Sound Effects

by L. J. Greene

  Jamie didn’t answer. He was very nearly vibrating with fury, though. Cords stood out on his neck and a deep shade of red began to rise across his face and ears. Lines had formed between his brows, and his impressive frame loomed over me in daunting silence. But I wasn’t backing down, either.

  “Oh, that’s just classic considering the fact that I haven’t heard from you in nearly two months!” I spat.

  “And it appears you wasted no time moving on!” he fired back.

  “For all you cared, you selfish ass!”

  “At least I never had a desire to even look at another woman!” he roared.

  His bullshit self-righteousness was the final straw–I drew my hand back and slapped him hard across the face. My palm wrung with the force of the contact, but he stood statue-like and unflinching, his eyes boring into mine with the twin of my rage.

  “How dare you, Jamie?! How dare you barge in here after all this time and make insinuations like that?! You have no right!”

  Out of sheer frustration, I pounded his chest with my fist. It was like hitting a wall, completely useless.

  All the while, tears were welling up, just below the surface and I fought them as hard as I fought him.

  Finally, growing tired of my thumping, he took hold of my wrists in one large hand and pulled me tight against his body. With masculine savagery, he kissed me, long and hard. It was an access of pure passion, not of affection or desire. Still, with his warm lips on mine, I disintegrated into that kiss, struggling to stay standing on my own two legs, and struggling to find an anchor point between a crush of raging emotions.

  My head was swimming with them, and I could not gather my wits. I pulled back slightly and bit his lip, hard enough to taste the tang of blood in the soft flesh of his mouth. His eyes lit with fire, but he released my wrists from his hold.

  “You have no claim on me!” I insisted. I was so upset that I needed to hear myself say it, knowing full well that his claim on me was self-imposed, and that he could easily argue for the opposing side.

  But Jamie was not interested in my argument, and even less in making one of his own. He pressed me to him and took my mouth again, deliberate and ruthless, staking his claim in his own way, and making his case even as I protested.

  It was all so bewildering and infuriating and ardent, and so I kissed him back hard, matching his passion breath for breath, and staking my own claim while punishing him at the same time.

  I wasn’t thinking about where we were. I didn’t care about my recklessness or what good sense might tell me. I wasn’t listening to anything but the demands of my body and his.

  I was finally finding an outlet for all of the pain and confusion and anger and resentment, and it felt absolutely intoxicating. I reached my hands up into his hair and pulled hard, then raked my nails down his neck and chest, as I kissed him deeply.

  We were both breathing heavily, struggling concurrently to tear each other apart, even as we pulled each other as close as was physically possible. And in the midst of this insanity, Jamie lifted me to the ledge of the gazebo railing and stepped between my legs, ignoring the kicks and blows I rained down on him.

  He let me hurt him, over and over, until finally, I had exhausted my rage.

  Only then did he break the kiss. He stared at me with the wild look of a stallion, hesitating only for a moment, and then tore at the front of his pants. He was massive–thick and steely, and made ready by so much more than lust alone.

  Was it true that there are only two emotions, love and fear?

  Jamie pushed aside my clothes and plunged into me with a tortured groan. Was this love? Or was it just fear of losing me?

  With one powerful thrust, he asserted his claim without speaking a word. Then he took my mouth again in the same manor. My mutinous body accepted his intrusion with no small amount of pleasure, and half-hearted curses and broken sounds were the only objections I could muster.

  All around us hung the faint musk of desire as Jamie rutted against me in quick, merciless motion.

  I was lost, driven by a compulsion I didn’t understand, but felt compelled to obey. I held on to the folds of his shirt, and opened myself to him even as my mind fought his stake on my body.

  “You have no right,” I said feebly.

  I pulled at the buttons of his shirt, tugging him closer as my nails clawed at the smooth skin of his chest, and dug into his vital flesh.

  “You have no right to me,” I whispered again, as he pounded my body, making my words come out individually through punctured breath. Sweat beaded on his brow and on his chest.

