“You’re very distracting when you’re naked on top of me.”
I laughed and pulled at the corner of the sheet to cover myself, but he tore it out of my hands with a grin. “Shhh. Don’t wiggle too much, and I should be able to get through it. Then I’m eating your pretty little pussy for breakfast.”
I bit my lip, forcing myself to stay focused on my question despite his words pulling my mind toward considerably less-verbal activities.
He pinched a nipple before clearing his throat and looking down at his left arm. “I got this sleeve when I was twenty. I’ve always read a lot, mostly fantasy. Dragons were my favorite creatures in those books. Strong, dangerous, but also wise. They had this awesome power, greater than anything a human could ever possess, but they didn’t corrupt it with their ego. They lived for thousands of years, protecting secrets that could change the trajectory of the world around them, forever stable in the presence of chaos.”
I reached for the head of the first dragon, touching the green scales that parted to reveal bright-yellow eyes. The other two were painted blue and gold, their tails and bodies folding onto each other in what looked like a braid.
“Plus, they look cool,” Silas added with a smile. “When I was twenty, that was probably the most important thing, but over the years, whenever I feel beaten down by life, looking at them always gives me strength. I know that a dragon would stay resilient through any challenge thrown at him.”
He grabbed my knee before showing me his other arm. “There’s a lot of stuff here. Around my wrists and lower forearm, it’s a picture of the house I grew up in. My family lived out in the woods about a few hours from here when I was younger. My earliest memories are from there, and it’s always been a special place for me.
Twisting his arm a bit, he let go of my knee and pointed at a large depiction of a square-shaped gem in an intricate setting. “This is an amulet from one of my favorite fantasy books. It was a mystical object created at the dawn of time to hold the evil spirits at bay. When the amulet was broken, the world would be consumed by darkness. In the book, the hero’s goal is to get to the amulet before the villain so he can hide it where no one can ever find it again. I wanted to get it tattooed with just a thin crack through the middle, a reminder that the world as we know it is a gift we shouldn’t take for granted.”
My chest felt tight when he finished his explanations. Learning all of this about him felt as intimate as reading a person’s diary, and the fact that he hadn’t hesitated when I asked him about it touched me deeper than he could ever know. I felt connected to him. To all of them. What was I going to do when that connection was severed?
Silas grabbed my waist, his large hands covering it almost entirely, and flipped me on my back.
“I want to make love to you before we go,” he whispered against my skin, trailing kisses down my abdomen, and I told myself not to read too deeply into his words. It was a figure of speech.
He spread my legs and dipped his tongue inside, tasting me and making appreciative sounds as I squirmed under his touch. As he worked me up to my release, I thought my body was like the amulet on his arm—holding something back and cracking under the pressure. When it broke, would it be darkness that was released or something else?
Minutes later, when I finally splintered on his bed, my eyes fell shut, and all I could see was light.
* * *
“We’re going to do a quick rehearsal in the studio,” Abel said on Thursday about an hour before we were due to leave for the concert. He turned to Kyle and told him he could leave for the day.
“What are we rehearsing?” I asked, a little confused. We were recording parts of the last song for the album, and I thought that if we kept going, we might be able to finish everything today. That would give us all of tomorrow to rerecord any parts on earlier tracks that Abel didn’t like.
He ignored me, which struck me as strange. I had thought we were past that kind of thing.
Ezra shrugged when I raised a brow at him and walked inside the studio, leaving me with nothing else to do but follow.
Before I made it inside, Abel turned to me. “You don’t need to join for this. Just listen in the control room.”
His words stung, even though they shouldn’t have. Maybe they had a song they didn’t need another guitarist for. I pursed my lips and went to sit in Abel’s chair on the other side of the glass while the guys gathered in a circle and adjusted their instruments.
After a few moments, Abel looked back at me and flashed a sign that meant I should turn up the volume on my side. I quickly pushed my disappointment and confusion aside, curious to hear what they would play.
Nothing could have prepared me for what I heard.
It was the song we had written, but it was made ten times better with the addition of the other instruments. My heart was crawling up into my throat as I took in the sounds and the visual before me. The guys were shooting me excited glances as they played, watching for my reaction while I tried my hardest to keep it together.
Abel sang the whole song while looking at me, the words somehow made more powerful because of the unbound emotion in his voice. He wasn’t holding anything back. I imagined the sea of fans who might one day hear this song played live at a concert, and I hoped that they would appreciate it as much as I did in this moment.
I’ve never given birth to a child, but I’ve often thought that songwriting was in many ways a metaphor for watching a child grow. It got expelled out of our minds and bodies in its most primitive form, then it took on a life of its own and changed in ways we could never have predicted initially. I listened to our song evolve under the influence of the other players and grow into something exquisite.
When the song ended, Abel waved me inside, still holding onto his mic. I walked through the door with shaky steps, my tears successfully contained, but my emotions still running high.
“What did you think?” Abel asked.
I opened my mouth a few times like a fish, unable to get the words out. “It was incredible. I can’t believe how good it sounds.”
Silas grabbed another guitar and handed it to me. “Play with us. I wrote a backing track I want to try, so you play the melody.”
I looked around to see the encouraging smiles on Ezra’s and Cole’s faces, and I nodded. “Okay.”
