Chapter 29 #2
My friends and I approach the stage and wait by the stairs. Travis comes down first, arms full of equipment. Hannah bustles forward.
“I’ll be taking that,” she says, taking an amp from him.
Mick comes down the stairs next. He pauses next to me, his arms full of equipment too. “Hey, is that older lady all right? It didn’t sit right with me what the Soviet guy tried to pull.”
“Yeah.” I gesture toward the table where we left our Wise Elders. “She’s sitting back there. Go say hi, if you want to give her a thrill. She had a lot of nice things to say about your ass.”
He throws his head back and laughs. “You know what? I think I might just buy her a drink. She reminds me of my grandmother.”
Leave it to Mick to have a secret soft side. Then again, what have these last couple of years been other than a lesson in layers? We each wear so many of them.
Finally, Cormac descends with his guitar bag slung around his shoulder and a couple of boxes of equipment.
“You’re here.” Grinning, he reaches the bottom of the steps and moves to the side.
I sidestep with him, taking in the sweat on his brow. He worked hard for that sweat. The perverted side of me wants to lick it, in the same way people lick desserts to claim them.
“I’m here,” I confirm.
He glances down at the boxes regretfully. “I’ve got to get these out to the VW—”
“The one you stole?”
“I did give it back, but yes, apparently that’s still frowned upon in the eyes of the law. Who knew.”
“You, probably.”
He lifts the boxes slightly. “I’ve got to go stow them, but I’ll—”
“I’ll be taking those,” Rob says, winking at me as he grabs them from Cormac’s arms. “Have fun. Great show, man.”
He drops a kiss on Sophie’s head. She attempts to take a box from him but is refused as quickly as we were.
The crowd hasn’t fully dispersed yet. Plenty of people are still milling around, not ready for the fun to end yet. The venue’s blasting out songs from the speakers, probably hoping people will stick around.
“You were really good,” I tell Cormac, my pulse spiking as we stand facing each other.
“I was better because you were there.”
A smile spreads across my face.
“I could feel it,” he continues. “It’s like you were my—”
He trails off, but I know what word he was going to use. I used it earlier with José.
Muse.
“Come with me,” I say, my heart thumping hard. Because I’d like to take things too far tonight, with him.
He doesn’t hesitate. As soon as I start walking, I feel him following me. Trusting me. He probably shouldn’t, but I dare to hope that this time he’ll be happy he did.
I head down the snaking hallway, past the bathrooms—the woman’s room has a line, because of course. We turn, and I find a closed door, unlabeled. The sound from the venue is muffled now, distant. I try to open the unmarked door, but it’s locked.
“Do you think you’re supposed to do that?” Cormac asks.
“No.”
But when I step away, continuing down the hall, he follows. We reach another door, this one with a small metal sign that helpfully reads CLOSET.
I glance at him and try the door.
He peers back down the hall, probably concerned someone’s going to send the authorities after us.
But no one’s coming, and the door opens. It’s mostly empty inside, aside from a mop and a few other cleaning supplies that look like they haven’t been brought out for some time.
“This is a closet,” Cormac says.
I found his habit of saying the obvious aggravating a couple of months ago, but now I think it’s cute, dammit.
I reach for him and grip the front of his shirt, tugging him in after me, and shut the door behind us.
We’re left in near dark, aside from the glow emanating from the cracks above and below the door.
“You should probably put down your guitar,” I say.
“You can’t possibly show a girl seven minutes in heaven if you’re carrying that. ”
I see a blur of movement as he does as he’s asked.
Then he steps up to me, his image becoming clearer as my eyes adjust to the darkened interior.
We could turn on the lights, of course, but they look like fluorescents, and I’ve noticed bright lights bother him.
There’s also something deliciously forbidden about touching each other in the dark, hidden away in a space where we could be discovered.
It’ll be the experience I wanted all those years ago but never got.
“Are you actually going to fulfill your end of the bargain this time?” I ask, the challenge ringing in my voice. “Or are you going to walk out on me again?”
My back meets the door as his hand finds the hollow beneath my neck and slides up, guiding my face to look at him in the dim near-dark.
“I wanted to kiss you that night, Nora.” His fingers run across my jaw, leaving a trail of pure sensation.
“Surely you realize that now. I was dying to kiss you. But I didn’t want to do it like that, with people laughing outside.
Like it meant nothing. It would have been sacrilege. ”
His words soothe that old hurt. “And now?”
His answer is to kiss me resolutely, and I moan into his mouth, lit up by the slight pressure of his hand on my neck and his lips consuming me.
