Connor abruptly stood up and left me, half-naked and sprawled on the garage floor. It occurred to me that the main door was still open. Down on the floor, we were a little more hidden than we had been, but any bikers in the compound who strolled past the garage door would be able to see us just fine….
Connor returned seconds later with a box of condoms. Not our usual, high-tech, glossily-packaged brand. Some basic, generic type, purely functional, for when it’s just about the sex. The same box shared by everyone at the club, dipped into when a girlfriend or a hooker or an old lady stopped by. Biker condoms.
It seemed appropriate.
He rolled one on as I lay there panting up at him, and for a second I was back in my apartment, all those months before, pleasuring myself with my dildo. How would Connor Locke take me?
“Turn over,” he told me in a voice thick with lust. “Hands and knees.”
I assumed the position, palms flat on the greasy fabric, feeling the chill of the concrete soaking through to my knees. With my back to the open doorway, I had no idea if anyone was watching us or not, and not knowing sent a dark thrill through me.
I felt Connor come up behind me, his dirty hands tracing up my bare thighs…my ass. And then his face was between my legs, his tongue flicking out to caress folds that were already moist. I shuddered and pushed back against him, my upper body sinking towards the floor. Again and again, his tongue traced the shape of me, until I was a helpless, writhing mass, drunk on pleasure.
And then I felt his hard length slide into me and I arched my back as I took him deep, his hands clasping my hips. Three long, slow thrusts into my tightness and he was completely within me. As he started to move, I let my shoulders sink the rest of the way to the floor, my cheek pressing against the tarpaulin. Hot red lust was throbbing through me, getting stronger with each thrust, my whole body jerking to the rhythm. I had my eyes squeezed tight shut, the world narrowing down to the feeling of him inside me, his thighs slapping against my ass. His hands came forward to squeeze my breasts, my nipples caught between his fingers, rubbing and—God—pinching me just right, and I knew he was leaving black smears on my pale skin and didn’t care. Every silken movement of him inside me added a new layer to the rhythm, the climax reaching up inside me to steal my voice, steal my breath—
“Connor!” I managed as the orgasm overtook me, and I pushed back with my hips, wanting him as deep as he could be. He thrust into me hard and my pleasure blossomed and spread, and then I felt him jerk and pulse inside me.
He slumped over me, his chest against my back, so close I could feel his heartbeat. His huge, calloused hands came down to cover my much smaller ones, rubbing over the backs of them again and again. Comforting and protecting me, forever.
***
As he pulled on a t-shirt, Connor asked me, “So, how do you want to spend your first night of poverty? I can stretch to a takeout pizza. Maybe.”
I kissed him while fastening my jeans. “Later. First, there’s something I need to do.”
Chapter 32
Jasmine had told me the hotel she was meeting her client at. I just prayed that she’d be early…or that he’d be late. Neil gave me a lift on his bike, grinning and muttering something about how Darrell was the one who’d got to do this, last time. We roared through the streets with me clinging onto his back and his long hair whipping me in the face. A few times I wondered if we were going to survive, but he got me there faster than any cab could have.
“Wait there,” I told him as I handed him back his helmet. My hair, already tousled from the sex, was now a complete mess. “I need to talk to you, too.”
He looked a little unsettled at that, but I ignored him. I also ignored the hotel doorman, who looked aghast at my appearance.
I found Jasmine at the bar, in a long green dress. When she saw me, she turned on her stool to gape.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked. “He’ll be here any minute!” She looked closer. “Is that oil on your face? Why’s your hair all scrunched up?”
I didn’t have time for long explanations. “I had filthy sex on the floor of a biker garage,” I told her. “Neil brought me here on his bike.”
Her eyes went huge as she made the wrong connection.
“The sex was with Connor, you idiot! Grab your purse. You’re coming with me.”
She shook her head. “You know I can’t. He’ll be here—”
“Call him and cancel. Tell him you’re pulling out. You’re not going to be an escort.”
Her face darkened. “I thought you were supporting me!”
“I am supporting you. I’m doing what I should have done from the start and slapping some sense into you. You are an amazing actress, you are going to be a success and you do not need to do this.”
She froze, as if I’d broken some spell by saying the magic words. “But—I don’t have any other place to go,” she said. “Karen, I can’t move in with my brother….”
“I know. You’re moving in with me. You can sleep on the couch.”
She shook her head. “No. God, I couldn’t—”
I grabbed her by the shoulders. “Yes you can and yes you will.” My voice softened slightly. “Part of being a good friend is letting your friends know when they’re being fucking stupid, and saving them even when they don’t want to be saved. I’m…sorry I didn’t see that before.”
We clutched each other tight, and suddenly we were both blinking back tears.
“Wait. Did you just curse?” Jasmine asked.
I giggled through my tears.
A man in his forties tentatively approached us. “Vanessa?” he asked uncertainly.
Jasmine turned to him. “Nope,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Never heard of her.”
