Chapter 17
17
Wyatt
T he last note trailed off and she turned to look at me, eyes bright. That lip between her teeth again. How could she be nervous after that? How could she have any doubts?
“It was terrible?” she asked. “You just can’t say it?”
I stood up from my chair and bent over hers. My hands braced on the wide arm rests. My nose nearly touching hers. “That. Song. Is. Amazing.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, and leaned up to kiss me. Her hand came around my neck and she was pulling herself up against me. The guitar got in the way so I stepped back, picked it up and set it aside. She jumped to her feet and then jumped in my arms. Her legs around my waist. Her eyes staring into mine. She was giddy with her own power. Her own creativity.
“You really like it?”
“It’s my favorite song of yours. It’s my favorite song full stop.”
“Are you just saying that because you’re doing it with me?” she asked, wiggling against my dick. I kissed her because she was so wrong. I kissed her until she was soft and warm against me.
We’d been fucking like rabbits the last few days, only taking breaks so she could work on Paper Doll and I could finish the porch. Sometimes we ate. Sometimes we went to the hot springs.
Where we fucked some more.
“You need to send it to your label,” I said against her lips. “Who gets it? Like, is it a bunch of people or someone you work with directly?”
“It would be Marc. He’s been my producer on all my other albums. He’s got an amazing ear. I would trust his opinion. I just don’t think it’s ready yet.”
That’s because she was gun shy and self-conscious.
“Look, I’m just a hockey player,” I said, kissing her neck. Palming her ass in my hands and squeezing until she groaned. “And I don’t know shit about music except what I like. You need to take that masterpiece to someone who does.”
“Later.”
“Right now, babe,” I said.
She leaned back and laughed at me. “Remember who’s the boss,” she teased.
“How about this?” I said and put her back on the porch. Her feet against the fresh planks. “No more fucking until you send it to him.”
She gasped. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would.”
She reached for the hard ridge of my dick beneath my sweatpants and I caught her hand. “Try me babe,” I said, leaning in close. “Remember. I don’t lose.”
Her face screwed up in mutiny, but I knew I had her. “That’s…that’s unsportsmanlike behavior! Someone should give you a red card.”
“Wrong sport.”
“A five-yard penalty?”
“Still wrong.”
“A time out?”
“We’ll talk hockey once you send Marc that song. Until then…” I stepped back and held out my arms. “I’m off limits, babe. No fun for you.”
She scowled some more, and to make my point clear, I left her behind on the porch and wandered over to my tool box wondering what project I could tackle next.
“You don’t play fair,” she shouted at me.
“I play to win.” I shouted back. She went back into the cabin to grab her phone and stomped back out to climb the small hill where the septic was buried at the side of the cabin. The only place she’d get four bars.
I pretended to dig around in the box looking for nothing in particular, but I was watching her body language. She talked for a little bit and she laughed and her shoulders came down from her ears. Then she scrolled through her phone. She’d recorded the song on her phone yesterday and she must be sending it to him. She talked to him a second longer and hung up. She crossed her arms over her chest and turned to face me.
“He’s going to call me back after he listens,” she shouted across the clearing. “Might take him a few days. He really has to hear it a bunch of times before he can know if there’s anything worth-”
Her phone rang.
“Oh my god, it’s Marc,” she said, and answered. I stopped pretending to be looking for a tool. I was fully attuned to her and the tension in her body and the way after talking for a few seconds, she sagged. Her hands on her knees and then she did her overtime fist pump. Three in a row.
My heart literally soared in my chest.
Marc clearly loved the song.
I knew it. My girl just needed to be reminded that she was Sydney Fucking Malloy. And she had a gift.
She hung up and turned to face me, triumphant and glorious.
“He likes it?”
“Loves it! Said he knew after one listen it was gold.”
“Told you.”
“Oh, you think you’re a music boss now?”
“I think I’m the boss of you.”
Her eyes flared and her cheeks went pink. A little thing we’d learned while fucking like bunnies. Sydney liked to be bossed around. Sydney liked to be chased and caught. She liked when I took control and delivered pleasure right to her door.
Me? I fucking loved it. Something I’d only just found out about myself.
It was my way of taking care of a woman who hadn’t been taken care of once in her life.
“You better start running, little girl,” I said, playing her favorite game.
