by Zoe Lee
And fifth—by far his favorite movement, since each pump of his heart was like a gong in his cock—the way she’d succumbed to her pleasure, accepting what was given to her and taking it wholeheartedly, inconsiderate and beastly and utterly magnificent as she’d come.
Now she was sprawled out on his bed like the best fantasy he’d ever had come to life.
Everything someone else might perceive as an imperfection, the wiggling silvery lines of her stretch marks, the complete disarray of her hair exploding above her head, the stubble on her knees and thighs and along her bikini line, were nothing short of miraculous to him. It had been ages and ages since a lover had been comfortable enough to demonstrate this type of trust in him, so deep and powerful that he didn’t even think it was consciously done—which made it that much more incredible to him, because it was instinctual.
Seth had never been overwhelmed before, never felt any urgency to prove how he felt.
But this one person had his hands shaking. It wasn’t like the other times with her, which had been fueled in large part by the energy and adrenaline from giving an amazing performance. This time, everything he felt was strictly the result of her; he wanted to worship her, to absolutely destroy her for accepting anybody else’s efforts.
All of it gathered in his heart, making him feel as though it were glowing.
Outwardly, he smiled at her, the slowest, easiest smile of his life.
Their first night, he’d sure as hell taken his time too, but this wasn’t the same.
This was him making love to her.
She undulated beneath him, rising and falling as if he were singing a song and she knew just how to dance to it, her body willing and patient since she’d already come once. But her heart and her mind were still impatient, still hunting, and pleas and groans poured out of her. So he rolled her onto her belly and began again, barely noticing when the sticky head of his cock dragged up the inside of her thigh or through the gentle indentation of her spine.
An hour slipped by before he raised her hips until she was planted on her hands and knees, her wrists crossed and her fingers scrabbling against his pillows. He stroked his tongue along her pussy, lying on his stomach so that he was suddenly aware of how long he’d been hard, feeling a wet spot of precome seeping into his blanket. He couldn’t wait another second to be inside of her again, so he stretched his mouth wide and filled her with his tongue, groaning at the concentration of her taste and how she fluttered around him.
“Seth,” Astrid cried out, her voice broken and needy right before her overtaxed body gave out on her and she collapsed onto her front. “I can’t take it. I need you, please!”
He crawled over one of her calves to reach his messenger bag on the floor, unzipping a side pocket to pull out a condom. He tore into the foil and rolled it on while she shuddered and moaned, eyes closed tightly as if she were still feeling phantom caresses from him.
Sluggishly, she rolled over, one shoulder and then one leg almost flopping over until she was on her back, and she dragged her heels up the mattress, spreading her legs wide.
“Come here,” she ordered, her words slurred with pleasure, curling up her shoulders to stretch a hand out towards him. Catching her hand, he lifted it to kiss her palm, then flicked his tongue against it. “I know you like it slow, but I’m a woman, Seth, not a snail.”
The admonishment was filled with lazy amusement, but her eyes were feverish, so he moved between her legs and smoothed his hands up her belly and breasts before framing her face. He kissed her until she was breathing so frantically that she couldn’t keep kissing him back, and then he slid his hands under her shoulders, curling around them, and lowered his body onto hers. She half-sobbed in relief as the fat head of his cock pushed inside her, the cords in her neck popping and straining as her chin jerked up towards the ceiling.
“I imagined us like this, I imagined you so many different ways,” he told her, rolling his hips in tiny fluid waves, barely going farther on each upstroke, jaw clenched because her pussy was hot and pulsing around him. “But nothing I imagined was as good as this, baby.”
Her whole body quivered beneath him, her nails scratching his shoulders and back heedlessly as her heels dug into the dimples at the base of his spine, shoving him in harder.
“I’ve waited, I’ve been so good,” she wailed in her precise diction, “fuck me, damn it!”
