Falling Away (28 page)

“And you can give me that?” Her palms rest flat on my chest, and her eyes are bright despite the skepticism in her voice.

“I can sure as hell try,” I tell her, gazing down at her, into her dark, damp brown eyes.

“Then I guess…” She inhales deeply, lets it out slowly, and then rests her cheek against my chest, melting into my arms. “I guess I can try to let you.”
 

I curl my arms around her waist and we stand there for who knows how long, just holding each other.

Eventually she props her chin on my chest, her hands on the backs of my shoulders, and her eyes find mine. “Now what?”
 

I shrug. “I don’t know. This is new for me, too.”
 

“How about you take me home? I have a door that closes, and I’m sure Brayden can take a hint…”

My hands wander down her back, and I finally loosen the chain reining in my libido, a little. “That sounds like a great idea.”

Her hands circle and graze lower down my back, until they rest just above the waistband of my basketball shorts. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. You’re killing me in that dress, Echo. It’s been hard to stay focused.”

“Well then take me home, and you can take it off me, and see where that leads.” She digs under my shirt and touches my skin, tracing circles on my skin with her palms.

“Echo, babe. We both know exactly where it’ll lead.”
 

“Oh yeah? Where?” She glances up at me, her gaze coy.

I feel my skin heat and my crotch tighten. “With you naked beneath me and screaming my name.”
 

“Is that so?” She slides her soft warm hands under the elastic of my shorts and cups my ass.
 

“That’s so.” I take her hand and lead her toward my Silverado.
 

It’s silent as we drive and the air is tense with charged sexuality. The only words spoken are Echo directing me the few short—yet still far too many—blocks to her apartment building. I find a parking spot, and Echo is out of the cab before I’ve got the truck turned off, grabbing my hand and leading me to a nondescript, unmarked doorway sandwiched between a bistro and a head shop, dragging me up a narrow flight of stairs to a small landing with a single doorway on the left-hand side. She digs in her purse and produces a single key on a Belmont lanyard, and unlocks it. The door opens to a wide living room, the back of a battered, tattered, faded black leather couch facing the doorway, a matching loveseat on one side and an arm chair and ottoman on the other, a glass-topped, low wooden coffee table in the middle. A GoPro is set up on a short tripod on the coffee table, facing the couch, and I recognize the setting as the location where Echo and Brayden record their videos. To the right is a kitchen separated from the living room by a huge butcher’s block island. Opposite is a bathroom between two doors that lead to the bedrooms; one door is open, showing a messy bed with jeans, T-shirts, underwear and boots scattered across the floor, making it Brayden’s room; the other door, Echo’s, is pulled closed.
 

There’s a faint, acrid, almost sweet smell to the air, which I belatedly identify as the scent of pot. Brayden’s head pokes up from where he’d been lying on the couch, out of sight. He has a joint in his mouth, the cherry lit, smoke curling in thin gray tendrils around his face.
 

“Oh. Hey, you two. Get it all worked out, did you?” His voice is thick and slow, muddled, sleepy.

Echo lets go of my hand and moves to the back of the couch, brushes a wayward lock of brown hair away from Brayden’s face. “Bray? Are you okay? For real?”

He flops back down onto the couch, pinching the joint between a thumb and forefinger and staring at it as he sucks in a mouthful, inhales and holds it, and then blows out a series of smoke rings. “Fine, babe. Just fine.”
 

“And I call bullshit, Bray-bay.”
 

“Just personal drama, sweetheart. If it gets to a point where I need to talk about it, you’ll be the first one I come to. For now, I just need to brood on it, okay?” He shifts to a sitting position, joint clamped in the corner of his mouth, eyes narrowed against the smoke. He grabs his ashtray, the baggie of pot, the pack of papers and the lighter, and moves toward his bedroom. “Something tells me it’s time for little old me to get scarce and turn on some music.”

His door closes behind him, there’s a moment of silence, and then the music starts. It’s a quirky folk duo, guitar and cello and a distinctive male singer. Echo listens for a moment, staring at the door, then shouts, “Who is this playing, Brayden?”

He sticks his head out. “Brown Bird. The song is ‘Ebb & Flow’. They’re totally amazing, but epically tragic.”

“Why tragic?” Echo asks.

“The lead singer died of leukemia after they’d made only five or six albums.” He gestures to himself and then Echo. “We should cover them, someday.” And then he closes his door again, somewhat abruptly.
 

She stares at the door as if still seeing him. “Something’s up with him. He’s not usually so broody, and I’ve never seen him smoke pot before. He doesn’t even drink all that much, now that I think about it.”
 

