Rhythm, Chord & Malykhin

by Mariana Zapata

  When we got to the hotel, I followed Sacha to his room, flicking off my brother when he started moaning from down the hall, "I'm going to be sick."

  I hadn't gotten used to how much smaller everything seemed to be in Europe. The rooms were more compact, and even the shower stall was narrower than I was used to. But I wasn't going to complain as I dropped my backpack on the floor next to the double-sized bed.

  "You want to shower first?" Sacha asked.

  "You can go first. You're faster than I am," I told him.

  He nodded, digging through his backpack for his clothes and toiletries before slipping into the tiny bathroom. In less than ten minutes, he was out, and I thought I'd died. Wearing only a pair of his beloved black basketball shorts, it was a miracle I wasn't standing because I would have fallen over. Sacha had some serious definition to his upper body; there were planes and crevices of muscles over his frame had me drooling in approval.

  And the bastard knew it because he just smirked in my direction.

  "Shut up," I mumbled as I slipped past him only to reach back and pinch his butt cheek before closing the door. I could hear him laughing from the other side while I showered quickly.

  Once I finished getting dressed, I opened the door to find him sprawled on top of the bed, still shirtless, flipping through the channels on the small box television. I smiled before taking a seat next to him. He looked over at me before reaching out to place his hand on my thigh, rubbing up and down the length of it.

  I took the time to count the solid bands of ink that striped up his arm. There were thirteen of them total, starting at his wrist and going up his shoulder in perfectly even spacing. "Was there a reason for these?" I asked, knowing his gaze was still on me.

  Sacha took my hand with his free one, and placed it on his forearm. "Each band is a reminder of the number of labels that rejected us before we got a yes," he answered. "I like remembering that no matter how successful I might be now or in the future, it wasn't an easy journey." He paused for a moment. "Is that cheesy?"

  "No," I snorted, because it wasn't. This was my pretty humble guy who didn't act or look in the way I'd expected him to in the beginning. "I think it's neat." I slid my fingertip around the band covering his elbow. "And the one on your chest?"

  He looked down at the thick swirl of black on his pectoral. "I just thought it looked good," he laughed.

  I shook my head, snorting. "You're an idiot." I poked his taut stomach. “The one on your neck?” I grazed the piano keys with my fingers and watched as his tipped his head to the side to capture them against his skin.

  “It’s my favorite instrument. Did you know I started playing when I was three?” I shook my head. “I did. I’m classically trained. I remember my mom sitting behind me on the bench before I was old enough to reach the pedals, trying to teach me.”

  How cute would that have been? A pale-skinned little boy with crisp black hair and huge gray eyes? Bah. I kept that to myself and instead asked, "You have any more tattoos?"

  "One," he said in a flat voice.

  "Where?" I asked him suspiciously.

  Pale eyes blinked. "On my ass."

  "No way!"

  "Yes way."

  A second later, I was trying to roll him over to look at his ass cheek, but he grabbed onto my wrists to keep me from doing it. "Let me see it," I begged.

  "No."

  "Come on."

  He shook his head, sternly.

  "Why not?"

  "It's the first tattoo I ever got," he admitted.

  I smirked at him, reveling in the fact that he was still holding my wrists. "It can't be that bad." When he didn't say anything in response, I got a little scared. "Seriously. What is it? As long as it isn't a tribal tattoo, it can't be that horrible."

  Sacha looked at me for what felt like a long time. "It's of my dog."

  I blinked at him. "Shut up."

  "It is," he snorted the answer out, smiling too wide for me to take him seriously.

  I tried pulling my hands out of his hold, but I couldn't. "You're a damn liar.”

  He pulled me to him, kissing my throat softly. "Okay, I guess you can see," he murmured against me. A moment later, he was flipping over onto his hands and knees, and I was pulling down his shorts and boxer briefs to one side.

  There was nothing there.

  I pulled down the other side, and there was nothing there either.

  "Liar!" I laughed at the same time I slapped the lower half of his butt cheek as hard as I could.

