30. Zak
It was a beautiful night for an outdoor concert. Clear skies on a mild summer evening, so much like the ones Zak remembered from her first time in the City.
“Damn! It’s good to be back, New York!”
Chase’s voice reverberated through the speakers and into Garden Square, but it was nowhere near as loud as the response.
The sound of the crowd traveled through the open air, though iron and steel and concrete. It shook the metal beams of the amphitheater. It scaled the skyscrapers. It merged with city living, with the stampede of footsteps on sidewalks and the rumble of car engines.
Chase smiled behind the microphone, and she tried not to stare for too long.
Watching him find his place on stage had been just as enthralling as watching the album sales amass, watching their songs rise on the hot list. The shy guy who could barely get into a Bad Company song at a coffee shop now fed off the energy from the audience.
And tonight, that energy hit like a shockwave.
Addicted to the resonance of her guitar, her music, igniting their corner of the City, Zak extended her solo in “Kerosene” for thirty seconds. One minute. Maybe two. She lost track, but the longer she played, the louder the screams grew.
As her playing finally tapered off, a new sound rushed in to replace it.
The euphony of thousands of voices, singing the chorus like a stormy breeze in the darkness.
Zak loved this place. She loved the fresh start it had given her. The bittersweet way it reminded her of fulfilling Link’s dream as well as her own. The small pockets of the city she had explored and the ones that awaited her still.
New York was home to some of her most life-altering memories, and now, a new one joined their ranks.
Chase looked at her.
She looked back at him.
All five members of Saint of Spades stared out into the sea of people, dancing and chanting the words to their song.
“Holy shit,” Chase said. She wasn’t sure if he realized he was speaking into the microphone at first, but he adjusted his grip on it and recovered. “You all sound good. Thanks for the break. My vocal cords appreciate it.”
A few clusters of laughter interrupted the crowd-voice, but they carried on singing.
That was the moment Zak felt her fame.
For years she’d poured her heart into writing words that meant something to her, not knowing if they would mean anything to a single other soul. Now people memorized them the way she memorized those songs that spoke to her.
They finished the song, and it was a failed effort on Zak’s part not to smile at everybody like an amazed amateur.
And then, Chase told them, “Let’s see how well you know the next one.”
“This is starting to feel like a kidnapping,” Zak said as soon as she caught her breath. Between her shorter legs and high heels, she’d had to jog to keep up with Chase as they snuck out of the stadium wearing baseball caps and oversized hoodies.
“It’s starting to feel like I have to kidnap you to get you alone.” Chase perused the subway station map as he paid for their MetroCards.
Throngs of people passed through in waves, all while street performers played at every column in the familiar juxtaposition of instant and eternal. Life moved fast here, but there were alcoves where everything slowed down. Where people embodied the bare essentials—art, emotion, connection.
Zak’s heart squeezed. “You planned something?”
“Of course I did.” His laugh said it should have been obvious that he would stick his neck on the chopping block for something as trivial as a date. “I was dying to take you out the last time we were here, if you don’t remember. Hell, I wanted to take you out the minute I got my first car, but you used to scare the shit out of me.”
“Maybe you should talk to someone about the way you conflate fear and attraction. That sounds like a deeper-rooted issue.”
She broke away to dump all the money in her wallet into hats and buckets. From the decent guitar player at one end to the greatly disturbing sword-swallower at another.
The last time they’d been here, she stood by while Chase threw money at every donation box, tip jar, and street act they passed. Enamored, contradictorily, with both the idea of having money and the idea of caring so little about wealth.
When the band was starting out, she had felt eternally grateful for those odd strangers who placed twenty-dollar bills in the open guitar case at their gigs—with Link’s THANKS, MOTHERFUCKER sign taped to the side—instead of ones or fives.
Now, she could leave hundreds.
“I love that about you, too,” Chase said, following in her footsteps. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against one of the columns as they waited for the subway to arrive.
As if her small acts of generosity had anything on the way he researched every nonprofit and cause lodged his way by strangers, and donated to the ones that turned out to be real. The way she knew he made monthly payments toward medical research and services for amputees, not because he’d ever told her, but because she saw the thank you letters on his desk the last time she stayed over at his apartment.
“Don’t give me too much credit, Mr. Charity. I’ve also got my eye on a pair of Valentinos and that new Fender Cyclone. The one with the tortoise-shell pickguard…” she trailed off, salivating at her mental render of it.
“And hopefully the third item on your list is a new car?”
She waltzed over to him. “There is no third item.”
He rolled his eyes and laughed.
In a racket of howling wind, clacking wheels, and screeching brakes, their train barreled down the tunnel and came to a stop.
