Page 53 of Your Echo
14Trouble I’m In || Twinbed
ACE
When the roomreappears around me, the first thing I notice are the freckles on her back: four of them, all about the size of thumbtacks. Two are right beside each other, just between her shoulder blades, and the other two lie a few inches apart along the ridges of her spine.
I didn’t see them when we were fucking. I barelysawat all. I just felt. It was like being on drugs—the single-minded concentration, the inability to tell where one sense ended and the others began. Scent and sight and sound were all one pulsing stream of information feeding my brain until I thought it would combust.
This girl. This fucking girl.
I see her shiver, lying on her side facing away from me, and something roars to life inside me. I wrap my arms around her, flipping her over and pulling her into my chest. I tuck her head under my chin and tangle my legs up with hers. She whimpers.
“Hey,” I say. “You okay?”
She nods. I rub my hands up and down her back. We’re both sweating and the air of the room around us is stifling, but I feel an inexplicable need to warm her up.
“That got pretty intense,” I comment, when she doesn’t make any attempt to speak.
She nods again.
“Yeah.” Her voice is raw. “Yeah, it did.”
“Too intense?”
“No. No, it was...everything. I just need a minute to come back.”
She presses her body harder against mine, and I hold her tight. I’ve never felt like this after being with someone: like I can’t let her go or she’ll slip away, and that if she slips away it will be the end of my world. Something close to terror creeps up my spine as the full impact of that feeling hits me.
You’re in over your fucking head, Ace.
Then Stéphanie sighs, and I stop focusing on anything other than giving her what she needs.
“Stay here,” I tell her, before disentangling our bodies and climbing out of bed. I shut myself in the bathroom and get rid of the condom before splashing some water on my face. I let the sink run until it’s warm, and then dip a towel underneath the stream.
I almost trip over a guitar case when I walk back into the room. I curse under my breath, not at the pain in my foot, but at the threat to the instrument. I’d take much more than a stubbed toe for the sake of my guitars. I bend over to assure myself that everything’s okay, then make my way back to the bed.
Stéphanie is right where I left her, only now her knees are tucked up to her chest. She looks so damntinylying in my bed alone, like a wild, wounded animal that slipped in through the window at night.
I grab the corner of my blanket and toss it over her, then take a seat on the edge of the bed.
“Here.” I hold up the damp towel. “I don’t know if this will help with the wax at all, but we can try.”
She smiles and sits up, keeping the blanket draped over her legs.
“You mean you’ve never had to remove melted wax from a woman’s chest before?”
I shake my head. I thought she’d take the towel herself, but she shifts her body towards me, so I start to rub at one of the splashes stuck to her skin. The towel does shit all to help.
“This isn’t really working. We may just have to pick it off.”
I peel a flake off with my fingers. Stéphanie laughs.
“Sacrement.When I left the house tonight, I did not expect to end up in Ace Turner’s bedroom, picking candle wax off my boobs.”
“Expect the unexpected,” I joke. “What were you doing at that party, anyway?”
“My friend wanted to introduce herself to some agent. She’s a dancer and part time model. She needed someone to go with her.”
We’re both working at peeling the wax off her now. A pile of it collects on the blanket.
