by Kathryn Moon
Callum’s hips twisted and his hand burrowed beneath him. I watched his arm flex and twist as I moved down his back, wrestling with the knots beneath his shoulder-blades until I could see the way he melted into the mattress, eyes drooping and hand growing lazy. I stretched for the bedside table and grabbed the bottle of oil, squeezing some out into my palms and warming it before stroking it down his sides and then up over his ass, barely dipping my fingers between his cheeks.
Callum grunted beneath me. “Is there more oil?”
I added some to my palms and then took his hand to slick it. He sighed as he gripped himself again, moving smoother and a little faster.
“Tell me what you dream about. What you’re thinking about right now,” I said, bending to kiss the back of his neck. I spread my hands across the back of his thighs and worked up with my fingers dipping again, a little lower.
Callum was quiet for a moment. “Her eyes,” he whispered. “Her hips.” I hummed and he continued. “The way she looks at me out of the corner of her eye. How she teases. Like Aiden but…sweeter, dryer.”
“Your knees,” I said, soft so as not to pull him out of his thoughts of her. I coated my hands and fingers in the oil as Callum pushed up to his knees. “How chaste,” I said. “You dream of her looking at you and that has you moaning in your sleep?”
Callum sucked in a breath as my hands went to work, one sliding up and down between his ass cheeks, a finger tip barely grazing at the puckered rosebud of sensitive flesh. The other went between us to stroke and pull at myself until I was tapping beneath him, swollen and aching.
“What do you want me to say?” he grumbled.
“Tell me how you would touch her,” I said, circling his hole with my fingertip.
“I’m afraid to,” he whispered.
“To touch her?” I asked, brow furrowing.
“That I’ll mess up.”
It wasn’t as if I had forgotten that Callum had given up interest in anyone but Aiden or I, only that I forgot that meant he hadn’t been with a woman in over a decade. Or anyone new.
“It’s not so different,” I said. His ass was twitching in my direction, my middle finger just resting at his opening with him nudging back, impatient. I pressed in, just to the first knuckle and Callum released himself to rise up to his elbows, pushing back and fitting my finger deeper.
“Like…right now, I’m thinking about how her legs would looked wrapped around your hips as you filled her up,” I said, pumping my hand for him and watching his mouth fall open, face grimacing down at the mattress. “Think about how warm she’d be, how wet we could get her.”
I pushed my index finger in, adding to the stretch and he buried a cry into the pillow, one of relief. His hips rolled, dipping into the fantasy of a woman and a whimper echoed from his mouth.
“I need this faster, Isaac,” Callum said through gritted teeth.
I tested him, adding a third finger but his face only relaxed and he gave easily. I pulled my hand free and then held him open, his hips holding still while I rested the blunt head of my cock against his entrance.
“I want to taste her,” Callum whispered. “Have her soak my tongue.” And then a moan broke free as I pushed in an inch.
“I want to know what she sounds like, crying out for you,” I said, holding still.
Callum’s shoulders tensed, the lines of muscle in his back standing out in shadow. “Want to feel her softness.”
“Good,” I said, and I entered him another inch, swallowing at the hot grip of him. “And?”
“Damn it, Isaac,” he hissed but I held still, rocking away as he tried to push back against me. “I want to suck on her breasts…oh.” He breathed deeply and continued, “Pull her legs up around our hips and fuck her fast, play with her clit. Bite at her neck.”
My hips were settled against him and his head was rolling back and forth. “Would you leave a bruise?” I asked. I wanted to mark her, in secret spots for our eyes only.
“Only if she wanted me to,” Callum said and he looked back over his shoulder to smile at me. He’d left hickeys on my neck back when we’d started courting and it’d been free gossip for the campus for weeks. “Please, Isaac.”
I slid my hands up and down his sides and then took his hips in a hard grip. “Picture her there.”
“Tell me,” he said, and our hips rolled down together.
“I want to watch her face as she comes for us,” I said, drawing back and surging forward and feeling the first sparking beat of pleasure in my groin. “Watch her take you in her mouth and make you fall apart.”
Callum lifted his head from the pillow and one hand braced itself there, leaving room another face to nuzzle against.
“Her skin,” I said, finding a rhythm with the words, with the sound of Callum’s breaths and the hiccup of a whine at the back of his throat. “I want to mark it too, to claim her. Fill the bed with the smell of her like… like…”
Like cookies my mother had made on rainy days. The spice of cinnamon and the thick halo of sugar in the air. I groaned as Callum conjured it around us, the cloud of sweetness and spice. I wondered how she would smell with us inside of her.
