Page 34 of Reverb

“No, I don’t.” She looked shocked that she’d said it. She’d admitted something out loud by saying that, something she hadn’t admitted to herself. “I want you to keep saying it.”

I glanced above my head. I wanted to get up, cross the room, and grab her, but if I did, I’d crack my head on the ceiling and this would turn into a Marx Brothers act. “Come here,” I said instead.

“This is an awful idea,” she said.

“The worst,” I agreed. “Sienna. Come here.”

THIRTEEN

Sienna

I wasn’t sure what I expected when I crossed the room to stand between Stone’s knees. When I’d thought about sex with him—which was more often than I’d wanted to admit while we were rooming together—I’d imagined he’d be gruff, ready to get down to business. He’d yank my leggings down and get the job done with no need for romance or flowery words. A straightforward exchange. Maybe he’d call me good girl once or twice before it was over.

Okay, that part was kind of hot.

But as I stood here, now, I realized for the millionth time that I hadn’t seen who he really was. I’d pictured a man who was blunt about sex, but what I’d actually thought was that he’d have no finesse.

I was wrong.

As the music from the record player curled through the air like smoke, he put his hands on the backs of my knees. His big palms warmed me through the fabric, and he squeezed. With that single touch, I lost my breath.

Slowly, ever so slowly, his hands moved up the backs of my thighs. My skin tingled everywhere. Looking down at him, I could see that his gaze was lowered, focused on my body. My T-shirt wasn’t tight, I was showing no skin, and I wasn’t wearing sexy lingerie. My hair was tousled and I wore no makeup because ever since I’d come home from the tour, all I’d done was sleep, work, and listen to music. I looked nothing like a seductress, and yet I could have sworn he looked at me as if I were one.

His hands moved higher. He was exploring the feel and shape of me, memorizing it.

I had been thinking about Stone, unable to keep myself from texting him. Now that the tour was finished, and after that awful scene in New York, we should be over. We were incompatible. We could do nothing but insult each other, peppered with the occasional fight. We should be interviewer and subject, bound by a contract, and nothing more.

But we hadn’t felt finished, at least to me. To me, after New York, our story felt like it ended abruptly, midsentence, like a book with the last pages ripped out. I wanted to know if he was okay. I wanted to tell him I was sorry. When I drifted to sleep at night, I could still feel his kiss against my mouth, see the look in his eyes when he took my face in his hands and saw that I had been crying. I went back over every conversation we’d had, every time he’d sat silent while I waited for him to say something. The words, I knew now, had been going around and around in his head every time. I wanted to know every one of them.

And now that the pressures of the tour were over and I was in my own bed, I felt something physical for him. I’d had to keep a lid of denial on it, but I let some of that denial go, and now my body went warm when I thought of him, when I thought of that kiss. The only word I could put to it was craving. I wanted him in a physical way I hadn’t wanted anyone else. It was part of my fascination with him, my desire to know him, to have a piece of him.

So he’d barely left my mind. He’d texted me that we would talk, and I couldn’t think of a reply. And then I’d heard a car pull up, and my parents’ voices on the driveway, and that familiar grumble. And I’d thought, He doesn’t think it’s finished, either.

I’d watched from the window as he talked to my parents, completely delighting them. He had no idea how easy he’d been in those moments, how relaxed his posture was, how gorgeous he was when he smiled unselfconsciously at my dad because he liked him on sight. Watching him with my parents had made a piece of my heart break off and become his forever. I’d never get it back.

Stone’s hands brushed up over my ass, taking in its contours, and his fingertips hooked gently into the waist of my leggings. He hesitated there, as if giving me the chance to tell him no. In response, I grabbed the hem of my shirt, preparing to lift it. I wanted this.

His hands grabbed my wrists, stopping me. “I want to do it,” he said.

So I let go, and he slowly pushed my shirt up, exposing my bare stomach, then my bra. I lifted my arms and he pulled the shirt off, his movements sure as he tossed it aside.

My bra was the basic cotton kind, but Stone made no comment. He brushed his fingertips down my belly, making my skin shiver, and hooked them into my waistband again. Then he slowly peeled my leggings down, unwrapping me.

I lifted one foot, then the other. He gripped each ankle and tugged the leggings off, then threw them aside, too. Now I was in my cotton underwear, navy blue with stars and crescent moons on it—an old pair I’d found balled up in my dresser drawer. There was nothing of the sex goddess about me, and yet this was the most rawly sexual moment I’d ever had in my life. Standing between Stone’s knees in my attic, with the music playing and the soft twilight coming through the window as he stripped me naked. I couldn’t get enough of the way he looked at me. I wanted him to see me, all of me, and I wanted him to touch me the same way he looked at me.

Only him.

His hands slid to my hips, his thumbs pressing into the soft spots beside my hipbones, and he leaned forward. I thought he’d kiss me, but he paused instead, his breath touching the skin below my belly button. He hovered there, inhaling me, as if he could scent how aroused I was, as if the smell of me was driving him wild. I wanted him to hurry up, and at the same time I wanted this to go on for hours, days.

I put my hands to the back of his neck, felt the warm skin there, and then I tangled my fingers up into his hair. Stone let out a long sigh that was half a groan. His breath fanned over my skin, down between my legs. He leaned in and rested his forehead against me, his hands squeezing my hips as I moved in closer, urging him.

He’d thought about this. He’d admitted it. He hadn’t been indifferent, all those nights he’d let me sleep without worrying. He could have used his power over me in a million different ways—physical, psychological, the power of his fame and prestige. He could have pushed me, seduced me. He could have gotten what he wanted, using a hundred different manipulations to make me give in. I knew now that if he’d been persistent, if he’d said and done all the right things, he could have worn me down and taken something from me that I knew it wasn’t right to give.

But that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted me to give him this freely, because I wanted to, and he was willing to wait for it. If I never wanted it, then he’d walk away and leave me none the wiser.

Now we were in my place, at the time of my choosing. He’d come to me. I put my hands over his and placed his fingers on the waist of my underwear. He pulled them down to my ankles, where I stepped out of them.

I was completely exposed to him now, and he let out another harsh breath. One hand went to the inside of my knee, then moved slowly up the skin on the inside of my thigh, parting me. I made a sound in my throat. I put my hands on his shoulders—they were big and warm, just like I’d imagined—and levered one knee onto the sofa, then the other, straddling him. I lowered myself into his lap.

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