  We were locked in a struggle of possession, garnished with frustration and anguish, love and fear. It was love for me, for sure. I pulled him to me and pushed him away, wanting so badly, I hurt with the need. Gripping him viciously with the desire to own him completely, then crumbling in his arms, and melting as if I was made of nothing substantial.

  “I know I don’t,” he said bitterly, exposing his own torment. He plunged forward with the full weight of his body, and his taught frame stilled as he came copiously inside me.

  His heaving breath was at my ear, warm and humid against the crisp night air. I felt his hands flex on the curve of my waist and then relax again to a soft hold.

  And then neither of us moved a muscle for a very long time.

  This whole night had been too much, a release of emotion so powerful and so overwhelming that I felt absolutely drained. The body, it seems, has its own language, capable of speaking in a voice more demanding than words.

  Love or fear?

  “Why did you come here?” I managed to ask him. Please tell me it was for love.

  He exhaled into my hair as though admitting defeat. “I missed you.”

  I leaned back from the warmth of his neck and chest so that I could see his wary face. “If you missed me then why did you stay away?”

  “I …” He looked at me, distracted momentarily by the sight of the tears I could not contain. Gently wiping one away, he answered quietly, “I guess maybe it’s what I know.”

  Jamie was never anything but honest. And he had the heart of a lion but, by his own admission, he lived in his head too much of the time and he retreated there when he needed to gather himself. It was a songwriter’s sanctuary, I knew, but it was hell on a relationship.

  “You can’t just do that,” I insisted, straightening my dress. “You can’t just come into someone’s life and then leave without a word the moment that things in your own life get hard. Because people care about you–I care about you–and it’s not fair.”

  Love or fear?

  Jamie examined my face with considerable absorption and then exhaled deeply. He did up his slacks and placed a soft kiss on my lips. “That’s only part of it.”

  All around us, the night was still, barely a breeze to move the leaves overhead. And it was too late in the season for insects, so the only noise came from the far off sounds of the city. I sniffled unattractively and quickly dashed away a rogue tear with the back of my hand. “What’s the rest of it?”

  “I know when I’m being selfish.” There was a note of steel now in his voice that told me he had regained his composure in full. “It’s not right for me to have you when I can’t provide for you.”

  That felt like a slap.

  “You cannot be serious!” But he was serious, dead serious, and he met my eyes unblinking. “You have no right to make that kind of a decision for me! And furthermore,” I said, my ferocity now restored, “I can provide for myself! I don’t need a man for that!”

  “I know that, as well.”

  “Does it bother you? Is that the problem here? Are you threatened by my career? Because I need to know that right now.”

  There was a very traditional side of Jamie that rankled, but he was no chauvinist.

  “No, Melody,” he said. “I’m not threatened.” Then he fixed a determined gaze to mine. “But I want to give you the world, and I don’t know how long it will be before I c
an give you anything at all. Not like these people can. And that isn’t right. At the moment, I don’t even have a band.”

  We both fell quiet again, but did not take our eyes from each other. He honestly thought all of that mattered.

  “Don’t cheapen my feelings for you by saying something like that.”

  He shrugged, half impatient, and shifted his body restlessly, stubborn, proud fool that he was.

  “Do you care about me because of my job?”

  “You know I don’t.”

  “And do you really think something is going on between me and my boss?”

  He exhaled and shook his head, looking out into the night behind me. I watched his tawny green eyes sightlessly take in the landscape from end to end. “I guess I didn’t like hearing from him that you’ve been learning to cook. That was a bit of a surprise. As were the wings.”

  One corner of his mouth curled up irrepressibly.

  “I cook a lot of meat,” I said with irony. “I think you’re my muse.”

  He smiled sweetly, so that dimples appeared now on both cheeks.

  “You’re mine, too, you know. Two Seconds From Now was written about you. About falling in love with you the first day we met.”