I pressed my belly to Callum’s back as my hips bucked and his rolled forward into nothing. My hand found Callum’s already folded around the sheets as if he were holding hers, and we knotted our fingers together and braced ourselves. My other hand stroked down his chest and then wrapped itself around his cock. His pulse was throbbing against my palm and his voice was breaking in the air.
I left wet, licking kisses over his spine, my breaths sobbing out on his skin.
“Fuck, Isaac, I won’t last,” he growled and jerked in uneven, desperate hitches and thrusts.
There was a spike of white hot, dizzying sensation running up my own spine. I released his hand on the bed and wrapped my arm around his chest and we fell hard into the bed, gasping and groaning together as we fell apart. Callum burst and spilled himself over his stomach and the sheets and my hand and I buried myself deep and held on tight to him, my teeth grasping at his shoulder.
His arm wrapped over mine and he caught his foot around the underwear, lost somewhere in the sheets, and drew it up to wipe as much away as he could.
“We’re going to have to do better than that for her,” he mumbled.
I snorted against his skin and left a soft kiss where I had bit. I moved to pull away and one of his hands landed on my hip to hold me still.
“Not yet,” he said. So I curled myself around his back and kissed his neck and behind his ear. “Don’t tell Aiden, yet.” The words were slurring with sleep and I rolled my eyes a little, my own head feeling heavy and drowsy.
“It’s all going to work out,” I murmured and Callum sighed and shifted, either to nod or to drop off into sleep.
9. Joanna
Aiden sat on a bench in front of an upright piano with a long pipe-like instrument, as tall as my waist and narrow in his hands. The wood gleamed red as he polished at the metal fixtures running up the long body that twisted back around itself. Sunset streaked in from the window at the far end of the room, glinting like gold on the pedals and tuning clamps and curving over his broad shoulders like a heavenly silhouette.
“That looks like a weapon,” I said, standing in the doorway of his office.
“I would take serious issue with anyone who tried to use it as such,” Aiden said. His eyes travelled openly from my boots up to my face, expression easy and eyes slanted with interest. “Thank you for coming.”
“I’m flattered you asked,” I said, which was true. I was baffled too, and flustered, and nervous. I felt like I hadn’t stopped blushing since Isaac had left me standing on my stoop on Sunday and Aiden’s gaze, somehow both casual and thorough, was no help.
“Will you come in and sit?” he asked, nodding to an armchair waiting at the desk on the opposite side of the room as his piano.
“Why did you invite me?” I asked, finding that words came easier if I didn�
�t have to look directly back at him.
“I like an audience,” he said. I caught his grin as I sat in the chair. It was too big for me, Aiden was broader and taller by far, but I fit nicely when I curled up in the seat.
“And you’ve scared off all the other potentials?” I said.
He laughed. “Some of them, yes. Others I’ve simply worn out my welcome.”
“Settling for a little country librarian,” I teased.
He hummed at that, glancing at me out of the side of his eyes, and the sound was almost a growl for how low it was. “At the very least you’ll be a university librarian soon, Joanna,” he said.
I ignored the flutter in my stomach at the way his voice purred over my name. That was only how he spoke. And I was spending too much time with these men, searching in the conversation for an invitation that wasn’t really being issued.
Isaac was bad enough but at least he had the charm of home on his edges. Aiden was the kind of man I would never have imagined meeting because I could never have imagined a man like him. He was style and charm and art in an exquisitely perfect package. Flirting aside, and his interaction with Gwen had made it clear he did plenty of that, I had no chance of keeping his interest past the novelty.
“What’s it called?” I asked, nodding at the horn in his hands.
“Ah yes, the Wing Horn,” he said, lifting the instrument up off his lap and holding it vertically in the air. Everything from the height and gleam and warm tone of it suited him. “Wrenshaw was a little romantic and he was constantly building new pieces, trying to make it impossible for anyone to really learn his techniques. At least until he published. There are a few Wing Horns of his, each one a different manner of flight, supposedly.”
“Have you heard any before?” I asked.
“Once, at a concert my parents took me to when I was young,” he said. He was more interested in the Wing Horn now than me and I settled deeper into the chair, happy to watch him handling the piece while ruminating. “It did feel like flying to listen. Dizzying and fast and like the floor fell away right from under where we sat. Then my mother told me to close my eyes and…the music just soared and took us with it.”
