The Rider List: An Erotic Romance (13 page)

Chapter Seventeen

Audrey

Adam holds the scarves up as he asks me if I’m ready.

“Yes.”

He tells me to sit down and he kneels on the floor before me, taking both of my hands and tying one of the smooth scarves around them. Just like he did with my panties, the scarf isn’t tied tightly, but I can tell that he’s done it in such a way that if I pull, it will get tighter.

“Good?”

I nod.

He stands and holds my ankles, lifting them, and I expect him to loop the longer scarf around them and tie them to the legs of the chaise lounge.

But he holds my ankles together as he lifts my legs and I’m lowered onto my back. I feel his tongue on the back of my calf, then feel it moving down my leg…to the back of my knee, my thigh, and then between my legs.

In this position, I can’t see what he’s doing. I can only feel it, which makes it more intense.

He licks me and makes a low groaning noise, like he loves it.

I squirm as he works his tongue on me, still holding my ankles together with one of his hands.

And then he stops. This is where I expect the scarf on my ankles, but instead he lowers my legs and licks his way up my body, to my stomach, grazing his tongue across each nipple, and then to my neck.

He has one knee on the chair, and he’s hovering over me. I watch him hold the scarf and wonder where he’s going to put it.

“Do you trust me right now?” he asks, his voice barely a whisper.

I nod.

“Tell me if you want to stop.” And with those words, he places the scarf over my eyes, and ties it at the back of my head.

My breath hitches. I love that he asked if I trust him, but being blindfolded makes my heart race a little faster, makes me feel unexpectedly more alert, like some kind of defensive reaction to losing my sight.

He lifts my hands and places them behind my head. He lays me back.

“Okay?” he asks.

“Yes.” And it really is—it’s just like if I were lying with my fingers locked behind my head, only this time my wrists are bound and I can’t move them.

Adam kisses my cheek, before his mouth is next to my ear.

The sensation of his warm breath is intense.

The way I can feel him shifting his weight on his knee is more amplified.

I can hear his breathing, slow and deep, and he must have been doing this the whole time but now it’s like my ability to hear has increased.

My sense of touch is magnified so much that his tongue trailing down my neck, chest, and torso feels like he’s igniting every nerve ending in its path.

“I’ve wanted your pussy all day,” he says, as he wraps his fingers around each of my ankles, spreading them wide.

His mouth is on my hot, wet flesh, giving it a little suck. He licks me up and down with his tongue flattened, just before he starts fluttering it along my clit. I feel a finger slip inside me, and it’s almost enough to set me off, but I manage to resist.

I gasp as his tongue is in perfect, constant rhythm against me. I never knew how not being able to see increased other senses, but if there was ever any doubt, this is the best way to prove it.

Adam licks and fingers me as my open mouth sucks in air and dries my mouth.

My body starts to writhe on the chair as my hips buck wildly against his mouth. He’s licking and sucking and fingering and managing to say quick things like: “taste so good,” “you like it?” and “come on my mouth.”

His words echo in my mind. Sightless, it’s all sensation and imagination. A thought pops into my mind: Sex before Adam was muted colors and now, because of Adam, sex is a wild riot of colors.

I call out his name as my body feels like it contracts and then suddenly explodes with an intensity I’ve never felt before.

Adam continues licking me as I come, and that sensation—the one that almost hurts—starts to rise. With my hands bound behind my head, I can’t reach down to push him away. I close my legs around his head and he backs off. I feel his heavy, hot breath against my thighs before he slips from what must have been like a leg-lock.

I roll to the side and Adam kisses the back of my thigh. He caresses me with his hands, slow, even, circular motions, like he’s working me down easily from a height I’ve never been to before.

He knows what he’s done to me.

Without being able to see, my anticipation about his next move is even greater. What will he touch? Where will his hands be next? Or his lips? His tongue?

A moment passes before he moves me up to sit on the edge of the chair.

