Punk and Zen (52 page)

She buried her head into my neck, between
me and Samantha.

“Okay…okay…” she groaned as I pushed her
over the edge, slipping my fingers inside her, letting her crush down upon me.

I felt Samantha ease out of me a bit and
then…God. The world was going to fall apart and take me with it because it
hurt, it fucking hurt, but it didn’t matter because it was so fucking intense,
so fucking good it spiked through me, and caught as I was between them, my body
heaved anyway, light and pain and pleasure, and God, if it only happened once
in this life, then it was enough to remember it always, the sweat-slick
intensity as Fran’s head pushed into my shoulder and her free hand pulled,
Samantha’s arm wrapped around me, fingers digging across my collarbone as I
buried my face against her chest, her heart pounding into my ear, the
straining, painful push of bone and muscle of my arm trapped to my side now so
I could bury my fingers into Samantha’s cunt, the bruising push of Fran’s hip
between my legs, driving, always driving their combined thrust while I loved
her, deep and hard.

“God yesss…” Fran hissed against my throat
as she shifted on me, her pussy pulling and gliding and loving me. When she bit
at the bone in my shoulder, the sensation sent a chill through me, and I heard
Samantha’s breath catch as she surged against me.

My body relaxed, totally relaxed, and I
felt their combined push become something deep and discrete—Fran steady and
deep, my Sammy more of an urgent thrust in my cunt as she got ready to come. I
could feel it—in her body, in mine.

I twisted my head and kissed the skin
above her heart. “Come, love,” I begged her, “come deep.”

Her leg flexed over mine, pulled against
me, and I could feel the tendons in my wrist strain between our bodies, the
tension of her cunt an exquisite weight across my arm, the beloved absolute
embrace of it almost blinding me as she took as much of me as she could within
her and her painfully engorged clit pulsed under my thumb.

“Coming,” she gritted out, a desperate
sound that slipped between her teeth, and her body waved as she again crushed
me to her, kissing me desperately as she rode the tension out of her and into
me, forcing me to move against the twin pressures of them, creating a frantic
need, a hunger that made my throat ache and made my hands move, almost frenzied
as I plunged as far as I could in Fran.

“Stop…baby, stop,” Samantha said, “too
much,” and she shifted slightly so I could ease my fingers from their home.

I won’t lie, my hand hurt from that position,
and I slowly flexed it, then wrapped my fingers lightly around Samantha’s
forearm, sliding down over her wrist, stopping only when my fingertips found
Fran’s hand crushed over hers.

Electric strings were racing out and under
my skin, the arc starting from wherever I felt the raw intensity of my
Samantha, the barely restrained fierceness of Fran, and the rush was coming up
and over me as she let go of my shoulder. Her hand reached for my face,
brushing over my cheeks with her fingertips, tracing my lips until her thumb
rested below my lip. She raised her head and kissed me the way only she could.

“Yours,” she whispered against my lips,
and once again my beautiful Fran broke and took me with her, my body soaring,
my heart torn between love and grief because I knew what she meant, what this
was—this was good-bye—as her cunt held me as if she’d never let me go.

I moved the hand that had felt both of
them within me to her back to feel the flex of the muscles there with the blade
as sharp as an angel’s wing, to trace the span of her shoulders one last time.

“My lion,” I whispered back to her, “the
pride of my heart.” I kissed her with hopeless intensity and came, a sharp
burst of pleasure and pain that pounded through me, tearing me, drenching me in
love and sorrow.

Fran eased slowly out of me and the loss
was painful, both physically and emotionally. She pressed her fingers against
my neck as she rested the full weight of her body upon me and cried into my
throat while Samantha murmured soothing little sounds into my ear and gentled
my bruised and aching cunt.

I didn’t need to see Fran’s or Samantha’s
hands to know that I’d bled again. I’d felt the tear when they’d entered me,
could smell the blood on Fran’s hand.

When I moved my fingers to come out of her,
she stopped me. “Please…stay,” she cried softly, “just a little longer.”

“Love you,” I murmured and stayed, content
to feel her for as long as possible before even this, too, had to end, and I
rubbed her back as she lay on top of me.

Samantha shifted, sliding her arm out from
under me, and lifted herself up on an elbow. She kissed me tenderly, kissed the
tears that ran hot and free from my eyes, and when she finally left my cunt she
placed her hand over mine where it rested in Fran.

I realized Samantha cried too, as she
kissed her cheek. “I love you,” she said softly to Fran, then Samantha kissed
me again. “I adore ABC you,” she whispered into my ear, then settled
herself over me.

It was some time later, but not too long,
when we shifted and resettled into each other, and I let Francesca hold me as
I’d never let her—my head on her shoulder, my leg over her hip and Samantha
draped over my back, her arm reaching over me to hold my hand and Fran’s,
joined together, body and blood.

You’d think there would be, but there
really wasn’t any “morning-after awkwardness,” and because it was a free day,
we spent most of it quietly, together. We went out for breakfast, well, brunch
really, and we went back to the park for a while. We walked over to El Prado and
let ourselves get art stoned, lucky enough to be there during a huge Picasso
retrospective—his sketches, his books, all on display.

Fran loved it, really and truly loved it,
but I didn’t get it at first, although I really enjoyed his sketches (I’m more
of a Matisse fan, myself) until I saw
Guernica
. It floored, absolutely
slammed me into shock (I can’t even begin to describe it), and I was touched in
ways I don’t think I can explain when I saw that it brought Samantha to tears.

As we wandered through the galleries and I
saw the work of Goya, I knew I would never, ever paint again. I could never
hope to approach that level of brilliance; I mean, okay, the
Saturn-eating-his-children thing was gross, but the way he painted light? I’d
just have to try to do the same thing with my guitar and voice—I would never be
able to do that with a brush.

