Slower

by Deana Birch

“I couldn’t agree more.” She lifted the hem and pulled it over her head. She stood before me in a black push-up bra and cotton panties. I couldn’t believe it had been months since I’d seen her like this, and a flashback to all her running made me understand why there was a little less of her than before. I took mental note to make her eat some ice cream, which led me to think about her licking a cone, which distracted me from the fact that I needed to get this woman naked.

  “Bra first,” I commanded.

  She held my gaze with her confident smile—it was another thing I loved about her—and reached around to unhook the clasp and let the bra drip down her arms and fall to the floor with the dress.

  Her small tanned breasts revealed themselves, and even though I’d seen them by the pool weeks prior, this time they were all for me. My ego was absolutely not imagining that they looked happy to see me.

  When she went for her panties, I shook my head. “Not yet.” I winked.

  I moved to the edge of the couch, still sitting, with her standing in front of me. I ran the back of my hand across her jaw, and she pressed into it. My thumb outlined her lips, which made her close her eyes and tilt her head back. I circled random patterns down her arms and back up to her collarbone and finally to her chest. Those nipples wanted to be bitten but would have to settle for the very hard pinch I knew would make her even more turned on than she already was. Her gasp confirmed. I continued tracing down her stomach and around her back.

  “Turn around. Bend over with your hands on the table.” She did as I asked. Sexual Louana was always more complacent than her out-of-the-sheets counterpart. I rubbed her ass and pulled her panties down to reveal half of her cheeks. Jesus Christ, a finer rear there had never been.

  I rubbed a little more, then caressed up her back and down again to the prize. I brought my finger to my mouth to wet it, trailed it between her cheeks, rubbed around the rim of her ass, and slipped it inside. My free hand pulled down her panties, so that they puddled around her ankles then came back up to where she was dying to be touched. I worked long, slow strokes from the outside in. By the time my fingers found the center, her moaning had intensified, and I barely had to touch the button to sound the final alarm. She trembled around me, called out to God, and said what she’d once told me was the equivalent of “fuck” in French. If she had invoked her mother tongue, I had done my job well.

  She stood up and stepped out of her panties, then turned to me. I was hoping to be surprised, like I had been with her on my lap, and that she would do something about the throbbing man in my pants, but she only studied me for a moment, said “thank you,” and went to the bathroom to clean up.

  My three legs and I went to the kitchen to wash my hands and get a fresh beer. I fanned the door of the fridge in front of my crotch, hoping it might help cool me down. When it didn’t work, I went to my mental medicine cabinet to find a bottle of boner eraser and took another pill in the form of my brother’s feet. Next time I saw him, I would make sure to tell him how much of a help his curled and nasty toenails had been.

  Louana had slipped into her white nightgown and thrown a cardigan over it. She sat down on the couch with her feet tucked under her and reached for the cold beer in my hands. I gave it up willingly, went back for another, then settled back on the couch and grabbed my shirt. I didn’t know what would happen next, only that she was the one making the calls. There was no need to say I wanted to spend the night—she knew—and I was trying really fucking hard not to be pushy. I expected her to bring it up, but she surprised me with a different topic.

  “So now that the apartment is done, we need to figure out how you’re going to play music again.”

  Talk about a buzzkill. My head tilted back as I let out a sigh.

  She didn’t stop. “I don’t care if you don’t want to talk about it. You had your distraction. You need to get back to doing what you love.”

  “That’s why I’m sitting on this couch.” I loved her more than music.

  “You know what I mean. Jake, you were meant to play and write songs. How are we going to get you back to that?”

  We. Her and me. If I couldn’t tell Louana how I was feeling, who else would I tell? It might even get me a couple of trust points along the way.

  “Ugh ….” I scratched my neck. “I know you’re right. And I fucking miss playing. Part of me wanted to go down to the Guitar Center last week and just bang the shit out of some drums. But the truth is, I don’t know what to play. I can’t play any Spades songs—it pisses me off. And I don’t have anything new.”

