Sweet Harmonies

by Melanie Shawn

  He looked down at her after he finished, and stroked her hair tenderly as she licked him clean of any trace of his juices.

  When she was done, she tenderly placed his manhood back into his pants and buttoned him back up, her movements gentle and loving.

  She then gave his newly re-assembled fly a little pat and looked up at him.

  “That wasn't so bad now, was it?” she said with a wicked little grin.

  He exhaled and wiped the sweat from his brow, smiling back at her, “Far from it.”

  Still smiling, she started to swing one leg around him, obviously aiming to stand up, but he caught it in the air.

  Karina laughed as he held her leg aloft, “Ryan, what are you doing?”

  He grinned and set her leg back down where it had been, “What are YOU doing?” he volleyed back, dropping to his knees.

  Her eyes widened as he gently cupped his hand under her lower back, teasing her up slightly from the couch, and then tugged down her boxers, revealing a tiny leopard print thong.

  “Meow,” he chuckled.

  Karina, sounding a little concerned, said, “Hey, Ryan, seriously, what do you think you're doing here?”

  He looked up at her and grinned, “Returning the favor.”

  She smiled appreciatively but regretfully and started to shove him away by the shoulders, “Oh, that's sweet. Honestly, I appreciate it. But I don't really care for that very much...”

  His eyebrows raised but he didn't budge under the pressure of her hands attempting to shove him backwards. “Really?” he inquired skeptically.

  She looked uncomfortable, “Yeah, I mean...I like it, don't get me wrong...but in the context of sex, you know? When we're both all hot and steamy. But to just sit here and have you...ya know...it feels kind of weird.”

  Ryan looked thoughtful, and began slowly trailing his fingertips over her inner thighs and lower belly, “OK, so you don't like the power imbalance.”

  Goosebumps started to pop out on her skin and her breathing began to become more shallow, but she tried to hide this in her voice as she spoke, “I guess you could say that. I just don't like the idea of being totally out of control while you have all your senses about you, ya know?”

  He nodded, trailing his fingers around the edges of her panties, and watching her nipples rise to attention underneath her thin tank top.

  “Kind of like what just happened a few minutes ago,” he observed conversationally as his fingers increased their work and Karina began to squirm underneath his hands, “Except that in that case, YOU were the one in control.”

  She nodded, unable to respond.

  “And you seemed to enjoy that well enough.”

  She nodded again, breathlessly, speech still eluding her.

  He pushed her legs open wider before him, and ran his thumb up and down, repeatedly and insistently, over her moist mound, on top of the playful leopard fabric. This caused to her to moan and throw her head back, her hands scrambling to grasp the couch cushions.

  “Yes, alright!” she cried, unable to control the convulsions of her hips and torso, “I like to be in control! I admit it, so sue me!”

  Ryan burst out laughing and said, as he pulled her panties down in one swift movement, “Oh, sweetheart. You're going to need to get over that.”

  With that, he dipped his head and engulfed her entirely in his mouth, his tongue darting in and out of her, his lips teasing the pert little button that was her pleasure center.

  “Ooohhhh...” she moaned, burying her fingers in his hair as his mouth worked, “Oh, Ryan, yes...yes...”

  She dug her heels into the floor and raised her hips, rising up to meet his tongue, pressing herself into him even more intensely.

  He drew his head back slightly and laughed, “Oh, no you don't, sassy girl. I'm in control of the rhythm this time.”

  He lowered his head and shoulders again and lifted her thighs, pulling her hips forward on the couch and placing her legs over his shoulders. His tongue went to work on her again, and he raised his gaze to hers so that they were looking directly into each other's eyes as his tongue and fingers teased her ever closer to the precipice.

  He slid his hands up, pushing her tank top about halfway up her torso. Catching on quickly, she reached down and tore it off, exposing her belly, breasts, and upper chest – all of which were flushed with arousal. This turned him on so much that he licked and sucked at her even more furiously, causing her eyes to roll back and her to throw her head back on the couch cushion.

