She reaches for my belt and pauses. I cover her hand with mine. “Your pace.”
“My pace would have you naked by now.” She finds me through the zipper and presses slow. My head drops back. I let myself be the one who makes the small sound this time. She smiles against my throat like she’s taking notes.
I get my breath back and pull her closer, the heel of my hand exactly where she wants it, the other hand keeping her balanced so she doesn’t have to hold herself up. She takes me out, and I help her remove her clothes just enough, and she slides down my cock, tight, hot, wet, mind-blowing. Nothing short of perfection. When she grinds down, I can tell when my piercing hits her clit—her dark eyes roll back and her breath leaves her. I fucking love it when that happens. Lou bounces on me, chasing her pleasure with my body. Thing of beauty.
“That’s it, angel,” I murmur against her throat. “You take me so good.” I twitch myself inside of her, and she gasps, eyes wide. I grin. “Keep going.”
She bites her bottom lip, rolling her hips on me again. When I twitch my dick for her, it catches her off guard. “Oh my god, that’s so good. Go faster.”
So, I do. It’s not easy, but nothing worth doing ever is. Between twitching myself inside of her and my pubic piercing, she’s pouring down my shaft by the time her body throbs on me. She’s so close I can taste it. Shaking in my arms, begging god, begging me. We climb together. My body aches for this. For her. It’s messy in a way that feels right.
She shudders and leans into me hard, breath breaking, mouth open against my jaw. I hold her through it, doing what I said I would do. The sound she makes is small and yearning, and it tips me. I follow, hands locked, head tucked against hers while the heat drains out of my bones.
We breathe. The bike ticks as the metal cools. A truck drones somewhere too far away to matter. I put my forehead to hers and close my eyes for a beat to make sure the world still fits.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Yes.” She laughs, soft, surprised by herself. “Apparently yes.”
“Good.”
We sit until our pulses stop being percussion. I smooth her hair and she smooths my shirt like we’re both trying to make us neat for no one. She stays straddling me, her palms on my shoulders, her eyes on my mouth, as if she’s making a decision.
Wind moves across the scrub, and the world smells like dust and metal and whatever perfume she wore this morning after the shower.
We don’t rush. We don’t turn this into a pledge. We sit on the cooling bike until the sun slides one finger lower and the sky starts thinking about changing color. My hands stay steady where she left them. She stays where she is because she wants to, not because I’m holding her there.
She kisses me once more, quick and clean, then presses her forehead to mine again and smiles. We stay like that, breathing, until the heat lets us go.
13
LOU
Building the deck takes time.The suite dining table is big enough to spread everything out, and the light from the window is good for color checks. I name the file and drop a title slide with today’s date so no one can argue about versions later.
Album title options first. I put them in a grid so they look like choices, not a fight.Static & Honey. Back to the Drawing Board. Sage and Spark. Work Lights. Lost & Found. Under each, I leave notes on tone, mood, and what the words promise.
Color next. I pull a palette from Sagebrush: the walnut console, sun-stained pine trim, the faded orange of the door, the steel of old stands, the cotton white where the paint never stuck. I add the gold of Talia’s old session laminate and the soft blue from the tape box labels. I mock up each color as a full bleed and then as small chips next to a photo of the room.
I do the same for font. Logos. Motif slide.
It’s all about family, craft, and second chances. For family, there’s hands on instruments, Talia’s cue notes, the studio scuffs we grew up on, the doorframe pencil marks where someonetracked height a decade ago. For craft, I have clips of tape splices, the old patch bay, pencils, and grease china marker, the ribbon mic silhouette that flatters nobody and tells the truth. For second chances, there are repairs visible on purpose—frankensteined mic stands, restitched amp covers, a chalked X where we stopped a rattle.
We show the scars and keep moving.
I add a slide for working titles we shouldn’t use, so we stop ourselves before we waste a day. We are not telling the press they were right. We are not making the fans parent us.
I build a board for physical texture so the assets don’t turn into flat screens. There are gaffer tape veins, console wood grain, the nick in the piano lid, a cue sheet corner torn and taped back. I drop in a hand-lettered alphabet where the letters waver like they were written after midnight. Hero assets always carry a trace of hand. The point is to look touched, not polished.
I add merch mock-ups because everyone always forgets merch till the last day. A black tee with the album mark high left, not billboard center. Tote with the studio silhouette and a single line of copy, Album name here. A cap with the ribbon mic and no text. Laminates with the grid baked in, so backstage doesn’t look like a different company. Fewer items, better blanks.
Suspicion taps a knuckle while I work.This is too easy, says the part of me that learned to expect nothing and like it.
Men don’t ask for my rate and mean it. Men don’t bring coffee and not expect something in return. Men don’t say yes without adding “but.” I list every reason I should brace. I don’t know how not to prepare for the worst.
But then Houston cleans the French press because he used it. Salem is putting the cap back on the marker someone left uncapped. Knox numbers the file versions correctly in a shared drive.
Basic shit for any woman. But for guys? Well, I wish it didn’t impress me so much, but sadly, it does.