  “What do you play here during the day?”

  “Mostly covers I learned in high school.” I shrugged. I’d also memorized her new underwear, but that might have been too honest. What had Fern said? One day at a time.

  “Okay, let’s start with that. Play one for me.”

  I peered at her from the corner of my eye as I got up and moved to the piano. “I thought I was the pushy one.”

  “Jake. You get your hands on me for the first time in months, and the first thing you do is put a finger in my ass. You’re definitely still the pushy one.”

  “You didn’t like that? I could try a different technique …?”

  “Play.” Her chin jutted out at me.

  I sat down and decided to play what I had been practicing all week. “Zombie” by the Cranberries was one of my favorite songs from the early ’90s and one of the first I’d learned on the drums. Playing it acoustically on the piano made it even more haunting than the original. I closed my eyes and let it flow from my soul to my fingers.

  After hitting the final notes, I slowly backed away from the keys and stared down at them. It had drained me more than I’d thought it would. I blinked a few times, the reality of my band going on without me hitting hard, and the realization that I would have to start again from scratch joining it for a one-two punch to my gut. I heard Louana get up from behind me and come over.

  “Hey.” Her voice was soft, and I tilted my chin up to meet her gaze. “That was amazing. The drumming always overshadows what a great piano player you are.”

  “Thanks.”

  “If I ask you to spend the night, can we just sleep?”

  I closed my eyes and gave her a slow nod of agreement. The emotion in my chest welled up. She always knew how to take care of me. Yeah, I wanted to have sex with her again. But what I really needed was for her to help me heal my battle wounds.

  “Come on.” She grabbed my hand. “I’ll find you a toothbrush.”

  34

  LOUANA

  * * *

  Under the duvet, as Jake snoozed away, I skipped my Sunday morning ritual and opted instead to read with him by my side. I should have known the first time he got back into my bed, he wouldn’t want to get out. Then again, neither did I. These lazy tranquil moments were how I’d pieced him back together when we’d first met. I hoped they still held their magic.

  Because even though I was still raw from what he’d done on New Year’s, the pull to his arms was overwhelming. I’d forgiven Dimitri so many transgressions over the years. But if I forgave Jake, I was terrified I would lose the equal ground I so desperately wanted from a relationship.

  He stirred a little and laid his head on my stomach. My fingers traveled through his light brown hair. He was a giant child. An alpha baby. And he’d crawled back into my heart. I just had to make sure the next steps didn’t shift directly into him running away with it again.

  Jake opened his eyes and stared at a spot at the end of the bed. Whatever he was thinking, he didn’t share. I went back to my book and we stayed that way until my stomach voiced loud protests about the late breakfast schedule. The rumbling brought Jake back to the present, and after one more objection from my tummy, he looked at me with a little chuckle.

  “I’ll make breakfast.” He gave a full-body stretch, which only made me want to hop on top of him and have a different kind of meal–his happy trail was my Disneyland—but I let him get up. I did love
it when he turned the tables and cooked for me. He pulled on his pants and T-shirt and walked out. I heard him stop in the bathroom before the clanging of pans and silverware echoed from the kitchen.

  I finished my chapter, wrapped my cardigan around my bare shoulders, and went out to meet him. He’d made coffee for himself, had the table set, and was edging the omelets onto our plates when I sat down.

  “I was thinking about last night.” Jake sat the skillet down on a hot plate and slid into a chair.

  “Oh, yeah? Which part?” I bit into my slice of toast.

  “What would you have done if I had taken advantage of the situation?”

  “I knew you wouldn’t. I knew you’d pass the test.” I smiled confidently at him.

  He cut into his eggs with the side of his fork, and before he brought the bite to his mouth, he said, “So, all along, all day yesterday, you knew you were going to let me do more than kiss you?”

  “Yep.” I grinned as I chewed. The man could cook the hell out of eggs.

