Falling Away (30 page)

In fact…

I touch my lips to his ear. “Hey, Benji-boy?”

“My love?”
 

I pull back to stare at him, momentarily stunned by the easy way he said that, and by the way my heart squeezed—but in utter inexpressible joy, rather than fear.
 

I reclaim my thoughts, and writhe against his hold on my ass. “I like this.”

“Me too.”

I bite his earlobe, and then whisper, “But I want more.”

“More, how?” he asks, but his fingertips slide closer to the crease between my globes.
 

“Like that. Yeah, baby.” I try the endearment on for size; having never even pretended to love a guy before, I’m a stranger to lovey-dovey terms. I nibble at his shoulder and try to keep myself totally relaxed as his hands explore where I’ve never let a man go before. Finally, he gently tugs one of my cheeks aside and traces the gap. “Oh god, yeah, oh yeah, that’s where I want your touch, Benji-boy.”

He finds my rear opening with a finger and presses lightly. “Here?”

I moan, long and breathless. “Uh-huh.”

“You’re sure?”

“Gently, baby. You’re the first and…the—the only one to ever touch me there.” I bury my face against his chest and claw my fingers against his shoulders.
 

With one hand he spreads me apart, and with the other he gently, slowly presses a thick finger to the tight knot. “This feel good, Echo?”

“Jesus…yes!” I gasp, when he presses just so, and now I’m penetrated. Just a sliver of the tip of his finger, but penetrated where I’ve never been touched, the one place I’m still virgin for my man.

“Touch your pussy, Echo.”
 

I obey him immediately because fuck yes, that’s what I need. He doesn’t move, just waits for me to press my fingers to my throbbing button, and I inhale a gasp because all of me tenses, and then rockets explode inside me, and I feel myself clench around his fingertip, I feel wetness smear out of my pussy, and my nipples pebble against his chest. There’s only one thing missing, now: I shift my hips and slide downward, and he’s inside me, his thick shaft piercing my folds, and now I’m aching with fullness. I draw my legs closer to my torso, and seat myself on him, impaled by him. He’s balls-deep in me now, and I wrap one hand around his neck and we both strain to press our mouths together, kissing each other’s breath away.
 

“More…” I gasp.

He wiggles his finger, and I involuntarily clamp down around him, but he’s up to the first knuckle of his finger and my breath has left me. I’m so stretched and filled that the universe has been reduced to the pulsating tightness of my body.
 

God, I ache so beautifully.

He holds still, and so I do I, letting myself grow accustomed to this new and delicious sensation. I’ve heard and read how good this can feel if done right, but I never believed it. Until now. This…oh yes, this is going to be something Ben and I explore and push the boundaries of; it’s a new favorite thing, I think.

For now, I’m content to roll my hips and feel the finger inside me back there, and let myself growl like a lioness with how incredible I feel right now. I lie on him, draped on him, his body a solid sheltering mountain beneath me, supporting me and taking my weight easily.
 

I have to move. God, now the need is a fierce burn inside me, sudden and sun-hot. I press my lips to his chest over his heart. “Don’t move, Benji-baby,” I murmur, and roll my hips.

Oh, oh fuck yes. Oh hell is that good. His cock slides between the stretched lips of my pussy and his finger stimulates me back there, making me feel overfull in a dirty, naughty, perfect way. I like being bad. I like being his dirty girl.
 

As if reading my mind, Ben’s lips move at my ear. “You’re my dirty girl, huh, Echo? You like this, don’t you? You like being kinky.”

“God, yes. I’m so bad, Ben.”

The hand cupping my ass lets go, caresses the globe, and then smacks my cheek with a sharp slap. “So bad.”

I shriek out loud, because the slap shocked me and I almost didn’t notice when his finger slid deeper, but now, oh now, my ass stings and I ache with the fullness of double-penetration. He smooths a hand over the stinging flesh of my backside, and then slaps the other cheek, and I shriek again, breathless, because now he’s in me to the second knuckle. It almost hurts, but doesn’t. Or if it does, it’s a hurt I can’t get enough of.

“Again,” I groan through gritted teeth, sliding my pussy up and down his length.

So he slaps my ass again, and it stings so perfectly, and he pierces deeper, and he does it again on the other side, and now his knuckles crush into the plump muscle and skin of my ass. He can’t go any deeper, and I’m growling in my throat at the sensation, feeling dirty and fierce and primal and desperate for motion.
 

