“So are you,” I whispered. My teeth grazed his neck as my hips rolled against him.
He wrapped his arms around me and held on tight. Thrusting into me fast and hard. The sounds of our flesh sliding and slapping a sinful new soundtrack to the winter night.
I felt it building, felt the first flutters of my inner walls.
“Christ. That’s right, baby. I can feel you getting ready to let go,” he groaned against me and then his teeth sank into my shoulder. “Show me how hard my dick makes you come.”
The bite coupled with the demand left me no choice but to do as he ordered.
One second, I was Brooke Zimmerman, middle-aged empty nester. The next, I was a sex goddess hurtling into an orgasm so violent I worried I might die.
My vision grayed as the waves of pleasure pounded me mercilessly. I felt my inner walls clamp down hard on his straining erection as my thighs quivered and my head spun.
“Vonn!”
He was turning me inside out. Tearing me apart and reassembling me into something new.
His triumphant shout rang in my ears as he thrust once more into my still convulsing core. I felt the devastating pulse of his orgasm as he emptied himself inside me.
“Best Christmas ever,” I whispered.
“Damn right,” Vonn agreed.
It was officially Christmas morning. The dark hours of it anyway. The power had come back on at some point, and we were tangled up together in my bed. Fingers trailing over new skin, lips exploring uncharted territory. We’d put a more than respectable dent into the box of condoms Addison had hilariously given me along with a lecture on safe sex when I’d started dating again.
Vonn’s body was warm and hard, full of unexpected pleasures.
His fingers brushed my tattoo, a musical note on the inside of my right hip.
I felt…wonderful. Lit up from the inside. Loose and warm and ridiculously happy.
He threaded his fingers through my hair, separating the strands and letting them fall. “Why didn’t you ask about him?” His voice was a rumble in his chest against my ear.
“Who?”
“Tommy.”
I shifted to look at him. Tommy Kwik had been the original front man for Sonic Arcade. A punk icon whose tragic death had rocked fans. Vonn and Tommy hadn’t just founded Sonic Arcade, they’d been best friends.
Vonn had driven Tommy to his last stint in rehab. He’d been best man in all three of the lead singer’s weddings. They’d written all of the band’s songs together.
And by all accounts, it had been Vonn to find his best friend’s body in a hotel room in Miami after Tommy had overdosed two years ago.
He’d never once discussed it publicly. Never once talked about what had happened that night. Which had led a rabid public to devour and manufacture a steady diet of rumors and half-truths. The desire to know exactly what had happened to the beloved singer still gripped the music industry.
I remembered the footage of a grieving Vonn leaving Tommy’s funeral. The flashes from cameras, the shouted questions. A disrespectful trespass into territory where none of them had belonged.
I hadn’t asked him. Not because I didn’t want to know. I, like the rest of the public, was driven mad by the unanswered questions. But I didn’t want him to tell me. I didn’t want to make the call whether to keep the secret or to share it with the world.
Hell, I’d already compromised my integrity by having four orgasms with the man. But this seemed even further over the line.
“It’s too personal,” I said.
“I’ve never talked about it.”
“To anyone?”
He rocked his head back and forth on the pillow. “No one.”
We were silent for long minutes. Betty snored indelicately from her dog bed in the corner. A mix of snow and sleet hissed against the windows. His fingers trailed up and down my arm like he was playing chords.
“Been keeping it inside long enough. Might be nice to know that someone else out there in the world is keeping it with me.”
“Vonn, it doesn’t have to be me.”
“You’ve got all my other secrets.”
“I’m writing a story. If this is something you don’t want out there in the world, you need to at least tell me it’s off the record.”
“He’d been clean for nineteen months. Longest stretch yet. Tommy was a partier. Always had been. He loved the stage, the spotlight. When he was offstage, he was constantly chasing that feeling. We all dabbled off and on in the early years. But the rest of us learned our lessons. We got over it. Tommy never did. He couldn’t stand being alone. If he had a day off from touring or interviews, he’d throw a party or show up at some hotspot and make news.”
As Vonn talked, his hands continued to stroke my flesh. As if touching me made the words come easier.
“He thought he was the life of the party. But for us, he was becoming a liability. He didn’t show for practices. He was late for shows. There were a few times when he could barely stand on stage. Every time we shipped him back to rehab. And every time he tried. He fucking tried. But he couldn’t stand being sober and alone.
“We told him it was his last shot. He had one more chance to get clean, or he was out. He was my best friend, but I couldn’t even look at him anymore. So we sent him back to rehab. And this time it looked like it stuck. Long enough that I started letting my guard down. We were writing songs again. Touring. Things were good. It took me a while before I started to notice the little things. The fidgeting. The too-loud laugh. The showing up late or not at all.
“We had a show in Atlanta, and it was fucking clear as day he was using again. We put it up to a vote on the tour bus that night. He was out. Tommy begged me to change my mind, to change everyone else’s mind. But he’d blown his last chance. I told him that. I couldn’t stand by and watch him kill himself slowly.”
I sucked in a sharp breath.
“We got to Miami and crashed for the night. I woke up early feeling like something was wrong. I went to Tommy’s room and let myself in.”
I clung to Vonn, trying to put myself between him and the memory.
“He was still alive. High as fuck. Pills and coke on the coffee table right in front of him. ‘I started a new song, Vonn. We can finish it together.’ He couldn’t even hold his head up, and I knew something was wrong. So fucking wrong. I called the doctor, then sat on the floor with Tommy.
“He kept sayin’ he was sorry. So fucking sorry. And I just held on to him. I wrapped my arms around him and held on tight like it was gonna keep him with me.”
Vonn’s voice was tight with emotion. It felt like a knife in my chest. “I loved him like a brother.”
Hot tears escaped from my eyes, slipping down my cheek to slide against his chest.
“Told him he was going to be okay. That we were gonna be okay. He told me it wasn’t my fault and that he wanted me to finish the song. Our last song. He was reciting lyrics one second and gone the next. His heart stopped. On Christmas Eve.”
“I’m so sorry, Vonn.” Words felt meaningless when stacked against his palpable pain.
He sighed, his breath ruffling my hair. “It was always going to end this way. That was the first line of the song.” His fingers trailed up and down my arm like he was playing chords. “There’s no new music without him. I’m no good with words. He was the lyrics. I was the music. But there aren’t any more songs without him.”