  “No,” he said, removing his mouth from her tender flesh just long enough to give her a short directive in that commanding tone he adopted, the one that she had found out in his office had such an intense erotic effect on her, “Open your eyes and look at me. I want to be looking into your eyes when you come.”

  With great difficulty, she tore her eyes open and locked her gaze onto his, watching his mouth move in between her legs, watching her own belly heave and convulse as his tongue sent waves upon waves of ecstasy radiated upward from her core, watching as his fingers massaged her now-exposed nipples.

  Suddenly, a wave of pleasure so intense ripped through her, causing her to arch her back and scream, an intense, sharp, horror-movie-heroine-esque scream that she wouldn't be surprised to find caused the neighbors to call 911.

  This was such an unusual experience for Karina, who could usually feel herself building up to an orgasm as it approached, and in truth, usually had to help push it over the edge, either with her own fantasies or her own fingers.

  This orgasm was an entirely new experience. This was so much more than just the physical climax of arousal that she was used to experiencing, this was an all-encompassing, soul-ripping, bone-shattering, body-electrifying sensation.

  For only the second time in her life – the first being in the office with Ryan a mere two days before – Karina completely lost track of her surroundings and circumstances, totally unaware for a few blissful seconds of where she was, who she was with – hell, of her own name. She was aware of nothing but the pure physical and metaphysical bliss she was being carried away on.

  As she slowly drifted back down to earth, she found herself wrapped in Ryan's arms, and she took a moment to enjoy the delicious sensation of him stroking her hair and murmuring sweet nothings into her ear.

  She felt her eyelids getting heavier, along with her limbs, and she began to drift away into peaceful slumber, a small smile on her lips, secure in Ryan's embrace....until her eyes flew open and cold panic flooded her muscles. NO! What was wrong with her? She had come dangerously close to breaking her own “no spending the night” rule.

  Taking a deep breath and attempting to seem casual, she stood up and stretched, pulling her panties and boxers up in a single motion. She made a show of yawning.

  “Don't take it personally,” she smiled, “That was far from boring. I just haven't slept. So if we're all good here, I think I'm gonna head back to bed. You can let yourself out, the door automatically locks after it closes.”

  She turned and started towards the stairs, clearly not inviting him to go along.

  A little stunned, he said, “OK. Um…well, alright. Sorry I woke you up. I'll call you later,” and started towards the front door.

  When he was halfway to the front door and she was halfway up the stairs, it occurred to him that he'd never even addressed what he had come over for in the first place.

  “Oh, wait, Karina,” he called up the stairs.

  She turned and looked at him expectantly.

  Ryan pulled his phone out of the back pocket of his jeans, pulled up the bookmarked page, and pressed play on the video.

  “Have you seen this?” he asked, amazed.

  Karina glanced down at his phone to see the video which had been the subject of so much discussion on this endless night.

  “Yes, I've seen it,” she said in a blasé tone, “And if you wouldn't mind, I would much rather discuss it with you when I can actually string two consecutive cohesive
thoughts together. Good night, Ryan.”

  With that, she continued up the stairs, and Ryan heard her footsteps as they padded down the hall. He then heard her bedroom door close behind her, definitively ending any discussion on the matter.

  “Okay then,” Ryan mumbled to himself, puzzled, “Guess I'll be going.”

  Not sure what else to do, he turned and walked out of Karina's house, checking to make sure that the door had, indeed, locked behind him. He walked back to his truck and climbed in, starting the motor, and pulling away.

  He drove down the mountain as a brilliant orange sunrise began to peak over the Sierra Nevadas, and Ryan tried to figure out how in the name of God and all that is holy he was EVER going to manage to take things slow with the extremely sexy and enticing Miss Karina Blackstone.

  Chapter 16

  Ryan listened to the hustle and bustle of Sue Ann's Cafe die down after the dinner rush. He felt like a coward hiding out back here in the office, but he couldn't help it. It seemed every single person in Hope Falls had some kind of opinion about his new YouTube fame. Not only that, but it seemed like every single person in Hope Falls felt the need to come by the Cafe and share that opinion with him.