Grinning sharply, eyes blazing because he’d finally gotten her to unravel, he braced his toes into his mattress and did as she asked. Every thrust was measured and powerful. When he was buried in her to the fucking hilt, he stopped for a beat, growling when she ground her clit against his pubic bone. Every withdrawal was slow, making her moan and him suck in a quick breath, her nails scraping deeper. It was like a heartbeat, one quick ba as he withdrew followed by a hard bum as he filled her, infinitely. Despite his training, despite his willpower to make this last forever, the tempo picked up exponentially.
Then she snapped up to cling to him with the full measure of her strength, her body curled into him and convulsing erratically, her lips open in a soundless scream.
It was the most beautiful, powerful thing Seth had seen or felt in his entire life. It awed him so much that once it had ebbed to just little twitches, his orgasm swept over him immediately. His body hunched animalistically, crouched between her thighs, sighing moans a melody of relief and satisfaction, while he exploded endlessly into the condom.
His body relaxed and he memorized every detail—the sweat between them, the way her chest quaked—and then raised up on unsteady arms, locking his elbows to keep the position. He looked down at Astrid, who was still quaking with soft breathless sobs, but also quiet laughs. Strength flooded back, so he could bend down and brush kisses over her salty wet cheeks and her kiss-bruised, dry lips, whispering, “That was amazing.”
“Do you know,” she gasped, “you’re a quite fascinating man, Seth Riveau.”
Chuckling tiredly, he kissed her again before disentangling their bodies carefully so that he could handle the condom and go upstairs on shaky legs to get two bottles of water out of his mini fridge. He twisted the tops off and gave one to Astrid, who had propped herself up on his pillows and brought a sheet up to cover her glistening body.
“I can’t feel my toes,” she observed, “and I think I could sleep for a hundred years.”
“Good,” he murmured with relaxed pride, putting down his empty water bottle.
He stretched out on his back next to her, folding his hands behind his head and looking over at her. She was attempting to free her hopelessly knotted hair from its tie, her breasts bouncing beneath the thin sheet, and his mouth curled up in pure satisfaction.
“Tell me something,” she said once she’d finally gotten the tie free, twisting and winding her hair up on the very top of her head. It made her look softer and less sophisticated, as if this was how she was in her natural habitat.
“Mm,” he hummed, his mind blissfully quiet, like clear skies after winds had blown away all of the clouds. All of the things that had risen up, sending him into hiding in his studio up in the attic, seemed uncomplicated now. He was sort of laughing at himself inside, that a perfect encounter with Astrid had crystalized all of his thoughts. Suddenly the ghost of Hedda and his stubborn denial that he didn’t want to be a musician seemed childish and behind him. All of the pain of losing Hedda and all of his cynicism that he wasn’t going to enjoy fame were still there, of course, but they no longer hobbled him as much as before.
Exhaling, he offered up almost idly, “Everyone thinks I’m still in love with Hedda.”
Astrid jerked, fumbling her water bottle before putting it aside quickly.
“No one’s ever told me so directly, but my brother Aden, my sister Leda. My closest friends Tristan, Jesse, and Dunk. Downbeat, Kayla, and Hank—I know they all do.”
“Some people might be somewhat offended or thrown off to hear that right after they’ve had sex with someone,” she pointed ou
t, one shapely eyebrow zinging up sharply.
“There’s no need to be jealous of a ghost,” he murmured.
“I disagree, respectfully, when you’re calling her a ghost.”
That had him opening eyes that had gone heavy-lidded, pinning her with a disappointed look. “She’s a ghost because she haunts me, not because I’m still in love with her,” he said with a little bite of frustration, aimed more at everyone else in his life who believed it even though Hedda had been gone for eight years. “It’s like… a phantom limb. I know it’s not a fair comparison, but it’s the best one I’ve got. She was a part of me, even once she broke up with me and moved back to Berlin and we weren’t making music together anymore. For so long after I came back to Maybelle, I could barely write, play or sing. Every time a lyric came into my mind, it burned me like I was betraying her. Every time I touched my piano or my guitar in its case, I remembered something brilliant that she’d said. About why music is so important or why love is so important. Sometimes I’d play and sing anyway, just to remember. I played on the Square the day I came home actually. Aden found me.”
