“We’ve got our intro. Now we need the verse. Chorus. Bridge.”
He traces the line of my collarbone with one finger first, like he's deciding, and then the marker follows the same path and I close my eyes.
“Stay with me,” he murmurs. “Tell me if the words are right.”
“Read them to me as you write them.”
He does. His voice low in the dark, just above the sound of the crickets, reading the lines as they come. They’re raw and unfinished, not quite strung together yet, but there’s so much beauty in the fragments already.
He’s writing love and loss like two notes in the same chord. The tension between them is the whole song.
I listen with my eyes closed and feel the marker moving across my skin.
“Here’s the chorus,” he says, and pairs the lyric with melody.
It’s beautiful, but…
“Change ‘devil’ to ‘outlaw’,” I say, when he pauses.
A longer silence.
I can feel him turning it over. Testing it against the melody in his head.
“Say it again,” he says.
“It’ll go like, ‘Face of an angel, heart of an outlaw.’”
He doesn't answer. Just picks up the guitar and plays the line both ways, back to back.
Then the marker moves and he writes the new word over the old one.
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Yeah, that's it.”
He plays it again with the change and I watch his face. The slow smile. The new spark in his deep green eyes.
He grins back at me.
“I think you might have a hidden talent for songwriting, darlin'. Where have you been hiding that?”
Maneuvering the guitar out the way, he reaches out and slides my dress strap off my shoulder. Slowly. His eyes on mine the whole time.
“Maybe here?” He kisses my shoulder.
“Lower,” I tease.
His eyes glimmer.
He tugs the neckline of my dress down, his knuckles grazing my skin as he goes. Presses his mouth to the swell of my breast, his lips warm and unhurried.
“Here?” he murmurs.
“Getting warmer.”
A smile against my skin. Taking his time as his mouth moves lower, tongue tracing the curve of my breast, and I feel my breath go shallow. He pushes my dress down all the way, leaving my breasts exposed, and takes my nipple into his mouth.
My head falls back as he sucks, swirling his tongue across me until I’m gasping. I'm arching into him, fingers curling into his hair, when he withdraws his lips from me.
I make a sound of protest.