  He had held out as long as he could, being polite, smiling, treating each person as if he really and truly cared what they thought about his relationship with Karina, his musicianship, his voice, his lyrics, his stage presence....his clothing, for Pete’s sake!

  He had pastedon his fake smile through the breakfast rush, he had pasted it on again for the lunch rush, but God help him, by dinner, he had had enough. He told his Granny – who incidentally could not be enjoying what he considered to be an extremely embarrassing turn of events more! - that he needed to catch up on inventory and payroll.

  Since his arrival in Hope Falls, he had taken over the bookkeeping duties at Sue Ann's Cafe. It was a pretty monumental project. He had realized right away that, while Sue Ann definitely had kept all of the pertinent information, she had also eschewed any kind of filing system. Not only that, but she had unsurprisingly neglected to bring her business into the 21st century – hell, even the 20th! - by putting her financial records on computer. What receipts there were sat stuffed into shoeboxes, and what records there were sat handwritten in thick and dusty ledger books.

  Justin had gotten them all pretty much organized chronologically, and now was beginning the massive undertaking of entering all of the Cafe's past records into QuickBooks.

  Normally, he relished the task. He liked for things to be organized, and he got satisfaction from taking chaos and fitting it into neat and understandable entries in a database.

  Today, however? He was suffering from two problems, and they both involved Karina. The first was simple – he could barely keep his eyes open. After his sleeplessness the night before, he was having a tough time keeping himself from nodding off. He had made numerous trips back to the kitchen for fresh coffee, but the strong brew did not seem to be doing too much to keep his eyelids any more open than half-mast.

  The second was more complicated. Try as he might, he could not help getting flashes of their searingly hot encounter every time he looked...well, pretty much anywhere in the room. Every time he looked toward the door, he saw her standing in her bra and panties, blocking his exit from it. Every time he glanced down at the desktop, he saw himself setting her perfectly shaped naked backside down on it, immediately before plunging himself into her.

  Yes, if one of the goals of solitude – besides freeing himself from the tide of public opinion – was to get his mind off Karina and onto his work, maybe he shouldn't have retreated to the very same small room where they had first made love. Yes, he sarcastically told himself, this may have been a mistake.

  He let his head fall down, his forehead hitting the edge of the desk with a sharp 'thunk' sound. I deserve it, he told himself miserably.

  “Ouch,” he heard a voice say from the doorway, “I know YouTube stardom can come with pressure, but don't give yourself a concussion over it.”

  He looked up to see Justin standing in the doorway, a lopsided grin on his face, dressed in athletic gear and holding a basketball.

  “Hey, man,” Ryan said, perking up, “How's it going?”

  “Good, good,” Justin assured him, “I'm meeting Eric and Jake at the Rec center for a pickup game, you in?”

  “Hell, yes!” Ryan replied, up and out of his chair before Justin had even finished speaking, “Lemme just go throw on some shorts, and I'll meet you out front in two.”

  This was exactly what Ryan needed to clear his head of thoughts of Karina, a little physical exertion. Since he was doing everything in his power not to get physical with Karina (with limited success, but nevertheless) blowing off some steam by playing a little b-ball was exactly what the doctor ordered.

  Ryan threw on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, and quickly laced up his sneakers. As he bounded down the stairs and onto the sidewalk, he saw Justin standing there waiting, with none other than Kyle Austen Reed.

  Great – this guy, he sneered derisively to himself, just what I need.

  “Hey,” he greeted the two guys, “I'm ready.”

  They turned to face him.

  “Ryan Jackson Perkins!” said Kyle gregariously, his face lighting up.

  “Kyle Austen Reed,” Ryan returned the greeting cordially. He wasn't exactly thrilled to see Kyle, sure – but that didn't mean he was going to be rude. I mean, hey...it's not as if Kyle Austen Reed was a bad guy. He was clueless when it came to Karina, but he wasn't a bad guy. He shook his head slightly, smiling to himself. One things for sure, he mused, I can definitely say that I've never met anyone before who was anything like Kyle Austen Reed, and I probably never will again.