Slowly, Astrid began to run her hands through his hair, her nails pushing gentle tunnels through it from his forehead to where his head was on his hands.
“I’m so sorry that you lost her, Seth,” she whispered tremulously.
His arms twitched from the simple show of sympathy and care and he angled his face a little more into her touch, watching her with his breath trapped in his lungs. He’d only really reminisced about Hedda with Tristan and he’d never spoken of his feelings about her with anyone before now. It was a very strange fact, but the rightness that settled in his chest, allowing him to breathe again, made him smile up at Astrid, his heart in his throat.
“The worst part…”
“It’s alright, darling,” she encouraged quietly, her eyes dark and knowing as she slid down in the bed so that she was curled facing him.“There’s no shame in how you feel.”
His spine arched up and he felt the pressure of distant tears against the backs of his eyes. Closing his eyes, he breathed through it until the pressure eased enough for him to admit, rough and helpless and angry, “The worst part is that I think the grief is mostly… habit now. It’s become so ingrained that I don’t… I don’t really hurt when I write a song or when I sing with another band anymore. I just… feel like I ought to, and so then… I do. Sometimes it’s real,” he couldn’t help but add, as if that would make him a better person, “like on the anniversary of her birthday. Then I’m truly haunted and hear her. Lieber scheiẞe tanzen als dumm herumstehen, Seth. Better to dance badly than stand around like an idiot.”
The pitch and rhythm of Hedda’s German was perfectly imitated in his quote and he really fiercely missed her in that moment. Missed her absurdist sense of humor, her painful practicality, the way her dreams of loving him forever and making music hadn’t come true.
“She would have loved picking you apart,” he told Astrid with a gutted laugh.
“I think I would have let her,” she answered, and moved in to kiss him softly.
He caught her jaw and kept her there, savoring her taste and letting it pull him fully into his present, which was so much more than he could have imagined earlier in the day.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Astrid
Astrid stayed with Seth in his bed, combing her fingers through his hair, letting him settle down as much as he could after all of the emotional ups and downs he’d undergone recently. Eventually she had to suggest firmly, “You should call everyone to let them know that you’re out of the studio.” He grimaced, so she pressed, “They were really quite upset.”
“I don’t know what to say,” he admitted, voice scratchy from overuse and crying.
“Just say that you unlocked the door,” she said while he fished his cell out from his bag and plugged it in, since it had definitely died after two days on. “You can have someone else come over,” she half-suggested a bit awkwardly while his thumbs tapped away. “In case you’d rather someone else were here to spend time with you. Talk with you.”
“No,” he answered simply, “I want you to stay.”
She was worried about muddying the waters between them any further by staying, but it would be cruel and cowardly to abandon him now, when he had to still be fragile. So she nodded and offered, “How about I make some food, then? You must be hungry. I am too.”
“There’s not much here, I haven’t shopped since I got back,” he said as they went down to the kitchen and she started peering into the fridge and pantry. “I can order in for us.”
“If you’re up for a delivery guy coming here,” she said, raising one eyebrow, “then that’s fine with me. But you have a very large frozen meat lover’s pizza in your freezer.”
Screwing up his face, he sighed. “Dunk left it here. I don’t really eat junk food.”
Astrid laughed and turned on the oven. “Tofu and veggies won’t restock your energy after the way you’ve treated yourself the last couple of days,” she admonished him. “I’ll eat that and you take the pizza. You can climb off your ‘healthy eating, my body is a temple’ high horse for tonight.”
“Hey,” he mumbled, but his expression softened into appreciation.
“Want to watch TV or something?” Astrid suggested.
