by Martha James
She was likely overthinking things in this regard, she knew, but it was a risk she was unwilling to take, given how much she had already lost, and would never be able to get back again.
She didn't think she could possibly survive if she lost this, too...
But then one night, the stars seemed to align, and the window of opportunity they'd both been longing for since the moment they'd first met seemed to present itself, as organically as either of them might have hoped.
They'd shared another lovely meal together, and both had just the right amount of wine in their systems as they sat at the table together, talking and laughing, both feeling bubbly to the brink of carbonation in one another's presence.
Desiree had just finished laughing at something Julian had said, which she couldn't even remember by the time she'd finished, nervous and thrilled as she was, thinking for the hundredth time that tonight would be the night. This would be the moment that their professional relationship turned into what they both knew it truly was, and they could finally make their true and desperate feelings known to one another.
But then, instead of a profession of love, a long silence ensued.
They looked at one another, then looked away, not knowing what to do with the oppressive silence that now enveloped them.
Damn it, she thought. This wasn't right. This wasn't the moment, as much as she'd wanted to believe it was.
Whatever she'd been thinking this would turn into, it was time to abort the plan, and come back to it later with a clearer head.
She cleared her throat, and rose from her seat.
“Well... I think I should head to bed,” she said, hating herself for it as the words passed from her lips. “I'm meeting with my manager tomorrow. We plan to discuss picking the world tour back up, and seeing where things go.”
“Oh, yeah?” he asked. “Are you feeling like you're ready for it?”
She shrugged. “I don't know. I don't think it would be right away. In a few weeks, maybe. The concert people have been pretty understanding about the whole situation, but I think they're understandably a bit miffed about having to refund all the overseas dates we had planned. It's costing them a pretty penny.”
“There are more important things than money,” he said, and she smiled at him.
“No, to be honest I think it might be good for me to get back on the road. The sooner I'm able to start moving on the better, as impossible as it seems sometimes. But anyway...”
He smiled sympathetically. “You'll get there,” he said.
She just nodded in acknowledgement, but didn't say anything.
“Go ahead and rest up then, and I'll hold down the fort out here.”
“Alright,” she said, and turned to go. “Goodnight,” she added feebly.
“Goodnight,” he said, and she could feel his eyes following her as she made her way from the room.
About an hour later, Desiree found herself lying awake in bed, hating herself for not leaping at the opportunity she'd been given to make her true feelings known.
She imagined what it would have been like if she'd had the courage to ask him to come to bed with her. To feel his warm, muscular body pressed up against her, his arms wrapped around her, his whole being, inside her, filling her to capacity, driving her to the brink of her own glorious destruction.
It made her shiver to think about, and she closed her eyes, pressing her hand down between her legs, up her silk nighty, rubbing slowly against the lightly damp lace of her panties.
She breathed in deep and slow, her nostrils flaring, and gently opened her mouth. She pulled in air, imagining herself sucking on- well, any part of him really, and this sent an almost violent shock of sensation coursing up from the space between her legs, buzzing through her entire system.
She let out a little squeak, a gasp-
And then she stopped.
She let out a frustrated groan, and pulled her head back out.
It was a pale and meager substitution for the real thing, sitting right outside her door and hers for the taking, and she knew that if she went any further it would only leave her wanting more- so much more than she had the courage to attain.
She buried her head in her pillow, squeezing it tight around the sides of her head. She was painfully aware of the gaping void that now existed between her humming thighs, begging to be filled, and wished that she could somehow will herself unconscious that very moment, so that she wouldn't have to keep thinking about this nonsense for however many more hours it took her to fall asleep.
She waited, and waited, but no darkness overtook her.
She thought, for a moment, that she was almost there, but then she realized something odd.
She was hearing music...
She furrowed her brow, and sat up slowly, thinking that if she moved too quickly it might somehow dissipate into thin air.
But no...
It was still there. Still strumming along.
A gentle guitar melody, simple but beautiful, making its way to her distantly but clearly from the living room.
She brought her legs over the side of her bed, still listening, and now quite curious.
“Huh...”
She got up, and crept to her door, getting a closer listen. She could hear, now, that the guitar playing was accompanied by male vocals as well- no words, but a slight humming, in a voice that she wouldn't have imagined coming from the man she was certain must have been producing the instrumentation.
She placed a hand on the doorknob, and was just about to step out into the hall, when suddenly she stopped herself. She recalled that she'd gone to bed in a red silk nightie, which revealed an abundance of cleavage and left very little to the imagination.
Not that this was necessarily a bad thing, but she decided it might be best to cover up a bit more.