The open seats were a little questionable—Zak couldn’t quite tell what color they were originally—but they sat in them anyway. She was pretty sure her old couch was worse, and the pants were a rental. Besides, she had no idea how long they were going to be on this thing, considering he hadn’t told her where they were going.
But she guessed it as soon as they got off at the stop. It wasn’t difficult when there was a place in Brooklyn that meant more to her than any other.
The jazz club was exactly as she remembered it—the open windows, music drifting through the streets for everyone to hear, not just the people enjoying wine and espresso inside. The padded wingback chairs in deep jewel-toned shades, all of them filled by guests.
All except for two, which Zak spotted when Chase opened the door.
He ushered her through a dimly lit entryway where a hostess confirmed their reservation and took them right to that empty low table. The main seating area was crowded with vintage photographs and paintings, illuminated by tea candles and pendant lights.
She pulled her chair closer to his as they sat. So as not to disturb anyone or detract from the show they were late to, when she whispered in his ear, “How long have you been keeping this one a secret?”
“They only take reservations a month in advance. Thought it might be nice if we actually got to go inside this time.”
“It is.” She drank in the atmosphere. The warm light reflecting colors from the mismatched stained-glass light shades. The golden tone of the trombone soloist on stage and the peaceful piano accompanying him. “But I would’ve been happy to stand outside again with you.”
“You mean too much to me for all the shadows and secrecy.” Chase cupped her cheek to kiss her chastely. “Hopefully next time, I can show you that you mean more to me than disguises and sneaking out through the bus lot, too.”
“You already have.”
Whether it was hidden from the world or not.
Whether they were swaying outside in the street or in the corner of the tucked-away dance floor. Her fingers interlocked with his and her head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat, completely off-tempo with the easy lilt of the music.
“This is what I see when I think of the future,” he spoke softly to her. “I’m happy on that stage. I’m happy writing songs with you and the guys and putting in long hours at the studio. But this is where I’m happiest. With you.”
Forever was a word she used to only associate with music, not with people or with feelings. Those things had always been abstract. But Chase was real, and he was touching her, kissing her, and he felt an awful lot like forever. For whatever that meant.
“I’m glad you like it, but I can’t believe you brought it on the road,” Chase said as she pulled out the record player he had gotten her for Christmas. “It’s not exactly portable.”
“You’re talking to the girl who’s used to hauling all her band equipment everywhere. It’s portable, I assure you.” She unsleeved the record she’d purchased on the way back from the jazz club. While she was happy to cart the turntable around to their last few tour stops, she had no desire to bring a stack of albums when she could have an excuse to add to her collection. “Besides, I won’t be able to take it to Europe, so this is my last shot.”
She smiled at Chase from where he sat propped up in bed. At the free smile taking over his cheeks, and the dimple on one of them. The nose he’d broken, repeatedly, and the fake teeth she still couldn’t tell from his real ones. The messy curls of his hair, half-dry from the shower, and the golden hue of his tan against the sheets, dotted with those freckles she loved.
She smiled because he was the best fucking person in the entire world, and somehow, he was hers. Because from one year to the next she had gone from undiscovered to undercover, sneaking around after playing for a crowd of twenty-thousand to have a moment of peace. From never traveling further than the Pacific Coast, to seeing twelve new countries in the coming months.
She laid Duke Ellington John Coltrane on the platter of the turntable, dropped the stylus on the outside groove, and turned the volume up. It wasn’t her usual listen, but she wanted the memory of tonight more than the familiarity of one of her favorite rock albums.
The effortless, bell-like dance of the piano keys, followed by the buttery rasp of the saxophone drifted through the speakers as she slipped under the covers next to Chase, closed her eyes, and simply listened.
His fingers tangled in her hair. “I swear, watching you listen to music, all kinds of music, is like an experience of its own. You go somewhere else, and I feel like I’m stuck here in the boring real world trying to figure out where you went.”
As if she would want to be anywhere but the real world when he was lying next to her. It was more like experiencing two worlds at once. Magic woven into the fabric of reality.
“Sometimes the songs without words are my favorite,” she said softly. “If you listen closely, you can hear the instruments speak to you on their own.”
Music was its own disorganized language. Sometimes the words didn’t exist, sometimes they were nonsense, or sometimes the lyrics were beautifully at odds with the message from the instruments.
“Reminds me of talking to you,” she said, her eyelids fluttering open to a sea of blue. “I don’t feel like I always have the words to tell you that you’re the best thing that ever happened to me. No one does anything the way you do. No one sings like you, loves like you, or understands me like you.”