I feel his hand touch my head and I expect him to pull me forward. I open my mouth, ready for it, but he’s moving my hands down in front of me.

“Better?” he asks.

I didn’t even realize it but my arms were starting to feel a little strained. That feeling is immediately relieved now that they’re in front of me.

“Yes.”

He pulls on the scarf and my wrists are freed.

“Touch me,” he says.

Lifting my hands, I blindly reach out for him. His cock would be difficult to miss, hard as it is and as close as it is to my face. I feel his hand on the top of my head. He’s not moving it, just holding it.

And as I lean forward and take the tip into my mouth, he runs his fingers through my hair. The sensation of his fingertips along my scalp sends a shiver up my back and I let out a soft moan.

He moves his hips back and forth, opposite to the motion of my head.

“I love fucking your mouth,” he says. I feel a surge of excitement in my chest and stomach as he talks that way to me.

He’s fully rigid, big, stretching my mouth.

“Slow down a little.” His words surprise me, and then I feel his hand replace mine. “Stick out your tongue.” I do as he says. “I want you to feel it slowly sliding across your tongue. Yeah, like that, just like that.”

I can feel every detail of the contour of his erection, and I don’t want it to stop.

But he does.

“I want to come in your mouth eventually, but not this time.”

With those words, he pulls away from me. I feel him moving to my left side, sitting on the chair. He takes my arm and turns me. His hands are on my hips firmly. “Feel this,” he says, as he pulls me onto his lap and closer toward him.

I’m so wet, I’m sliding back and forth on his cock. It could go in at any minute, and the anticipation of it makes me grind harder. “I want it.”

“Tell me.”

“I want it so badly.” An involuntary groan comes out of me with a heavy exhale. “Do it. Fuck me. Now.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear.”

I’m ready to take him, all of him, but he moves me away from his body. I hear him tearing open a condom wrapper. Thankfully, he does it quickly, and he pulls me back close to him and he slides inside me. Deeply. With one long thrust of my hips, I take him.

“You should see yourself,” he says. “Grinding on me, your perfect tits bouncing.”

I’m breathing heavily. My stomach muscles are clenched tightly as I ride him harder.

“That’s fucking perfect, Audrey.” His voice is strained. “Ride me.”

Reaching forward and hoping to find the back of the chaise lounge, my hands make contact and I hold on tight. I’m able to plant my feet on the floor and fuck him hard.

He thrusts upward as he holds my hips and pulls me down.

I’m trembling. I can hear and feel my heart beating in my ears. I feel the taut muscles of his thighs every time I slide down him.

I’ve never felt anything like this, either physically or emotionally. He has me blindfolded. I’m completely at his whim. Vulnerable. And I trust him like this.

It’s more than fucking for distraction now. I’m realizing I crave everything about this man—from who he is, to how he carries himself, how he treats me, how he pleasures me like I’m someone he’s dying to make feel good, to how he fucks me like he can’t get enough of me. All of it.

The realization is hitting me as hard as the second orgasm that slams into me, when he does what he did before—his thumb on my clit. Fuck, I love that he knows just what to do and that he does it when I least expect it.

I cry out his name as my head drops and our foreheads touch. I try to find his mouth, but I feel his cheek, and then he finds my mouth.

Our tongues swirl around each other’s like we’re trying to tie them in knots. Our heavy, hot breathing against each other’s mouths and the noises I’m making pulls him along with me.

I feel his cock pulsing inside me.

He throws his head back. “Fuck, Audrey.” He blows out a burst of air as I feel his body tense up tighter than I’ve felt it before, and then start to go slack.

He pulls the ends of the blindfold and I get to see his face in the last seconds of his orgasm. His jaw is tight. His eyes are like fire burning through mine. I can’t look away. I want to memorize this image as if I were taking a photograph of it.

I lean down to kiss him again. He wraps his arms around me tightly and holds me against him. My head falls to his shoulder. We’re both catching our breath, calming down, when I feel his hands on the sides of my head. He raises it so I look at him.