She slipped into a matching silk robe, then stepped out into the hallway, making her way slowly toward the source of such beauty, walking as though on eggshells, not wanting to interrupt the performance.
Sure enough, she made her way into the living room, and there was Julian, sitting on the sofa, strumming his guitar, humming along to the melody with his eyes closed. He looked enraptured, lost in the music, oblivious to anything and everything around him.
Desiree watched for a long while- what felt like minutes- gazing reverently at him, standing in plain view. Julian remained swept up by his performance, however, and only took note of her upon screwing up a note, and looking down at his guitar to try and readjust his fingering.
He started upon the realization that she'd been standing there, and looked a little bit alarmed.
“Oh, my God, Desiree, I'm so sorry... I didn't think I was playing that loud. I hope I didn't wake you...”
She shook her head.
“No, you didn't. I couldn't sleep, and then I heard you playing. It's beautiful. Keep playing- I mean, if you don't mind me listening.”
He gave her a gentle smile that seemed to say “not at all,” then looked back down at his guitar, repositioning his fingers. Then he closed his eyes, strummed, and picked up right back where he left off.
Desiree sat down beside him on the sofa, listening as the beautiful melody of the guitar mixed with that of his voice. She closed her eyes as Julian did, and listened along, willing herself to be similarly swept up in it. The way he performed made her feel the way she had when she'd first been learning to play herself, and the way she felt playing the stripped down acoustic version of “Now That You're Gone” in front of thousands of fans, and the way she always felt any time she happened to be falling in love.
The song ended after another minute or so, and when Desiree opened her eyes again, she saw that Julian was already looking at her, expectantly, waiting for her reaction.
“That was lovely,” she said, the understatement of the century. “I didn't know you played...”
He smiled, and shrugged. “I'm just an amateur. But I've always had a passion for music. It takes me to another place, l
ike nothing else can.”
“I know,” she said, nodding. “I was there...”
He smiled, and set down his guitar.
“Lately... I don't know... I guess I've been feeling a bit more inspired than usual, for some reason.”
She grinned shyly, her cheeks reddening, her heart pounding. Excitement and anxiety battled it out inside her, and she allowed the former to take over.
“Hmm... I wonder why that might be?” she teased, savoring his answer.
“I don't know...” he whispered, extending an arm to her, placing his hand gently against the side of her face, and causing ripples of warmth to tingle and emanate through her entire body. “But I like it...”
He leaned in, and Desiree closed her eyes.
Their mouths met.
She felt as though she could collapse, dissolve into him, surrender herself totally to him as their lips slid across one another. He tasted incredible, warm and sweet, his fingers dancing along her cheek as they kissed, his warm breath blowing up against her, giving her goosebumps.
At last, when it was mutually acknowledged that they could no longer breathe, the two of them forced themselves apart again, gasping. Desiree's wide eyes burned like emerald fire at him, and Julian's blue irises seemed to crackle with light at her in return.
“Wow,” she said, still trying to catch her breath, and unable to think of anything more appropriate to describe how she felt in that moment.
“I've wanted to do that ever since the moment I first laid eyes on you,” he said, his chest heaving, his face seeming even more beautiful to her than it ever had before up to now.
“Me too,” she said desperately.
And so they did it again.
He wrapped his arms around her, his fingers curling into her body through the silk of her nightie and gown, and she twisted her arms around his neck, sliding her digits through his hair, unable to satisfy the infinite craving she felt for him as their tongues twisted around like serpents in one another's mouths.
Before either of them knew it they were stumbling back through the house, tripping over their own two feet as they made their way down the hallway, laughing giddily with each near collapse, and catching one another any time they came too dangerously close to falling on their asses. Separation from one another, even for a moment, seemed like the worst thing in the world to either of them, and as such they held together every step of the way as though attached at the lips, unable to put a stopper on what had taken so very long to be unleashed.
At last they slid into Desiree's bedroom, and Julian slammed her up roughly against the door, making the full depths of his longing for her known. He opened up her robe and put his hands on the sides of her body, rubbing her stomach as he tilted her head back, and endeavored to suck out her very soul in the intensity of their shared kiss. Desiree burned for him, loving the intensity of his muscles wrapping around her, pinning her in place, the taste of his tongue, and the scalding hardness of him pressed up against her, rubbing against her thighs between the prison of their clothes.
He grabbed her right leg at the knee, and hoisted her leg up around his waist, bringing the force of erection even closer and harder up against the center of her body. Then he pulled his lips away from her mouth, pulled the top of her robe down off of her arms, and leaned in to kiss her neck. The suction of her flesh being pulled in between his teeth felt as amazing to him as it did to her, as did the sliding of his hands over her smooth, bare shoulders, sending goosebumps up along the course of her spine.