***
I filled Jasmine in on what she’d missed, put her in a cab and told the driver to keep the meter running. Then I walked over to Neil.
He was still sitting on his bike, parked right in front of the hotel’s main doors. The doorman looked like he wanted to say something, but clearly wasn’t going to mess with Neil. I wasn’t surprised. I’d found Neil pretty intimidating, too.
Until I got angry.
“You need to tell Clarissa that you love her,” I told him.
“I—What?!”
“She’s unhappy and worried and you need to fix it. She and Natasha have been trying to figure out a way that she can fix it, but she’s not the problem. You’re the problem.”
“Now hold on just one second—”
“You’re tough and moody and you can growl in her ear and make her drop her panties in three seconds flat, okay—we get it! But I know there’s more to you than that. Natasha said you helped Darrell, back when they nearly split. You helped me tonight. Open up and talk to Clarissa or you’re going to lose her, you big…lunk!”
He went quiet. Then he swung one leg off his bike so he could turn all of his powerful body to face me. “’Lunk’?”
“It was all I could think of,” I said, flushing.
He gave me a long look. “Open up, huh?”
“Open up. If you really love her.”
He didn’t answer at first. He swung his leg back over his bike and started it up, and a terrible fear clutched at my chest, that I’d just tipped some awful balance and driven them apart.
Staring at the road ahead, Neil said, “I love that girl more than words can say.”
And he was gone, powering off into the traffic.
***
We swung by the motorcycle club to pick up Connor. It was a weird cab ride back to my apartment, with Jasmine sitting between us. It should have been awkward, but somehow it wasn’t—we held hands across Jasmine’s lap and she slipped an arm around each of us and we all just sat there in silence, letting everything that had happened sink in. I’d glance at one or the other of them and we’d exchange smiles in the brief flashes of light from the streetlights. I had my man back, I had my friend back, and that was all that mattered.
&n
bsp; ***
In my apartment, Jasmine declared that her first day of work had exhausted her and that she was going to crash out. Connor and I moved into my room.
“What was she doing, anyway?” Connor asked. “She said she was working, but she’s dressed for a date.”
“Long story,” I told him. “And one I’m not going to tell you.” Jasmine’s brief career as an escort would stay between her and me.
“Can I take a shower, before we do anything else?” he asked. “I’m covered in oil.”
“I’m covered in oil too.” I looked at the bed. “So it doesn’t much matter.”
Connor considered. “Or…we could take a shower together.”
The bed sounded good, but that sounded even better.
Jasmine must have been able to hear us. The lounge was just down the hall from the bathroom, and even though we started out quiet, with Connor soaping my back and sliding his hands down my flanks, it soon got a lot noisier. Kneeling in front of me, the water thundering down onto his head like a warm waterfall, he had me groaning and thumping on the wall with my fist. When he fucked me, my back braced against the wet tiles and my legs wrapped around his waist, my cries must have reached the next apartment, never mind the lounge. But when we emerged, wrapped in towels, and crept back to my room, all we could hear from the lounge was gentle snoring.
Of course, she was a very good actress.
Chapter 33
The next morning, I took Connor with me to Fenbrook to collect a few things and say my goodbyes. Technically, I could have kept going to lectures right up until the recital, but I knew I couldn’t perform without Connor, and Connor had flunked out—so what was the point?
The place was quiet, everyone either in classes or huddled in practice rooms working away at their recital pieces. Exactly where we would have been, if Ruth hadn’t screwed Connor over on the essay. I trailed my hand along the wall as we trudged down the corridor. The place had been my home for almost four years, and now—
I realized Connor wasn’t with me. He’d stopped a few paces back, staring at something on the wall. I backed up to see what it was.
It was the poster I’d pretended to read when I’d been stressing about being a virgin the day of our first real date, what seemed like a lifetime ago. The Fenbrook Improvisation Challenge! A Timed Composition for Extra Credit. “What?” I asked Connor.
He looked at me, and then looked at the poster.
Extra credit.
“Connor, they just run that for snob value. It’s for the super-elite. No one actually enters it. Certainly no one manages to do well in it!”
“Technically,” he said slowly, “we don’t have to do well in it. We just have to enter.”
I blinked. The improv challenge was held after the recitals. If Connor and I entered it, theoretically he still had a shot—however unlikely—at getting the grades he needed to graduate. And therefore they’d have to let him do the recital. And if we aced the recital, I could still graduate. Connor had come up with a sneaky, backdoor way to give me my dream back.
“We don’t even have to show up for the challenge,” he told me excitedly. “Entering just gets us back into the recital.”
I thought about it. We’d have to rehearse like hell for the recital, with Connor knowing that however well we did in it, he still wouldn’t graduate. It melted my heart that he was willing to go through all that just to give me a chance, but it would break my heart to do it.
I shook my head. “No,” I said firmly. “It’s not enough.”
“You could graduate!”
“I’m not putting you through all that if you don’t have a chance too. If we do this, we do it for real. We get you back into Fenbrook, we ace the recital and I graduate, then we ace the improv and you graduate, too.”
