by Amber Burns
“Eat,” her order is easier said than done, but punctuated with her retracting foot.
It’s an innovative motivator, that’s for sure. I polish through breakfast quicker than she does only to have her foot return to my crotch.
Lucky for me Astra isn’t much of a sadist. She gives my dick a good petting with her foot and when I can’t stand it, she brings her plate over and sits in my lap, letting me do whatever shy of having sex on her breakfast table.
I’d skip cleaning the dishes, but Astra’s meticulous.
“I don’t want to have to deal with it later.” She says at my incessant whining.
“I’ll clean it up then. Don’t make me fuck you here, babe.”
“You better not.” She strokes my head, breath hiking up when I lean in and kiss the side of her mouth. Astra turns naturally, making the second kiss a deeper, open-mouthed affair.
We break apart at her protest. “Dishes first, Ryker.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I decide to keep my mouth busy. My hands splayed over her lower belly, thumbs making slow circles.
Astra tilts her head to the side, giving me free reign to nip up her throat and latch onto her pulse, suck until I’ve renewed my love bite from our first time.
“You’re impossible, you know that.” Her hand falling over mine atop her stomach, I note she’s stopped washing.
“I’ve been told that.”
Blindly reaching for the handles, she closes the faucet and turns in my embrace. Her wet hands grasp my cheeks and she tiptoes into a scorching kiss.
It’s a crazy feat of stumbling and making sure we didn’t fall and break our necks back to her room. I’m doing the leading and at the threshold I pause to lift her up and prompt her legs around my waist.
Turning around, our mouths mashed together, tongues in a tango, I settle her carefully over the bed. She drops her arms slowly, smiling up at me.
Losing my jeans and boxers, I crawl back over her and start to kiss and lick and suck whatever part of her I can. She’s salty from the sweat of our previous love-making and there’s a hint of the eggs and bacon wafting from her. It’s heady. A bottle of my own Astra aphrodisiac.
I let her sit up long enough to help her drag her head out of her night dress. Discarded over my shoulder, I palm her breasts, pinching and lightly pulling at the sensitized flesh.
Reaching down, I test her readiness. Sucking her juices clean from my fingers, I move down and drink from the source.
“Ryker, aahh,” she wrings her hands into my hair, massaging my scalp slower and slower until her walls clamp around my searching tongue and pointer.
Cleaning her through her climax, I slide along beside her, groaning at the pleasant welcome of her weight atop me. I’m ready to take her when she takes me inside.
“Cum with me?” her dark lashes ring clear, brown eyes, her desire, happiness and earnest shining through. But there’s also another emotion I might be able to decipher, but I can’t touch, not now.
With a roar, I forget all about what I think I may saw in Astra’s eyes. Throwing back my head, I cum. Hard.
Astra’s cries are prolonging the end.
When the fog starts receding to the edges of my mind, I slide my arms to the side from her waist, and smoothing her hair from her face, I check she’s breathing and well.
“Sleep...now…” she smiles, sensing my stare.
I chuckle. “As much as I’d love to be your bed, sweetheart, I can’t.”
“Why not?” Astra lifts her head up, resting her chin on my pec. “Do you have to leave already?”
I laugh a little louder.
That’s a gross exaggeration.
For the past four days we’d been locked up in her house. I’d all but moved out of the B&B, only I didn’t. I did grab a couple shirts and my guitar and partially moved in.
“I’ll be back. I just need to check on the guys.” I kiss her, mash our mouths hard as if to lockdown on that promise then settling Astra beside me, I lift off. Standing and dressing before her naked body tempted me back into bed for the rest of the day. Finding my jacket, I slip it on and turn to see Astra asleep.
Very carefully I carry and replace her over her pillow, grabbing the blanket and drawing it over her beautiful tits.
At the door I swivel around at a sudden remainder.
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” I kiss her, much more gently this time. The feather-light touch is almost as erotic as everything else we’ve done.
“Mhm…” She murmurs, as if concurring, in her half-sleep, face burrowing into her pillow, and her mass of dark red hair covering her.
Out in the hall I walk past the other bedroom, the guestroom that doubles as her storage. The door is slightly ajar. I didn’t notice considering I’ve been all over Astra since I set foot in her house last evening – and every other time before that.
I briefly recall taking her on her couch that first night.
Curiosity digs in my heels now. I push the door lightly, the crack widening and I’m stupefied.
The so-called guest-cum-storage is actually just a guest room. And what a guest room. Unlike the muted creams and beiges of her master, this room was more feminine.
The bed, dresser and paired night stands are all dark wood. The white and light pink comforter matches the soft pink accents in the curtains and the lamps on the bed-side tables.
It looked ready to be slept in.
