Chapter Twenty-Four #2
It started in A minor, which had always been her favorite.
She knew that D minor got credit for being the “saddest” chord, but for her it had always been A minor—darker, a little more solemn.
There was something poignant about the way John played the tune, though, something that dropped her heart into her stomach but lifted it back up again.
She couldn’t explain it. But that was the thing about music.
Sometimes it could speak in a way that words couldn’t.
They’d stayed up for four hours on that porch, crafting the verses and chorus, Micah humming a melody over his guitar until she started scribbling down some lyrics that she felt could fit.
She’d never had a song come together in quite that way before—where it truly felt like a conversation, like everything John did made her think of a way she’d want to respond.
When she’d asked if he had a name for the song, when he’d first started figuring it out, he said, “If Only.” And even though she’d already written out most of the lyrics and that phrase never appeared in them once, she knew it was the right title.
It perfectly fit everything she’d been thinking, too.
She sat down now, reaching for the acoustic guitar closest to her.
John had already made sure it was in tune, of course, and she easily found the position for that first A minor chord on the fretboard, strumming gently with her fingers.
It felt good, sitting with a guitar again, feeling its weight on her, the press of her fingertips against the strings.
She’d missed it, she realized, which was not something she’d known until that very second.
John pushed one of the open guitar cases toward her with his foot, indicating a bunch of differently colored picks piled up in one of the pockets.
“Later, I’ll set one of the mic stands up with a pick holder,” he said, “and have you practice grabbing another pick midsong, in case you drop the one you’re using.
It happens sometimes, especially if you’re nervous and your hands are sweaty.
Honestly, that’s probably the only thing you’ll have to worry about—I know you won’t have trouble with the song itself. ”
That was more confidence in her abilities than she had, but she appreciated it and was grateful once again that he’d thought so far ahead. Dropping her pick while she was in the middle of playing hadn’t even been on her short list of things she was anxious about.
She reached down to grab a pick from the case, letting out a choked laugh when she read the words printed on it. “Flick It Good?”
John looked up, his brow furrowed, until something seemed to click and he grabbed for the guitar case to slide it farther away from her again. But she’d already come up with a whole handful of the colorful picks, and was turning them over in her hands, reading them one by one.
“ Go Pluck Yourself ,” she said. “ Give Me a Lick. I Love Your G String. Put Good Wood on It . John, these are filthy!”
She didn’t think she’d ever seen his face so red. It was delightful.
“They were a present,” he said. “A gag gift from Asa. He—”
“Between the Batman pajamas and these, I’m starting to think Asa doesn’t exist,” Micah said.
“He’s like your Canadian boyfriend. Your fake Floridian housemate you blame whenever I find out something embarrassing about you.
Shake That Bass —a bit of a homograph problem there, right?
Is that what you would call it? You Rock My World.
I’m Good at Fingering —well, that’s certainly true.
It Isn’t Going to Spank Itself. Touch My— ”
She broke off, unable to even get the words out, she was laughing so hard.
John had a smile playing around his own mouth now, and he was watching her face instead of looking at the picks. “Touch my what? What does it say?”
She shook her head, her laughter having ascended to that plane where no sound was coming out of her mouth, where her stomach muscles almost hurt and there were tears in her eyes.
“ Touch My —” she started to say when she thought she’d gotten control over herself, but then the laughter started all the way back up again, until eventually John was laughing, too.
She held the pick out to him, and he turned it over to read what it said.
“ Touch My Whammy Bar. That’s pretty good. I’ll definitely be using that one.”
“If you say any of this stuff to me during sex, that’s it, party’s over. I’m putting my clothes back on and you can touch your own whammy bar.”
“I don’t know. They’re not all terrible. Like Give Me a Lick .”
Okay, she had to agree that one wasn’t bad. In fact, something about the way John said it, that K sound in the back of his throat, suddenly wiped away any desire to laugh and replaced it with another desire entirely. She set her acoustic guitar carefully back in its stand.
“What are you doing?” John asked, but in a tone that suggested he knew exactly what she was doing.
“We need to focus,” she said. “And I feel like we’re going to have a hard time focusing.” She lifted her shirt over her head, dropping it to the floor next to her. Then she reached behind her back to unhook her bra, letting it fall down her arms to join her shirt.
“I have excellent focus,” he said. She could swear his eyes were darker than they’d been a second ago, more pupil than iris.
“I know you do,” she said. She slid down to her knees, crawling the two feet until she was kneeling between his legs. When she touched his thighs through his jeans, she could feel his muscles clench, could feel his body heat. She could see where he was already hard, and it made her mouth water.
He was still holding a guitar pick between his fingers, and he flicked one of her nipples with it, making it tighten into an almost painful bud. She arched her back, leaning into the sensation.
“The door’s not locked,” he said. “Anyone could come in.”
It wasn’t a rebuff or a rejection. It was a test, a question where he cared about her answer before moving forward.
But he also had to notice the way her breath caught, the way her hands tightened on his thighs as he worked her other nipple with his guitar pick, almost casually, like she’d watched him play a thousand times before.
“They won’t,” she said.
His hands skated along the tops of her shoulders, coming up to cradle her face.
“What do you want?” he asked, his voice low.
Something about the way he said it, she didn’t even think he was only talking about sex.
But she didn’t know how to answer that question, which was much bigger than this moment and which had the power to unravel everything.
All she knew was the way she wanted to feel right here, right now.
“I want to see you,” she said. “All of you. I want to touch you. I want to taste you. I want you inside me. I want it all, John, everything you’ll give me.”
He shrugged out of his hoodie, then yanked off his own shirt, until he was bare-chested in front of her.
She’d had the chance to look at him on the beach, but even with her sunglasses on, she’d been conscious of staring too long.