I pivot around in front of her, so I’m in her line of sight. “Like he said, he’ll talk to you about it when he’s ready.”

She ducks her head. “I haven’t been a very good friend to him. To anyone in the band, really. I’ve been so self-absorbed.”

“Now you know, and you can remedy that. But not this very second.” I rest my hands on her hips, dig my fingers through the thin white cotton dress into her flesh.

She takes a deep breath and lets it out, then looks up at me, eyes wide. “No, not right now.”

“Show me your room,” I whisper to her.
 

She steps into me, and I walk backward. Her hands rest on my chest, slide downward, and curl into the lower hem of my Commodores T-shirt. Her eyes are bright and her breath is coming deep and slow, a smile of anticipation curving her lips. The tips of her breasts poke against her dress, and the material is just thin enough that I almost make out a tantalizing glimpse of her areolae and the hardening buds of her nipples. My hands caress up from her hips to cup and lift and release her heavy boobs, and her breath catches when I scrape my thumbs over her tautened nipples.
 

I bump up against her door, and she’s crashing into me, tits flattening between us, her mouth finds mine, hot and hungry. Her lips slant across mine, her tongue slashes between my lips and her hands slip under my shorts to graze my hips and then cup my ass, and I’m gasping into her kiss, stunned momentarily by the sudden assault of her kiss, her toothpaste-fresh mouth, her hands clawing at my backside, her body hot and soft against mine.

I’m stunned into letting her lead for all of thirty seconds, and then my ravenous need awakens, and I take charge. I reach behind me and twist the doorknob and we both go stumbling backwards, caught off-balance. Echo tumbles against me, and I catch her, lift her. Her legs go around my waist, and I push her dress up around her hips, gasping at the vise grip of her thighs, inhaling the musky aroma of her desire. She wraps one arm around my neck and shoves the door closed with the other, and then she’s leaning back in my arms, clamping down hard with her legs to keep her weight supported as she lets go and jerks at my shirt. I cup her ass with both hands, gripping and kneading the generous, supple flesh, and then raise my arms over my head as she peels my shirt off and tosses it across the room.

Then her hands are on me, all over me, as is her mouth, clawing and palming and kissing and licking my skin wherever she can reach. I trip over a shoe, regain my balance and pivot, set Echo down on her feet. She reaches for my shorts, but I capture her wrists, a smile on my lips.
 

I’ve missed her so much and waited for so long. It feels like a lifetime, but it is really somewhere around two months. I spent those two months in class and working out like a madman, exercising my knee until I was as close to normal as I could be. Now I can walk normally without the cane, and I can even jog for a half a mile or so.
 

I’ve missed her, spent every waking moment waiting for a call or a text, trying not to think about her and failing miserably. I’d wake up at night, horny and rock hard, dreaming of her, aching for her. Once I even woke up having made a mess of myself from an erotic dream of her mouth on me, and her hands on me, and her eyes needy for me.
 

And now I have her, now she’s here and wants me not just for sex but for a potential us? There will be no rushing in my claiming of her.
 

I move her hands behind her back and pinion them with one hand, standing close so she has to stare up at me, hair draped across one shoulder to hang over her left breast. I use my other hand to slide the skinny white strap of her dress down over one shoulder. Her lips part and her eyes fix on mine, wide and waiting, and her nostrils flare, and her nipples tighten to diamond-hard buds against my chest. I slide the other strap off, and the dress slithers downward, baring mile after mile of lush skin and taut curves. The dress is halted in its slide by the press of my hips against hers and by the grip of my hand around her wrists. Her tits are bared to me, begging for my mouth.
 

I release her hands and step away from her. The white dress pools at her feet, and she’s naked in front of me.
 
I don’t move to touch her, kiss her or take her in my arms. I only stare at her for a long moment, drinking in her beauty, her golden skin and her glossy honey-blond hair, her heavy breasts and her bell-curve hips and plump, firm ass, her long legs and her hands, her hands, trembling at her sides.

And her liquid brown eyes, staring at me expectantly. “Benji?” she asks, and my name is a plea on her lips.
 

“Oh god, Echo, you are…so lovely, so perfect. I just want to look at you for a moment.”
 

“I need you, Ben. Please.”
 

I take a step toward her so our bodies are nearly touching, but not quite. The taut tips of her tits graze the skin of my chest. “Please what, Echo?”

“Make love to me?” Her voice is small but firm, her eyes wide and clear and hot with need.
 