  He shook his head and swallowed his bite.

  “It just seems a little unfair. I mean, you’re making all the decisions about us and I don’t even get a vote.”

  I squinted to the ceiling, then back to him. “Are you filing a complaint?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Then shut up and eat.”

  There was a big, fat, thick part of me wanting to tell Jake to go get his clothes for the week and spend one more night with me before I left for New York, but that was the old us. Our new, lazy relationship required space and air. I made him leave in the afternoon after playing with Archie and told him I would see him at the end of the week.

  My own afternoon was spent shopping, which seemed silly since I was headed to Manhattan the next day, but I wouldn’t have much time for self-indulgence while I was there. I would be trying to land Mario’s next project after the Matthew Schiller action film. It was the opening titles for a new series on cable, and I had some other contacts with whom I wanted to remain in touch. Timing-wise, it was my typical trip to the East Coast: Fly out one day, spend two days in meetings, and fly back. I would be home late Wednesday night, and my biggest worry was that Matthew would be coming in on Tuesday morning and I wouldn’t be there to buffer.

  The flight was easy, the city was the same, and my meetings were going well.

  Tuesday, when I finished my long lunch with a producer whom I had originally met at the publishing conference Mario and I had attended in Mexico the year before, I pulled out my phone to find three missed calls from the office. Shit. I called back.

  “Hey, it’s Louana. I think Mario is looking for me.”

  “Oooooooh, yeah,” the receptionist said. “Hold on.”

  She transferred my call, and thirty seconds later Mario picked up without saying hi.

  “I knew I shouldn’t have let you go to New York with him here!”

  Shit. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. What’s happening?” I asked as I walked down Hudson Street.

  “He’s out of fucking control is what’s happening. He actually said it didn’t sound current when he said last week that it needed to be tribal. He has no fucking clue what he wants, and if he did, he sure as shit wouldn’t know how to express it!” An angry Mario was a new experience for me. I found a bench without pigeon droppings and sat down.

  “What happened to the Mario Mendina who knows how to deal with difficult clients?”

  “That Mario bailed when his dumbass client hummed the most popular melody in cinematic history and said, ‘Something like that.’ You need to get on the next plane and deal with him.”

  If I did, we would risk losing the next project because my meeting for it was lunch the next day. I checked the time: 11:30 a.m. in L.A.

  “Okay, listen. Stall for me while I figure this out. Order lunch. Pretend to have a technical glitch, and I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”

  “Call me back in thirty minutes.”

  I hung up with Mario and dialed Bob.

  “Hey, stranger.” His calming voice melted a tiny bit of tension from my shoulders.

  “Hi, is this a bad time?”

  “Not at all. The baby is sleeping. Shoot.”

  I explained the backstory of Matthew Schiller, and Bob laughed because Mario hated hipsters and always had. The solution to the problem, for Bob, was easy. Schiller would want to feel like he had created the music, too. Had been hands on. We needed to get in a patient musician whom he could collaborate with and try different things. Mario was too intimidating. He would need to sit back for a day and let the director tinker around, so he felt like he was the hero and was saving the project.

  It didn’t matter that he wasn’t; unless things turned around, Mario would probably never work with him again anyway. We needed to focus on saving face with the producers at the studio by showing confidence in their young director. I thanked Bob profusely, asked him to send us some pictures of his new granddaughter, then called Mario again.

  I explained my plan—well, Bob’s plan—and crossed my fingers it would work.

  “I thought of that, but Steven’s not around,” Mario said.

  My mouth twitched, and I bit down on my lip before saying, “I could ask Jake …”

  “Don’t you think he has better things to do?”

  “Actually, no. And he would do it for me.” I hoped. I really fucking hoped.

  “Well, it would be impressive …”

  “Great. I’ll call him. And don’t worry. He’s really, really patient when it comes to music.”

  Jake laughed at the idea until the thought of negotiating payment came to mind.

