Chapter 8

Chapter 8

She barely remembered getting on the elevator. Once the doors closed in that tight space, they looked at one another. The air between them was heavy with want, and she threw herself at him the moment the doors sealed shut. She heard the tone of his floor and the doors opening again. They stopped for a moment, and seeing the floor clear, they resumed their frenzied kissing. Finally, he broke away, grabbed her hand, and they bound down the corridor toward his room. It was endless. Corey imagined the hallway stretching and telescoping ever onward until she yelled, “Seriously?” and they both laughed. Holding onto her hand then, his pace quickened, until their pace became a trot, and they stumbled to a halt in front of his door and he fumbled with his keycard. He slipped the card into the door and finally, blessedly, after a long pause, the little red light on the jamb turned to green with an audible click.

She pulled him to her. The first kiss in the room was longer and slower and deeper. They were out of the elevator now, out of the hallway, no longer tripping and running and out in the open and vulnerable to prying eyes. The kiss settled her, like taking a long drink of water on a hot summer’s day. It took the edge off, but she wanted more. She was less frenzied now, but more insistent. One kiss had to follow another. Her hands floated up and she ran her fingers through his hair and she pulled him closer still.

This was the last thing she had expected tonight. It had been forever since she last had sex. Her previous romp had been unremarkable, a cute brewer in Portland, who spent more time talking about craft beer and left her face a red, raw mess from his beard.

But this guy? Kyle was a departure from her norm: skinny rock boys with leather jackets and long, shaggy hair. Talented and haunted, sometimes flirting with the darkness. Nocturnal club dwellers like her. Fellow ships passing in the night, carrying vampires in their holds. Artists full of brio and spilling music and big ideas, often at the expense of maturity or hygiene or any semblance of consideration. All forward thrust. All G chords. Zero staying power.

The posters in her bedroom growing up were of these rock gods, not safe Tiger Beat teen idols or square jawed movie stars.

And yet, here she was in this clean-cut man’s hotel room, and she wanted nothing more than to drain him of his energy as if he was a solar battery.

They stumbled backwards toward the bed, fumbling with jackets and buttons and buckles. Finally they toppled together on the mattress, a tangle of confused limbs and half-discarded clothing.

Thank Christ I did laundry in Chicago, she thought, one of the few coherent thoughts that were running through her mind. It was freezing in the hotel room, insufficient heat pumping through the unit by the window, and wherever his hands passed over her body, her fine hairs stood on end and her skin puckered in goosebumps.

“Oh my God, it’s freezing in here,” she said.

“Here,” he said, leaping to his feet. He swept the duvet aside and she scampered beneath the sheets. In the mayhem of the moment, she unclasped her bra strap and flung it to the floor. Kyle smiled and slid in next to her and she rolled to him. She reached down beneath the covers and grasped him. There was a sharp intake of air and he closed his eyes.

“Wait,” she whispered. “Tell me you’re not a serial killer.”

He opened one eye. 

“No,” he laughed, “just a Grammy thief.” He buried his head in her neck then. It felt so good, she thought, his lips in the hollow above her collar bone. He wrapped an arm around her middle and pulled her to him. His other hand found her breast and his lips left her collarbone, trailing toward her chest. She closed her eyes and she began to relax.

He slipped his arm from around her waist and slid his hand beneath her panties to cup the underside of her ass. His other hand hooked her panties and she shimmied out of them.

“No fair,” she said, looking at his boxer-briefs.

“No graceful way to do this,” he said. He rolled onto his back and shucked them as quickly as he could.

They both laughed. They lay side by side and supine, heads lolled toward each other. He was smiling, beaming. She was warm and comfortable now, and her body hummed. Glowed. His hand found hers beneath the covers and he gave it a squeeze.

She had not anticipated any of this, of experiencing any sensations tonight beyond bitter Midwestern cold, a sparse gig, an endless parade of dickheads, and general disappointment. She supposed, there was still the very real potential of disappointment now, of not being fulfilled, of the inevitable post-coital awkwardness, but the best she had been hoping for tonight was maybe a nice buzz. She thought she had lucked out with the cookie. On the other side of this surprise, all she had to look forward to was an early morning wake-up call, heading back out into the cold to get to the airport and shuffle through security, all to board an over-booked plane to return to her lonely Boston condo. Yet in the middle of all of this, she found herself in a thoroughly unexpected, perfect moment. Like spotting a deer in a clearing, she didn’t want to move for fear of spooking it. She wished she could revel in it forever—lying next to a handsome, charming stranger, her body tingling with anticipation—but the ache became unbearable. 

“C’mere,” she said.