“You’re gonna fuckin’ kill me, you know that?”

We look at each other for a few seconds and he starts to laugh. I drop my head to his shoulder again, smiling, wishing he would hold me like this forever.

Chapter Eighteen

Evan

After recovering, we get dressed—me in the clothes I was wearing, minus a few buttons, Audrey in the second dress she bought along with the first. The backup dress. The one she didn’t know she’d need because she had no idea I was going to tear the first one off of her.

“Weren’t you supposed to bring something else?” I ask her, as we go into the den.

She looks at me.

“I asked you to bring something to show me, something that tells me more about you.”

“Oh, right,” she says. “Well, yeah, I can show you on my phone. Photos, some of my designs, stuff like that.”

She looks at me with her head tilted to the side, like she’s trying to gauge whether I’m interested.

“I’d love to see them.”

She sits down. “It’ll just take me a minute to pull them up.”

“While you do that, I’ll get us something to drink. You know what I have.”

“What are you drinking?”

“A beer.”

“I’ll have one, too, then.”

I grab two bottles from the refrigerator and go back to the den. Audrey is busy scrolling through her photos.

“I’m making a slideshow,” she says.

Looking out the window, I see the porch lights are off, and it’s complete darkness out there, except for one blinking light—a boat on the horizon.

“Okay, ready?” she asks, pulling one leg up on the couch and moving closer to me. She settles against my body. She’s warm. Her hair is soft against my chin. This is strangely intimate for me, but I don’t question it right now; I just want to enjoy her.

She starts the slideshow. “Sorry, no music.”

My stomach sinks a little at the mention of music. Fuck. I need to tell her about my name, who I really am, everything. But this isn’t the right time.

For one thing, she’s enthusiastically showing me her photographs and some mock-up ad designs—all of which are extremely impressive—and there’s no way I’m stopping her.

Worse, we just had sex. Something just doesn’t feel right when I think about fucking her and then saying:
Oh, by the way, I’m not who you think I am.

I decide that I’m going to do it in the morning. On the way downstairs I asked her about staying overnight and she said she couldn’t. I told her I wished she would, but I didn’t want to force it and make her uncomfortable. I’m well aware of her situation at home and I know she has a good reason for not staying here. Maybe that will happen. Give it time.

She’ll stop by tomorrow, though. We talked about it. I’ll be her last stop on her morning rounds and she’ll have a late breakfast with me.

I’ll talk to her then. I’ll come clean and answer anything she wants to know.

I focus on her photos and designs. She explains each one—when she took the picture, why she took it, how she came up with a certain logo, how long she spent thinking about slogans for the fictitious companies she invents for design practice—and I’m amazed by all of it. She has an incredible eye for composition, and she’s really good with words, too.

“Okay, enough of that,” she says, right in the middle of one of my numerous compliments about her work.

“Why?”

She shrugs, closing the photos app and locking her phone. “I’m not good at taking praise.” Her head turns quickly to face me. “Or criticism. So thanks for being nice.”

“I wasn’t being nice—”

“I’m kidding,” she says. “I can take criticism. It’s compliments that I have a hard time with.”

“Why do you suppose that is?”

She sips her beer. “I don’t know. I’ve always been like that, though.”

We’re silent for a moment or two as she curls herself against me, her hand flat on my chest.

“That was…I can’t even think of a word for what that was,” she says.

I kiss the top of her head. I wish I could see her face as she talks about this.

“I know,” I say.

“I’ve done things with you that I never thought I would do. I mean, more like I haven’t thought about at all.”

I consider how to respond, and decide now is as good a time as any to tell her: “There’s more.”

She’s quiet for a few seconds. “More?”

“Yes. There’s more to what I like. But I didn’t want to rush you into it.”

She looks up at me. “Like what?”

I put the empty beer bottle on the table next to the couch and turn my gaze back to her. “Would you rather me tell you, or would you like to find out a better way?”

“Surprise me.”

