He said nothing else, though he looked like he wanted to. Instead he caught my cheek in his palm, and pressed an ardent kiss to my lips. His other hand settled firmly on the base of my spine and brought me against him.

My movement was restricted because he held me so completely; therefore I slid my hands under the hem of his shirt and gripped his rigid sides, loving his smooth, taut skin. I rubbed myself against him, sought to deepen the kiss, a little wild with the irrationality of just feeling.

But then he pulled away, turned away, and crossed to the far side of the room. I slouched, trying to catch my breath, and I heard him curse viciously. Yet almost immediately he turned back and charged at me, muttering another curse before he pressed me more completely against the piano, insinuating himself between my legs.

Again, the discordant music caused by my bottom and thighs was nonsensical and jarring. Nonetheless, my heart swelled at the harsh melody, because it felt real and honest. Martin rocked into me and I sucked in a surprised breath. His erection was unyielding—granite, hard and covetous—and he rubbed himself against my center with an impatience that felt forbidden, dangerous, and seductive.

As well his hands were everywhere, searching, grabbing, wanting, and grasping as though he would remain forever disgruntled with settling for just one place, one touch. They slid under my shirt, pushing it up, insisting I discard the offensive garment. I lifted my arms to assist and he whipped it off, his mouth tasting and biting my collarbone.

His hands cupping my bottom, Martin lifted me off my feet and turned, supporting my weight entirely. He brought me to the side of the instrument. Abruptly he lifted me higher, then relinquished my weight to the piano. He buried his face in my breasts while he showered them with all good things—some painful, some tender, all wonderful—then pushed me gently backward until my back met with the cool lacquer of the instrument. My legs dangled off the side.

“Martin, what—”

“Let me,” he said, his thumbs rubbing a controlled circle around the tight peaks at the center of my breasts, then sliding his hands down my stomach, to the waist of my plain, grey sleep shorts. He curled his fingers around the band, then moved to my bottom, lifting my hips. He tugged the band lower, pulling my shorts and underwear over my hips, bottom, and thighs.

I stared at him as he did this and his gaze didn’t deviate from mine. When my pajamas hit the floor his hands slid up my calves, the backs of my knees, the underside of my thighs, lifting my legs as he went until he’d positioned my heels on the edge of the piano, my legs immodestly spread.

Then his gaze flickered away and he looked at me. I held my breath. Waiting. Watching.

Martin licked his lips, his thumbs at my center opening me. Then he bent and placed a cherishing, closed-mouth kiss directly on my clitoris, his soft, full lips lingering at my apex.

“Oh God.”

I panted. I tensed. My hands gripping the smooth surface of the piano and finding no purchase. Every part of me sore and throbbing from my earlier exercise, yet singularly focused on where his lips loved my body. He leaned away slightly and kissed the inside of my thigh, nipped at the skin, then soothed it with his tongue, trailing a wet path directly to my slick center. He licked me, softly, reverently. Then he licked me again, and again.

He tasted me over and over; wet, lapping noises that struck me as tremendously carnal married with my harsh breaths and moans. The combination was discordant, awkward, and clumsy; yet like the accidental and inharmonious tones of the piano as he’d pressed me against the keys, the sounds were real and they were honest.

They were the sounds of sex, of desire.

If I hadn’t been lost to my passion, if I’d heard the sounds separate from this act, they might have struck me as lascivious and animalistic, repugnant. But passion changed them. Passion changed us. Passion changed me.

His fingers whispered over the backs of my thighs, making my legs shake. I threaded my fingers through his hair, pressing him to me, needing to hold onto him. Then he did something shocking and wonderful. Keeping his lips on my center, his tongue lapping me loudly, hungrily, he moved his index and middle finger into my body and stroked.

My breath hitched, my hips lifted off the piano, and I felt my insides shatter into a million shards of pleasure. It felt so good it hurt—the sharp edges of my release cutting through me, leaving a trail of ruin and stunning anguish. My lungs seized as I tried to hold on to the sensation, willing it to last and last.

But it didn’t. It couldn’t. And when the shards dissolved and disappeared, leaving me cut and wounded and satiated and defenseless, I realized I was crying again.

Not big messy sobs.

Just quiet, joyful tears.

