Page 31 of Resonance
He caught my arm to steady me as I rose, then shocked me by leaning forward and rubbing gently at the divots the planking had made on my knees before tugging me down beside him. “Okay?”
“What?” I didn’t understand the question at first. “Oh! Yeah.”
“Shoulda put a towel down on the ground or something.”
“I forgot the floor existed, promise.”
Dan pulled my head onto his chest and leaned back, resting against the bench behind us and folding his arms behind his head. Our breaths slowed even though my cheek grew sweatier against him. I didn’t want to move, though. His skin held the metallic bite of sweat, but also there was the faint, clean scent of deodorant, something really light and nice, and I kind of understood some people’s obsession with licking guy’s armpits in that moment, because I totally would have if I hadn’t been so content just to cling to him like a piece of lichen.
After a while, Dan ran his hand over the top of my head and brushed aside the damp strands plastered to the side of my cheek.
“Should we umm…” I proposed ineffectively, gesturing toward the door. It was sweltering and we were both still as drenched as we’d been in the pool.
“Yeah, I reckon so.”
We moved like slugs on hot pavement, collecting our towels and clothing. When we stepped outside the sauna, the air might as well have been an arctic blast despite having left the door open. We padded quietly down the hall and stopped outside his bedroom door. Mine lay ten feet beyond on the other side.
Dan swiped his towel over his face and licked his lips. “Do you want to—”
“Yes,” I answered before I even knew exactly what I was agreeing to, because yes I did want. I wanted whatever else he was offering tonight.
Whateverstarted out as us both collapsing in his bed but quickly became me on top of Dan, kissing him recklessly and everywhere because I didn’t know if this chance would come again. Maybe he felt the same, too, because he seemed just as into it, matching the deep thrusts of my tongue, digging hard into my skin with his fingers and hips, until he eventually flipped me onto my back, pushed my legs up, and used his fingers and tongue to fuck me until I saw stars and came again all over my stomach.
There was a moment when I thought he was about to suit up and push inside me, and god how I’d wanted it. He had his hands behind my knees, holding me open as he ate my ass, then slid them down to cup my cheeks as he rose up on his knees. “This goddamn ass,” he muttered, and I couldn’t help a cheeky “I get that a lot.” Even though I didn’t, not really. But then he’d gone silent for a second, sucking on his lower lip, like he was tasting the question he wanted to ask before he let the skin go free and lowered his mouth again.
I guess he figured that might be a bridge too far, some divide we couldn’t cross back over again. I got it, though, I really did. And I was just happy to feel fucking useful and supremely desirable.
Afterward, I lay in the crook of his arm drawing nonsense shapes through the whorls of his chest hair.
“Fuck…” he exhaled.
“Yeah, I know. It was a bad idea. We’re both on the same page there.” Two orgasms in and the regret was hitting me like the sexual version of an alcohol bender.
“Wasn’t what I was gonna say, though you’re right, and when we get back to Nashville, we should go back to status quo.”
“Done,” I agreed easily, because I liked my job, and I liked Dan, and I really didn’t want to fuck either of those things up. “So what were you gonna say, then?”
“That it was good.”
“Like volume up to eleven good?”
He gave me tired smile for my Spinal Tap reference, a twinkle glimmering distantly in his eyes. “I don’t know, an eleven seems like it should involve gymnastics or some feat of flexibility.”
“Um… you could have salted me and called me pretzel for the last three minutes there.”
His brows pulled together. “Shit, did I hurt you?”
“Oh no. I loved every internal-organ-twisting second of it. I should be good to skip yoga this week, which is great, because if I’m gonna be stretched out, I much prefer an orgasm at the end to some boring relaxation session.”
“Do you really go to yoga?”
“Nah. I’ve just got some old DVDs. Yoga classes are expensive as crap, which is kinda ironic considering what it’s all about.”
He grunted and we lapsed into silence that stretched until a quiet sense of dread stole through me. We’d definitely just jizzed on some boundary lines we probably shouldn’t have.
“Our manager knew. Sort of. Some of the roadies did. We were really careful first. We had our own bus, so it wasn’t that hard. Hotel rooms, travel.” Dan spoke out of the blue, index finger and thumb rising to pinch between his eyes. “For being surrounded by people constantly, it was surprisingly easy to sneak off or hole up at the back of the bus and say we were practicing. But the label caught wind of it eventually. There’d been some rumblings and some whispers. Hush-hush, but I could sense it gathering steam. We got a little cavalier, and somehow the label got confirmation. I didn’t know how… still don’t. They said it had to end. Full stop. Threatened to drop us. No one wanted a couple of queer country boys onstage. That was insanity back then. A deathblow. Not just to us, but probably to the label, too, who had a shit ton of other high-profile country acts under their umbrella.” His hands moved gently, soothingly, absently over my back. “The crazy thing was, I got it, I really did. It’s a machine. It’s capitalism. It was the way of things at the time. On a business level I got it. I raged inside, though. I wanted to walk. Quit altogether or start something independent, just me and Ryder.
“But Ryder didn’t. We were already standing on a sure thing. The idea of just abandoning it, challenging the norms, starting over from scratch, possibly losing a shit ton of our fan base, going from a tour bus back to a van, hotel rooms back to motel rooms, he couldn’t. And I hated him for a long time for that.”