  “I’d like the same agreement we had on Saturday night, but with roles reversed and the other weapon.”

  Ha! As if it would be some kind of skin off my back. Since I had admitted to myself I wanted him back, I’d been carefully plotting ways to move us forward little by little. And unbeknownst to him, I had bought a teeny-tiny shimmery piece of satin-and-lace on Sunday especially for him. I’d already planned on doing what he thought he was bargaining for. I smiled at the blasting car horns of Manhattan and “reluctantly” agreed to his terms.

  I called back to the office and told Mario that Jake was on his way and to set up and mic the drums.

  Helpless in Manhattan, I went to my next meeting and tried to be present while wondering what kind of job Jake was doing at calming nerves. At least he knew his way around a studio.

  Before dinner, I managed to get Mario to call me back, and he said things were moving forward. Matthew had spent the first half hour trying to build up his credentials in front of Jake. Lord, I wished I could have been in the meeting. I knew Jake would never be condescending; I had seen him over and over with his fans. He was always a doll, even when some of them got star struck and tongue tied. I wasn’t worried about him—more like for him. Matthew might eat him up or bore the pants off him with his self-promotion.

  They were still at it in L.A. when I’d finished dinner in New York. My only info came from Jake at 10:30 p.m. East Coast time, when he said he and Mario were going out to dinner. It was hard to know if they were celebrating or planning on drowning their sorrows after a long and horrible session. I’d have to wait until I was on my way to the airport the next day to get the full report from my boss.

  My lunch with our potential new client didn’t go as wonderfully as I had hoped. The studio had another composer in mind and I would need to up my strategy to get Mario the project. At least my contact had been honest with me and told me what I was up against.

  I stopped by the hotel, picked up my bag, and headed out of Manhattan to JFK. Once we exited the tunnel, I called the office, hoping for any news about the day before. The receptionist put me through to Mario, and from his greeting, I could tell the situation had improved.

  “It absolutely did the trick. Schiller is appeased—I mean, he still thinks he’s a genius and Jake told me he almost punched him in the face after he made some kind of lewd remark
about you—but we got some great samples, and he feels like he’s helped create the score. Plus, he spent the better part of the session bragging to his buddies about who he was working with.”

  We ran through the schedule for the next two days, and he emphasized how much he needed some peace and quiet on Friday. I told him I was sorry I hadn’t been there for the crisis, but one of Bob’s biggest nuggets of wisdom was that sales were made face-to-face with nurtured relationships, and I was sure, in the end, the trips would pay off. Ever since the Vincent incident, I’d had more confidence in my sales game than my production skills, but I didn’t want to mention that during another tricky situation.

  I hung up with my pacified composer and dialed my … what? Boyfriend?

  “Hey, gorgeous. When do you get in?”

  The concrete jungle with its bridges and tunnels disappeared behind my back and replaced itself with the brick housing projects of Queens. “Late. Thank you so much for yesterday. I heard you were a musical hero.”

  “You owe me bigtime. That dude is a massive douche.”

  “I fully intend on paying you back.” I grinned. I knew exactly how.

  “I fully intend on enjoying it. But not before I buy you dinner. Where do you want to go?”

  Buying me dinner? Good step, Mr. Riley.

  “Sushi, close to home. Did your bed come?”

  “Not yet. I’m gonna stay in Venice tonight. I’m meeting up with Gina.”

  “Really?” I’d thought he was keeping all things Spades at arm’s length but was happy he was taking a step forward.

  “Yeah, well, we’re still friends, she’s a bit lonely with Sam gone. Plus, I wanted to see Boom Boom.”

  Sentimental sap. He did love those dogs.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow night?” I asked.

  “You will see all of me tomorrow night.”

  35

  JAKE

  * * *

  My meeting with Gina served us both. I was working on a surprise for Louana, and I needed feminine input. And that girl needed to vent. And vent. Then she vented some more.