Kyle rolled toward her and she embraced him. He entered her slowly, and she welcomed him with a gasp. They kissed each other greedily. He slid up to the hilt and ground into her, moving his hips in a circular motion. It was slow and rhythmic, with no respite, no lull. Normally, where she feared she might need to coax an orgasm or will it into existence, one galloped toward her, closing the distance by half with every breath. She gasped again, feeling the pressure build throughout her body, up into her throat, and the gallop became a stampede. She clutched him around the shoulders, desperate for air, but more desperate that he not stop, not ever, and suddenly it overwhelmed her. One moment, she thought she was having a fun romp, the next she was caught in an avalanche, ice and rock cascading around her. Standing on the hood of a car borne by surging floodwaters. Buffeted by hurricane force winds, terrified and exhilarated in equal measure, in over her head and loving every second of it. Her whole body seized him and she held on for dear life, panting in her orgasm’s wake. Somewhere in her frenzy, she realized he was coming too. He called out, his muscles tensing, and she felt him pulse inside her.

Their eyes met again, and they looked at one another as if they had been tossed out of the surf and onto a beach, wrung out, having just miraculously survived something neither of them had bargained for when they set sail. When she realized the stunned vulnerability that must be written all over her face, she concealed it with a kiss. 

He tried to shift his weight, but she told him not to move. Not yet. Finally, her body unlocked, and her arms, exhausted, fell from his shoulders to the mattress. 

“That was,” she said, still shuddering, “better than the cookie.”

“I’ll take it,” he said. “Those were good cookies.”  

Oh no, she thought, I’m too clever for my own good. The shields were already going up. And I started it. She rolled out of bed for the bathroom, and the aura of warm heat dissipated instantly, the cold air of the hotel room rushing at her. She jogged toward the bathroom on her tiptoes.

It’s over, she thought with a sudden, unexpected pang. Just like that.

All that was left was a walk of shame, shitty hotel coffee in the lobby, and a forty-five minute drive to the airport on a cold, bleak morning. But it had been a lovely way to cap an otherwise uneventful tour. Sometimes the universe threw you a bone. A bone, she thought, and smirked.

She left the bathroom, armor back on, ready with the quips. She was surprised to see him still in bed, covers pushed aside, waiting for her.

“Get back in here,” he said. “It’s cold.”

Corey paused for a moment. She knew she should begin the extraction, but she admitted to herself that she didn’t want to. It was cold and she did want back in there. She wanted to stretch the moment like taffy. She crossed the room in three strides and slipped in beside him and he wrapped his arms around her. He felt unbelievably warm. She pushed against him, and ran her feet, now cold, up against his shins. He didn’t protest.

“You say you’re a fan, so why weren’t you at my show tonight?”

“Guilty as charged. I didn’t know.”

“Where’s home?”

“Norfolk, Virginia. I wouldn’t call it home as much as it’s where my stuff is. I’m on the road more than any other place.”

“The hard traveling life of a risk taker.”

“Risk mitigator.”

She made a snoring sound and he jiggled her.

She rolled over and kissed him. She didn’t want to be so clever right now.

“I would have loved to see your show,” he said.

“Have you ever seen me play before?”

“Twice. Once with the Toddlers. Once solo at Lollapalooza.”

She nodded. Don’t ask him what he thought, she thought.

“Great shows,” he said. “The solo one was better.”

“You already got lucky. You don’t have to butter me up.”

“I’m not. The Toddlers show was very rock and roll…in that Anders was shitfaced, and you guys didn’t play an encore. You could tell the wheels were about to come off.”

“I’m not giving you a refund if that’s what you’re asking.”

He smirked. “I got my money’s worth at Lollapalooza.”

She propped herself up on one arm.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I was with a bunch of my buddies from the Coast Guard. They’d been drinking all day, but I didn’t want to be wrecked for your set. Just a nice buzz. It was a perfect summer evening, the sound was great, and this beautiful girl was singing to the crowd. Great memory.”

“Wow.”

“I was a big fan.”

“Was?” she said, shoving him.

“I can say with complete conviction that I’ve never been a bigger fan of you than this moment.”

She smiled and fell on her back. “That was a scary tour for me. My first solo outings. I figured I could hide in a festival. I wouldn’t have to carry the whole thing myself, you know?”

“Couldn’t tell from where I was standing.”

“Oh, I was shitting myself.”

“That’s funny. I remember thinking at the time how ballsy it was.”

“Bullshit.”

“No,” said Kyle, propping himself on one arm. “No bullshit. I was getting ready to graduate from the Academy and go into the fleet. I was terrified. I didn’t know what the hell was going to happen to me, if I would succeed or fail, just that I would be a commissioned officer in a matter of weeks and all of this responsibility would be heaped on me. And there you were and I thought, ‘How in the world does someone so young achieve what you’d achieved, to earn your living on your wits and creativity. To work without a net like that. I thought it was utterly badass.”

“Trying to get lucky again?”

“Maybe.”

“Okay, I just have to know. Did you have the fucking poster?”

He laughed. “I wasn’t allowed to.”

“Not allowed to?”

“I couldn’t hang that up in a military academy dorm room. Contraband, remember?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Would you have?”

He smiled. “I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that it might incriminate me.”

“Don’t be so clever.”

He reached out and tugged at the sheet until it revealed half of her breast, as it had in the poster.

“It was worth the wait,” he said.

She met his eye and rolled toward him.