Beneath The Skin(102)

I lean into her face. “Do you want me?”

“Yes,” she sighs, fraught with urgency.

And then I enter her, full force. She groans loudly, clinging to my body for dear life as I start to pump her deeply. Torches and works of passion surround the building, and here we are, two human torches on a stool generating a fire that no torch or brazier or blazing bonfire can compare to. And here we are, a work of passion two lifetimes in the making.

I feel her tightening on my cock already. I know she’s close, but I can’t let her get off yet. I slow down and thrust my mouth at hers, tasting her, forcing her to keep pace with me and savor every long, tormenting moment of my desire for her.

She claws into me, forcing me to feel every pinch of hers.

With our lips interlocked and our tongues wrestling for dominance in our mouths, I cling tight to her and pick up the pace. My heart hammers against my chest. My throat constricts, feeling the impending wave of orgasm. She must feel it too, if the scars she’s making down my shoulder blades are any indication.

I feel myself rushing to the edge. She tightens, rushing to her own.

Our bodies react together, flexing and tensing as our mouths part and our breaths turn into cries. I empty into her as she crashes into her orgasm.

I feel it from my arms to my bucking thighs. I empty into her so deeply, it never seems to end until the chasm in my chest is filled up, until I feel flipped inside-out, until my brain is flooded with the bliss of relief.

We collapse in the exact position we’re in, clutched to one another on that fateful stool. I hold her tightly, protectively, lovingly … and she grips me, her legs wrapped around my waist. In and out we breathe, cherishing the incomparable closeness we’ve just discovered.

How have I been missing this my whole life? Nell has completely undone me. I’m ruined, in all the best ways possible.

“That part I said,” she murmurs quietly, her chin resting on my shoulder. “That part about me being a better artist without you …”

“Yeah?”

She grips me tighter, then breathes in my ear: “I was wrong.” She pulls away and meets my eyes. “I’m just darkness without you. Brant, you make me a better person.”

“And I was just a player without a game,” I tell her. “You helped me find myself. I’m just … dirty bed sheets without you.”

She wrinkles her face. “Dirty bed sheets? Gross.”

“Not if you’re the reason they’re dirty,” I growl into her ear, and when she laughs, I close her mouth with a deep, warm kiss.

I love this woman.





NELL

- Six Months Later -



Dessie and Clayton’s house is remarkably packed, though I guess that’s to be expected at a celebration of this magnitude.

It’s the evening, but the sun still paints the sky a brilliant orange with pink and crimson highlights, and it looks downright beautiful pouring over the fence of the backyard where everyone is gathered.

No, no one’s getting married. In fact, quite the opposite. It’s a party for everyone who’s graduated this year, myself included. And really, a graduation is a lot like a divorce. Except everyone’s happy.

“I’m so unhappy.”

I face Sam, who stands by my side in a green lace top and her huge thick-rimmed glasses. It’s hard to say if Sam is sulking because she only ever seems to sport one particular facial expression, and she does it expertly: deadpan. I feel like her furiously angry face, her arm-chillingly excited face, and her bored-to-tears face are all exactly the same. There’s something oddly comforting in that fact.

“Why?” I ask after kicking back the bottle in my hand.

She squints into the sunset. “All my best friends are graduating. And even people I don’t know all that well, but kinda wish I got to know better.”

“Like who?”

“You.” She shrugs. “I don’t have any close artist friends.”

“I don’t have any close musician friends,” I note. “Unless you count the band that lives across the hall from me.”

“Dessie’s graduating and moving back to New York,” Sam goes on, speaking once again in perfect monotone without any slight sense of punctuation or breath. “Clayton is going with her, obviously, and that shouldn’t come as a surprise but it does, kinda, not really, and then Chloe is going too because of something to do with her sister—I didn’t know she has a sister, but she does—and then Eric’s graduating, which I guess isn’t that big a deal because he’s still living with Brant, but I just have this feeling I won’t see any of them again, I don’t know. Why didn’t I make any friends of my own? Why are all of my friends Dessie’s friends? I make bad life choices.”