Sometimes I held Samantha’s hand, other
times Fran’s, they held each other, we walked arm in arm. It was just so very
easy and very quiet, even when we discussed the paintings. We’d stand in front
of them and whisper and point at different things. Honestly, we’d said
everything we’d had to the night before.

During the siesta hours we went—where
else?—back to the apartment and the pool.

There was only one awkward moment—when it
was finally time to turn in for the night—and in the end, we all slept in my
bed. It wasn’t sexual, though. I suppose it could have gone that way if any one
us had even slightly pushed for that, but this strangely sweet sort of shyness
flowed between us.

There were whisper-kisses and
ever-so-slightly suggestive caresses. We traded these gentle touches until we
were all sleepily satisfied and wrapped sensually around each other like a pack
of little fuzzy animals, curled together, warm and soft and safe.

The studio sessions? They were another
story altogether.

Fran would work in Carlos and Enrique’s
office, reviewing the contracts that Enzo would send her while Samantha and I
did our work: sculpting feeling into sound.

The music was really going great; it was just that
these moments would occur between us, Samantha and me, I mean. We were a little
shy with each other, a little extra-polite and oddly formal in a way I didn’t
understand, all things considered.

I’d catch myself staring at her, her lips, the exquisite
line of her neck as she sang, the way her fingers ran up and down the fret
board—long, lean, musician’s hands, the veins standing out in sharp relief
through her skin—like mine.

I’d catch her staring, too, her eyes sometimes
glinting at me in the dim light that surrounded the workstation. When she
leaned over me to check a pan level on the board for a new tune we were
starting to lay tracks out for, her nearness made me catch my breath, and we
stood there, frozen, afraid to move in any direction.

I shook my head and looked down at the board. “Set a
midrange here, I think—you?”

Samantha hesitated a moment before answering. “Yeah,”
she croaked out, “mid, uh, midrange.”

I reached across the board to set the dial just as
Samantha did, and when our hands touched, I knew, whether or not she did, that
the time for bullshit had come to an end. My nerves were frayed; I was jumpy
and edgy and filled with this nervous energy that skittered through me that I
couldn’t control no matter how hard I tried.

I took her hand in mine and faced her. “I can’t do
this anymore,” I told her. “I can’t work with you.”

Her hand was warm, electric in mine, and her eyes took
on an edge in the work light that surrounded us.

She placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Do you not
like the work we’re doing?”

That was so far from possible that I just shook my
head wordlessly. The developing material had the hallmarks of greatness, I
could feel it.

I took a breath, then another. I had to say this, had
to get it out there and in the open, because I couldn’t take the shyness, the
longing distance when every single time she was near me, and even when she
wasn’t, I could hardly breathe because all I could think, all I could feel was
her
—her
presence, the taste of her breath on my lips, and the custom fit of her on my
hands, the flash of her eyes when she came, and the exquisite softness of her
skin as it melted into mine.

“Samantha,” I said finally, looking into her eyes,
eyes that made me want to jump in and swim through her, “it’s not the
music—it’s us.”

Samantha shifted her hand from my shoulder and stroked
my face, lightly rubbing her thumb along the rise of my cheekbone. “Love, do
you need time alone? Am I making you uncomfortable?” She gazed at me earnestly.

I let go of her hand and caught her face lightly
between my fingertips. “You’re making me crazy,” I whispered, glancing at her
lips before I pulled her to me.

God, I’d missed her, the taste of her mouth, of her
breath as she breathed against me, her body molding to mine. When her lips
parted it was as if my skin remembered everything we’d done, and blood pounded
through my neck as images of all I wanted to do to her, with her, slammed
through my mind.

“The feeling is quite mutual,” she breathed into my
ear as her fingers curled around the nape of my neck and dug lightly at the
muscle. I licked the sharp ridge that defined the hollow of her throat, and my
hands eased down her sides, memorizing again her shape.

Samantha’s body eased before me until we were leaning
against the board, and it was either her hip or my arm that brushed past the
“on” switch for the DJ section of the board and set music flying through the
room, a beautifully evocative trance piece by Bjork (she used to sing lead for
the Sugarcubes—incredible stuff!). It couldn’t have been a more ideal moment,
except it got better.

Samantha tore her mouth from mine as my hips eased
between her thighs. “Is this your choice, then?” she asked, holding my face in
her hands, pinning me with her gaze, her eyes a deep midnight blue as they
searched mine.

I searched myself, outside in, skin to soul, and back
again. I kissed her, softly, thoroughly, then pulled away from her slightly.
“Dance with me?” I asked, a quiet breath against her ear. I let my hands wrap
around her waist and pulled her gently to me, away from the board.

She followed and we moved out onto the open floor. I
touched my lips to the vein that jumped in her neck as we swayed together. It
occurred to me that at some level, even though I had to leave New York to go on
tour, I had run away from Samantha, not then, but after, after Ibiza, after I’d
given up trying.

Her hands were warm, strong, loving, as they held me,
and her cheek rubbed against mine. I was again struck with how absolutely safe
I felt with her, how completely, utterly loved, without expectation, without
reservation, and then it hit me—I hadn’t welcomed Samantha home to me, she’d
made me feel at home with her.

That scared the fucking shit out of me.

She’d asked me if this was my choice. Choice? What
choice did I have, really?

“Samantha?” I asked lightly, afraid to break this
beautiful spell.

“Hmm?” she responded, a soft burr as her lips brushed
against my ear.

“Fuck the demo,” I said, “take me home.”

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

Jóga

I know that you don’t want us to fall
apart

Don’t be afraid—it’s love we made

The truth? It’s in your heart

“Face
The Rain”—Life Underwater