Page 55 of Reverb
“Stay the night?” She pressed a finger into the cleft of his chin.
“Baby, yeah. If you want.” He wasn’t really sure he could walk that far anyway, and the idea of spooning up with Mish sent little sparks of pleasure through his arms and legs. How long had it been since he’d held someone during the night? Been held?
“I want,” she said.
They both rose to clean up. Condom ditched. Dick cleaned and put back in its bag. David brushed his teeth, leaning heavily against the counter. His reflection looked very much like a man who’d just had some of thebestsex in his life. But also a guy who was about to fall over from exhaustion. It was late, and after a concert.
“Glad there’s not much going on tomorrow,” he said when he exited the bathroom.
“Mmm.” Mish had slipped under the sheet on the bed. “We do that on purpose. Give ourselves some time to fuck off.”
“Or fuck?” He bent down to retrieve one more item out of his duffel bag: Marly.
“Or fuck.” Her reply was a soft echo of his, and she eyed Marly curiously. “You have a bear?”
He did. An old, somewhat worn teddy bear. The one thing he had left from his childhood. His dog tags were looped around Marly’s neck. “He’s...a talisman, I suppose. A touchstone. Was in the desert with me. And also high school.”
She shifted under the covers. “Which was worse?”
He laughed, but considered the question anyway. There was also some truth there. “The desert, but not by much.” He set Marly down on the nightstand, then crawled into the huge bed.
Mish drew him into her arms, into her warmth, and her smile tumbled all the emotions he’d shoved off into the back of his brain. Hope. Fear. Longing.
“I’m glad you brought him,” she said.
“Why?”
“’Cause it means you trust me. And it means you wanted to stay. Planned to. Weren’t just gonna fuck and run.” There was a bitterness there.
“Oh, baby, no. If you’d wanted me to go, I’d have gone, but I want this. Not—”
Not a one-time thing.
She laid a palm on his cheek. “Things are gonna get interesting, David.”
“You don’t say...”
She smirked, then rolled over enough to turn off the lights. In the darkness, they curled into each other’s arms, and David fell asleep with the scent of Mish’s hair close by and the warmth of her body pressed to his.
It was heaven.
Chapter Twelve
Morning came slowly to Mish. The whir of the hotel’s air conditioner, the smell of the sheets, the warmth of David next to her and the pleasant ache of her body, both from the concert and the intense, fantastic sex she’d had with him.
God, even thinking about that sent a shiver of goose bumps over her arms. David was all that she liked in a partner—giving, snarky, passionate, and willing to let her lead. His body was tantalizing and perfect.
She ignored the voice in the back of her head that wondered if this was wise, if they could remain professional now that they’d fucked. None of her bandmates cared—they’d rather she be happy with David.
But she’d been happy with Sasha and Dane on tour before, and neither of them had stuck around. Granted, she hadn’t said that they should, nor really wanted them to—they’d had their own lives and dreams. David, though...
She moved slowly, to not disturb his sleep, and looked over the bare expanse of his back, marked with scrapes and scratches from her nails, to gaze at the teddy bear that sat on the far nightstand. Marly had been obviously well loved, but also well cared for. Mish focused on the dog tags looped around his neck. There were times and moments David would likely never speak of, that he’d shared with this bear, this touchstone.
She’d never dated a man ten years older than her, and maybe that was the strangeness of it all, the way everything felt deeper and—more. Or maybe it was because everyone else in her band-family was, for all intents and purposes, married. Couldn’t tell.
Her aversion to older masc lovers wasn’t fair, but too many of her mom’s boyfriends had taken an interest in her during the bad days when they’d scraped by and moved around and her mom—
Mish ended that line of thought. She missed her mom something fierce and with a pain that would never go away. She hoped that if there was an afterlife, her mom was pleased with how her daughter’s life had turned out, with her chosen name and with the family she’d found.