Sydney was fast and I let her stay ahead of me. The flash of her panties under my over-sized t-shirt she wore to bed, was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen. She made it around the house and back to the soft grass before I wrapped my arms around her and sent both of us to the ground. Landing on my back so she didn’t get hurt.
She fought until I rolled her over on her back, both her hands over her head, held down by one of mine. The other I slipped under that shirt of hers. Over the taut skin of her belly. She gave me one more good heave, trying to buck me off, but I was way too heavy and I was done playing.
“I like it when you run,” I said.
“I like it when you chase,” she whispered.
I shoved that shirt out of my way, sucking on her nipples, until she started to writhe beneath me.
“Wyatt,” she cried, arching up into my mouth, trying to get her hands free. I knew what she wanted, but I wasn’t ready yet.
Another thing we’d learned in these weeks together. She loved sucking cock. Something about it made her soaking wet.
“Let me,” she whispered. “Come on, you know you want to. I’ll suck it so good…”
Fuck. I mean, I was just a man. How much was I supposed to withstand? I let go of her hands and got to my feet.
She was such a picture in the grass. Those pink nipples. The creamy skin of her breasts covered in red beard scrapes. Her pale blue panties, twisted and pushed aside. Her eyes hazy with desire.
“Let’s do it here,” she said.
“Nope. Condoms are inside.” I reached down and grabbed her hand, pulling her up and over my shoulder so I could carry her inside.
“You know,” she said, smacking my ass as I walked up the stairs. “I don’t think you should get used to carrying me this way.”
I shouldn’t get used to any of this, I thought, and pushed it away. It was the truth, but we still had time in this paradise before we had to get back to reality. Though, I might have made our return a little quicker by getting her to send that song to her producer.
I tossed her down on the pull-out couch that we hadn’t folded up this morning. For some reason, we just mutually agreed that this was our bed for as long as we were in the cabin. Maybe it was the lingering memory of the raccoon. Or maybe because it was ours together. We’d bought it, the sheets, the blankets and the pillows.
She sat on the edge and pulled my sweatpants down. My cock, hard and already dripping and eager for her.
“Wyatt,” she whispered. “I love your…cock.”
That hesitation, any time she referred to my dick, got me every time.
I cupped my hand around her cheek, my fingers creeping into her hair. “Show me how much you love it,” I groaned.
She cupped my cock in her hand, tilting it towards her mouth. She licked her lips and looked up at me through her lashes. Evil fucking fairy. Evil fucking light of my goddamn life.
“Suck me, Syd,” I said. “Do it like I showed you.”
“Or what?” she asked, her little tongue coming out to lick the cum off the tip. Enough words. I was dying. I slipped my hand around the back of her neck and pulled her forward gently but irrevocably. She opened her mouth and let me in. Deep, the way I liked. She closed her eyes and moaned in her throat and I braced my legs out wide so my knees wouldn’t buckle.
She flicked her tongue under the head of my dick, something I told her drove me crazy. My balls got tight and that delicious ache in my back signaled I was close.
“Syd, get a condom.”
She resisted the command, doubling down instead by taking me further into her mouth, while her hand wrapped around the base of my cock and squeezed.
“Your mouth is so goddamn hot.” My head tilted back of its own accord, my eyes closed. Part of me just wanted to say fuck it, and come in her mouth. On her lips, on her tits again. She’d liked that when I’d done it before, kneeling over her, dick in my hand.
Cupping my hand around her cheek, I gently pulled her off me. The release of her lips from around my cock was near torture.
“Condom,” I said again. “I want you to ride me.”
She was breathing heavily her pupils dilated. So aroused by sucking on me, I could see her rubbing herself against the mattress just to alleviate the ache between her thighs. Except, I wanted to alleviate that ache.
“I want you on my dick. Now.” I leaned over and slapped her on the ass. One crack that sounded worse than it felt, but her body shivered when I did it.
Syd liked that, too. Someday, I’d pull her squirming little body over my legs and we’d find her line between pain and pleasure.
She pulled the last condom from the jumbo box that had been left in the cabin, by Liam, I’d presumed. Which meant we were going to need to go back into town to buy more. We’d been up here three weeks, just the two of us. And it had been perfect.
I scowled at the thought of re-entering society and her fingers brushed my cheek.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered.
I shook my head, not wanting to talk about anything that wasn’t us right now.
