fun. Strip for me, landlord.”
And that was how Blake had become her nightly, mostly naked audience. At this point, it was going to feel unnatural wearing clothes while she performed, but he’d dressed up for the occasion, nonetheless, in black slacks and a gray button down. When Kevin and Elaine had arrived so they could drive to the club together, he’d taken quite the ribbing over going Hollywood, but he wanted Autumn to know the things that were important to her mattered, especially to him.
They hadn’t spent a day apart since the accident. There’d been no discussion about whether Blake would get to hold Autumn in his arms at night, either, but they’d quickly come up with a solution for where that would be happening. Autumn’s brighter apartment served as home, meaning he now paid himself half the rent. His apartment was being used as their mutual office. Blake used the space to restore his books and exercise and Autumn generally napped on the couch and brought home the occasional sick pigeon. Against his will, Blake had formed something of a kinship with the winged rats, even taking over nursing duties while Autumn worked at the clinic. They were little reminders of his girlfriend when she had the nerve not to be there.
Christ, if he’d known love like this was waiting for him, maybe he wouldn’t have spent a decade being such a surly bastard. Autumn showed him the bright side of everything. Daytime was no longer a period to hide from the sun and unpleasant chores. It was a time to try new things, like drinking from paper bags in the park and walking home tipsy, laughing for no reason. It was time for making their story, one experience at a time.
His friends had fallen in love with Autumn within minutes of their first meeting, Elaine dragging her off to gossip a
nd hide from the four little girls who now referred to Autumn as Auntie Autie. They’d even gone down to Rockaway and taken surfing lessons one weekend, crashing at Kevin and Elaine’s afterward. Blake was surprised to find that not only could he stand on the board with his bad leg, the continued movement forced him to stretch the damaged area and ease his limp. He’d caught his girlfriend looking up online deals for surfing getaways that night…a prospect that would have made him scoff once. Now, he couldn’t wait to get Autumn out of the city, be in a place when he could focus on nothing but her.
Maybe they would even visit her parents in Melbourne. Their Sunday Skype call was growing less and less awkward, mostly thanks to Autumn’s unflagging positivity. It was clear her parents wished she would come home—and Blake couldn’t blame them. The thought of parting with Autumn after knowing her for twenty-five years was a grim prospect—he couldn’t live without her after a few months. Blake had a difficult time conversing with a screen, but last week, Autumn’s mom said she’d never seen Autumn happier. Her dad had agreed. And the tense atmosphere had eased. It would continue to ease, because Blake’s mission in life was to make sure Autumn remained happy. Having her parents understand and approve of her decisions was part of that.
Enough mooning over your blissful existence. Tonight was about her. Autumn telling her jokes in front of an actual crowd. Blake opened his mouth to tell her that she had a full room waiting for her to perform. Kevin and Elaine had wrangled a babysitter for the night, against all odds. Mrs. Zhu, Mrs. Fuller and Ross were in the house, too, all of them having surpassed the two drink minimum—they were his crazy-ass tenants, after all. Isabella, Owen and Ryan were in the front row staring at their cell phones, and some of Autumn’s patients had shown up, too. Or the owners of her patients, rather. Which was a testament to the affect she had on everyone. They all wanted her to succeed.
He thought better of telling her she had a packed room when the tension in her shoulders registered. It dawned on him that Autumn already knew he stood behind her. Across the room there was an ancient stereo system with a glass door, his reflection in the doorway clearly visible. So why hadn’t she turned around to greet him?
Awareness crackled to life in the small green room, forcing him to notice things he’d missed while daydreaming about how incredible his life had become. The trail of goosebumps decorating the slope of Autumn’s neck, she’d become restless on the couch, her hips rocking in a slow tempo, the notebook forgotten on her lap. Her skirt had ridden up enough to make Blake’s cock grow thick with lust. Was that a garter belt holding her stockings to her thighs?
“Autumn…”
Still she didn’t turn, but her breathing picked up, shoulders lifting and falling.
Her nerves were getting the better of her. Blake’s intuition where Autumn’s sexual needs were concerned had been honed as sharp as a goddamn axe. If she didn’t want to turn around and talk through her fears with him, she wanted him to obliterate them. Make them cease to exist. And so he would.
Quietly, Blake closed and locked the door behind him, the energy of the crowd fading into nothing. Her set wasn’t due to begin for ten minutes, he could work with that. Even if the room had to wait, so be it.
His footsteps creaked as he approached Autumn, his gaze trained on the pulse at the base of her neck. She gasped when he stepped into her periphery, attempting to stand. But he caught a fist full of her hair, instead, half-dragging, half-guiding her across the room.
Autumn’s palms flattened on the wall, head turning to the side so Blake could see the outline of her chewed lips. Seeing the proof of her nerves, his heart squeezed. Slowly, though, a certain power began pumping in his veins. A power she’d granted only him. “You think you can just make everyone wait, Blondie?” He caught her earlobe with his teeth and lowered his zipper, the sound extra punctuated in the tiny room. “All men wait for you, don’t they? Girls who look like you show up when they please and we just accept it. We need to look at you, we need to pretend we’ve got a shot at fucking you. Too bad I’m tired of waiting and thinking. I’m taking this pussy however I can get it.” Using his upper body to keep her pressed to the wall, Blake hiked Autumn’s skirt up around her hips and jerked her thong to one side. Fuck. Garter belts on both thighs. He didn’t know whether to be thankful or put her over his knee, because surely a hint of these would be visible up on the stage.
