15. Lake
fifteen
Six Months Later
I’ve lit a couple dozen candles in the bedroom of our new house on Leschi.
Small ones on the dresser. Tall ones on the nightstand. A pair of columns inside glass hurricanes on the floor by the wall of windows. A hand-poured black-fig on the side table.
The room glows.
Levi’s sound asleep down the hall, out for the night. His moon nightlight is on and I can hear him snoring through the monitor. Noa should be done with her bath soon, and I’m ready.
They moved in six weeks ago. Some boxes are still stacked in the second bedroom I use for a home office. We’re actually looking for a bigger place, and our realtor sent us three new listings this morning. We’re hoping to have our forever home within a month or two.
Months of counseling has done wonders for both of us. Noa has reclaimed her body one session at a time, taking back what she thought she gave away. Our sex life is off the charts. She fucks me as a woman who owns her own skin, making me the most fortunate man alive.
“Hey, handsome.” Noa’s in the silk robe the color of butter I bought her in Paris on tour. Her hair’s piled on top of her head with a clip and one damp strand hangs against her neck. Her eyes find me across the room and land, and I feel my cock grow harder against the front of my briefs.
“Fuck.” I cup myself. “You’re spectacular.”
She glances around the room. “You lit every candle in this condo.”
“Yep. Every candle.” I beckon her. “Now, come here.”
She crosses the room. Bare feet on the rug. She stops between my knees where I sit on the edge of the bed and I put my hands on her hips over the silk. “Untie it.”
Her fingers go to the sash at her hip. She pulls it free. The silk parts. She lets it drop.
I take her in. Full breasts. Nipples tight from the cool air. The tiny gold cross at her collarbone. The dark strip of hair between her legs framing her pussy where I smell her arousal. She’s already wet. “Christ, baby.”
“You look at me the same every day.” Her mouth curves.
I slide my hands to cup her ass. “Because you always look this good.”
“Sit still.” She puts one knee up on the bed beside my hip, then the other, and settles onto my thighs. Slides her arms around my neck. Her tits are inches from my mouth.
I fuse my mouth on the base of her throat.
Kiss my way up her neck. Bite her earlobe.
Nibble down to her mouth. She kisses me hot and unhurried, tongue against mine, fingers stroking the back of my head.
My hands move up to her shoulders and back down to settle on her hips, which I use to pull her forward against my cock.
My breath breaks against her mouth. “Baby, lie back and let me worship you.”
Noa climbs off my lap and scoots up to the headboard, where she lays against the pillow and parts her legs.
I follow her, taking my time to kiss her mouth, the side of her throat, down the swell of her right breast where I suck her nipple and hear her breath go ragged above me.
I roll it with my tongue. Lave it flat against the roof of my mouth.
Use my teeth once and hear her gasp. Then I switch to the other one.
Back and forth until they’re both red as cherries.
“Lake.” Noa tugs at my hair. “I need you to lick my pussy.”
I move down her ribs past the soft plane of her belly and across the dip of her navel to the line of dark hair leading me to the promised land. I settle between her thighs on my forearms, push her knees apart with my shoulders and I look at her.
Her pussy is glistening. I place a kiss on the inside of her thigh.
Then the other. Finally, I lower my mouth to her clit, circling in slow patterns I’ve learned she likes over months of practice.
Using two my thumbs, I spread her open and suck on her pussy lips before returning to her sensitive nub.
“Lake,” she keens.
“Yeah.”
“More.”
I slide two fingers inside her drenched channel, find the swell of the spot I know by heart and press it in a slow, steady rhythm while my tongue works her clit.
Noa’s thighs start to shake against my ears.
Her hand grips my hair. I feel her tightening around my fingers and the flutter of her walls start and I look up at her face as I work her into oblivion.
Her eyes find mine. Feral. Wild.
I suck her clit one more time and she breaks.