I let a smile curve my lips. “I’m going to do so much more than that, Echo.” I close the inch between us, press my body against hers, let the rigid bulge of my erection behind my shorts communicate my need for her.
 

I palm her hips and kiss her throat, bend and kiss the valley between her perfect breasts, move to my knees and cup the backs of her thighs and her ass, kiss the dip between hip and core. She gasps and buries her fingers in my hair, and I gaze up at her, and then nudge her thighs apart and prepare to worship her.

SIXTEEN: Newborn Love: River of Passion

Echo

I can’t breathe, can’t move, can only clutch at his hair and gasp for breath. I can only try to remain upright and swallow past the hammering of my pulse in my throat and chest.
 

My Ben, my Benji, he’s on his knees in front of me, both hands curved against the bubble of my ass. I’m standing with my feet wide apart, spine arched inward, head hanging back on my shoulders, trying not to scream as he laps at my core. Screaming isn’t possible, I realize, because I’m totally breathless. But I need to scream,
need to
, because I haven’t felt his touch in so long, haven’t felt this good in…ever. I haven’t even touched myself since I came back from Texas. The last orgasm I had, Ben gave me. I’m swollen with heated need, aching with the pressure of built-up desire, because even through my guilt and grief and drunken wallowing, I needed Ben, wanted him. If I wasn’t fighting tears or trying to keep myself coherent despite the whiskey, I was dreaming of him and aching for his touch. And now I have him here and I have his touch and I won’t ever ever, ever let him go. God, my fucking god, no, I’ll never let him stop touching me. I won’t let him get dressed, even. I’ll keep him naked forever, oh yes, I’ll keep his huge muscled frame close and his hot skin bare, and his hard thick cock buried inside me…but right now all I want, all I need, all I can even conceive of is his talented hungry mouth eating me out like he’s never tasted anything so delicious as my quivering, quaking folds. I’m so greedy for this, aching for this. I cup his head and press him closer, grind my hips to get his tongue deeper into my opening, harder against my swollen clit.
 

I hear words pouring out of me, and don’t even try to edit them. “Oh yeah, Ben, don’t stop! Eat me, Ben, eat my pussy…oh god it’s good, so good…yes, yes!…oh fucking yes!”

He growls and his tongue swipes up my pussy, and I jerk as the tip of his tongue swats at my clit, and I nearly buckle when his lips close around that sensitive, delicate, needy little bundle of flesh and nerves and sucks and his tongue swirls around it. And just like that, within moments of his mouth latching onto me I’m ready to come, ready to explode around his mouth, and he knows it, feels it, hears it.
 

And he abruptly quits all contact with my pussy, stands up and ignores my wordless wail of protest. I reach for him, but he grabs my hands in both of his and spins me in a circle so I’m facing away from him. I gasp in shock when he shoves his big body up against mine, pressing the thick ridge of his cock between the globes of my ass, and his hands cup my tits, grasping roughly and thumbing my nipples until I wince and gasp and my knees dip. He’s all over me, all around me, huge and hot behind me. His mouth is on the ridge of my shoulder and now at my neck, and then at my throat, and I tilt my head to bare my throat for him. He accepts my offering, and his mouth sucks at my throat, and his hips grind against me. I whimper and writhe my ass against his cock, needing pressure, needing touch, my folds are aching and my clit is throbbing and I’m fading away from the edge of orgasm and I could scream from the desperate need to fall over that edge.
 

He has my hands imprisoned in one of his, held in front of my body so I can’t reach for him, can’t try to get his shorts off like I want to. I need him as bare as I am, need all of his skin naked against mine. But he’s got me in his thrall, and I don’t dare fight him for fear he’ll refuse to let me come. I hold utterly still as his free hand steals down my belly and slips over my core, cups my pussy; I don’t even breathe as his middle finger penetrates my folds and delves into me, and I don’t dare even breathe as his palm presses against my clit. I’m paralyzed, needing this so badly it’s all that exists. He adds a second finger, his ring finger, and he’s knuckle-deep inside me, pinky and index finger lying along my inner thighs, thumb tucked in. His fingers reach in and up and curl, scrape, withdraw, slide in, and my pent-up breath explodes out of me in a groaning sigh when I feel the hot wire of orgasm go taut and white-hot. His fingers pinch my nipples, one and then the other, and I feel the tug in my belly and in my core. His mouth rasps against my throat, his teeth nip at my delicate skin, and his hips move, sliding his fabric-covered cock between my ass-cheeks.