“This is going to be fast, just like when I jerk off thinking about you. If you’re not on stage soon, they’ll come looking.”
“No, please.” She pushed off the wall and tried to twist away, but Blake surged forward to keep her pinned, then jerked her hips back and guided his cock between her thighs where he found her soft flesh soaking wet. “Please. I don’t want this.”
“Oh, you’re getting it. Go on your toes and make it easier for me to hit that pussy. Unless you want this to take longer?”
“Maybe I do,” she whimpered, molding her ass to Blake’s lap under the guise of attempting to escape. “Maybe I don’t want to go on stage,” she finished, almost too quietly for Blake to hear. But he did, thank God. Instead of ramming home inside Autumn as he’d intended, Blake pulled back on the reins of his control at the last second and sunk in slowly into his tight girl, inch by inch. “Fuck,” he breathed into her shoulder, the lines of their game blurring. Autumn’s head fell back, their eyes met…and perfect, singular love connected them, communicating everything.
“I’m scared,” she whispered. “Excited, but scared.”
He pressed their mouths together, but didn’t kiss her, badly as he wanted to. “Of course you are, but you’re too brave to let it overwhelm you.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you didn’t give up on me. You made me want to live better. You made the past seem like nothing, in comparison to spending one day without you.” He gave in and kissed her temple, cheeks and nose. “You’ve tamed a beast, beauty. This is just another thing you’ll conquer.”
She sighed a laugh, her eyes rolling back in her head when he shifted inside her. “What if I don’t? What if I bomb and everyone throws rotten produce at me?”
“Then we go home, I get in my best underwear and we regroup.” A laugh shook her little body and Blake groaned, his cock wondering why there was a hold up. Looking into her eyes, he could see his words had found their mark.
“I love you, Blake.”
“I love you too, Autumn.” The stress lines around her mouth had faded. And when he angled her hips, bent his knees and pumped from beneath, her jaw dropped, erasing them even further. “Now who are these garter belts for?”
Autumn turned and pressed her forehead to the wall, releasing a harsh sob when Blake began fucking her in earnest, her ass slapping with rapid, obscene sounds off his stomach. “No one. I swear.”
“Liar. You wore them to fuck with me.” He snapped one against her thigh, before reaching around and delivering a rough slap to her pussy. “This is what happens now, when you tease. You give this up. You hand it over.”
“Oh my God.”
Jesus, they could keep this up for an hour. Blake filthy-talking her, bringing her to the brink and letting her suffer a come down before driving her toward orgasm again. It’s how they spent their nights, weekends and occasional mornings when the cravings were too intense to deny. But now one of Autumn’s dreams awaited her and Blake was determined to make sure she got the chance to see it through. She’d chosen the time, date and place. Now he supported her timing. Her decisions. A lesson he’d learned the hard way, but one he’d needed to learn, all the same.
Blake’s fingers found Autumn’s clit and went to town, rubbing fast without ceasing or changing directions. The climax built inside of her so fast she reared back against him, arching, twisting and whining, her thighs going wild beneath, feet connecting with the wall. His cock rifled in and out of her, his grunts cutting her cries of his name in half.
“Come on, little brat. You’ve never had it better, just let yo
ur pussy admit it.”
“Oh God. God.” Her flesh seized around his cock, a long pause following her sucked in breath. That’s when her shaking started, every inch of her spasming and shuddering. Blake bit down hard on his lower lip, liquid fire making a brutally fast ascent in his cock and filling Autumn. Claiming every inch. He gave a few final pumps, trying to rid them both of every detail of the ache, the pressure.
Moments later, they hung there against the wall, clothes in disarray, their breathing just beginning to return to normal.
Blake grazed her cheek with an open mouth. “How do you feel?”
She turned in his arms and gave him a dazed look. “Like I wouldn’t hate making this a ritual.”
“At your service, Fun-Size.” He kissed her mouth, long and hard, while fixing her skirt and panties. “Now and always.”
After a few more kisses and reassurances that she was going to do amazing, Blake gave Autumn a final look and left the green room, traveled down the hallway and re-entered the club. There was no end to the smirking when he took his seat beside Kevin and Elaine, but he could only flip them the bird. Because now he was nervous on Autumn’s behalf, like the comedy version of sympathy pains.
“Did you tell her to break a leg, or just break her off?” Elaine asked, gouging him in the side with an elbow. “You dirty dog. I didn’t think you had it in you. Public places and everything. Kevin, we need couple’s therapy.”
“Would you stop?” Kevin signaled the waitress for another round just as Autumn’s name was announced on stage. “She’s right, though, B-Money. I don’t even recognize you, anymore.”
Blake smiled. “Good.”
When Autumn came out on stage, keyboard in her arms, Blake almost stopped breathing. God, she looked like a tiny angel up there. If anyone heckled her, he’d have to punch someone else in the face. It took Elaine tugging on Blake’s sleeve to realize he’d been so knocked dead by the sight of her on stage, he’d forgotten to clap. Just as he started, everyone stopped. On stage, Autumn laughed watching it happen. She squared her shoulders and played her first few notes on the Casio…and a transformation came over her, one he’d watched play out for months, but it became solid in that moment. A thing visible to the naked eye.
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