Her back arches off the bed, hips canting into my mouth. Her pussy pulses around my fingers in long, deep waves and she makes a broken sound of my name in three syllables. Her whole body shakes, but I keep my mouth on her until she her hips slam back down onto the mattress.
Her clit is swollen against my lips. Slick. Pulsing.
I know not to stop. My woman needs to be worshipped.
I kiss the inside of her thigh, sucking on her clit gently while circling her opening with my drenched fingers.
I lick through her folds, slowly this time, easing her down and letting the second orgasm build at the same time.
When her hips lift again, I put my palm flat on her low belly and hold her against my mouth.
“Lake.” She laughs, breathless. “Fuck, Lake.”
“You’re going again, baby.”
“I can’t.”
“We both know you can and you will.”
Noa’s body was made for pleasure, and I will not let her feel ashamed about it. It’s my privilege to give her what she needs because she deserves to have a safe place to express her sexuality without apology.
I curl my fingers and press the magic spot and suck her swollen clit like a boss. She immediately squirts on my tongue, thighs shaking, pussy clenching around me in tight, fast pulses. She rides my mouth through it, and I stay with her the whole way.
When Noa’s limp with exhaustion, I kiss my way back up her body. Her stomach. Ribs. Nipples. Up to her throat and jaw.
She grabs my face and pulls my mouth to hers and tastes herself on me. She moans into my mouth, “Lake.”
“Yeah, baby.”
“I need your cock inside me. Now.”
I sit back, peel my briefs down my hips and drop them off the side of the bed.
Her eyes track my body. Her hand glides along my thighs and closes around my cock, causing my head to drop back for a second because she strokes me perfectly, thumb across the head.
It takes everything I have not to spurt into her hand.
She pulls me forward. “Come here.”
On the way, I hook my arms under her knees to open her wide for me. Look at her face as I press the head of my cock against her opening.
“Look at me,” I demand when I slide inside her.
Her eyes flick from mine to where I enter her body. One millimeter by another. She’s so wet but the fit is always snug. Once I’m fully seated and I feel her pussy grip me, I have to hold still for a second because she feels so goddamn good it’s almost impossible not to come.
“Noa, baby,” I manage. “I’m gonna fuck you so good.”
I pull almost fully out and slam back in, leaving her breathless. I do it again. Slow. Steady. She’s so tight, wet, and hot around me and I feel every ridge of her from base to tip. I keep her legs hooked over my arms and fuck her deep, varying my pace to keep her guessing.
Noa’s breasts move with every thrust. Her nipples are diamond hard. Her mouth is open, hands on my forearms. Our eyes are locked.
“Lake,” she whispers.
“Yeah.”
“You feel like home.”
God, this woman. “You are home.”
“I love you.” She reaches up and puts her palm against the side of my face.
“I love you.” I press my lips to hers. “Forever.”
My cock is about to explode, but I need her to go over with me. Keeping the pace, I put my weight into it now. Fuck her deeper into the mattress. Pinch her nipples. Bring my thumb to her clit and rub in small circles. She jolts.
“Baby.” Her hand slides from my face to grip my shoulder. “Baby, I’m—”
“Come for me.”
Noa’s head thrashes from side to side. “No, I wanna come with you.”
She clenches tight around my cock and I feel her start to pulse so I let go. Come hard, in long, thick bursts, emptying everything I have into her as her pussy milks. I can’t see. I can’t hear, I’m inside the heaven of her body and there’s nothing else.
When it’s over, I don’t pull out. Instead, I lower myself onto my forearms above her. She wraps her arms around my back. I bury my face in her neck and breathe her in.
She turns her face into my hair.
“Lake,” she purrs. “Stay inside me.”
My cock is still hard, which isn’t new. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but Noa does this to me and has since the first night I laid eyes on her.
She shifts under me. “Are you ready for me to ride you?”
“Christ.”
I roll onto my back, taking Noa with me, slipping from her body in the process.
She straddles my hips, hair falling forward around my face, framed by the candlelight behind her.