Ben’s cock throbs inside me, and I know he’s aching with need. So I roll my fingertips against my clit, having forgotten momentarily to touch myself like I was supposed to, and when I do feel the press of my fingers against my swollen flesh, I have to breathe out a curse at the lightning that hits me.

“Oh fuck,” I whisper, and grind my hips on his. “Oh fuck. Oh fuck.”

“You feel so good, Echo. Jesus, you feel so good I can’t take it.”

“You don’t even know, Ben. You just don’t even know.” I’m moving so gently it’s hardly even a motion, just a whisper of skin against skin. “Just hold still and let me fuck you, Ben.”

“Anything for you.”

“You’re my anything. My everything.” I don’t know where this is coming from, only that it’s true, and that somehow the intimacy of this moment, the way he’s touching me, the way he’s so fully inside of me on so many levels has raw truth spewing out of my mouth. “I’m going to scream when I come, Ben. I’m going to scream, and it’s going to be your name.”

I slide my mouth across his, but I’m too full of him to kiss, I can only hold my lips against his and breathe as I start to move in earnest now, pushing upward, and then sliding downward, feeling him glide in and out of my pussy, and I gasp with each motion. It starts out slow, and his hand follows my movements, keeping his finger inserted in me. I drag my mouth away from his and press my lips to his chest, stutter them across his skin until I find the flat of his nipple and I lick him, then nip him hard enough to elicit a curse and a jerk that has him crushing deep into me. I bite his other nipple, then, just to get that same curse-and-jerk, and lick it to soothe the sting. My hips are gyrating now, and he’s moving with me, and it’s like the universe itself has been compacted down to an intricate, impossible knot inside me, the heat of all the stars going nova all at once burning low in my belly, making my core ache and my lungs heave helplessly and my heart slam like a tribal drum.
 

I’m moving hard and fast along his body now, hovering over him with my hands on his chest, not needing to touch myself to be on the edge of climax, but it’s not a climax, it’s the apex of all sensation, it’s orgasm times love times infinity. His groaning and mine harmonize, our bodies move and meet in sinuous waves, and we’re lost in each other, shouting and cursing, and it’s music, we’re a symphony together.

And then he sneaks a hand between our bodies and finds my clit with his fingers, strums my clit and I snap like an over-tightened guitar string.

“
BEN!
” I scream, shrill and breathless.

“I’m right there with you, Echo, oh god, I’m coming too, coming so hard,” he growls.

Everything narrows down to the infinitesimal instant when I come and he comes, and it’s a moment of perfect unity, our eyes locked, our bodies merged.
 

His finger is pushing in and pulling out, mirroring the action of our joining, and I’m coming apart, thrashing on top of him, screaming wordlessly, crashing down onto him hard again and again, and he’s moving and thrusting up into me, and I feel him explode inside me, feel the hot gush of his release, and the universe that was within me is expanding out of my pores, fire in my veins and heat in my blood and I can only scream through gnashing teeth, biting his skin until he grunts.

We come, and we come, and we come. It’s a never-ending tsunami of ecstasy bashing through us.
 

When it’s over, I cradle his handsome, sexy face in my palms and stare down into his deep brown eyes. “I love you, Ben.” I whisper it, breathless. What just happened between us, it dragged the truth out of me. Wrenched it free from deep down. And now that I’ve said it, the phrase pours out of me. I’m sobbing it over and over again, overcome by how truly I mean it, by how deeply I feel it. “I love you, I love you…I love you, oh Ben, I love you so much, Ben.”
 

His mouth finds mine, and his lips tremble and I taste tears, his or mine or both I neither know nor care. “I love you so fucking much, Echo.”
 

I can take no more, so I reach back and tug at his hand. He understands, and gently, so gently pulls his hand free. I gasp at the shocking emptiness I feel.
 

Ben rises, washes his hands and gets a clean towel from the bathroom, returns to clean me.
 

When he’s done, he lies back down beside me where I’m collapsed facedown on the bed, trying to put my body back together again.
 

I grin at him. “Good morning.”

He laughs at the utter absurdity of the greeting, at the
non sequitur
of saying such a thing after what we just did. “Good morning.”
 