  With a yelp, Sacha flipped over, wrapping an arm around my waist to pull me onto the bed beneath him. His long body stretched over mine until we were pelvis to pelvis. He shook his head. "Oh Gaby, Gaby. You want to play the spanking game?"

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Sacha got a single good spank in.

  I don't know what I'd been thinking hitting him. This was Sacha. I should have known he was going to retaliate somehow. And he did. In the blink of an eye, he flipped me onto my stomach and smacked my butt so hard there was for sure going to be a bruise there tomorrow.

  The special thing about my relationship with this guy, the thing that made us and what we were different, was that we were both laughing our asses off the entire time.

  Not in a million years could I have ever imagined thinking that getting spanked by another person could be both funny and also pretty damn sexy. I could blame the latter on the fact that I'd seen his tight and cute butt cheeks seconds ago. My Sassy was something special. If there was a fraction of a doubt in my brain that I was crazy for this guy, that I felt a connection with him that trumped any other relationship I'd had in the past by leagues in the sea—it was smashed.

  "You bitch!" I screeched against the bed cover, bucking my hips away.

  Heavy weight fell over me, his chest pressed against my back, and I could feel his lips on my neck. "Princess,” he said it with a snort.

  "That hurt!"

  He cracked up harder, kissing me over and over again. "Gaby," he murmured. "I'd say I'm sorry, but I'm not."

  I howled in pain until his palm smoothed from my side over my lower back and slowly inched down to cup my still aching ass; I sucked in a rabid breath. That large palm stroked, rubbed and kneaded the flesh gently. What did I do? I arched my freaking back.

  His free hand pushed up the back of my shirt, up, up, up until all the material bunched over my breasts and the middle of my back. "You're so smooth," he said in a husky voice right before hot, wet lips were dragged down my spine. "God, Gaby," he groaned as I curled into him even more.

  "Hmm?" I mumbled incoherently, relishing in the sensation of his mouth and warm skin on mine.

  I felt something infinitely times warmer than his lips and much more wet at the small of my back. He licked me. Oh my lord, Sacha—the most gorgeous man in every universe—was licking me. Both of his hands slipped around my waist. His fingers prodded at the elastic of my sleeping pants, before pulling it down erotically slowly.

  It wasn't until I felt his mouth on my shoulder and his fingers dipping inside the front of my panties that I thought the earth shattered into a million fragments. "Sacha," his name hissed from my lips.

  He moaned my name in return, those long, lightly callused fingertips brushing over my the lower seam of my body, not stopping until he swept over the slit there multiple times. "Fuck," he hummed into my ear. A single finger dipped into me at the same time he used his other hand to pull my back against his upright chest. The position gave him access to my neck, where he started sucking lightly.

  I cried out when he slipped another finger in me, fingering me so slowly I couldn't breathe from the sweet anticipation. What the hell my hands were doing, I really had no clue. I think they'd landed on his thighs, squeezing them tightly. "That's so good."

  He hummed, nipping me lightly on the slope between my neck and shoulder. "I want you so fucking bad."

  The rocking of my hips against the twisting and scissoring of his fingers should have been
enough of an answer to his request, but I turned my mouth to kiss him, long, deep and slow. It was only when I pulled away from his lips that I nodded. "Please."

  Sacha yanked my shorts and underwear down my legs a second later, giving me a light slap where his hand had been last. Moist lips kissed one cheek and then the other before I rolled over into a sitting position. His mouth covered mine again, kissing me slowly, sucking one lip and then the other into his mouth while his hands fiddled with the bunched material of my shirt, pulling it up and over my head.

  His eyes swept their way down, a great breath of air filling his lungs as he did it. While I hadn’t opted to get the biggest boobs in the universe, I liked Lucy and Ethel more than enough. They were now both a small C-cup with only tiny lines for scars on the bottom of each. They looked as natural as they possibly could. Sacha pushed me onto my back gently, dragging his open mouth and lips down my chin, over my jaw, neck, collarbones, before settling over my right nipple. It wasn't my imagination when I felt him shudder over me.

