Record, Rewind

by Ava Lore

  Ah. The regret of a pot-idea. I couldn’t blame him, though. Sometimes things just sounded like really good ideas when you were high. Now he was laid low by performance anxiety.

  Well. Dalton Rooker isn’t perfect after all. Or is it Damien Colton?

  The question was too philosophical for me. “You’d better come up,” I said to Damien, then closed the window and retreated, waiting for the wonderful feeling of being pursued, and when the buzzer on my door sounded, I smiled.

  Chapter Seven

  “How’d you find my apartment?” I asked a very nervous-looking Damien as he sat on my beat-up sofa and sipped a cup of three-day-old reheated coffee.

  “Called your parents,” he said.

  Of course he did.

  I studied him from my perch a few yards away on the coffee table. I wasn’t comfortable being too near him yet, but I also didn’t have any other furniture. That sofa did triple and quadruple duty sometimes.

  He sat awkwardly, nothing like the suave and confident rock musician who had showed up on the street outside my window. His knees knocked together and he held his elbows in his lap as though he were trying to protect his nuts from a beating.

  Which he might very well be doing, I thought. I probably had every right to kick him in the nuts, actually. You don’t go confessing your love to a girl, give her the most intense orgasm of her life, and then tell her not to call you.

  He knew it, too, because he wouldn’t meet my eye. Now that he wasn’t wearing the armor of his guitar, he seemed vulnerable and small.

  “So,” I said finally, “is there something you wanted to talk to me about?”

  He bit his lip and I tried not to forgive everything then and there for the chance to bite his lip for him. “Yes,” he said. “There is.”

  “...And?”

  Damien took a deep breath. “I want to start over.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “You and everyone else in the universe.”

  He finally met my eyes with a pained look. “I mean start over with us.”

  I pursed my lips. “You mean like with our smoke break?”

  “No,” he said, “I mean like with our whole relationship.”

  “So you want to start over at the point where you got onto the elevator?”

  His jaw clenched. “I don’t think so,” he said slowly. “I mean we should go all the way back to the beginning. When we met in high school.”

  “We never really met in high school,” I couldn’t help but point out.

  “Yes,” he said, “and that’s the problem. I don’t know about you but I’ve been carrying around this little flame for you for years, but when we finally met on that rooftop you were nothing like I remembered.”

  He must have seen the dismayed look on my face because he hastened to add: “I mean, you are like I remembered, but you’ve changed a lot, too. And that’s great. I think I might like you even more now. Especially because this is the version of you I’ve actually spoken to.”

  I had to smile at that. I’d been thinking the same thing. And I knew the reverse was also true. Was I talking to Damien, or Dalton? The boy I’d known, or the man I didn’t? And did it matter? I’d never really known Dalton anyway, except as a girlish dream. “I get what you’re saying,” I told him, “although I think you still have an idealized version of me in your head.”

  He frowned. “Really? Why?”

  I tugged on my ear, nervous. “Because I’m not...you really liked the smart girl, remember?”

  “Are you saying you somehow got dumb since high school?” The idea seemed to amuse him.

  “It happens,” I said. “Especially to people who smoke too much weed.”

  “Okay, fair enough. Still. You think you’re stupider now?”

  I shook my head. How can one person be so dense? I thought. “I mean I’m a huge failure now.”

  There. My big issue, the problem that gnawed at my soul, on the table for him to see.

  He stared at me blankly. “I don’t get it,” he said at last.

  I sighed, exasperated. “Look, the reason I didn’t want you to notice me was because I am completely, utterly ashamed of how badly I’ve fucked everything up. I’m a failure at twenty-five. How bad at life do you have to be to be a failure at twenty-five? And you!” I waved at him. “You’re the biggest success to ever come out of our silly little town, and I was just...ashamed.”

  Tears pricked behind my eyes and I angrily blinked them away. “I didn’t want to face the guy I’ve always crushed on like...like this.” I pointed to myself, to my shitty little rathole apartment, to the bare walls and piles of laundry and dishes stacked in the sink. “It was humiliating.”