His face softened as he spoke, shedding the smirk that lingered at the corner of his mouth and the tight focus that left me squirming. The catlike cunning and handsomeness transformed into something open and gentle and the sight left me warm, cocooned in the chair that smelled like spice and the sharp pine of wood polish.
“Would you like to hear?” he asked. The quirk in his grin returned with the glint in his eye but this time instead of wanting to shy away from it, I answered it with my own.
“Please,” I said.
He held my gaze for a moment, eyes darkening, and then slowly lifted the horn up to set the reed to his lips in a kiss. The first note rose, sweet and coiling through the air, and the room spun without moving. I closed my eyes as the sound deepened, reverberating around me and against my skin. There was no seat beneath me, no worn fabric beneath my fingertips, just the glow of the sun falling in through the window and stretching out to stroke at my cheeks.
Aiden spun the single note into several, rising and falling and flurrying around each other. Something like a breeze brushed through my thoughts. I pictured the lane at home that stretched flat and straight through the county and without pulling at the image it began rushing beneath me. The music built and I flew higher, watched the pattern of the fields organize themselves into a quilt of my hometown, all while the wind wrapped itself around my waist and limbs and carried me off like a leaf or a bit of cotton weed.
I was partway between woman and bird and speck of dust on the air, losing the sense of having a form or thoughts and feeling; only flight.
Too soon, far too soon for my liking, the whirlwind settled. My shoulders were heavy and the roots of my hair ached as I remembered them. There was a soft chair beneath and it felt as hard as landing from a great height. I opened my eyes and the smell of fresh air was replaced with wood polish and dry pages. The sun was shifting lower and casting shadows in the room.
Aiden waited for me to speak, eyes soft on my face.
“Like…floating,” I said, then added, “Is there more?”
His laugh was like gravel after the pure notes of the horn. “That’s it for now. From me, at least. I’ll write you something,” he said. “A flight suite.”
He would find a better use of that time, I was sure, but I didn’t want to argue. I could enjoy the idea of the offer without building expectations.
“I do, however, have a recording I think you would like,” he said. He grabbed a case that had been leaning against the piano and started to pack away the horn.
“I should go,” I said, but I didn’t move to get up out of the chair.
“Stay a little longer,” he said, looking at me over from over his shoulder which I had been busy watching shift beneath his jacket. “Or I’ve dragged you all the way up here for a few bars of music.”
“And a few moments of flying,” I said, laughing.
His grin turned wicked for a moment and then settled. “My favorite recording and I’ll walk you home.”
“Everyone is always offering to walk me home,” I said. “I must look easily disoriented.”
“You look like good company,” he countered, crossing the room to rifle the contents of a shelf, heavy with records. “And maybe a little bit stubborn.”
“The last part’s true. But alright, I’ll listen.”
He had already pulled the envelope off the shelf and turned to the gramophone. I had seen one before in the Bridgeston pub, a rickety old thing that skipped and hissed through the limited collection of stomping tunes the town agreed on. Aiden loaded the record into the player with quick, practiced precision. Even if I had been determined to leave he would have had the music playing before I’d made it to the door.
“I hope you like water,” he said, dropping the needle. He came to join me, sitting on the floor in front of the chair and then leaning back, resting his head against my knees.
There was a hiss of static and then we were swimming in music; piano keys bursting into bubbling notes, strings sweeping tidal waves into the room around us, and a low groaning tuba in the background dropping away the world and leaving the ocean beating beneath us.
My fingers reached down and grabbed onto Aiden’s shoulder to steady myself and he rested his cheek there. His own hand reached back and wrapped around my ankle as we were swallowed up in sound.
“You must be Joanna.”
I was standing on a ladder, arguing under my breath with a group of divination texts that insisted upon organizing themselves by year of publication instead of last name of author. And I thought to myself, must I be Joanna? Because it seemed as if ‘Joanna’ had a great deal going on in her life and I wondered if it might be nice to be someone else.
“The new librarian trainee,” the voice behind me added.
That, at least, I could not argue. I twisted on the ladder and looked down to find one of the most fashionable women I had ever seen. And beautiful, or at least polished to the point of being inarguably perfect. She was tall, enough so that she barely had to crane her neck to look up at where I stood on the ladder, and statuesque in sapphire blues and charcoal silks that sang against her brown, glowing skin.
“What can I help you with?” I asked.
Her facial features were large and well made-up, and her black hair was piled high, lustrous and smelling strongly of roses. But in spite of all that there was something straightforward about her and she looked less amused by me than most people on campus.