Suddenly the feeling of intrusion catches up to me and I back out of the room, closing the door this time, more to block out the sight of the carefully decorated room than to avoid my girl’s suspicion.
Why did she say the room was storage?
I can’t exactly go ask her while she’s sleeping. Peeling my eyes from down the hall in Astra’s direction, I take to the stairs.
On the way out I dip into the kitchen and grab her house keys from an old sugar jar, the hiding spot she’d showed me a few days earlier and I lock up.
Jesse and Dan would kill me if I bailed on another practice. With Lola’s party hovering closer and closer it’s a matter of time before Astra and I’d have to take a break.
A small break, naturally. I’d be making sure of that.
The world is bright from a combination of the snow and the sun shining on the snow. The sky is mostly clear save the careless cloud here and there, and the roads are much clearer compared to the snowstorm that had blown in with me. The same one that got Astra sick.
I note that there’s a fresh trek of boots through Astra’s small lawn, right up to her living room window. The curtains are closed, but it unnerves me.
Shaking off the worry I move forward.
Lately I’ve been more mellow than usual. I don’t even care that her neighbors see me.
Now that the news of Tense Finger has swept through St. B&J, we’ve been assured after Lola finalized her invites and sent them out.
My hand stills over the car door, head tilted towards a familiar pea-green coat.
She’s facing away from me, walking in the opposite direction and fast.
“Lola,” I call out, slowing from my speedwalk. “Lola, stop.”
She does, clinging onto the guy beside her like he can save her from my interrogation and serious annoyance.
“You’re far from home, aren't you?” I seize up the guy, my shock redoubling. “Liam.”
“‘Sup.” His greeting is subdued, much more considering the last time I saw him he was ready to ask for an autograph.
“We’re just walking.” Lola is looking at me though.
She’s staring at her color-coordinated suede ankle boots. Black tights are creeping up and disappearing under her long coat. She looks ready for the runway, not for the sunny but brisk February morning.
As if to tone down and compensate for her colorfulness, Liam is dressed in head-to-toe black. Black coat, black, baggy jeans and black shit-kickers.
His bottle-dyed black asymmetrical fringe falls into his eyes every so sudden and he lifts his unoccupied ha
nd to brush it back.
“Really? Your walk led you all the way out here.” I flick a hand between them. “You two dating?”
“No,” they say together.
Lola and Liam go rigid at the same time, too.
“We’re just friends,” Lola explains, her strained voice saying otherwise. “We’re hanging out.”
“All the way here?” I repeat; I’d be totally amused if I wasn’t irritated.
Astra doesn’t need this. I don’t care for this. So whatever it is, it’s got to stop.
I seize a paranoid thought. “Did your dad put you up to this?”
“No.” Lola’s confusion is the first genuine emotion she’s shown.
“Forget I asked,” I rush, my gaze returning from skimming the parameter for the Lopez patriarch’s hiding spot.
Dan and Jesse aren’t the only ones waiting on me to resurface from Astra and our little blissful bubble; Custodio has been on edge about the Campos and my meeting with the eldest daughter for our planned nuptials.
That’s not happening, and I’ve been working out a countermeasure to kill this stupid idea of his dead. Gone are the days where Custodio Lopez can push me around.
Besides, these days I’m wrapped around someone else’s finger and she’s the kindest, sexiest woman.
“I’ll ask you again then, what are you two doing here? Lola? Liam?” I look to both, but I’m hoping Liam breaks first. My history with Lola and her family tells me she won’t crack, definitely not in front of Holly’s kid.
“We were walking.” Lola is resolute, sticking to her side of the story. Shit alibi if I’d have heard one, but whatever. I’m not going to throw down with my teenaged goddaughter. Or her so-called friend.
“It’s not like that’s a crime. Right?” she looks to Liam and he nods unconvincingly.
“You’re right, it’s not. But creeping around on someone else’s property, that’s something else.” I say. At her silence and Liam’s avoidance I nod and drop the subject.
Turning back to the car and expecting them to follow, I drive Liam home first. It isn’t a far drive. He reminds me that he could walk, but I’m ready to see him home.
“Thanks,” he says, and with a curiously stricken look in Lola’s direction he splits.
Poor kid. I recognize that face. He’s crushing on Lola.
“You’re staying?” Lola speaks to me for the first time since entering the car.
“Yeah.” I say.
I’m passing her, leading the way up to her door, leaving my car in the spacious one-lane driveway with just enough room for any visitors to settle beside me.
Lola follows me to the studio. Sure enough Dan and Jesse are working away. Behind the drums, Jesse is in full rock mode. Dan is lost, too.
I let them finish the song minus my vocals. Lola rests on one of the stools, her eyes fixated on the glass, on Tense Finger in action.