“You’re not moving fast enough,” I growled, crawling into the bed behind her and lying down with my back against the arm rest. I stroked my cock, squeezing the tip until cum dribbled out. “Don’t make me do this alone, Syd.”
“Don’t you dare.”
She ripped open the package and rolled the condom over me like I’d showed her. Bracing her hands on my shoulders she straddled my hips, her knees on either side. I held my dick while she lowered her body down on me. Now, I could slide in deep and smooth. So easy it was like we were made for each other.
“Yes,” she sighed when she was seated fully against me. “So good, Wyatt. So…good.”
For a moment, I just gripped her hips, my fingers tightening on her flesh, holding her still.
“Don’t move,” I said, when she started to rock. “I just want to…I just want to remember it. Like this. Perfect.”
She pressed her forehead into my shoulder, kissed my skin, happy to hold the moment with me.
“Will you do the thing?” she whispered. “With my hands.”
I groaned and my hips bucked up, driving me deeper. This, this little kink she had and the way that she asked for it, fucking destroyed me.
“Look at me,” I said, and she leaned back, her green eyes blown wide. Her cheeks pink. She was blissed out and we were barely getting started. “Show me what you want, Sydney.”
Eyes locked on mine, she lifted her hands off my shoulders and pressed her wrists together behind her back. We didn’t need ropes or ties. My grip was more than enough to bind her, hold her. I held her wrists in one hand and my other hand clutched at her ass and started to move her sweet little body, using it to stroke my cock the way I needed. I groaned and she started to hum. That sex song of hers. The other day she made a joke about recording it and I about lost my mind.
This song was mine. Ours.
God. I was fucked.
This was going to be impossible to walk away from.
She worked herself against me, taking my cock deep. My hand on her ass giving her the help she needed to keep the pace I wanted.
“Ride me, baby,” I groaned. “Fucking use me.”
She tilted her head way back, a flush climbing across her belly, up her tits to her neck. “I need,” she whispered, and I knew what she needed. I let go of her hands and her fingers found her clit, rubbing herself as she fucked me, head thrown back. A woman fully realized. Fully herself.
I had to bite my lip to keep from coming.
“You close?” I muttered.
She nodded, and curled forward, her head against my shoulder. “Harder, please.”
The angle was wrong for us, if she needed me harder, than I needed to take her from behind. She always came so fast that way. I think because my words from weeks ago, lived rent free in her head.
Nail you hard from behind.
With a hard push I lifted her off my cock and rolled her to her stomach. I got to my knees and lifted her ass high towards me. Her hands were pressed together over her head, her face buried in the pillow. I caught her wrists in both my hands, pressing them into the bed, as I used my knees to spread her thighs further apart. A quick shift of my hips and I was once again cock deep inside her.
We both cried out with satisfaction.
“How do you want this, babe?” I said, leaning over her back, so I could nibble at her ear lobe, my beard tickling her neck.
It was a little fucked up that I did this, but now that we both knew what she actually liked, it was fun to get her to say it.
“Unhh,” was her only reply, her face pressed into the pillow.
“No, you’ve got to say it,” I told her, and kept my strokes steady but shallow. Driving both of us crazy.
“Wyatt!”
“Yes, honey, tell me what you want.”
“Rough!” she said, turning her face to glare daggers at me.
I laughed and slammed inside her, my groin pressed hard and tight against her sweet ass cheeks.
We practically moved the sofa bed across the floor while I rode her hard and fast, holding her down the entire time. I shifted both her wrists to my one hand, and used the other to play with her nipples, tugging them, pinching them. Her body twisted underneath me, the two points of pressure, inside her pussy and on her breasts, seemingly too much.
She cried out and I could feel the squeeze of her hot walls all along my hard cock. She was coming. Hard. And I reveled in it.
“Fuck, yes.” I could feel the cum pulsing out of me, as I stroked deep. Distantly, I wondered how this would feel without the condom. What it would be like to try and make her pregnant. I wondered if she was pregnant.
Maybe wished it was true.
Barbarian thoughts, and nothing I would share with her. But it was still there, even as my orgasm continued to pulse through my dick.
Mine.
I was folding the mattress back into the sofa, while Syd was opening the cabin windows along the side of the wall. They were opened and closed with a winch that locked into place. Making it harder for uninvited guests to get inside, but not impossible. She was trying to push the winch open and was failing.