“I love you,” I say, just to see if I can say it again, now that we’re not in the throes of the most intense sex I’ve ever had. I grin, because I can, and it feels good to say it. “We should start every morning like that.”

“With my finger in your ass?”

“Or your cock.”
 

His gaze heats. “You want my cock in your ass?”

“Oh, it’s happening. We may have to work up to it, but it’s
so
happening.”
 

“Let’s go back to the part where you love me.”
 

“Yes, let’s,” I agree.

He takes my hands and draws me to himself. I’m dragged up and up until I’m sitting on his lap, curled on him, my head against his chest, his palm on my hair, the other on my hip. And oh…oh, being held like this? After such a wrenching, wracking orgasm and such a fierce and explosive epiphany of love, being wrapped up in this man is just too much. So perfectly, beautifully, too much.
 

I can only weep, deep wracking sobs that Ben doesn’t question. He just holds me through it until I can twist my head to peer up at him. “I love you with all that I am, Ben Dorsey.” I palm his cheek and whisper this against his mouth. “It’s crazy. It’s like one second I was falling, and then now I’m just…I’m there. It’s love so big it hurts, so much it’s scary. So big, so much, all at once.”
 

He rolls with me, pressing me with a delicate gentleness to the mattress, hovering over me. He’s huge and beautiful and broad, all dusky skin and sleek muscles and bright eyes that breathe with potent love. “You can fall, Echo. I’ll catch you. Because I’m falling too, and I need you to catch me, too.”

“Now and forever, come what may,” I tell him.
 

And when we join again, it’s slow and with all the fragility of newborn love, each of us shaky as a newly birthed foal. My heart gallops as we move together, wrapped up in him, tangled up in him, loved by him, loving him back with a heart freshly opened to the long-pent-up and long-building well of passion that flows free like white raging river water from a burst dam.
 

When we come together, it’s with whispers, mine and his weaving together and overlapping: “
I love you, I love you—god, I love you
…”

SEVENTEEN: Falling Away

Ben

One year later

The thunder of hometown applause is deafening. I stand backstage, watching as Echo the Stars takes the stage for their first live performance since Echo’s incident, now almost a year and a half ago. They’re signed with Calloway Music, Kylie’s parents’ label, and with the Calloways producing and guiding and honing them, Echo the Stars have found a sound that people all over the country are clamoring for. In that time, they cut their first EP,
Miles To Your Door
, followed less than six months later by a full-length album,
Sweet Refrain
. They’ve put up a slew of YouTube videos as a band, and Brayden and Echo continue their stripped-down duet journal-videos, but the band hasn’t appeared live until tonight. This performance takes place as the opening act, preceding Oz and Kylie—who now perform under the moniker O+K—then the Harris Mountain Boys, and then Colt and Nell themselves.
 

The applause reaches a crescendo as the band settles in with their instruments, Atticus getting comfortable on his stool and twirling his drumsticks, Will picking up a dobro from the side-by-side stands holding that instrument, a banjo, and an electric guitar. Mim brings her bass to an upright position and settles it against her ample chest while Vance cradles his fiddle under his chin, propping it there and adjusting the tuning. Echo is absent from the stage, but she’s standing in the wings, waiting until the crowd is screaming and howling and whistling.
 

Brayden stands tall and lanky at center stage, hooks the strap of his mandolin over his shoulder and clips it, adjusts the angle, and then reaches over to the microphone beside him. “What’s up, ya’ll?” he shouts. The crowd shrieks, and Brayden glances around the stage at each of the members. “Wait a second, wait a second. Someone’s missing.” He grins and glances at Echo, clearly stoked and ready to jam.

“Echo!” comes the response from the crowd. “ECHO!”

My girl is giddy, beaming, bouncing on her toes. The house lights and the stage lights go black, and Echo trots out on stage in darkness, takes her place at the microphone. Atticus hammers a thudding beat with his kick drum—
BOOM…BOOM….BOOM
—and then Brayden picks a delicate, intricate melody that loops and dips and swirls around the beat for several seconds. Vance saws a long, low note which is mirrored by the deep, throaty, mellow note of Mim pulling a bow across the strings of her upright bass and then, lastly, Will sends a bent and wavering high note from his dobro to finalize the weaving, interlocking melody. The audience is screaming nonstop now, and they only go silent when the stage lights come on, bathing each member in a spotlight, Brayden and Echo sharing a pool of light and the microphone.