Connor gaped at me. “You just said it was for the ‘super-elite’. You said before it was hardcore, remember?”
I squared my shoulders. “Then we’ll just have to be hardcore. We’re in this together, or not at all.”
He stared at me for a long time. “You can be a stubborn bloody mare at times, you know.” He pulled me into a hug, my head against his chest. “Thank you.”
We went to see Harman.
***
“No,” said Harman. “Definitely not. You shouldn’t even be on Fenbrook property, Connor.”
“If he enters the improvisation challenge, he could still get the grades he needs to graduate,” I told Harman.
“Barely!” said Harman. “And he can’t enter. He’s already been kicked out.”
“Technically,” I told him, a warning note in my voice, “you shouldn’t have kicked him out. It was still possible for him to graduate—how did you know he wasn’t going to enter?”
That threw him, and he gave me a long look before finally sighing in defeat. I’d trapped him in his own rules again. “Okay,” he admitted. “We missed that one.”
“So if we sign up for the improv challenge, Connor’s back in?” I asked. “He can do the recital with me? He could still graduate?”
“If you were to ace the recital, you could still graduate,” Harman said tiredly. “I suppose in theory, if you scored top marks on the improvisation…yes, Connor could too. But—no offense—that’s a big ‘if’. No-one’s ever scored that highly in the improvisation. Certainly not with your…unusual choice of instruments. With all due respect, Karen, I admire your determination, but I’d advise you—”
I leaned over his desk, all five foot four inches of me. “With all due respect, Professor Harman…I think it’s time I started making my own decisions.”
***
We had one week to not only nail the recital, but learn how to improvise together. We needed more than just rehearsals; we were going to war.
We chose Connor’s apartment as our bunker. Ruth had packed her bags and left, destination unknown. With Jasmine crashing at my place, it made more sense to work at Connor’s—besides, his neighbors were more forgiving than mine and we weren’t going to have time to be considerate about when we practiced.
When we arrived, I eyed the space. I’d forgotten just how small it was. Rehearsing there as we had in the past was one thing, but with two of us living there we were going to be crawling over each other. And yet somehow, because it was Connor…that didn’t sound so bad.
I drew up a planner. I couldn’t find a piece of paper big enough, so I drew straight on the wall, constructing a massive grid eight feet wide and as tall as I could reach, and then filling it in. “Rehearsals are light green through dark green,” I told him. “Lightest green for the first piece, darkest green for the final piece. Improv practice is yellow.”
“You think this’ll get us there in time?” he asked.
I gave him a look. “This is what I do.”
“What’s red?”
“Mealtimes.”
“What’s blue?”
“Showers.”
“What’s pink—Oh. Really?! You even scheduled—”
“I could take it off the grid if you want,” I deadpanned. “More time for rehearsing.”
He put his hands together in prayer. “Please don’t.”
***
In the improvisation challenge, we’d be given a basic melody and would have to compose around it—in thirty minutes—and then perform what we’d composed. There’d be no time for back-and-forth and second-guessing each other. We had to function as one, despite our very different instruments.
The first time we tried it, we’d barely strung together ten bars when we ran out of time and the cello and guitar never blended. Connor was better at it than I was—he’d had years of jamming in bars. I’d spent my entire life with organization and structure.
“I can’t do it,” I told him. “I can’t not know in advance what I’m going to do. I can’t walk in there without any idea of what the music’s going to be.”
He put his hands on my shoulders and made me look at him. “If there’s one thing you’ve taught me,
it’s that we can change,” he said.
And so we practiced. We found an old kitchen timer and set it at random, behind our backs. When it went off, we had to stop whatever we were doing, turn on an old, thrift-store radio and listen to the music that was playing—whether it was rap or classical or a commercial for toothpaste. And then we had thirty minutes to come up with something based on that melody that didn’t suck.
We clashed at first, wasting time by arguing. Even after all our time rehearsing together, it was difficult to get past that, to stop thinking on our own and start trusting each other to do our parts. But we ran the exercise five or six times a day and, gradually, we got slicker. After a few days, we could use every second of the thirty minutes productively, him focusing on the flowing parts that could be winged and me focusing on the ones with heavy structure that needed precision. I was the tent poles; he was the canvas.
Meanwhile, we had to get the recital nailed. Playing through it again and again was like reliving the course of our relationship: the first pair of sections, written when we hardly knew each other, both of us separate and aloof. The second pair, when I’d written him into the music and he’d written me. And then the final pair, the ones written after we’d had sex. Mine a delicate blending of our two styles, intimate but romantic; his urgent and powerful, the guitar parts hard and almost brutal as the cello wrapped itself around them—
We were usually tearing each other’s clothes off within seconds of finishing that part.
We rehearsed on the roof whenever the weather allowed it, the music floating out across the neighborhood. We’d refuel on coffee and work late into the night, and then be too wired to sleep, talking or fucking until the early hours.
In Harmony Page 28
