Buried in my dresser, folded into a T-shirt and wrapped in headphones that I need to replace because of the fraying exposed wire, is my Discman. What I grab to feel like I’m at home even when I’m not.
Over the years, I’ve used it less and less, terrified that I’ll push it past its limit. That one of the few things I have left fromthe happiest time of my life would break beyond repair. I’ve transferred my old CDs into a new case, one with a hard shell. I flip through the pages until I select the perfect one and click it into place. The only one that would make sense for tonight.
I head out of my room on my way back to the porch, but Wes is standing in the living room.
“It started to rain. Not hard, but…” He trails off, spotting the device clutched between my hands, and my heart squeezes at how he looks at it. Like an archeologist on a years’ long expedition finally stumbling across a treasure lost to time, when anyone else would probably be wondering what I was doing with something that’s become obsolete in the age of streaming subscriptions and wireless technology. “Is that?”
“I thought you might want to listen to something?” My words come out as a question.
“Please,” he breathes out.
If it weren’t for the limitation of the headphone cord, I’d opt for sitting a few feet away, but that’s impossible. We sit close. Thighs pressed together. My back straight as to not lean back against where his arm is draped across the back of the couch.
I press play and his brows pinch. He mouths the words to “You and Me” by Lifehouse like an incantation. It ends, and the infectious distorted bass line of Nirvana’s “Come as You Are” plays.
His head whips to face me. “My mixtape.”
But his movement pulls my headphone free. I catch it, and half a second later he moves to do the same, his hand cups over mine as I replace it in my ear. His fingers skate down my face, cupping my cheek. My hand slips to his wrist, not to pull it away, but to anchor myself against him.
“I listen to this CD the most,” I admit.
Because ever since I left Caper, I didn’t have a physical place to call home. No four walls that I claimed as my own. But wheneverI listen to this mixtape I feel like I have a little bit of home with me.
“Listen not listened,” he notes.
“I wasn’t going to change my music taste out of spite. You used to have good taste.”
“That was all you, always showing me something new. I’ve suffered without you.” It’s there in the depths of his eyes.
He looks at me like religion, salvation. So many have lost me in acts of selfish translation, but all he offers is devotion.
“I would be cruel if I let that continue.”
His thumb shifts, rubbing over the seam of my lips. “Please, Avery. Tell me what you want me to do.”
There’s only one thing I can think of asking for. “Kiss me.”
I expect it to be like being hit by a train. Full force. Crushing.
But he slowly takes the headphones out of our ears and sets them aside. A startled giddy laugh passes my lips when he hoists me up and places me on his lap. I brace myself on his biceps, firm and corded.
He takes me in for a heartbeat and then, finally, his mouth meets mine. My lips to my jaw to my neck over my fluttering pulse. I shiver and grind against him. He moans and I feel him growing hard under me. Heat coils in my belly. The soft caress on my neck turns into a bite. Teeth skating tentatively over my skin.
He could tear out my throat and I’d let him. I’d bleed out here staining the white couch and be happy for it.
“Don’t leave marks where people will see,” I say faintly, remembering the makeup I’ll have to wear tomorrow. The cameras and the giant images of us that will be projected over the heads of ten thousand people.
It’s an effort, because when it’s us, it feels like it’s just us. Dangerous to not think of the consequences. Freeing to pretend they don’t exist.
“God. I want them to,” he murmurs against me. Hot breath feathers over my throat. “But because you asked, I’ll just have to be creative.”
He shifts, twisting us so I’m no longer on his lap. I’m on my back with his fists planted on either side. His body is slotted between my legs. As he hovers his silver chain pops free from the collar of his shirt, the ruby ring attached dangling so the warm metal just barely touches my chest. That wicked, wicked mouth of his dips lower. Over the heaving swell of my chest. With no bra, my nipples press tight against the fabric of my shirt.
He holds himself up with one arm and his free hand pulls down the fabric by the collar, exposing me to a flash of cold air. He pinches my nipple, sending a shock straight to my clit, the same moment his mouth lands on me. I writhe, bucking, squirming, desperate to relieve the ache between my thighs. My hips bump against his, but I need more.
“Please,” I beg, and he moves a thigh between mine, bunching up my skirt that feels as light and unnecessary as tissue paper. I roll my body in urgent frantic thrusts until I’m panting. Closer and closer. Muscles pulling taut as I reach a breaking point.
His mouth is everywhere. Sucking. Biting. Licking.