  For several long moments, we both just looked at each other, taking measure of the impact of the words he had just spoken. If I had any thought that his declaring his love for me was an accident, that thought was erased by the look on his face that challenged me to disagree. And if I had wanted to somehow conceal my love for him, well, that was impossible.

  But the truth was, this was the first time we’d ever spoken openly about the word ‘love’ in the context of us. It was long overdue. And I guess I felt like if we were going to finally speak of love, I wanted to be touching him when we did.

  I reached out and picked up one of his hands, spreading his fingers wide and pairing it with mine. His was much bigger, very warm to the touch and rough with life and labor. I reacquainted myself with every ridge and callus.

  “You can’t fall in love with someone because you like her name,” I said practically, though a part of me hoped to be wrong.

  “Ummm,” he said, shaking his head and watching the movement of my hand against his. “I fell in love with you even before I knew your name.”

  “Ah. That little rub down I gave you in your living room?”

  “Well, no,” he said with precision. “Although I will admit, that did sweeten the pot a bit.”

  I gave him a brief and dirty look, and he laughed, before touching my cheek with his fingertips.

  “No, I fell in love with you the moment I saw you through the window.”

  From where I’m standing here, we’re nothing more than strangers.

  But two seconds from now, I’m gonna make you mine forever.

  “Love doesn’t work that way, Jamie. You can’t fall in love with someone you see through a window. You don’t know anything about them.”

  “That’s not true. I could see a great many things in you.” His gaze was fixed on mine, but I knew he saw, instead, an afternoon barbecue on a sunny August day. “I knew you were brave and strong because you came to my house, not knowing anyone. And I knew you were kind because I watched you find something broken and try your best to make it whole again.” He picked up a lock of my hair and ran it through his fingers, finally allowing it to drop back to my shoulder. “I could see that you had enough joy in your heart that you would leave a little piece of happiness behind for someone else to discover. And I knew you were waiting for someone;–” he shrugged his shoulders– “I just hoped I could be the man you were waiting for.”

  “Jamie.” I searched his face, wishing that I could see the world as he did. I couldn’t, probably never would, but loved that I could see it vicariously through him. Gratefully, I leaned my cheek into his chest and wrapped my arms around his waist. “No one has ever seen me the way you do.”

  “And yet, I’ve made you cry. Tell me how to make you happy again.”

  “I don’t want to change you, Jamie. I just …” God, I looked at him in bewilderment as if he could supply the answer. “I just want you to be different.”

  A slow, earnest smile spread across his face in answer, though he didn’t respond directly. Instead, he gave me the space to compose my thoughts, waiting patiently for me to put words to what I needed from him.

  “I just thought that being your muse would be like being Van Morrison’s brown-eyed girl. I just thought of the good things, the romantic things. I didn’t realize I would feel so alone at times.”

  Jamie looked at me as though I’d just broken his heart. He knew something, too, about loneliness.

  “I don’t mind giving you space when you need it–I just wish I had some warning. And I need to hear from you every day in some way, and I need to know that you’re coming back to me. And I want to be a part of everything in your life–not just the easy stuff. Because how can I ask you to be there for me if you won’t allow me to be there for you? I love you, Jamie. And I want to be able to tell you that.”

  He wrapped his hand into my hair and looked at me with a depth of feeling that took my breath away. He was stunningly beautiful in the silhouette of the night sky, formidable and open, with a face that glowed with honesty and vigor.

  “I love you, too, Melody, as if we share one heart. And I should have told you that every day because you are the glory and solace of my soul, every day. If you’ll let me love you still, I won’t let another day go by. Not one.”

  I didn’t have to wonder whether he meant it; he always meant it. And so I folded into him and let the boundary of my body disappear into his.

  Somewhere during our earlier tangle, several buttons of his shirt had come open revealing the livid marks I’d made on his chest and neck. I ran my hand over them, caressing them soothingly in apology. He leaned into my touch as he always did, savoring it, gently cradling my face in his hands.

