1
“How are you feeling?”
We lay on the bed in the hotel the morning we were due to embark on the tour. I leaned up and kissed Marlow by way of an answer. I didn’t want to put it into words, hear the crack in my voice as I described something that I thought I’d never have to deal with again. I felt clear as a bell now, despite only just waking up, but that pain. My kiss didn’t seem to ease any of Marlow’s concerns. He stroked a hand over my forehead and down my cheek, those eyes seeing way too much as he studied my face.
“Kira?”
“I feel good, really good. That was scary, whatever the hell it was yesterday, but I don’t feel any of it now. My head’s clear, my neck isn’t tight…”
“It’s OK,” he said, pulling me against him so that my head rested on his arm. I was never, ever going to get used to looking at him. I so wanted to photograph the way his skin turned to a deep amber in the filtered light coming through the curtains. I smoothed the sheets back from his chest, my brows twitching as I tried to memorise every bloody shape there, storing it away for later, then I moved until I sat next to him and stroked the raw silk of his skin. “I’m not your father. You don’t have to report to me. I was just worried.”
But you will, I thought. People always fell in two camps—those who felt like I was a burden that needed to be cared for, and those who walked away from damaged goods. My heart seized in my chest as I considered him doing either of those things. His hands went to my hips as I straddled his, but I felt an urgency he probably didn’t, his eyes still heavy with sleep. I bent down, letting my hair trail across his skin before pressing my mouth to his.
I wanted to hold this, bottle this, preserve the way his lips felt against mine, the increasingly harsh bite of his fingers at my waist as my slick cunt rubbed along his morning wood. I wanted to swallow those rapid breaths, those low moans to save for later once he’d gone. I wanted to retain every damn bit of him inside that I could. Starting now.
“Kira!” he cried as I pulled the sheet away. I needed to see every damn inch of him. He grabbed at me as I slid down, then in a low, swooping movement, I licked my taste and his off his throbbing cock.
“Jesus fuck!” he yelped as my fingers closed around him, lifting that rigid length and then covering the head with my mouth. My lips bruised on the crown as I pouted so the softness engulfed him, then I suckled on the tip, drawing less and less coherent cries from him. His fingers dug into the bedcovers, the muscles tight and trembling as I licked him like he was my favourite treat, outlining every ridge and crevice, the flat of my tongue sweeping the taste of him that seeped from his slit over and over.
Marlow begged, for more, for me to stop, it seemed to vary. The quite natural concern for me warred with the sensations I was pulling from his body, until it appeared getting a blow job won. I readied myself to try and work as much of his thick length down my throat, when there was a knock on the door.
I heard Marlow’s hiss of frustration as both our heads jerked up.
“Hey, it’s Johnno,” the muffled voice said on the other side. “Sorry for interrupting, but we’re all due to do a morning briefing with the band in about half an hour. I’ve brought coffee.”
I didn’t want coffee, or at least, not the liquid kind. I looked Marlow over with a possessive eye. He’d been given to me, he was mine to touch and please. I wanted to see him come apart, completely and utterly vulnerable as I worked him with my throat. He seemed to sense this and got up off the bed, his eyes molten before shaking his head and deliberately backing away from what I was so obviously offering.
“I want this,” he said, wrapping his arms around me. “I want you so fucking much, but we’ve gotta get out there. Tours are like a machine, and they break down if all the cogs aren’t working. Jennifer’s been covering for me…”
Fuck, Jen. I felt a sharp pang of guilt as I realised I’d spent my first night on foreign soil without even a text for her.
“And she’ll be dying to see you. Let’s go out, have a coffee and a quick bite, and then head down to this meeting, yeah?”
“It’s not going to be like this again for a while, is it?” I said, looking back at the bed.
He shrugged with that same bittersweet smile of his. “Not for a bit. Love’s something you snatch when you can on tour. I’ll find you. Trust me, I’ll find you.”
Love.
The word dropped down inside me like a stone, and when I looked back at him, I saw a mirror of what I thought my face would look like. His eyes were wide, like he’d massively fucked up and hadn’t realised until now. Like he was looking down on the consequences of his fumble, aghast at what he’d done. He looked completely stricken, but I reached for his hand. His fingers tightened, his expression softening until I saw something I’d never expected to see in the eyes of another. It was big, vast, a whole undiscovered country of feeling inside him, one that matched my own. There was another knock on the door, but that didn’t stop me from rising up, touching his face, his lips.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” he whispered.
“I’ll carry that with me all day,” I said, and slid a hand over his heart.
“Damn…” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t let you go out into this. You’re gonna need—”
We both growled when we heard the last knock.
“We’ll talk about this more, later, yeah?” he said, waiting until I nodded before pulling away and yanking on some clothes. He tossed some for me on the bed, along with some very nice leather Chuck Taylor’s before opening the door. Johnno looked through the gap at me, frozen with the two coffee cups in hand. Then I did something I would never have believed possible.
I was already naked, so that cat was out of the bag, and from the descriptions of the preceptor-novitiate relationship, it was going to get sexual between Johnno and me. So I got off the bed, his eyes scouring my body as I drew closer until my hands went around one of the coffees. I remembered his words as I leant in, brushing a kiss across his cheek—that he didn’t feel vulnerable when naked, and I saw why. The usual hangups and worries about my appearance didn’t seem to register as fae, particularly as it had changed so much. To be blunt, this was the best I’d ever looked, and there was a pleasure to be had from watching his eyes grow heavily lidded as they soaked up everything that was on show. I liked the raspy sound of his breath, the tiny step forward he took as I sipped the drink. His skin started to glow faintly the longer I stood there, something I wanted to reach out and touch.
Instead I said, “Do I have time for a shower?”
“What? Oh yeah, if you’re quick.”
“So are you going to fill me in on what to expect?”
“What? In the shower?”
That wasn’t what I’d intended, figuring a brief elevator conference would work, but I met those molten gold eyes and couldn’t resist.
“Yeah, sure, if that works for you.”
I had to glance at myself in the bathroom mirror as I walked past, not sure who the hell was doing the driving, as it wasn’t me. Or it wasn’t the old me. That dream, that pain, whoever that guy was. I should’ve been talking about that, quizzing him about what that could have meant, but I didn’t. That was for future Kira to worry about. What was left of my humanity had a little scream about that, trying desperately to alert me to all the possible dangers I could be ignoring, but I didn’t feel anxious. I felt horny, proud, and was enjoying the deliciousness of Johnno sitting down on the closed toilet seat, coffee now discarded, as all his focus was on me.