He held her against his bare chest. Brushing the pad of his thumb over her lips. “You’re right. You must not have the words if you’re stealing mine out of my head.”
She lost herself in the music, his touch. And when the album ended, and the needle tracked around and around in the runout area, filling the room with crackles and pops, she remained lying with him.
“Kiss me.”
Her whisper got lost in the ambient noise. But either he felt the same sentiment in his heart, or felt it in the way her lips brushed over his heart, because he tilted her chin and kissed her like he was grateful she asked him to.
“Don’t stop,” she said.
“Don’t have to tell me not to.”
His hand cupped the back of her head. Hers came up to his neck, his pulse beneath her thumbprint.
The tail-end of a full-body shudder traveled from his bottom lip to her tongue.
She forced him onto his back, rolling on top of him, her knees hugging his waist. “Thank you for tonight.”
“Don’t have to thank me for spending time with you, either.”
“Fine. Guess I’ll go back to being an ungrateful bitch,” she teased. “Making your life difficult. Making our relationshipdifficult.”
He pulled her back down, smiling into the harder, needier kiss he planted on her lips. “Falling in love with you was the easiest fucking thing I ever did.”
His fingers toyed with the thin straps of her slip. Ventured beneath the hem that had risen over the tops of her thighs. There was no way he could see anything with his eyes closed as he kissed her, and nothing he hadn’t seen a hundred times over. Still, his breath quickened against her cheek as he pulled away to press a soft kiss there.
“Careful, Payton,” she said as his hands traveled up the silk fabric, his pinky and ring fingers brushing the underside of her breasts. “You’re going to turn me into one of those suckers who can’t write anything but love songs.”
“Last I checked, one of those suckersongs is topping the charts right now.”
Zak could see the night she had climbed out of the bathtub and penned those words, still covered in soap and oil. She’d wrapped her body in a towel without drying off completely, worried she would forget the idea as rapidly as it had taken form in her mind. Her feet had left puddles on the tile floor as she took hopping strides to the desk, and her hand had stuck to the hotel notepad. Aromatic water wrinkling the next five sheets of paper, making the page lines and ink strokes bleed together.
She had sculpted a fantasy of him—one she was sure he could never live up to—and romanticized it for the sake of dramatic effect. The song was supposed to be indulgent and exaggerated like all love songs were, but instead, it wasn’t large enough to encompass reality.
“Thought I wanted so much more than I could have,” she said, those feelings still potent at the forefront of her memory.
He lifted the dress, and then it was her skin against his. His hands on her breasts as he kissed her back, harder.
She twisted her head to bury the weak moan bubbling up against his throat.
“There is nothing you can’t have.” He stumbled over his words as she shifted her hips, sliding down and pulling his pajama pants off. His eyes seared with desire. “Nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”
“You don’t need to do anything for me.” She pressed her lips to the inside of his scarred knee. Kissed a trail up his thigh. “Let me take care of you.”
She took the tip of his cock in her mouth, his balls in her hand, as her tongue swirled until his low groan rose into the air. A sound that had her throat opening to take more, to see what other insanely sexy noises she could wrangle out of him.
She found herself drawing parallels in the sound of his voice, thick with pleasure, to the rumble of it through the microphone during the dirty, depraved songs their record label had balked at. That voice had been packaged up and shipped in little plastic boxes to music stores for people around the world to listen to, and a possessive, selfish part of her got a thrill out of having these sounds all to herself.
She took him deeper, gripping his thighs as her head moved down to the base of him. Sliding her tongue along the underside of his cock until a tinge of salt coated her throat.
“Zak. God. What the fuck?” he gritted out, as though all three utterances were synonyms.
She would’ve smiled at him if he wasn’t so full in her mouth, teasing the way he stretched between her legs, filling her there, too. Her thighs clamped together to dull the ache as he cradled her face with his palms, beckoning her to look at the pleasant torture swirling in his blue eyes.
“So good...”
She took him all the way, slowly. Again and again. Until her throat was raw and his muscles were tense beneath her fingertips. Until his fingers twisted in her damp hair, guiding the glide of her mouth over his cock. Wet, and sloppy, and hot, and not nearly fucking enough.
She grazed her teeth lightly over him. Ran her hands up his body as his breaths came in tight, short bursts. Felt the ripple of release flow through his muscles as warm, thick cum filled the back of her throat.
Though she was throbbing for more, she’d rather stay down there all day, between his legs, and take his pleasure alone. Watch his body crest and relax and his head sink into the soft pillows. Feel his heart pound rapidly in his chest and hear the sound of his breathing and know, wordlessly, how much he loved her. Like a song without lyrics.