Her nipples dangle inches from my mouth.
She braces her palms on my chest, reaches down between us, lines me up and lowers herself onto my cock.
When I’m buried in her, she adjusts her position so her clit is pressed against my pubic bone.
She grinds down. Her mouth opens. Her eyes flutter shut for one second and open again on mine. “Fuck.”
I grip her ass and move her on me, forward and back, and she rolls her hips with the motion, working her clit against the ridge of my bone every time. I lift my chin and catch her nipple in my mouth, sucking in time to our rhythm.
“Lake,” she moans and grinds down harder. “God, Lake. It’s so good.”
Her nipple’s in between my lips, so I waggle my eyebrows instead of answering and take control of the pace. Pump up into her as I slam her onto my cock.
Noa’s breath goes ragged as her pussy suctions itself around me and her whole body goes tight.
She erupts, walls clenching in fast, hot pulses, and I burst inside her a second time, spurting deep.
She throws her head back and cries out. I sit up under her, locking my arms around her waist while we ride it out.
Noa’s forehead falls onto my shoulder. My mouth is against her hair. Her heart pounds against my chest. My cock still twitches inside her. She pulses around me in small aftershocks.
She laughs, small and wet, into my throat. “Christ, Lake.”
“Yeah,” I manage. “Every time.”
“Every time.” She kisses my neck, jaw, mouth.
I taste her tears but don’t say anything because my woman gets to cry after I fuck her if she wants to.
Eventually, we settle and she lifts off me carefully and nestles against my chest. I pull the blanket up over both of us. Her palm rests on my collarbone. I look down and see the diamond catch a fleck of candle and sparkle.
I lift Noa’s hand, turn it over and run my thumb across the ring. Emerald cut. Four carats. Slim gold band.
She said yes last month. I proposed on the deck of the pool house at her parents’ compound with Levi by my side. Every time she calls me her fiancé, I feel it in my ribs.
“Can you believe,” I look over to see her watching me, “in twelve weeks we’ll be married.”
Her mouth curves against my throat. “I know.”
“Twelve weeks and you’re my wife.”
Noa kisses my jaw. “No, you’re my husband.”
“I can’t wait.”
She lifts her head from my chest and looks at me. Her eyes are still a little wet. “Then a lifetime.”
“No, beyond.” I put my hand at the back of her head, guide her down and kiss her. Long. Slow. The kiss of a man who’s going to marry the woman who was made for him.
She lays her head back down on my chest and drifts off to sleep almost instantly.
Down the hall, our son sleeps with one of his treasured rocks tucked into his fist. Beyond the wall of glass, Lake Washington lies black beneath the moon. Beside me is my soulmate.
For years I only measured my life in tour dates, album releases, sold-out arenas, and cities blurred together by hotel rooms and airports. I loved every minute of it and still do. Music built this life.
What I never imagined was how the best part would be waiting when I came home.
Noa shifts closer without waking, her hand finds mine beneath the blankets the way it always seems to now. Some nights I still catch myself wondering how I got so lucky. Then I remember luck had very little to do with it.
She and Levi came into my life as a curveball I never saw coming. Nothing about them fit the future I’d mapped out. They unraveled every plan I thought mattered, challenged every certainty I held on to, and asked more of me than I believed I had to give.
They’re the greatest gift of my life.
Tomorrow we’ll wake up and do what families do. Make breakfast. Chase a little boy who still believes rocks belong in pockets and beds. We’ll juggle rehearsals, calendars, grocery lists, counseling appointments, and a hundred ordinary moments.
It won’t be perfect. Neither will we.
I spent years chasing the next stage, the next city, the next milestone, convinced happiness waited somewhere farther down the road when it was here all along.
With the woman asleep against my heart and the little boy down the hall.
Now we’re building a life neither of us expected. One neither of us would ever trade.
I kiss Noa’s hair and close my eyes.
For the first time in my life, I don’t wonder what’s waiting for me tomorrow.
I already found it.