“I like this side of you,” I say in a breathy voice as he starts kissing his way down my neck, his other hand hiking up my dress.
“I like every side of you.”
My heart skips a beat. I can tell he thinks he means it.
All thoughts abandon my mind when his hand, the texture rough from playing, glides over and between my thighs. A throaty sound escapes me as he strokes me there, his talented fingers finding their way beneath my underwear.
“You really want me this much?” he whispers as he feels how wet I am, how much my need has transformed me.
“Yes,” I hiss, reaching for the band of his jeans.
I get the button undone, my hands trembling as he continues to glide his fingers over me, dipping inside of me, and—
I vibrate with pleasure, and in a low, honeyed voice, he says, “That’s a good spot for you,” and continues to play with me there, his touch sure and confident as he unravels me.
When has a man paid this much attention to what I like?
Never.
The little voice in my head, the one that seems to hate me, whispers that I haven’t allowed it. That I still shouldn’t be allowing it. But I can feel him hard and ready beneath my fingers, and the way he’s touching me, playing me like his guitar, unrelenting…
“Cormac.”
He swears under his breath. “I don’t have anything. I can’t—”
“I’m on birth control, and I always use protection. We don’t need one. If you’re okay with it.”
“Oh God.” He kisses the side of my face. “Yes. I need to be inside you. To feel you without anything between us.”
So do I, but I don’t want to say it. I don’t want to think about what it might mean that I want this with him when I’ve allowed it with no one else.
I unzip him and pull down his pants and underwear, wrapping my hand around him in the dusk of the closet.
He feels so warm and hard beneath my touch, and he’s kissing me again, even as he continues to move his fingers—each stroke hitting me in that mind-bending spot.
I can’t wait anymore. I’m on the edge of coming, but I want to do it when he’s inside of me. I want it to happen to us together.
“Now.”
I hook my underwear off and turn around, planting my hands on the door and pushing my hips back.
He swears but doesn’t hesitate. With one hand on my hip, his mouth pressing kisses to my neck, he lines himself up and thrusts into me. It feels impossibly good to have him like this—nothing separating me from his hard heat—and I almost come immediately.
“I have to stay still for a moment,” he whispers into my ear, his voice only for me. His cock only for me. “Otherwise, I’m going to—”
“I want you to,” I say, barely recognizing my voice. “I want to feel it happening. I don’t care if it’s fast. I’m so close.”
He groans, and with his free hand, he reaches around to cup one of my breasts. He’s still inside of me, filling me so well, and I arc back to bring him deeper.
He swears against my neck, then finds my lips and kisses me over my shoulder as he pulls out and slides all the way back in again. His glasses graze my face, but I’m glad when he doesn’t take them off. They’re part of him, and I’m fond of them.
The door creaks loudly as he thrusts in again and again, each stroke pounding raw pleasure through me. I want the moment to last forever, and I want my orgasm to rip through me now.
“I can’t—”
“Now, Cormac,” I say, feeling the pleasure finally reach its crest. I’m ready to jump off into the abyss. To take it too far. To take it all the fucking way. “Give it all to me. I want it.”
He thrusts in once more and bites my shoulder, and holy shit, I guess that does it for me, because I feel myself clenching around him with a release that has me practically pounding on the door. I bite back a loud moan, and he groans against me.
I can feel him coming inside me, which is a turn-on I wasn’t expecting, but he doesn’t pull out immediately. He kisses me and gathers me to him like I’m someone special—
Not the woman who just convinced him to have sex in a random janitor’s closet.
Not the woman who asks too much and gives too little.
We’re still like that, cuddled together in our bubble—Cormac inside of me, his arms wrapped around me—when footsteps sound in the hallway beyond the closet.
He swears again, his voice a bare whisper, then kisses my shoulder and pulls out.
I squat and start searching the ground for my underwear, but then he hands them to me.
“I swear to Christ, there’s a rabid animal in there, Murray,” someone says, which nearly startles a laugh out of me. Cormac, who’s peering at me in the dark, covers my mouth with his hand. I kiss it.
“Nah, I’ll open it up. I bet it’s nothing but a mouse.”
“If it’s a raccoon or something, we can’t risk it escaping. We’ll have to get building maintenance over here.”
They’ve nearly reached the door now, judging from their voices, and my heart is racing at the possibility of getting caught.
I can tell Cormac, who is obviously not as much of an adrenaline junkie as I am, is legitimately a bit nervous.
So I do what anyone with a passing knowledge of raccoon cries would.
I scream like a raccoon.