Chapter 31
Fireworks
SADIE
Ikiss him softly, and he kisses me back.
“We did it, darlin’,” he murmurs. “This is your song too.”
Above the valley the first firework goes up, a single silver streak climbing fast. It bursts into the dark in red, white, and blue light raining down over the mountains. The deep thud of the explosion rolls across the mountains a half-second later.
Walker sets the guitar against the side of the truck.
Then he pulls me into his lap in one motion, my legs straddling his, and kisses me the way he kissed me that very first time. Like it’s a revelation.
His hands are warm on my waist, sliding up under the hem of my dress. The fireworks keep blooming over the valley, shimmering explosions in the sky.
“You wrote a song,” I say, still marveling. “A great one.”
“We wrote it, and we’re not finished yet.” His fingertips skim across my ribcage. “Still got room for the rest of the album all over this beautiful body.”
The rest of the album.
“Are you saying what I think you're saying?”
“Mm.” His eyes are dark and steady on mine.
“Walker Rhodes is making a new album.” I can hear the delight rising in my own voice and I don't bother tamping it down.
“Sadie Sullivan,” he says, eyes gleaming. “Don’t tell me you’re turning into my number one fan?”
I take his face in my hands, those green eyes going dark right before I close mine, and I kiss him hard.
“Jury’s still out,” I whisper, wrapping my arms around his neck. “Let’s see how the rest of this album turns out.”
He laughs, low and warm, then reaches out and traces his thumb slowly along my collarbone, over the words he wrote there, down to the curve of my breast.
“Lucky for us,” he says, “I just found my new favorite way to write. And my all-time favorite subject.”
From my collarbone, he kisses down to my breasts.
“You can't write a whole album about my tits,” I tease.
He sucks my nipple between his lips and releases it with a pop, grinning insolently. “Try me, baby.”
His eyes roam over me as I straddle him, topless and covered in his song lyrics. The heat in his eyes smolders into something deeper, and he reaches for the marker.
I watch as he slowly, carefully draws a heart on my ribcage.
I laugh. As the fireworks continue in the sky, it feels like there are pyrotechnics going off everywhere inside me too.
“Are we in sixth grade?” I say, unable to hide my giddy smile.
“Seventh, at least.” He writes something else, then caps the marker, completely unrepentant. “I've got range.”
I look down at the heart on my ribs. There are letters he’s written inside, and since I’m looking at it upside down, it takes me a second to decipher it.
When I do, my breath catches in my throat.
WR + SS
4 ever
God. This man. My grumpy, guarded, impossible cowboy. Full of surprises.
“Walker Rhodes.” I shake my head. “Country music's biggest star. Drawing hearts on girls like it's the last days of summer camp.”
“Just the one girl.” His eyes find mine. “Just the one summer.”
I feel those words move through me like the first sip of whiskey. Warms you up at the same time it burns.
He's not pretending this is more than it is. He's also not pretending it's less.
“Is this your version of ‘property of Walker Rhodes?’” I say, throat tight.
He looks at the heart on my ribs. Then at me. “This says it better.”
I look down so he can't see my face. I've gone soft and swoony and I know exactly what I'd see if I looked in a mirror right now and I'm not ready for him to see it too.
He puts a finger under my chin and tips it back up anyway. Of course he does. This man who never lets me hide. Who finds me every time.
He kisses me like we have all the time in the world.
We both know we don't.
Can’t waste a moment.
As we kiss again, I feel him hard beneath me, pressing up against me through his jeans. I rock my hips against his erection.
“These need to come off now,” I say.
“As you wish, princess,” he murmurs.
This time when I go for his jeans I don't fumble. I’ve done this before.
Many times, now. He lifts slightly to help me drag everything away, and then there's nothing between us. He’s already pushing my panties to the side when I reach down and wrap my hand around his cock.
His shaft is hot, veins swelling, already slick at the tip.
I stroke him once, slowly, just to hear the sound he makes.
It's a good sound.
“Sadie.” A warning. Or a plea. With Walker it's sometimes hard to tell.
Rolling my hips, I grind against the hot, hard length of him. My pussy is already wet, so it’s more of a glide.
“You feel so fucking good.” His grip tightens on me. “I never want to let you go.”
So don’t, I think. Don’t ever let me go.
Pushing the thought to the side, I rise up on my knees. His hands go to my hips immediately, steadying me, thumbs pressing into the soft flesh there. I position him at my entrance and sink down slowly, taking my time, feeling every inch of him.
His head drops back on a groan that I feel in my spine. “Baby. Fuck.”
I stay still for a moment, just breathing, adjusting to the fullness of him as my pussy stretches around his girth.
His chest is heaving. His hands on my hips are trembling slightly, the effort of holding himself back written all over him.
I love that. The evidence of what I do to him.
Then I start to move.
He leans back against the cab and looks up at me in the starlight, the fireworks cascading above the valley, washing us both in color. Gold. Silver. Red. His gaze moves over my body slowly. Over the lyrics and the heart and his initials next to mine.
His expression is the most vulnerable I've ever seen it.
“You have no idea what you do to me.” He traces the line on my collarbone with one finger, following the ink like he's reading it again. Then he bends his head and follows the same path with his mouth, his lips moving slow along the words he wrote on my skin.
The intimacy of it stops my breath.
“Tell me,” I say. I'm riding him slow, savoring the sensation of moving along him, of the way he fills me up. The way he’s can’t take his eyes off me. “Tell me what I do to you.”
A firework goes up. Golden and enormous. The light of it washes over us both, illuminating the ink on my skin and his bent head of dark hair as he kisses and sucks my breasts.
His hands go to my waist as I ride him, fingers flexing against my skin like he can't decide whether to guide me or just hold on.