“Haven’t you learned your lesson about open windows?” I said as I walked over to help her.
“This place kind of reeks of sex. I think we need some fresh air. I’m willing to take my chances, so we’ll just have to be on critter watch.”
The cabin did smell of sex, but I loved it. When we left to go hiking during the day, it was one of my favorite things to come back to. The smell of us.
With a little extra muscle I freed the window from its lock and eased it open, letting in an awesome summer in the mountains breeze.
Her phone, dropped by the side of the couch, rang and the sound surprised both of us.
Our phones had been mostly forgotten the last few weeks and the sound was foreign in our cabin. She ran over to grab it.
“It’s my label,” she said, and looked up at me like it was the boogeyman. “Patricia.”
“The big boss,” I noted.
Syd had given me a rundown of the players at her label. The people who would be making the decisions about her upcoming album.
“Marc must have shared the song with her.” She caught her bottom lip in her teeth, her signal that she was anxious.
“Don’t answer it if you don’t want to,” I said, part of me wishing that she wouldn’t, and then feeling like shit for even thinking that.
“I don’t really have a choice,” she said, and tapped the screen with her finger. “Hi Patricia,” she said as she headed for the front door and the hill where the reception was the best.
I shoved the pullout bed back into place and folded it up. Put the pillows back the way Syd liked them and hung the blankets over the back of the couch. My blanket was blue and hers was kelly green. Like her eyes.
I was an idiot to let this go so far.
Blankets and pillows and sex and our bed. Wedding nights and sex songs and inside jokes. Those were things for real couples, with a future. We were fake and all we had ahead of us was a joint statement announcing our split.
Syd came back in the room, that bottom lip still between her teeth. That stress line between her eyes, the one I had effectively fucked out of existence, was back.
“Everything okay?” I asked, trying to be nonchalant. I walked over to the kitchen and started pulling food out of the cupboards. “You hungry?”
“I could eat,” she said, and sat down on the couch. Her body all curled up again.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Patricia wanted to remind me of the America’s Choice Awards. But really, I think she was digging about songs for the next album. Marc had to have played her the one I sent.”
“You have a bunch.”
“Ha! I have one good one, three great hooks. A bridge maybe? And a dozen ideas.” She rubbed her forehead. “I probably need to get back in the studio.”
This was it. The moment I’d been pretending wasn’t going to happen. The beginning of the end.
“Okay,” I said, putting crackers on a plate next to the last of the cheese and grapes. Girl dinner, she called it. I called it a snack, but whatever. “We can leave today.”
“We don’t have to go just yet,” she said, like leaving today was a terrible idea. That gave me some relief. “The awards are in a week and I can send Marc some more of the recordings of what I have so far. Make an appointment with him when we’re back in the city.”
She was supposed to get her period next week. So…this could be it.
The last week of us.
“What about you?” she asked.
“What about me?”
“Don’t you have to be at training camp or anything?”
“Not until the end of August.”
“Are you getting excited?”
“About two-a-day practices and getting back in the weight room?” I asked. “Not really.” Not at all.
“It must be hard,” she said, “gearing yourself up for that every year.”
“It used to be easy,” I said, and lifted my foot so I could roll my ankle. Fucker was sore. “It used to be the off season that was hard.”
“Are you really thinking about retirement?” she asked.
This time I didn’t even flinch at the word.
“Right now I’m not thinking about anything,” I said, bringing our little tray of food over to the couch. She grabbed a piece of cheese and an apple slice, like I knew she would. I ate a piece of ham and a cracker.
“You know, you really don’t have to come with me to the Awards,” she said.
I looked up, sharp and surprised. “You don’t want me to go?”
“No. Of course I want you to come. But you’re going to hate every moment of it. I just wanted to let you off the hook if that’s what you wanted.”
“What about all your fake-ex’s. You let them off the hook?”
“They didn’t go to award shows with me,” she said, shaking her head. “I never wanted them to be part of it. The awards, win them or lose them, were about me. My work. Not about my personal life. Certainly not a fake personal life. This one though, is just a personality contest more than anything.”
“Do you want me there?” I asked. “Really. You won’t hurt my feelings.”
“Actually, I would love it if you were there.” She shot me a smile, a real smile, and I knew she was telling the truth. “Besides, Liam is presenting. So you’ll be able to take a picture with him on the red carpet.”
“Joy,” I deadpanned.