  “I need you,” he whispered.

  “I need you, too.”

  Jamie’s eyes glistened, and he kissed me again, softly, his lips holding mine like he never wanted to let go. When he told me before that he needed me, I hadn’t been quite prepared to recognize the same feeling in myself. At that time, it had felt too dangerous–needing a man who came and went from my life without a moment’s notice. This time, though, I didn’t hesitate in answering; the truth, like scratches on skin, is sometimes glaringly obvious.

  I needed his joyfulness and his sense of adventure in my life. And I needed to be the person he saw in me because it was the better version of myself.

  He was the daring to my measured, the possible to my expected.

  I could fight this feeling between us, or I could embrace it.

  I decided to embrace.

  So, under a blanket of stars and forgiveness, we promised, each in our own way, to make a new way forward together.

  Chapter 27

  Mel

  ONLY ON RARE OCCASIONS DID I wake up before Jamie. I came out of a dream that I didn’t fully remember just as my bedroom was emerging from the gray light of nighttime into the warm, yellow glow of morning. I was deliciously sore in any number of places, and Jamie was sound asleep in the bed next to me.

  I got to watch as the dawn touched each of his features in quiet succession. His long, lean, naked body lay on its side with one white pillow under his head and another clutched securely in his muscular arms. There wasn’t a single line in his face, except for a slight indentation where his mouth seemed to bend vaguely at the tips in a secret smile. His thick, cinnamon-brown lashes with their dark tips fanned out over his cheek and outlined the soft rise of his cheekbone. He looked as peaceful as a choirboy–well, a very naughty choirboy.

  We had been up half the night talking and touching–his chest, my breasts, his hips, my thighs–and paused several times to remind ourselves how enticingly well all of these parts fit together. And finally, in the very early morning hours, we had curled up in shared warmt
h to sleep with my back to his front, his hand cupping my breast, and our feet entangled amongst the rumpled sheets of my bed.

  Now, as I watched him rest, with his hair in endearing disarray and his stubbled jaw just barely hanging slack, I had an urge to wake him again, to lick the seam of his lips in both greeting and invitation, and sink again into the addictive pleasures of the flesh. But I understood myself well enough to know that the urge to have him wasn’t just coming from my considerable lust for this man, but from a more basic desire to seek reassurance in the words we’d spoken, now in the full light of day.

  I resisted though, barely, knowing how much he needed the rest and how rare it was for him to be sleeping so soundly. The thing I knew about Jamie above all else was that he always meant what he said. He had said he loved me, and I knew in my heart he did.

  So instead of waking him, I snuck out of bed and off to the kitchen to see what I could pull together for breakfast.

  Atticus, though, was not so considerate.

  He cared nothing for weekends or sleeping in, and had no scruples whatsoever about waking Jamie for a little romping and snuggling in my absence. By the time I returned, Atticus was shamelessly on his back in bed, eyes closed in froglike bliss, as Jamie scratched him from throat to belly.

  “Good morning,” I said, leaning in to steal a kiss from Jamie’s mouth as I disrobed and slipped back in bed with our plates.

  “Good morning,” he said, placing his palm on the back of my head and doing the word ‘kiss’ far more justice than I. “God, you’re grand. What have you managed, here?”

  “Latkes. A glorified potato pancake.”

  “Mmmm,” he said, slicing off a large piece and engulfing it hungrily.

  Breakfast was a relatively basic affair, consisting of scrambled eggs, latkes and berries, and minus the dog, who grumbled on his way off the bed at my general lack of respect for his equality in the household.

  When we finished eating, I gathered the plates and set them on the nightstand beside me. It was Sunday morning, and I could not think of a single thing I wanted to do more than to curl up beside Jamie and spend the whole day in bed. He echoed my thoughts exactly, wrapping his arm around me and pulling my head down to rest on his inviting chest. His fingers ran again and again through my hair as I rested my cheek in the hollow of his sternum and stroked the many firm ridges of his abdomen.