  I was pulling his shorts and boxer briefs down his hips with my hands and then my feet when I couldn't reach anymore. My fingers roamed their way up and down his smooth back from shoulder to ass. Legs opened wider around his naked hips. The more skin I saw—both that smooth, lightly tanned skin and the one painted in black strokes of ink—the more I couldn't comprehend how lucky I was.

  "You’re driving me nuts," he groaned, lapping against my nipple. "I need you right now.” The heavy, hot feel of his cock brushed against my inner thigh as he rolled his hips. "Can I?"

  The “yes” exploded off my tongue in a rush.

  Sacha pulled back. His heavy, beautiful green eyes were hooded with lust and something else I couldn't decipher. He slanted his mouth against mine before pulling back to press our foreheads together. One finger brushed over my breast while another one stroked across my jaw.

  I closed my eyes because it all seemed like too much. The way he felt over me, the way his eyes made me feel like I wasn't my own proprietor. But I felt like a coward doing it, so I opened them again.

  He smiled at me gently before reaching over me, digging into his backpack for a second, retrieving a small box from inside. "You're a dream come true," he said softly once he was back in place, kissing me over my heart.

  Catching sight of the black and gold wrapper in his hand, I glanced back up at his face. "You're perfect," I told him.

  Sacha kissed me, pulling away to look down. I could see his hands shaking as he tore open the condom and sat back on his heels. I don't know how I didn't babble something like “holy shit” or “oh my God.” In the times we'd spent in my bunk before, everything we ever did was over clothing. I'd never put my hands on his naked flesh. So when I glanced down his bare, hard chest and the symmetrical, block-shaped muscles of his abs to see his thick, long cock hard and proud in the air, I sucked in a breath.

  He rolled the condom over the broad, blunt head between his thighs and over the thickening shaft that stretched wider at the base. Sacha wrapped his hands over my hips to pull me toward him once he was fully sheathed. The bulbous head slipped up and down my lower lips, the tip rubbing over me so nicely I whimpered.

  One more kiss and he was dropping to his elbows, caging me in between his biceps. Another soft, gentle kiss and he was adjusting himself to press his smooth head in me. Slowly, he pushed. I spread and stretched around him, inch by inch until he was buried to the hilt. The short, brown hairs of his base were pressed to my smooth lips.

  Sacha let out a noise that sounded strangled, but I pressed my forehead against his shoulder, trying to make it through how full he made me feel.

  After a minute or five, he pulled out of me slowly before sliding back in at the same languid pace. Then again. And again. Slow, slow, slow, he worked his hips and organ deep in me. "I'm not going to last that long," he whispered, kissing the corner of my mouth.

  "That's okay." It was more than okay. Better than okay.

  "You feel so fucking good. I'm sorry," he panted, giving me a sharp thrust upward.

  I cried out.

  "Everyday. I want you everyday," he groaned. "You're the best thing in the world." He flipped us over after that, never pulling out of me or losing contact with our mouths as we rolled. "Ride me," he begged. "I want you to come."

  I smiled at him, blissed out and feeling more amazing than any human being should be capable of. But I slid up and down his long cock slowly. It seemed like less than a minute later, I was sweating and riding him faster. "Oh my God."

  His hips pumped up, out of rhythm and sync, and I came so hard, my abdominal muscles cramped. I'd barely come out of my orgasm, still seeing spots in my eyes, when he pushed into me even faster, panting into my neck. Sacha went tense all over, pressing his lips against my chest with a muffled, "Fuck!" He came, riding out his orgasm inside of me.

  In the minutes after he'd calmed down, thrown away the condom and crawled back into bed, I felt like I was living in a dream. Sacha was curling around me, pushing my hair out of my face and grinning from ear to ear—a smile that put every other one to shame.

  "What's that look for?" I asked him, running my hand over his tattooed arm.

  His smile turned dopey and sweet. "You make me so fucking happy, Princess. You have no idea."

  * * *

  "You're dumb."

