by N. Kognytao
Finally, she got out of her chair, ignoring the way Jay called to her.
“Mr. Gracie?” she called, running after him. The older man turned.
“Ms. Dillon.”
“I really hate to bother you, but I was hoping you could help me with something.”
Mr. Gracie looked over her expression for only a moment before sighing.
“Is this about Braydon?”
“…yes,” Leah admitted quietly. “I haven’t heard from him in six days. I’m not trying to talk to him all the time or anything, but I just…I want to make sure that he’s okay, and that I didn’t do something to piss him off.”
The older man smiled, shaking his head.
“He’s probably just in work-mode finishing a manuscript,” he assured, extracting his phone from his pocket and typing a quick text. Leah watched the action, wondering why she wished that Braydon would not text Tim Gracie back. It was the first time that Leah felt angry about not knowing Braydon better. She wanted to learn everything about him. She wanted to be able to say so coolly and calmly that he was probably just working, the same way Mr. Gracie did.
“Six days, you said?” Mr. Gracie asked, glancing up from the phone. “That’s nothing to be concerned about. Sometimes he goes off the radar for a whole month. It’s generally when we haven’t heard from him in over a month that we get worried.”
“You don’t think I upset him somehow?”
“I doubt it,” he said. “Unless you’re being clingy and stalking him. He needs a lot of space, Ms. Dillon.”
“Then, not contacting anyone for a week is normal for him? Even with people he’s close to?”
“Absolutely.”
They both glanced at Mr. Gracie’s phone as it buzzed. He smiled, turning the screen for the singer to see.
Haven’t spoken to you in a while. How are you?
Braydon: Can’t talk. Working.
“See?”
Leah sighed, trying to be content at knowing that he was at least alright.
Mr. Gracie pocketed his phone.
“Have a good night, Ms. Dillon,” he said, turning away and walking down the hall, leaving Leah to stand nervously alone, trying to sort the complicated feelings trapped in her ribcage.
Once he rounded the corner, Mr. Gracie pulled out his phone once more, ignoring the various notifications of emails and messages he had yet to respond to and going back to his text messages. He typed another message to Braydon.
Your girlfriend thinks she upset you. Communicate with her a little more until she understands your hermit ways.
* * *
Leah fell into uneasy sleep in her dorm room around two in the morning, her thoughts troubled with worries about Braydon.
However, when she woke and grabbed her phone, she was startled to see a text message that had been sent to her around four in the morning.
Braydon: What are you doing Saturday night?
She was sure she had never typed so fast with her thumbs in her life.
We should finish recording around six if we’re still in the studio. After that I don’t have plans.
She was glued to the spot, waiting for his response. She was sure she had even stopped breathing. She wondered if he had fallen asleep already, considering the text was sent only three and a half hours previous.
However, as soon as she was beginning to believe he was sleeping, she saw the notification that he was typing.
She waited, unblinking.
Braydon: Do you want to join me for dinner once you’re done recording? I’ll make home-made pizza.
She did not even bother to read what he was going to make for dinner. She immediately replied with a yes.
The short conversation had changed her entire attitude and everyone could see her sheer happiness. Leah was energetic enough to write lyrics for three different songs, even though none of them had a melody yet. Jay spent a lot of time staring suspiciously at the vocalist. When Leah caught the stare, she stared back.
“What?”
“Alright, who’s the guy?” he asked. “Or girl? Whichever you prefer.”
“Guy, and it’s a secret,” she said with a broad grin.
“A secret?” Yasmine asked. “Why is he a secret?”
“You know who it is?” Jay asked, looking at the young bass player.
“We all saw him after the opening for Glaring Nights. He’s a sort-of celebrity, too,” she answered. “I guess that’s why you want to keep it a secret…”
“Well, don’t keep it a secret from me!” Jay snapped. “Name!” he demanded with a snap of his fingers.
“Kyle Hayward,” Yasmine said as Leah nearly leapt out of her chair in an attempt to stop Yasmine from saying anything.
“Calm down, you drama queen. I can keep a secret,” the producer groaned, pushing Leah back across the table. “And I know that name…”
“He’s an author,” Aaron elaborated.
“I said it was a secret!” Leah near-cried.
“Wait,” Jay said, turning to Leah with a knowing glance that had her hiding her head under her hands. “Is he pretty tall? Brown hair? Green eyes?”
Leah peered up through her fingers and Jay let out a loud bark of laughter, his head falling backward, his entire body jerking with fits of laughter.
“What?” Aaron asked. “What’s so funny?”
“You are so screwed!” Jay boomed, smacking his leg, heavily amused. Leah groaned and beat her head lightly against the table a few times. “Oh, I feel so bad for you. No wonder you got put through the ringer!”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Carson asked, looking between the two. Everyone was confused by Jay’s boisterous laughter and Leah’s guilty expression.
“Then you know, too…” Leah murmured, glancing at the producer when Jay’s laughter began to ebb.
“I do,” he said. “I was at the wedding.”
Leah banged her head a few times on the desk again, a little harder that time.
“Seems our vocalist is dating the boss’ younger brother,” Jay said, his eyebrows high.