“This is going to be the best birthday ever.” Her exclamation comes when they’re done. Lola’s shy smile reminds me she’s a brat counting to her sixteenth like it’s the whole world – albeit a spoilt brat…
“Hopefully,” I give her shoulder a squeeze, my mood towards her thawing just slightly.
“He finally shows,” Dan throws up his hands. “Welcome, oh Lordy singer of ours. What took you so fucking long?”
“Language,” I point out Lola and Dan waves at her, all smiles.
“I thought you might have brought Holly and Astrid again.”
“Astra,” I roll my eyes at the contrast of his dejection and inability to remember my girl’s name, especially as he drooled all over her chest.
“We’re talking about the hot redhead, right? Could have sworn her name was Astrid...you sure?”
Dan loved to poke at me, and I’d love to jab back but that’d involve proving I’m damn sure.
I grit my teeth instead. Yeah, I’m sure. I’ve been saying her name a lot more. Not that I’d readily admit she’s given me a whole new appreciation for sex.
And that’s an understatement even.
“Are we going to play or talk?” I look from Dan to Jesse and get their signal, dismissing the brief wave of their confusion at my snippiness.
We pick up the track they’d dropped when I entered, only this time we plug in the vocals. It takes seconds but Lola and the studio and the world bleeds away...as it always does.
Once Jesse times us in, we go and don’t fall back to Earth and real-time until the second track closes on my strumming the final chord, and a lengthy filler and guitar riff from Jesse and Dan.
Sweeping a hand through my hair, I grin at the guys and glance at the two-way mirror to see Lola isn’t alone anymore.
Tzatza materialized out of nowhere. I’d been swept up by the moment, I don’t even realize how sore my arms are or how parched my throat is; I’m running on pure music. My joints and blood are buzzing and fizzing with it even as we unpack for the day’s shedding.
We wrap it up, filing out of the rec area together into the studio’s vestibule. Normally I’d be raring to go from here back to Astra’s. But I know that Tzatza is waiting for us and it’s not going to be that easy anymore.
“Is that what you’ll be playing at the party?” she asks.
“A couple of the tracks, yeah.” I say. It’s Jesse who adds, “Why? Don’t you like it?”
For once Dan is quiet. He’s usually quiet around Tzatza unless directly provoked to speak: Smart guy.
“I love it!” Lola beams at us and that thaws more of the ice after her little stunt with Liam earlier.
Tzatza nods and moves on, bemoaning the party planning hang-ups. It gives me a thought and a chance to shut her up and speed this up so I’m burrowed inside Astra’s cunt, wrapped around her scent sometime soon.
“Holly Chandler?” she echoes, lips pouching – no, wait, that’s the collagen of her resting expression.
“She’s the guest we had a few nights ago,” I try to jog her memory. “She works in event management and was telling me how she worked out of Newark before setting up her business here.”
“Over dinner she was telling me about some of her work with the art gallery and a hospital benefit,” Jesse pitches in.
“I don’t know,” Tzatza shrugs, clasping her hands about her middle. “There’s so much to do and I have no time for amateurs…”
Bitch much.
“And Lola knows Holly’s son, Liam, very well” I add, hoping to sweeten the deal while smiling at the teen I’d put in the spotlight. Lola snaps her jaw shut and answers her mother’s inquiry with an affirmative.
“He’s in a couple of my classes,” Lola lifts her shoulders, crossing her arms like it’s no biggie.
My smile grows. Now we’re even.
Tzatza is warming to the idea; well, warming as much as a icy bitch is able to.
“I’d have to ask about her rate. With the party only five days away, I might as well hire a saint to work a miracle.”
She hurries off to scout a phone book and Holly Chandler’s number for said miracle. Dan and Jesse are behind me, walking me to the door, unbeknownst to them.
They’re busy planning a fun night.
“Remind me why I agreed to this?” Jesse looks a bit queasy at Dan’s maniacal grin.
“Because you know I’m boss when it comes to these things. And then we’re going to the city to party,” Dan grinds against an imaginary chick. “Won’t be coming home until tomorrow if I can convince Jesse. Gotta celebrate V-Day in style.”
“We’ll see.” Jesse turns on me. “You’re coming though? To help me control this animal?”
“No,” I distract Dan from retorting to Jesse’s ‘animal’ comment. I’ve put a damper on their plans gauging by their faces.
“You have to come. Nothing’s more important than this.” Dan calls after my hasty retreat. “You want pussy, don’t you?”
I try to keep my expression even in the face of the funny irony. I did have ‘pussy’ and it’s right here.
> I leave the guys staring after me at the front door.
“I’ve got plans, but maybe next time,” I toss up my hand as farewell and duck into my car, leaving the Lopez residence behind.
Astra is in the shower when I let myself in. Perfect timing for pussy…
I undress in the hall and slip in to the steamy bathroom.