She had forgotten all about her underwear, lacy and minimal as they may have been, and was about to take them off when Chase reached for her waist and pulled her to eye level.
“If you think this isn’t going to work both ways,” he said, tucking her bottom lip between his teeth. “Think again.”
He hooked his thumbs in the delicate band of her panties and dragged them over the curve of her ass, and off entirely. Then his hands were on the backs of her thighs, moving her toward the headboard until her knees fit into the crooks of his shoulders.
His nose nudged her clit. Then his tongue.
Her vision went black and starry as the night sky. “Chase...”
“I love that sound, angel,” he panted against her thigh. “That’s my favorite sound.”
Funny. Her favorite sound was him calling her “angel.” Low and sweet and affectionate, and broken up by short curses.
He licked. Kissed. Sucked. His hand snaked from behind. “What else can I do to get you to say my name like that, hmm?”
It felt like he already had his answer, as he parted her with his middle and ring fingers, sliding back to tease at her entrance. The first stroke of pressure, the accompanying circle of his tongue on her clit, had her grabbing for his hair and swiveling her hips into his touch. Moaning his name again.
His free hand held her down by her waist. Moved up to her breast to play there.
She fell against the wall, bracing herself with her elbow.
“Grind that pussy on my face, honey,” he said, his breathing heavy between her thighs as he fucked her harder with his fingers. “Love the way you move those hips. Love the way you taste…”
Zak had learned early on not to care about her desirability. Her personality alone was usually enough to scare people off. So why bother to even consider her appearance?
But then there was Chase. Looking at her like he’d never seen anything so sexy in his life as she did what he asked. Touching her like he would die if he stopped. Filling her head with words she wished she could bottle up and pour into a song. Tasting her like he was fucking starved for her. Like he cared less about breathing than he did about making her come.
Moving his drenched fingers out, up, to place pressure on her ass as he filled her with his tongue.
She wasn’t sure what she said. Something involving the words, “oh,” “holy,” “fuck,” or some derivative of that. Something that made him groan into her pussy and press a little harder.
Her orgasm hit like a bullet. He was everywhere. His hair filling her fists, his fingers stretching her, his tongue fucking her, his breath skimming over her clit, and his grip holding her down, hard, until she rode out every aftershock.
He lapped at her, sending one last jolt through her body before he parted to say, “Wasn’t just the heat of the moment, huh? You do want me to fuck that tight ass of yours, huh?”
“Wanna take everything you wanna give me,” she said breathlessly as she crawled down and laid against his chest. Wondering, after the fact, if that sentiment made any sense. “Have you ever?”
“No.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead, his wet fingers spreading over her ass cheek. “Have you?”
“You’re my first for a lot of things.” The only important things, at least. Love. Trust. She reached over him to the nightstand drawer, for the bottle of lube she’d presumptively snuck in there earlier, and tossed it on the bed. “I may have talked to Alex, though…”
A lightbulb seemed to flick on behind Chase’s eyes. “Well, that explains some of the weird jokes he’s made over the past two weeks.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He kissed her again, tenderly. “Kinda wish I would have talked to someone who knows what they’re doing, too. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t.”
He tilted her chin up and took in every feature of her face before he kissed her, long and slow. Stroking her tongue with his own and groaning her name among all variety of nonsense against her mouth. She could taste herself all over his flushed lips as he rolled her onto her back.
His cock hardened again, digging into her thigh as he lazily ran his hands over her body.
Two fingers eased into her pussy as his lips closed around her nipple. He sucked it between his teeth. “Going to start here, okay? Nice and easy, angel. Turn over for me?”
His hands moved, briefly, to her hips to flip her stomach-down on the soft comforter, before he continued that same, safe motion.
“Are you assuring me, or yourself?” she teased, moving her hips with the familiar thrust of his touch.
“Oh, definitely myself.” He chuckled softly. “I’m freaking out.”
His fingers were replaced by the thick, hard length of his cock sliding in, filling her with one, tight stroke that knocked a moan from her lungs. And now she was freaking out a little bit too, because how that was supposed to fit anywhere at all was mind-bending.
He collapsed over her, his body pleasantly pushing her into the mattress as he swept her hair over her shoulder and kissed her ear. Took her earlobe between his teeth.
“You feel so fucking incredible.” He groaned. “I can’t believe anything can feel this good.”
He moved inside of her slowly and deliberately. The only hint that there was anything more to come was the air coasting along her spine where his body had been. The click of the bottle cap opening before his slick fingers spread over her other hole. Caressing, massaging… testing, with the slightest push inside that had her burying her face into a pillow to muffle the curses.