“What?!” was the general consensus around the room.
“It was supposed to be a secret!” Leah lamented.
“Let me assure you, it will be now,” Jay insisted. “Without knowing that Braydon, I mean, Kyle, is Tim’s younger brother, they could let it slip that you were dating him. Now that they know, they won’t say anything, will you?”
“Hell no,” Keith snapped. “Shit, did you know he was related to Mr. Gracie?”
“No, not until a week ago,” Leah mumbled. “And it’s by marriage. He’s his brother-in-law, they’re not blood related.”
Jay let out a long breath, though a smile still remained on his face.
“Ah, you have Tim as a boss and as protector to his complicated younger brother,” he giggled. “I feel so bad for you!”
* * *
Despite the teasing, Leah was still extremely excited to see Braydon that Saturday night. Once she was done recording, she darted back to her dorm room to change and clean up, hurriedly applying a little more makeup, before catching the bus to his area of town. She went to the front desk of Braydon’s building and said she was there to see him. They called up to the room and cleared her to enter.
In the elevator, she was bouncing on his heels, nervous and thrilled at the same time. She had to take several deep breaths to keep her heart from climbing out her throat. It was only when she was in the elevator that she mentally slapped herself for not bringing a bottle of wine or something for dinner.
She walked to unit 8711 and knocked on the door.
Taking a deep breath, she prepared herself to see him.
Braydon opened the door with a gentle smile.
“Hi.”
“Hey,” she said, stepping inside. Even though she had only been there once before, she felt as though the flat was familiar and comforting. As she shrugged the coat from her shoulders, Braydon took it and hung it on the hook next to t
he door.
“Finish all your work?” she asked.
“Yes, finally,” he said, walking further into the loft. She took the moment to appreciate how he looked. He was wearing a long-sleeve sweater again, but had jeans that hung perfectly from his hips as if they were tailored for him. His hair had been slightly tamed, though the waves still looked wild on his head, which amplified the bright light in his green eyes.
“I just put the pizza in so it will be about forty minutes.”
“I didn’t know you could make pizza from scratch.”
“When I’m not staying up all night trying to meet deadlines, I enjoy cooking,” he said, grabbing two wine glasses from the counter and a bottle. He lifted it. “Wine okay?”
“Yes. Sorry, I guess I should have brought a bottle,” she said sheepishly.
Braydon shook his head, smiling as he poured the wine. “That’s alright. I have a large selection of wine.”
Leah walked over to the small dining table, looking over the simple place settings. “So, what made you contact me out of the blue?”
He walked over, handing her a glass of wine and leaning against the table.
“I wanted to apologize.”
“For what?”
“Not contacting you.” He took a sip of his wine. “When I’m writing, I check out of reality. I can be distant, or completely absent. But that is no reflection on you. I wasn’t avoiding you.”
“Yeah, Mr. Gracie told me.” She tapped her finger against the glass and then sighed. “Look, before we start dinner, can we talk about him for a moment?”
“Did he say something to you?”
“…sort of,” she murmured, sitting at the table. Braydon took the other seat.
“Tim’s a bit weird when it comes to mixing family and business, so he might have been harsher than he needed to be,” he said.
“But…it got me thinking about a lot of things,” she said. “I don’t know how else to say it, so I’ll just…come out and say it, I guess. I like you, and I want to get to know you. I enjoy the way I feel when I’m around you. And when I found out that you were my boss’s brother-in-law, I was terrified that he would tell me to stop seeing you.”
“He better not have told you that,” Braydon said, his eyes growing dark.
Leah hesitated. “He did say a few things to try and scare me away, I think,” she admitted. “He told me that you were very difficult to get to know, and that you’re not very good at maintaining relationships, and we were likely to fight, and that if I was not prepared to handle that, it would be best for me to walk away.”
He let out a long sigh, shaking his head and lifting his wine glass to his lips.
“Sounds like Tim,” he groaned. After taking a sip of wine, he lowered the glass once more, staring into it. “But, he was telling the truth. I am difficult, and I know that. I don’t like people getting to close to me. It makes me uncomfortable.” He pursed his lips, looking distantly at the table top. “But, if I’m being honest…I like you as well, which is…an uncomfortable feeling for me.”
“…should I be flattered or insulted?” she laughed.
“Flattered,” he assured. “It makes me want to try to be open to exploring where this goes. But…when I learned that you were going to be working for RM, I was also worried because I know that it puts Tim in a difficult position, which I do not want to do. But, you also need to pursue your career, so if you are not comfortable with—”
“That’s not it at all,” Leah assured. “I just…I wish you would have told me that my boss was your brother-in-law.”
“I had no idea how to bring it up.”
“He’s married to your older sister?”
“Younger, step-sister.”
“Oh, so…”
“So there is no blood relation but a lot of familial relations,” he completed for her. “Her father married my mother when I was seventeen and she was sixteen. Tim’s family lived next door to my mother and me, so that’s how we all got to know one another.”
“Small world.”
“Particularly with Tim Gracie,” he agreed under his breath. He swirled the wine in his glass. “Listen, if he starts giving you shit about me, let me know. I’ll set him straight.”