  Sacha scoffed, slipping his hands over my feet to set them into his lap. We were sitting on his bed playing Uno in Berlin. Earlier that day, we'd walked around with Julian and Freddy and then followed that up by going to the venue for the show. Now that everything was over, we could finally allow exhaustion to hit full force. Almost three months of nonstop touring was finally taking its toll on all of us.

  Eli and Gordo had been sick for the past week. Mason looked like he'd gotten into a fight with a chupacabra and lost. Poor Carter looked thinner and paler than normal. The other TCC guys weren’t faring much better. Our bodies weren't made to be on the move so much on such erratic sleep and inconsistent diets, but our hearts were trying to keep up.

  I think the only thing that kept me going was Sassy.

  And the piece of Malykhin between his thighs.

  Ever since that night in Zurich, we had turned into horny teenagers. No bathroom or hotel room was spared. It was fucking fantastical. Magical. A wet dream come true.

  My heart and body weren’t match for this man.

  "It's not my fault that I know how to play the game," I laughed.

  He flicked me on the forehead. "There's no strategy to it, you're just getting lucky."

  Taking a card from the deck, I threw it at his face. "There is a strategy. You can't keep putting down all your Draw Fours and Draw Twos when you get them, duh. You need to wait until you only have a few cards left, and then make me eat shit."

  "That doesn't make any sense," he frowned, poking me in the side before putting down a blue four.

  I groaned and put down a blue Skip. "Says the man who hasn't beat me once."

  Sacha laughed. "I can beat you at plenty of other things."

  Which was the truth but I shrugged, smiling. "Maybe but not this, sucker."

  Four moves later, I'd won again. He grabbed the messy pile of cards and tossed them in the air with a snort. "That's what I think about you winning."

  "You suck."

  He fell back onto the bed, pulling me down alongside him. "You suck way better than I do," he murmured, kissing my neck.

  I shivered, tilting my head up so he could get a better angle for more skin. "True."

  Sacha dragged his hot tongue over the shell of my ear. "Gaby?"

  "Yes?"

  His hand slowly stroked down my arm. "We only have a week left," he said in a soft voice, reminding me that our time together was coming to an end.

  I moved my head to kiss his jaw, ignoring the anxiety it caused in my stomach. "I know."

  "What are we going to do?"

  Clear gray eyes met mine, something like worry or sadness filled in
the edges of his lashes. I'd been meaning to ask him about it, but I was a chicken. In that moment, I regretted that I hadn't brought it up earlier.

  "Make it work?" I offered him.

  He threw his head back and laughed. "No shit." Fingers wrapped around my wrist, pulling my hand to his chest. "This has to work."

  "Oh yeah?"

  Sacha nodded, still smiling. "Yeah, Princess. It does."

  I kissed his cheek, slinking one leg between his. "I know." I kissed his cheek again. "Who else is going keep you entertained if you don't have me?"

  After a brief pause with no answer, we looked at each other and laughed.

  "Julian?"

  He kissed my nose while his chest vibrated with a rough chuckle. "I love you."

  The admission crushed my heart, flattening it out and ruining it for the rest of my existence. "I know."

  "You do?" he asked me softly.

  "Yep." I pulled away from him to get a better glimpse at the smooth texture of the skin on his face and the long, dark lashes that framed his colored eyes. It wasn’t necessary to think of all the things he did and had done to let me know he cared about me, mainly because for the first time in my life, I felt his affection. His attention. I felt Sacha in a way that had no explanation or reason. I knew love in its many forms. I knew how I loved Eli in a way that made perfect sense because we’d been stuck together for so long. I knew how I loved the other two baboons, but this… was nothing like that. It was undeniable, bright and massive.

  It was a rainbow, a unicorn, a million-dollar lottery ticket and happiness incarnate all rolled into one thing.

  "I love you. So much."

  His smile was the size of Jupiter and brighter than the sun. "I—," he stuttered, flushing. "I—"

  "You can get it out," I teased him.

  Sacha smirked. "How much?"

  "How much what?"