She let out a feminine cry, surrendering to his pleasure, unsure whether she could survive the total sweetness of what he had in store for her.
As he continued to kiss her in this way, she proceeded to pull her arms the remainder of the way out of the silk robe. She realized, now, that it had been redundant all along, but decided that it was entirely worth it to feel the article being shed from her like a snake losing its skin, as she writhed and shook in his arms.
Once it was gone, he promptly brought his face down to her shoulder, and began to kiss the bony knobs of her shoulders, unable to get enough of every perfect inch of her. She placed a hand against the side of his face, loving the bristle of his stubble against her palm, then reached down for the bottom of his shirt, pulling it up from where it was tucked into his pants. She got it out, and began to peel it up along him. She loved the slow revelation of his toned, glistening musculature- his Adonis muscles, his deeply cut abdominals, his broad pecs all coming into view, making her mouth water as her eyes fell over their mighty planes.
She'd gotten the shirt up just below his nipples when he suddenly took over for her, pulling it the rest of the way off of himself, and revealing the perfect torso that she'd always known deep down was being concealed underneath.
She reached for him with reverence, placing her open palms against the heaving planes, and rubbing them slowly up and down along him. In that moment, she thought she might just have been about the luckiest woman on the face of the entire goddamn earth...
She looked up at him after a moment, and saw that he had a cocky expression on his face that seemed to say confidently, “You like?”
She smiled at him, and said teasingly, “I think I can work with this...”
He swept her up in his embrace and brought her to her bed, lying her down onto its surface and climbing up onto her, enveloping her like a living, human blanket. He pulled her in close, wrapping his legs around her, and the two of them continued to make out with one another, getting higher and higher with every kiss that passed between their lips. She slid her fingers up and down along the muscles of his back, loving how firm and solid he was, and the way the planes seemed to shift and reset with every sweet, glorious movement he made atop her.
She pulled her lips away from him and gasped as she felt his hands suddenly being cupped against her breasts, squeezing them enthusiastically through her nightie.
It felt absolutely incredible...
She tilted her head back and whimpered, her jaw quivering, and Julian kneaded them between his fingers like dough, turning her into something very akin to putty in his grip. He buried his head in her chest and kissed the exposed upper halves of her tits, nestling in her cleavage, and making her ache for so much more that she almost wanted to cry.
Then, thankfully, she felt his hands sweep down along her body, and slide up beneath her nightie. His warm palms buzzed along her soft belly as he dredged the silk up off of her, and slowly he proceeded to pull the article completely up over her head casting it to the floor, and giving him total access to the perfection of her bare chest.
He cupped her breasts once more in his hands, the direct skin to skin contact feeling even more incredible to both of them. She took in a quick, shallow breath, then gasped outright as his fingers closed in around her nipples, pinching on the flesh, and pulling back with just the right amount of sweet, decadent pain.
He massaged and kneaded, getting her wetter and hotter with every application of his touch, then he took things one step further by leaning forward, opening his mouth, and wrapping his lips around her right nipple. Her knees pushed inward around him, and he sucked back slowly on her, rolling his tongue around her areola, letting his teeth sink lightly into her, and making her feel as though she might burst at any moment from the sheer, unmatched pleasure of it.
“Oh yes... Yes... Yes...” she began to chant, running her fingers through his hair once again, for lack of any better way to express her appreciation to him.
But then she thought of something that would do so quite well...
She slid her hand between his legs and held onto his cock for dear life, stroking him slowly through his pants. He had to pull away from her, groaning with pleasure at this, and she couldn't help but smirk, loving the impact she was having. She pressed up and down a few more times, imagining that the constraint of his pants as she groped him must be torture for him- which, of course, was exactly why she was doing it. Then, deciding to put him out of h
is misery, she moved up to unbutton his pants, unzipped him, and slid her fingers down into his underwear. His pubic hair rubbed beautifully against the palm of her hand as she reached between his legs, a fact which she loved having mostly slept with clean shaven or neatly trimmed men. She spread her fingers out and then tightened them like a noose around the hot, pulsing serpent of his erect cock, the burning against her flesh driving her wild, as was the gentle emission of clear fluid against her palm as she began to pump the shaft vigorously in her grip.
Julian sighed with pleasure, and after a few moments bowed appreciatively back down into Desiree's chest, suckling on her more fiercely than ever. Every time an especially potent surge of feeling ached through her chest, she found herself tightening her grip on his masculinity, and she loved the way he tensed up on her.