“It’s fine,” she assured. “Like you said, this is a difficult position for him. We can’t blame him for being worried.”
The two fell into silence before Braydon stood and looked around.
“Are you hungry? It’s going to be a while for the pizza. I can fix some snacks.”
As soon as she began talking, Leah got to her feet and reached out for his arm. As he turned to her, she stepped forward, wrapping her arms around him. He smiled, his fingers going down and tracing the line of her jaw, applying just enough pressure to the touch to tilt her head upward. With a small smile, he leaned forward and pressed their lips together.
It opened the flood gates.
Braydon’s hands went to the back of her head, deepening the kiss and holding her tight, her body arching to meet his. She was startled how differently he tasted that night compared to their first time together. His kiss was hot, heady with need and desire, but there was no lingering taste of smoke.
It was then that she noticed she had not seen cigarettes around the dining table.
Enjoying the kiss even more, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and held him close, their tongues dancing together.
His hands made quick work of her shirt, rapidly pulling it over her head, breaking their kiss only for the briefest moment before lunging back at her and devouring her mouth. A few moments later, Leah broke the kiss as well as she yanked his sweater over his head, tossing it in the general direction of her shirt.
His presence was more intoxicating than any alcohol, and each pass of his tongue over hers forced gentle moans from Leah, and the sounds were too much for Braydon to ignore. He turned them around and pushed her against the wall, pressing his hand flat to her abdomen and sliding his fingers into her jeans and under her panties to finger her, flattered to find that she was already wet from the heated kissing.
She moaned openly, bucking her hips into his fingers.
Without hesitation, he undid the button and zipper on her jeans, yanking them down her legs and going to his knees.
Her fingers wove through his hair as her hips slammed against the wall, shaking in anticipation.
Braydon pressed a tender kiss to each of her hipbones before his lips captured the tender flesh at the juncture of her legs. She let out a choked sound and her fingers tightened on his scalp as his tongue tentatively explored her, drawing more moans and sounds from her as he teased the sensitive flesh. He licked lightly at the soft lips with the tip of his tongue, coaxing them apart and getting used to both the scent and taste of her.
Her head was swimming with need and lust as she felt him push his tongue inside, his lips closing around her and causing a groan to bubble from her throat.
She was both trying to move her hips and keep them still, bracing herself against him, her thighs shaking against his cheeks with restraint.
Drawing back for a moment, he hooked his arm around one of her thighs, pulling it over his shoulder before diving back in, giving her more stability and granting him a better angle. His fingers deftly slipped between her legs and two slid inside her as his tongue teased the hard nub of her clit.
Leah let out another choked cry and the sound caused Braydon to moan against her, his erection hardening painfully against his jeans. He was faced with the dilemma of wanting to worship her body and bowing to his own desire to participate.
Crooking his fingers inside, he continued to lick and tease her, which caused Leah’s eyes to snap open quickly, her moans becoming louder under his ministrations.
When he added the third finger, her breath caught in her throat and her head fell back against the wall.
“Keep going…” she gasped.
He obliged.
He pushed his fingers even deeper, his t
ongue pressing harder to her most sensitive area as her hips pushed down, eager. He pushed his mouth against her, flicking his tongue back and forth rapidly as he pumped his fingers in and out of her warmth, feeling the slick fluid coat his fingers.
Leah’s breathing changed, her fingernails clawing at his scalp hard enough to nearly be painful. A few more pumps of his fingers and she was there, convulsing around him as a choked moan escaped her lips. He felt her muscles contract rhythmically around his fingers, her legs shaking and her body shuddering as orgasm wracked every nerve in glorious pleasure.
It was difficult for him to stand, so he had to unfasten his pants to relieve the pressure on his erection before he moved, but he was desperate to be inside her. He extracted a condom from his back pocket, rapidly unwrapping it and sliding it on his erection as Leah recovered slightly against the wall.
As she was beginning to calm her heartbeat, he grabbed her hips, lifting her and pressing her hard to the wall, using one hand to guide himself inside, his hips jerking upward sharply.
She moaned loudly, her head falling forward to rest on his shoulder as he braced his legs apart to thrust into her as deeply as the difficult angle would allow. Despite their limited range of motion and the way his hips stuttered, unable to maintain a steady rhythm, he pushed in and out of her as she gripped him tight, sinking her teeth into his shoulder whenever he hit a particularly wonderful spot.
Leah was losing all reason. Each movement her vision going white as the pleasure that bolted through her became too much. Her body begged for release, her mind in a fog of immediacy and need. She held him closer, pressing kisses to the side of his neck and cheek, finally capturing his mouth and rolling her hips forward to allow him deeper.
Braydon moaned openly into her mouth, burying himself deep, his body straining as he struggled to remain standing through his own orgasm.
For what felt like eternity, they remained still, holding their breath in the heat of the moment.
Once the strain of their standing position became evident to both of them, Leah unhooked her legs from Braydon’s waist and he slid out of her. Both of them slowly descended to the floor, Braydon sitting against the wall and holding Leah to him as she listened to him catch his breath and his heart slow to a normal pace.