I didn’t think about them, whether they made sense or what Martin might think. I didn’t try to reason them away or analyze the pros and cons of tears after cunnilingus.

I felt cherished.

I felt.

And it felt like perfection.

***

I slept naked in Martin’s bed. Yep. True Story.

Well, Martin slept. I didn’t sleep much. I couldn’t.

After our early morning inauguration to Wet-and-Wild Wednesday, Martin wrapped me in a blanket and carried me to his room, leaving my clothes strewn all around the piano. I was deposited on his twin bed. He then pulled off his shirt—but left on his pajama pants—and climbed under the covers next to me. He wrapped an arm around my torso and pulled my bare back to his bare front, slipped his leg between mine, and cupped my breast with his palm.

Then I felt him sigh. It sounded content and it made me smile. I had to bite my bottom lip to keep from laughing because the noise made me so happy.

“What?” His voice penetrated the darkness, sounding curious and maybe a little concerned. “What’s wrong?”

I shook my head, willing myself not to laugh.

“Tell me.”

I mimicked his sigh, but said nothing.

He stilled, waited, his hand at my breast toying with it, with me. I tried to ignore the lovely stabs of pleasure caused by his ministrations, coiling again in my lower belly.

Out of the blue he blurted, “We should move in together.”

My eyes flew open. All thought was bulldozed straight out of my brain by Martin’s statement.

“I…what?”

Martin pinched my nipple, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger, causing me to hiss and tense, then he smoothed his hand from my shoulder, down my ribs, over my side, over my hip, until it cupped my bottom. He caressed me there, like touching my body was his favorite thing to do.

This time when I sighed it wasn’t meant to mimic. It was a sigh of pure contentment. Who knew that lying in Martin’s bed, having one’s bottom stroked could feel so good?

“I said,” he whispered against my ear, “we should move in together. When we get back we’ll start looking for places.”

“That seems terribly impetuous and likely to end badly.” My voice was lazy, soft, and not at all argumentative.

“It won’t end at all, Kaitlyn.” He kissed my shoulder, then smacked my backside once. “Now I need to get some sleep or else I’m going to be dead for practice tomorrow.”

And with that he resumed our position—bringing me against him, hand at my breast—and fell quickly asleep.

Meanwhile, I did not.

It was one thing to be passionate, it was quite another to let passion be the sole driving force in my life. Reason and rationality still had a place at the table, even if passion wanted to have sex on aforementioned table.

So I spent at least another hour and a half reasoning my way through this latest and unexpected minefield. Because I wasn’t going to move in with Martin unless I trusted him completely, unless ground rules were established, discussed and negotiated, unless we were both on the same page. Unless I was in love with him.

And I didn’t and we hadn’t and we weren’t. And I wasn’t…at least, not yet.

CHAPTER 5

Simple Organic Compounds

I know I fell asleep because I was eventually woken up, and the waker-upper was a demon sent from hell.

“What the actual fuck is going on in here?”

This question was shrieked very loudly, and startled me into a sitting position on Martin’s bed. Instinctively, I grabbed the sheet to cover myself. I blinked through my sleep and glanced frantically around the room, worried it was on fire or about to explode—because why else would someone be yelling at me?

I brought the shrieker into focus and frowned at her. I had no idea who she was. I wondered for about two seconds if I was still dreaming and in my dream I was being harangued by an insane wet T-shirt contestant, or a woman made homeless by her penchant for elective plastic surgery.

“Pardon me…I’m…what?” I asked her sleepily, figuring if she were merely a figment of my imagination she would disappear.

She didn’t disappear.

“I said,” she ground out between clenched teeth, her hands coming to her slim, Barbie-doll like hips¸ “what the actual fuck is going on in here? Who the actual fuck are you?”

I blinked at her, knowing definitely this was not a dream. I would never dream a person who used the phrase “the actual fuck” unless that person was a parrot trapped in a human’s body and didn’t know any better.

“I was sleeping,” I answered honestly, pushing my hair out of my face. I shook my head to clear the cobwebs as I looked around. I was in Martin’s room and the events of the prior night abruptly rushed back. I didn’t have any time to organize my thoughts because the woman was still glaring at me, so I continued, stating the obvious. “But now you’re yelling at me and I don’t know who you are.”