“I've got a whole album coming together about all the ways you make my head spin.”
“Yeah?” I roll my hips and watch his jaw tighten. “Better write fast.”
He laughs, breathless, and the laugh cuts off into a groan as I increase my tempo.
I sink my fingers into his hair and find my rhythm. I don't entirely know what I'm doing because this is my first time in this position, but my body seems to have opinions about it that my brain doesn't need to weigh in on.
Walker's hands are on my hips, not directing, just… present. Feeling everything. Like he wants to memorize the exact way I move on him.
“So gorgeous,” he murmurs. His eyes move over me slowly. “Look at you. Fireworks behind you, stars above you, riding me like you were made for this.” His grip tightens. “Like a fucking dream, Sadie. You have no idea.”
I tip my head back and look at the sky coming apart above the mountains. Blue and silver and red, one after another, the finale building.
It is a dream.
One I’m going to have to wake up from in six weeks and I can't think about that right now.
I bring my eyes back down to him. To his dark hair and his green eyes and the way he's looking at me right now, like I'm the most dazzling star in the whole lit-up sky.
I kiss him as I ride him. The friction is building, slow and inevitable, my whole body tightening around him.
Then he grabs me and flips me, pinning me underneath him.
One smooth motion and I'm on my back and he's above me, the quilt soft underneath, his weight settling between my thighs. He looks down at me for just a moment. Hair disheveled, breathing hard, eyes dark.
Then he drives into me, brutal and deep, and I arch up to meet him.
It feels different from the first time. Raw in a different way. When Walker took my virginity he was guiding me through it. But tonight there's none of that careful management between us. Just two people who know each other now, taking and giving in equal measure.
A meeting of equals. That's what this is.
He shifts his hips and the angle changes and I gasp, my whole body lighting up. He does it again, deliberately, watching my face to see what it does to me.
“There,” I breathe.
“Yeah.” His voice is gravel. “I've got you. You’re mine, darlin’. Ain’t nobody ever gonna know you like I do.”
I know he’s talking about always being my first, but my heart wants him to mean it in other ways. That no one else will ever have my body or heart, that I’ll be his forever.
The quilt is bunched soft beneath my back.
The night air moves across my skin everywhere he isn't touching me, which is not many places.
His mouth finds my throat, my collarbone, the words inked across my skin.
His heartbeat against my chest is going as hard as mine, and I think: he feels this too.
Whatever this is. He feels every bit of it.
“I'm so fucking close, baby.” He eases back to gaze at me. “Fuck. I need to feel you come first.”
He rises up on his knees, hands sliding under my ass to tilt my hips up, changing the angle so he's hitting deeper. The sight of him above me, muscles flexing as he thrusts into me, eyes riveted to where we're joined, is one I’ll never forget.
He's watching his cock slide in and out of me. Watching the way my tits bounce as he thrusts into me.
“Touch yourself,” he says roughly. “Let me watch you.”
I slide my hand between us and find my clit and the sound that escapes me is embarrassingly immediate.
“That's it,” he breathes. “Just like that. Don't stop.”
Behind him the sky is coming apart. The finale, each firework larger than the last, the booms rolling across the valley one after another, deep enough to feel in my chest. Glitter raining down through the velvet dark.
I can't tell anymore where the fireworks end and my own body begins. Everything is building to the same point. The pressure of my fingers, the drag of him moving inside me, the boom and bloom of the sky above, all of it converging.
I look up at Walker.
His eyes are already locked on me. Not on my body. On my face. Like that's the thing he can't stop watching.
That's what does it for me. The orgasm breaks over me in waves, my back arching off the quilt, my pussy clenching around him, his name coming out of me on a broken sound.
He doesn't look away, soaking in every second of me coming apart beneath him with those deep green eyes.
Then his control goes.
He thrusts hard, slamming into me all the way before he stills. He comes with a groan, his cum pulsing hot inside my pussy.
I'm still catching my breath when he pulls me against him, his body pressing the full length of mine. His mouth finds mine in a deep kiss.
We pull apart only when breathing becomes a necessity.
The valley is quiet now. The fireworks done, just the smoke drifting across the stars, the smell of it mixing with the sweetgrass and the night air and the faint ink smell of the Sharpie lines still on my skin.
Somewhere out in the dark a cricket starts up. Then another.
I become aware of other things. The quilt warm and bunched beneath us. The guitar propped in the corner, its job done for tonight. His heartbeat under my ear, slowing gradually.
“Did we smudge the lyrics?” I ask.
He glances down at my skin, tracing one line with a fingertip. “All good. But I wouldn't have forgotten them.”
“That makes one of us.” I let out a breathless laugh. “I think you just rewired my brain entirely.”
“Good.” He presses his lips to my hair, utterly satisfied. “Returning the favor.”
I smile against his chest. Then I press my mouth to his neck and taste salt and warm skin. His arms pull me closer.
“Sadie.”
Just my name. Nothing attached to it. But the way he says it, hushed and undefended, like it means something more than just my name, makes me lift my head.
He's looking at me. Really looking. His chest still rising and falling, his green eyes dark and open in the starlight, all the teasing and the laughter completely gone from them.
“Thank you,” he says. “Thank you for making music with me.”
I don't trust my voice. So I just press my lips to his chest, right above his heart, and leave them there.
We lie there for a while without talking as the stars wheel slowly overhead. The cricket is joined by a chorus of them now, the whole valley singing.
“I didn't know it could be like that,” I admit.
I mean the sex. I also mean the song. I also mean lying here beneath the stars, with his words on my skin and his heartbeat beneath my cheek.
It feels like floating. It feels like falling.
“Is it always like this?” I ask.
He looks at me for a long moment. His fingertips trace along my cheekbone.
All he says is, “You’re a first for me too.”