“That won’t be difficult.”

. . . . .

I get up early the next morning and feel an urge to play my new guitar. I skip my usual morning walk and run, which isn’t a bad idea because it’s already crowded out there and a work crew is setting up a big tent that will cover the stage for a Fourth of July concert. But that’s not the reason I stay inside. The music can’t wait.

The guitar was in the master bedroom closet last night. I didn’t want to take any chances that Audrey would see it and ask me to play.

I’ve told myself I’ll do it when I’m ready, and now I’m feeling it again. This will work out great, because when she gets here for our late breakfast, I’m going to tell her what I’ve been holding back. I don’t see any way that she won’t ask me to play something for her, so warming up like this is good.

Starting off with some of the more recent songs I wrote, I just play the music without singing. I’m always singing backup and doing harmonies, but I can hold my own when it comes to lead vocals.

After a little while, I stop playing entire songs and start strumming pieces of different songs. Working them together like a medley.

This feels good. I feel comfortable. My fingers glide along the strings as if I haven’t missed a day of playing. And it’s been a couple of months now—the longest period of time I’ve gone without picking up a guitar.

Previously, the longest I went without playing was two days, and that was years ago, but ever since then I’ve played every day for at least thirty minutes no matter what was going on.

I switch from songs to random chords and solos, just enjoying the return of my usual comfort level with my instrument. I don’t have to think about what I’m playing when I do this, it just comes to me and I do it. It’s in this state that I sometimes get inspired to write a lyric or a bar of music. But today is different.

My mind is drifting to thoughts of the band and how I just needed this little spark that I seem to have acquired overnight. I’ll have to think more deeply about it, but this is the first time I’ve seriously entertained the idea of returning for the studio sessions.

I’m starting to think about this in terms of my responsibility to them. And loyalty. I’ve always been a loyal guy, and they’ve always been loyal to me. It’s part of what has held the band together over the roughly ten years of our existence.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t torn about this new realization. There’s a part of me that’s enjoying a leisurely summer break, away from the band and everything else. But it’s not really about that. It’s about Audrey.

What started out as pure distraction has become something more now, whether either of us wants to admit it or not. And it seems clear to me that she doesn’t, but I can’t see her one more time without her knowing how I feel.

I didn’t go looking for someone to pull me out of the creative slump I’m in, but she’s doing it. I didn’t set out to find someone to soften the hard edges of my cynicism about relationships, but she’s doing just that.

And I sure as hell didn’t book this resort for the entire summer expecting to find someone who I’d be missing when she’s not around, but that’s who Audrey is to me now.

It started as wanting her, but now it’s
needing
her.

I play a few notes, ones I’ve never played in this order before, and a melody emerges. New music. I repeat it a few times, adding to it with each pluck of a new note. Then the chords come, and I can hear a new song coming. It’s really more than that, though. I can
feel
it happening.

And just as quickly and unexpectedly as it started, it stops. I don’t want to force it. I can’t mentally afford the slightest encounter with writer’s block just as it seems to be lifting.

So I switch to an old song, a favorite, the one we released that became our biggest hit and remains so today. Playing it boosts my confidence because I wrote it in less than an hour. It’s the one that’s the reason for the date tattoo on my shoulder.

I start the song over and this time I sing with feeling and passion because I wrote the music and lyrics.

As the song winds down, I play softer, letting the music fade gently, and I hear a knock at the door. It must be Audrey.

I hurry to put the guitar back in the master bedroom closet, then go to the front door just as she’s knocking again. I open it and it’s Audrey, but she looks like I’ve never seen her before. There’s a glare in her eyes. Her face seems red, but it’s hard to tell because she’s under the shadow of the overhang.

“What’s wrong?” I say, reaching for her.

She pulls away from me, swiftly, and blows past me through the door.

I turn to watch her take a few steps into the bungalow.

She faces me and crosses her arms. “You lied to me. You’re not Adam Lewis. I know exactly who you are.”