“You alright?” He paused. “We don’t have to do this.”
“No, I’m—” she choked on her own words. “I definitely want to do this. Just. Fuck. No, it’s good Chase. Really good.”
Pleasure, full and intense, shot through every nerve ending. She didn’t know if she could even move, let alone take more. But as more kept coming, it got impossibly better. The bliss of him inside her distracted from the dull ache of those unused muscles stretching and relaxing.
“Good,” he said, barely above a whisper. “All I want to do is make you feel good.”
She couldn’t be too sure, but soon, a spike in sensation told her that a second finger joined the first, joined the deep strokes of his cock still inside her pussy. His other hand traced the line of her spine and drew goosebumps all over her skin.
She felt drugged. Drugs were the only comparison she had to the insane feelings he wrenched from her body.
By the time he finally withdrew, it felt like she would die if he didn’t enter her again. Somewhere. Anywhere. Preferably everywhere.
Her heart clenched in desperate anticipation as the wet, slippery head of his cock aligned with her ass.
His hand flattened between her stomach and the mattress to slowly rub her clit as he pushed inside the barest amount.
It felt so intense, so good, she could fucking scream.
And whatever sound she did make couldn’t have been far off, because his lips were at her neck before he could move any deeper. And he was kissing her with a shaky, “Okay?”
“So much more than okay.”
She didn’t recognize the sound of her own voice as she arched her back, taking him the next few inches. And if he kept making those noises he was making, she was going to come before that first stroke was finished.
“Jesus Fucking Christ, Parker.”
“Nothing godly about it, Payton.” She reached back to grip his thighs and force him down, down. Until his weight crushed her, and they were both so loud that she knew her friends in their neighboring rooms would torment her about it tomorrow.
He was moving inside her before her brain could fully comprehend the way his hands were all over her. Touching, caressing, scrambling for purchase in a way that made her hopeful it was a fraction as intense for him as it was for her.
She pushed onto her knees and walked her palms up the headboard during those shallow movements.
His hands found her breasts as his lips found the side of her neck, then ran over her curves. Dipping to draw circles over her clit again. “You’re so beautiful.”
“You’re killing me.”
He laughed breathlessly. “You’re the one grinding that sexy ass all over me. Taking me so fucking deep. Everywhere.”
“I can still take more.”
She backed into him harder, until he snapped.
His free hand formed a fist in her hair, at the base of her scalp, and his heavy groans vibrated over her skin beginning at the curve of her shoulder.
Her hips met every movement with a force of their own, chasing that deep, overwhelming fullness.
Some fatally intoxicating combination of things made her lose her mind. The slap of his skin on hers and the cold sweat on her brow. The angle of his cock inside of her. The sounds from his lips. The thought of giving him every single part of herself. It compounded deep within her core. Spreading over her skin in sweltering ecstasy.
But what shoved her past her breaking point was feeling his restraint. Every muscle in his body wound tight as his chest pressed against her back.
The heavy exhales that spilled over her skin like a dense fog whenever he held his breath for too long. The throaty sounds of his pleasure when he finally stopped worrying so much about being gentle and fucked her like he wanted to take as much as he gave. The control he relinquished when he caved into the pleasure of her fucking him right back.
It was the surrender in the way his lips slackened, his body conformed to hers. The power that came from how good she could make him feel. How much she loved him.
“Chase.” His name was practically a sob as her head fell back against his shoulder. Her entire body throbbed with the most insane orgasm she’d ever experienced, which was no small feat with the way he could play her body as well as any song or sport.
“Zak,” he whispered as he came down. Pressing his lips to the corner of hers as he massaged the tender spot on her scalp where he’d pulled her hair.
He gripped the sides of her hips, her ass, one last time. As if he was still in shock himself.
He folded her into his lap and hauled them both to the edge of the bed. Ran his hands up her shins as he untangled their legs and went with her to the bathroom to clean up.
The tub filled as they both sat on the ledge. Steam gradually fogged up the mirrors and soothed her raw throat.
Chase dipped a washcloth into the hot water and toweled down her feverish skin with a relaxed concentration.
“Everything with you is easy.” She said, straight from her heart past her lips. “Even when life isn’t.”
“Everything with you is crazy.” He kissed her, soft and tingling. His blue eyes sparkled back at her when he pulled away. “Wild and unexpected. Passionate and addictive. Inevitable. You’re everything I needed. Everything I always wanted.”
“You’re everything I didn’t know I needed. Everything I never let myself want.”
Because she didn’t know how badly she needed easy until she had it. How badly she wanted to be seen and loved for who she was, until he came along and did exactly that.