Maybe it was vain or crass, but I woke every morning as hard as a rock since our kiss all those weeks ago at the Rage Room, and I wanted to see her come undone.
I went back and adjusted the set, aware of her tracking my every move. I thought about what I told Cath—if I was playing to please her, it wouldn’t work. I had to play for the sake of the music.
I closed my eyes and played my favorite song from The Burnouts. I knew it completely, listening to the recording in my head. It didn’t make me sad like I thought it might. It felt right. It reminded me of the parts of playing with The Burnouts that I missed. I had a habit of only remembering the hardest parts of things. This was a good reminder of how much the music had meant to me.
I was sweating before long. The thin tee was creating too much uncomfortable friction on my skin. Mari watched me when I opened my eyes again to pull off my shirt. Her mouth was softly parted, her cheeks flushed. Shesquirmed in her seat, and I wondered if she knew what she was doing to me. I wondered if she knew how much she gave away. I wasn’t one for random hookups on the road, but I’d been thrown enough looks from audience members biting their lips and rocking their hips to know what they were thinking.
Mari had that look now. She pulled her hair off her neck.
I played another song and only stopped when my hands began to throb. It had been too long, and my muscles may remember every beat, but the skin of my hands had grown thin again.
When I set the sticks down, my chest rose and collapsed like I’d just been on stage. I held up my palms. “I need to ease back in.”
She frowned and disappeared into the bathroom. When she came back, determination set her shoulders. That was a look I knew all too well.
In a few strides, she came around the set to stand in front of me. I looked up at her and swallowed. My legs spread as I turned, and she came to stand between them without hesitation.
What was happening? I thought I could handle her looks, and maybe if it stopped there, I would have survived. I would not survive her physical attention.
She reached for my hands, and I lifted them to hers.
“You’re incredible,” she said.
I swallowed as I stared up at her. She gently examined my hands as though they had some secret magic she could discover if only she looked hard enough.
“Looks painful,” she said. She pressed the damp washcloth to the fresh calluses forming over the decades-old ones.
“Nothing I haven’t experienced before.”
With smooth, careful ministrations, she cleansed me with the cool water and checked for injuries. My chest rose and fell as she cared for me. Whatever I had done in life to deserve this, please let me do it all the time. After she’d finished cleansing my hands, she gently set the washcloth aside. She gently lifted my fingers and brought my right palm up to place a kiss at the center, then did the same to my left. A breath whooshed out of me. She kissed each pad of my fingers. Hot desire rushed all over my body. I swallowed and tried to wrangle in my thoughts and racing heart.
“These fingers. So strong but soft,” she said, still examining each one in turn.
“Can’t hold on too tight. Have to let things flow as they need to,” I said. Just as with the music, so with her.
“So . . . proficient. So good at what they do,” she whispered.
“Is this really happening? Am I dreaming?” She grinned at my question.
She released my hands, and I reverently dropped them to her hips, tentatively at first, to see if she’d stop me. She stepped closer, and the warm scent of her flared my nostrils. Her hands went to my hair and pushed it off my face. If she was bothered by my sweat, she showed no signs of it. If anything, quite the opposite.
“Funny you should say that because I have dreamed about your fingers,” she admitted softly, and heat bloomed on her cheeks. “Fantasized,” she added. It was enough to make a man feel like a god. My hands on her hips tightened, digging into the soft flesh.
“You have?” My voice broke as I asked.
She nodded, releasing me. “Few things are sexier than a man who’s really good with his hands.”
My chest felt like it was collapsing with every breath. I wasn’t sure what was happening right now, but it couldn’t go on if she didn’t mean it.
“Mari. I-I’m too worked up right now. The adrenaline—I don’t have the—I can’t be strong enough for both of us,” I admitted.
She cupped my chin and lifted it until I met her gaze. “Good. You’ve been strong long enough,” she said.
“I love when you look at me like that,” I said.
“You’re beautiful when you play,” she countered.
“I make dumb faces. I always feel awkward.”