He nodded and they settled into his comfortable couch, where she let him pick whatever he wanted to watch. She was charmed by the way he dithered, looking through nearly all of the options he had, it seemed, before selecting the next episode of a spy thriller TV series he’d been watching. They watched until the timer went off, then she got up to take the frozen meals out of the oven and carrying them back to the coffee table. They let them cool, then ate while the next episode started, and Astrid got sucked into the show.
She put a proper distance between them, like friends hanging out, but he gathered her up against his side and pressed her head into his chest. “Just relax,” he murmured.
The night meandered by, pizza and TV and him texting a lot one-handed so he didn’t have to dislodge her, until they were both nodding off. She stroked his stomach and whispered, “You should go on up to bed. I’m going to… I mean, I should go back to—”
“I’m inviting you to stay the night,” he said, firm but making fun of her just a little too. “Given the dramatics of the last couple of days, we’re all going to go to Tristan’s tomorrow and just hang out. His house is on one of the private lakes. So get ready for a good old small-town house party, Ms. A. Grilling, beer, inner tubes, country music, and gossip.”
Despite the clutch of uncertainty she felt, remembering how awkward she’d felt her first day in Maybelle trying to coax some kinship or friendliness out of the locals, she liked the idea. She couldn’t think of the last time she’d done something so relaxing.
“Okay,” she agreed finally, standing up and letting him tug her along upstairs.
They got ready for bed and she borrowed his toothbrush before sliding into bed alongside him. After the way he’d drawn her close on the couch, she assumed that he was a snuggler, but he gave her a soft kiss, turned off the lights, and flopped out on his back and knocked out almost immediately. In the faded glow of the just-waning moon, she watched him for longer than she’d ever admit, taking in the furrow between his eyebrows, the way his bottom lip was a little pouty when he was fully asleep, the way he sighed periodically.
In the morning, she woke up first and snuck out of Seth’s room to let him sleep as long as he needed. She showered in the ground floor bathroom and wrapped a beach towel around her, since she didn’t want to put on her dirty clothes from yesterday again.
After putting on coffee, she wandered around, damp fingers squeaking across the glass picture frames, the fabric of the couches, the polished wood of the countertops, and humming. When she found the laundry room, she pulled a Wild Harts tee and red running shorts from the dryer and put them on. They were a little loose on her, but not by much, and s
he shoved away the thrill of wearing Seth’s clothing without underwear.
She was just about to read one of his books on the couch when she heard a creak.
Leaning around the back of the recliner, she watched the front door deadbolt rotate. Figuring that a thief wouldn’t have a key, she watched in lazy curiosity as the door opened incredibly slowly and then Dunk McCoy snuck right on in.
He was hauling her suitcase—how the hell had he gotten that, she wondered—and had a disposable grocery bag hanging off each arm, creeping like a caricature villain.
“Duncan,” she scolded him in her crispest accent, watching him jolt and gasp, “what on earth are you doing right now? Didn’t Seth text you last night to say we’d see you later?”
Chest heaving, his hands clasped over his heart, he shot daggers at her. “Yeah, but when Daisy and I were here yesterday, we checked and saw there wasn’t any food.”
“You have my suitcase,” she pointed out.
He crossed his arms, as if he were trying to look surer of himself, then cleared his throat. “Everyone here loves Seth. And everyone was really worried about him. When Aden said you could get him to come out of his studio, I figured…” His face screwed up and went a little red. “I figured that you two were… you know. My spy at the hotel said no one had seen you last night or this morning yet, so Daisy said we should get your suitcase for you.”
“And the hotel let you?”
“Uh, Kayla has a key to your room,” he admitted sheepishly. “Please don’t be mad at us, we’re just trying to help Seth, and if you help Seth, then we have to help you too!”
“Hm,” she said, hiding an unrestrained smile behind her coffee cup. From an objective perspective, this was a lot of crossed boundaries and an invasion of personal space. But it was just so… sweet and so caring—well, sweet and caring for Seth, really.
“Dunk?” Seth asked, stumbling in, hair a wild crow’s nest, scratching his bare chest.