Now she was able to drink in the sight of him as much as she wanted: the sharp line of his clavicle, the dusting of dark hair on his chest, his puckered nipples that she touched with one finger.
John closed his eyes briefly before opening them again. “I want everything, too,” he said.
She reached up to the button at the fly of his jeans, glancing at him to make sure he was okay with it.
The knuckles of her uninjured hand brushed his stomach, the trail of hair leading into his waistband, and she felt him suck in a breath as she worked his zipper down.
The rest was difficult to do with one of her hands partially bandaged, and so he lifted his hips off the chair to pull his jeans down his legs, kicking them and his underwear away until he was completely naked.
She pulled her own pants and underwear off so she could join him.
“I want to touch you everywhere,” she said, running her hands up his calves, his thighs, the jut of his hip bones. She touched him everywhere but his dick, at least with her hands. Her eyes were greedier, unable to look away from the evidence of how turned on he was by her touch.
“Micah—” he said, his voice a little choked as she deliberately let her breasts brush his knees, the insides of his thighs.
And then she took him in her mouth, and he let out a hiss, his hands sliding into her hair. She’d left it down for once, and he gathered it into a ponytail in his fist, tugging slightly to get her to look up at him.
“You don’t have to,” he started to say, but she moaned, knowing he felt the vibration from the way his dick pulsed in her mouth. She knew she didn’t have to do anything. She wanted to. Fuck, did she want to.
She took him deeper, sucking and licking until she grasped the base of him with her hand, slapping his dick against her tongue.
“God, that feels so good,” he said, his hands still in her hair, his thighs braced so tense around her that she thought he might explode in her mouth at any second. “You’re so fucking good.”
She felt his words like a heartbeat between her legs, the strength of it taking her by surprise. She’d known about her pain thing, knew she liked it when it hurt. She hadn’t thought praise would do anything for her, that she could like it nice as well as mean.
She’d found her rhythm, was so intent on what she was doing that she flinched a little when she felt his fingers gentle on the back of her neck.
“You’ve gotta—” He twitched under her as she snaked out her tongue for one final lick. “If you want everything, you’ve gotta give me a chance here, Micah.”
She couldn’t help her smug smile. “I have you right where I want you.”
“You do,” he said, dragging his thumb along her wet, swollen lower lip, and suddenly she wasn’t smiling anymore. “I promise you do. It’s not a competition, but you’re winning. I surrender.”
She liked seeing her effect on John, liked knowing all the ways she got under his skin. But she knew that he deserved to know all the ways he got under hers, too, that maybe they could’ve figured this out much earlier if she hadn’t always felt the need to hide behind her own bravado.
“I’ve been dreaming of having you inside me,” she said. “Ever since I woke up in your bed the other morning.”
She’d dreamed of being with John like this before then, but it had always been in a more distant way, like she couldn’t actually think too hard about what it would be like or else she’d rewire her brain permanently, maybe ruinously.
It’d be a way he would grunt while he was helping Steve carry his drum kit, and she’d think, I wonder if that’s the sound he’d make when…
Or the way he’d put his pick between his teeth and she’d think, That mouth could…
The way he’d been the few times she’d seen him with a girlfriend, and she’d feel a flush of jealousy, a sudden impulse to say Mine , even when she knew she had no right to say that.
She’d always had rationalizations to help explain away those feelings, or talk herself out of them, but she was done with that.
She’d given herself over to it all, and it did feel so good.
She shivered, and John reached down to grab his hoodie, draping it over her shoulders. Her reaction had been more about the sudden overwhelm of the situation—them, together like this—than the cold, but she accepted the hoodie anyway, sliding her arms into the sleeves.
He grasped the front of the hoodie to pull her up toward him, pressing a hard kiss to her mouth. “I don’t have any condoms,” he said. “I thought about buying some, actually, while I was gathering up all the gear, but—yeah, I didn’t want to be presumptuous.”
“I love when you’re presumptuous,” Micah said. “For the record. But I have an IUD, and I get tested regularly, just to make sure, so…I mean, I’m okay not using one, if you are.”
“The last time I got tested was over a year ago,” John said. “But I also haven’t—it’s been a long time. Longer than that.”
Micah swallowed any comment she might’ve made to that revelation when she saw the look on John’s face.
He seemed mildly embarrassed, or shy maybe, like that information had been hard for him to share.
But she didn’t want him to be embarrassed about anything.
He hadn’t held any of her past against her, and she certainly didn’t intend to hold any of his against him.
She stretched to kiss him, opening up to let his tongue invade her mouth.
She almost bit down on his lower lip, before she felt the bump there with her tongue and remembered to be careful.
“Let me fuck you,” she said against his mouth. “I want it so bad.”
John’s hands tightened where he held her around her rib cage, his fingertips just brushing the underside of her breasts. He lifted her onto his lap, his thumbs now shifting to rub her nipples in rough circles that made her have to bite her own lip to stop from crying out.
“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted it,” he said.
She was already so wet, and he was still slick with her spit, so it was easy to slide right down onto his dick until she was completely filled with him.
She’d always thought descriptions of your eyes rolling back in your head were a little melodramatic, but that was how she felt, sinking down on him like that.
Like she’d suddenly lost any control over her body, her facial expressions, anything except for the sensation of what it felt to have him inside her.
He shifted so she sat a little deeper on him, her legs hooked around the back of the chair, and her breath hitched.
She could feel him all the way in her stomach.
She opened her eyes to see him watching her, his eyes hooded, his own breath coming sharp and shallow.
“Is this weird?” she whispered. “In a good way.”
The corner of his mouth lifted, and it did something to her heart, to see him smile at her like that while their bodies were joined so intimately.
“In the best possible way,” he said.