  At last understanding softened his face. “But Cassie,” he said, “you’re only twenty-five. You can’t be a failure yet.”

  “Want to try me?” I said.

  He scoffed. “If that’s how you feel about it, everyone’s a failure right up to the point where they succeed. I was a failure at twenty-two by your standard.”

  “It’s not the same,” I said.

  “It sure as hell is the same,” he replied. “You’re not a failure. You just haven’t succeeded yet.”

  My eyes prickled again. Stupid tears. I closed my eyes and willed them away.

  “Hmm,” he said.

  I blinked at him. “What?” I said.

  “I take it back,” he said. “I’m now wondering if you did get dumber after high school.”

  “Damien!”

  “Only an idiot would be ashamed of being you,” he told me. “And you’re not an idiot.”

  “And I’m not the girl you think you know, or knew, or whatever.”

  “I know,” he said softly. “That’s why I want to start over. I don’t want you to remember me, either.”

  I shook my head. “Not possible,” I told him.

  “It has to be,” he replied. “If you want to try this out, it has to be possible.”

  I frowned. “Try what out?”

  He grinned his crooked grin at me. “Try out dating each other,” he said. “Duh.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Is that what we’re going to do?”

  “I’d sure like to,” he said. “Don’t you?”

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  “You think?”

  I shrugged and he smiled.

  “Fine,” he conceded. “I’ll take what I can get. Anyway. I think we should start all over. We need to pretend that we just met each other. I want to have a relationship with the person you are now, not the one I think I remember.”

  “That’s fine,” I said, “but why do you want me to forget about you?”

  He looked away for a moment. “Because I’m a failure, too,” he said.

  My mouth fell open. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me.” He shrugged. “I remember the person I was back then and I was...so different. Open and caring and ready to trust people. I wanted to be everyone’s friend.” He shook his head. “I don’t want that anymore. It’s a fool’s errand. When you get famous, you find out who your real friends are, and I think I never actually had any to begin with.”

  His shoulders slumped and he looked at the ground. “I don’t want to remember how stupid I was. I just want to forget all the hurt my success has caused me.”

  My heart melted. “Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.

  He shook his head again. “No. Maybe one day. I just...want to start over new.”

  I watched him. “If you wanted that, then why didn’t you pretend not to know me in the elevator?”

  A faint smile impressed itself upon his lips. “Because it was worth it to remember who I used to be and all those fake friends I had if it meant I got to talk to you.”

  Well... I thought after a moment. Shit.

  Seriously. What girl could resist that?

  “All right,” I said softly. “I agree. I want to start over new, too.”

  His eyes snapped to mine and he studied me, intensely, for a long momen
t, as though he suspected I were lying to him, and I realized that he was right. We had to forget what we thought we knew if we were ever going to connect in the here and now.

  And here and now I saw a wounded young man, who wanted only the comfort of my arms.

  So I reached out and gave it to him.

  He started as my hands met his shoulders, but as I moved toward him, my arms encircling his neck, he relaxed into me. His hands gripped my hips and maneuvered me crosswise onto his lap, and for a long moment he rested his head against my breasts, quiet and content to listen to my heartbeat.

  It was bliss, but before long I grew restless. The moment I shifted, he lifted his face to mine and in a sudden, possessive move he captured my mouth with his own.

  Passion rose without warning. One moment we were simply warm and the next there was only a roaring blaze where our hearts had once stood.

  Suddenly his gentle hands were grasping, seeking, running up my back and down my hips, cupping my ass and digging his fingers in. I gasped against his mouth and he invaded me, relentless. His tongue stroked against mine, hard and full, and between my legs I was suddenly somehow both on fire and soaking wet.