  “So, yeah!” Justin said, maybe a shade too brightly, “I ran into Kyle here, he was out for a jog. So he's gonna join us!”

  Kyle smiled brightly, “I'm a big fan of the game of basketball. I played a point guard in All Net, and have had a true love and respect for the game since then.”

  Justin, stepping back so that he was out of Kyle's field of vision, mouthed to Ryan, “Sorry!”

  “Yeah, great, let's go,” Ryan said, doing his absolute best not to let his irritation with the situation show through. After all, it wasn't Justin's fault. It wasn't even Kyle Austen Reed's. It was just shitty timing.

  As they entered the basketball court at the Rec Center, Ryan saw Jake and Eric sitting on the bottom row of bleachers. Jake was putting something back in his bag and Eric was tying his sneaker. There were also a few other guys that Ryan hadn't met yet, and he nodded at them as Justin introduced each one.

  They quickly divided up into teams, and Ryan was somewhat disappointed that he ended up on the same team as Kyle Austen Reed. He was really in the mood to get out some aggression on the guy – in socially acceptable ways, of course, he reminded himself with a smirk – and it would have felt very satisfying to run up and down the court, with the sounds of sneakers pounding, the basketball hitting the wood, and bystanders cheering all echoing in his ears as he pounded Kyle Austen Reed into the ground. Metaphorically speaking.

  As they began to play, however, it became evident to Ryan very quickly that this scenario would never have taken place, and he ended up being very glad that he and Kyle Austen Reed were on the same team.

  Kyle danced around them as if they weren't even there, faking one direction and then the other, snatching the ball from their grasps effortlessly, darting past them, outrunning them, and all the while putting in fancy moves like bouncing the ball from hand to hand as he spun in a 360 degree circle, topping that off with an immediate jump shot.

  He dunked, he made three point shots – some of them from nearly the other side of the court – and still managed to wave to and show off for the steadily growing crowd of onlookers who had stopped to marvel at his prowess.

  Soon, all pretext of a real game, wherein there would be a competitive element and a score would be kept, was dropped. The othe
r guys were basically just providing the stage from which Kyle Austen Reed could perform.

  The oddest thing was, though, that each of them surprised themselves by not minding very much. It was such a bizarre experience to be a part of that they all just felt sort of surreal about the whole thing, and it was really too weird and amazing to be upset about.

  Finally, after the exhibition of sorts had gone on so long that the youth athletic team needed to take over the court for their regularly scheduled practice, the guys brought it to a halt.

  The crowd erupted in cheers, and Kyle Austen Reed held up the basketball victoriously. He pulled a Sharpie pen from his back waistband and signed the ball, throwing it into the delighted crowd, and then jogged over to them triumphantly, signing autographs and posing for photos.

  The rest of the guys migrated over to the bleachers, chuckling to themselves and patting each other on the back.

  Eric, who had been on the opposite team, said, “I guess I should kind of feel like I just lost? But I sort of feel like we all won, in a way.”

  Justin shook his head, “Hell, he just gave away my basketball and I still feel like I came out ahead. What is it about that guy?”

  Ryan sat down on the bleachers, not sure what he felt about the whole afternoon. Having Karina's ex there playing certainly didn't help get his mind off of her. Hell, maybe that was just a losing proposition all the way around. God knows nothing he had tried so far had come even close to working.

  The guys started packing up and getting involved in their own conversations, and Justin sat down next to Ryan. He leaned in so that the conversation was just between the two of them.

  “So, how are things going with Karina?” he asked.

  Ryan barked out a laugh, “You could say there have been a couple of setbacks.”

  “Really, what’s up?”

  “Well, this YouTube phenomenon, for one thing. Talk about putting the pressure on. I haven't even had a chance to talk to her about it yet. I went over to her place the other night to talk about it, but...”