It would be easy to agree not to go. Easy for her to put out a statement, that her notoriously grumpy hockey player husband wouldn’t be walking the red carpet with her. Frankly, it was unlikely that anyone expected me to be there.
However, in that moment, when she said she’d always done it on her own before, I knew I had to go.
One of the things I’d learned about Syd was that she’d always done everything on her own. She’d essentially raised herself, built her career by herself, enjoyed her success by herself, alone inside this reputation that had been forced upon her.
“It’s settled. I’m your husband. I’m going.”
“Okay. That’s good,” she sounded sincere and a knot of worry that had tied itself to my gut, went loose. “That’s great. I’ll call Beatrice. She’ll arrange for a stylist.”
“I have a suit.”
She wrinkled her fairy nose and shook her head. “Sorry. But there are going to be so many eyes on us and I’m only trying to save you from massive social media overreaction. If we land a solid minute slay, we’ve done our work.”
“What the fuck is a minute slay?”
“Not minute, as in time. Minute , as in French. Meaning tiny.”
“Okay what the fuck is a tiny slay?”
She threw her hands up in exasperation. “You really don’t ever go on social media?”
“No.”
She huffed. “It’s like a scale. Slay, minute slay, slay the house boots down.”
“You’re not speaking English right now. Is this all French?”
“Look Grandpa, all I’m saying is that we have a tiny little low bar, we just have to cross it and we’ll be good. After all, you’re a hockey player.”
“Hockey players can’t slay?”
She giggled. “Hockey players, who are not Liam Locke, I imagine would struggle.”
She said it casually, but somehow it was a slap shot right to my chest. With no pads to protect me. I didn’t need a reminder that my brother would fit into her life better than me. That Syd and me outside of this cabin didn’t make any sense.
“Oohh,” She looked up from her phone. “Should we call him and get his advice?”
“No.”
“But he’s your brother, he’s got great style and he’ll know what would suit you best.”
“I know what will suit me best. The one currently in my closet.”
“No,” she laughed, like I was joking, but I weirdly felt like I was fighting for my life. “What colors, what lines. How to make the most of your impressive build.”
“If my brother knows that about me, I’ll shoot him. No. Give me the stylist person.”
“You seem upset.” Her fingers were twisting together.
“I’m not.”
“Is it about the stylist, or because I said Liam has really good fashion sense?”
I took a deep breath. “Neither. Both. I’m sorry. I guess…I’m just not ready to let this place go.”
She slid our plate of snacks onto the floor and tucked herself into my body, her arms around my waist. She was either sighing or inhaling me.
“I don’t want to leave yet, either,” she said.
But we had to. Her whole life was waiting for her off this mountain.
“Funny how things change in such a short amount of time,” she said.
“What’s changed?”
She pulled back and stared at me with full outrage. “Are you kidding? Number one, I’m not a virgin anymore. Hold on, let me go outside and let the world know.” She tilted her head back and shouted. “I’m not a virgin anymore!”
“Tink,” I barked, torn between exasperation and laughter. Mostly laughter, if I was being honest.
“What? No one but the critters heard me,” she said. “Also, it turns out I’m a little bit of a freak in bed. Who knew?”
“I knew,” I said. “I saw you in that golf skirt and I said, there’s a woman who likes to be chased and fucked where she’s caught.”
“Did you know you liked that before you met me?”
“Not even a little bit.” She rewarded me for that little bit of honesty with a hard kiss.
“And! I like sleeping with another person. I really like it. I’m definitely getting a dog when I get back to Malibu.”
“You’re not supposed to let a dog sleep in the bed,” I told her but I wasn’t sure why. Was I jealous of a dog that didn’t even exist yet?
“Who says?”
“Dog trainers. They’re supposed to have their own bed.”
“Oh well, that’s dumb,” I said. “My dog is sleeping in my bed.”
“Anything else?” I asked. I didn’t know why I was pushing her. What answer I wanted. What answer could change what had to happen.
“Everything else,” she admitted, and curled back into my arms. “Feelings, and freedom. Change and friendship. I hope friendship.”
“Always friendship,” I said softly. “We can leave here the day after tomorrow. That should give us more than enough time.”
“For what?” she asked, all evil fairy again.
“For whatever I want,” I said, and pushed her back onto the couch, where I fucked her like I could imprint the memory of me on her body where she could never forget it.