  I moaned as he nipped at my lower lip, and before I knew it he had tipped me over and I landed on the couch as he loomed over me, his powerful legs insinuating themselves between my thighs. One hard muscle rubbed over my aching clit and I gasped and ground against his leg, struggling to recapture the sensation.

  “Jesus, Cassie,” he whispered, and his voice was hoarse with desire. “You don’t know what that does to me.”

  “Hopefully it makes you want to fuck me,” I said, breathlessly.

  My hands were tangled in his shirt, tugging him down toward me, but he hung back for a moment, and I made a frustrated noise. I wanted to fuck him, and I wanted to fuck him now. I didn’t care that I was a virgin, that we were starting over, that I didn’t even know him. If anything, I wanted to lose my virginity to the boy I once knew and come to the new man knowing how to please him. I wanted him learn that I knew how to give pleasure, how to act in bed. When we started over, I wanted to be able to give myself to him without that awkward first time standing between us.

  On the other hand, I seemed to be doing a pretty good job already.

  “You don’t, uh...” He groped for words as his eyes slid closed. I slipped my hands over his chest until my searching fingers found a nipple and gave him a little pinch.

  “Shit!” His hips bucked, fucking the air, and I was suddenly too hot, too confined. I needed my clothes off. Now.

  Also his clothes, too, if I could swing it.

  My fingers fumbled at the buttons of his shirt, clumsy and anxious, and I nearly screamed with frustration when his fingers closed around mine, arresting them.

  “You don’t think, uh, that we should wait?” he panted at me.

  “No,” I said.

  “Oh,” he replied. Then he quirked his little grin at me and shrugged. “Twist my arm.” And then he was on top of me.

  I moaned as his weight settled over my body, pushing me deep and hard into the couch cushions, his hands tangling in my hair. My fingers resumed their desperate task, popping button after button through buttonhole after buttonhole, and slowly, quickly, his shirt fell away and the firm flesh of his chest and flat stomach emerged.

  In wonderment I pressed my hands flat against his skin and he groaned in response, his body undulating in that same primal, ancient rhythm we’d first found on the rooftop. His jeans scraped against my pajama pants, abrading the skin beneath as his fingers gently slipped under the hem of my t-shirt and, in a swift, practiced move, had it up and over my head and on the floor in two seconds flat.

  I gasped at being so abruptly exposed. I’d never been so naked in front of a guy before, and I crossed my hands over my chest, clad in a small, lacy bra.

  But Damien tugged my hands away.

  “Don’t hide yourself from me,” he breathed. “You’re beautiful.”

  And just like that, I felt beautiful.

  Reaching behind my back, Damien undid the clasp of my bra, quick as lightning, and it fell to the floor too. Then he sat back for a moment, his eyes dark with desire as he drank me in.

  I must have looked a sight—hair undone, no makeup, frumpy clothes—but the way Damien looked at me I felt like I was a queen. A starlet on the red carpet.

  “Oh, Cassie,” he said. His hands descended and cupped my breasts.

  The effect on me was immediate. Delicious warmth shot through me as he fondled my breasts roughly, playing with my nipples, stroking and soothing. My whole body was on fire, but between my legs there was an ache like none I’d ever felt before, a need so powerful I felt as though I would collapse into a black hole of desire if Damien didn’t fill me.

  I reached for him. “Please,” I said. “Take me to bed.”

  “Gladly,” he said.

  To my momentary dismay, he backed away and I was left cold and alone, but then he scooped me up into his arms and carried me effortlessly across my apartment to the door of the bedroom.

  He tossed me down on the bed and immediately joined me. This time his hands went to my waistband and, hooking his fingers under the elastic, he stripped me of my pants and panties in one smooth movement.

  Probably just as well, I thought hazily. I was sure they were soaked through.

  Then he covered my body with his again and his hands were rough and searching, all over me, and I writhed under his touch, loving the wildness in him, the urgency that I’d never imagined him possessing before now.

  My hands went to the fly of his jeans and after only one aborted try I’d undone them. Eagerly I slipped my hand inside his zipper, aching to feel his cock with my own fingers, but he smiled down at me and pulled back again.

  “No!” I said.

  He laughed, though it was breathless. “Patience,” he chided me. He shoved his own hands into his jeans and boxers, then pushed them down and stepped out of them.

  There’s so much to say about his body. Sculpted. Taut. Covered in ink. But really, his body was sort of secondary to my true desire.

  The enormous cock, upright and proud, between his legs.

  I gulped. It was so cliché, but I couldn’t help but wonder where exactly he was going to stuff all of that.

  He laughed at the expression on my face. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll be gentle.”

  “Oh,” I said, and he laughed again.

  “Try not to sound so disappointed, okay?”

  “Okay,” I replied. I watched as he extracted a shiny packet from his jeans—a condom, I realized—and chewed my lip.

  He came back and sat on the edge of the bed. Idly he reached out and ran his fingers up the damp cleft between my thighs. My hips bucked and I moaned. Abruptly I sat up and, before he had a chance to protest, I grabbed his cock in my hand.

  It was everything I’d ever hoped for. Heavy, hot, hard. I needed it in me.

  “Put the condom on,” I demanded.

  He grinned. “You don’t want me to—” he began.

  “I need you to fuck me,” I said, and I did. I hadn’t known how badly I did until he’d walked into my elevator, but it had been far too many years without knowing his touch. I had to have him now.

  His grin faded. “All right,” he said quietly. “I promise I’ll be gentle.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “As long as you get rough later.”

  His eyes flashed, and I knew I’d said the right thing. Without further ado he ripped the condom open and rolled it down his cock in one fluid motion.

  Then he was on top of me, and my legs were hiked up high around his waist and his cock pressed against my aching entrance.

  God. Yes. I clung to him and arched my back, pushing forward, and he groaned something that sounded like my name before letting himself sink into me.

  It hurt. Yes, it hurt. But it was a good kind of hurt. An aching, stretching hurt, and by the time he had buried himself inside
me I had already figured out how to tip my hips and adjust, trying to get as much of him inside as possible.

  “Christ, Cassie,” he whispered. “You’re so fucking sexy, you have no idea.”

  “I thought you liked me for my smarts,” I gasped.

  He laughed. “Both,” he said. “It’s both.”

  Withdrawing his hips in one lazy, sensual motion, he dragged a shriek of pleasure from my lips, and then he was rocking against me, hot and immediate, all barriers between us falling away, the past, the present, the future, all of it meaningless in the face of the sudden driving need, and I urged him to go faster and faster.

  He complied with soft moans as I lifted my hips to meet him, and as his chest brushed against my breasts I felt an orgasm start to build.

  “Oh,” I said. “I think...I think I’m going to come...”

  “Good,” he grunted. “Good. Come for me, Cassie. Come for me.”

  The command in his voice reached through my brain, down into my spinal cord, and yanked.

  I came.

  It was violent, almost painful. My whole body clung to Damien as though I were drowning, as though I were trying to swallow him whole, cock first. I couldn’t even scream. My throat closed with pleasure, and I quivered and came around his cock as Damien roared and lost control, his hips thrusting against mine, pounding me relentlessly, turning my orgasm white hot, and behind my closed eyelids I could only see stars—

  “Cassie!”

  He managed to yell my name as he finally came, his cock jerking inside me before my body milked his cum from him. For a long minute he thrust hard, pouring himself out, until at last it was over.

  Together we collapsed in the tangled sheets, breathing hard.

  A minute passed as we lay there, stunned. Then, from the center of the floor, a loud banging sounded.

  The world swam back into focus and I rolled my eyes.

  That? Would be Dwayne, letting me know he’d heard me get laid by banging a broom on the ceiling like a cantankerous old lady.

  Way to kill the mood, I thought, but in a way I was glad. The experience we had just shared had been so...intense. I felt as though we had been melted down in its fire and reforged into something new. We needed time to process it.