Then she tightened as her orgasm rolled through her body. He climaxed a moment later, unable to resist when she tensed around him. His seed spilled into her, something he normally would not be comfortable with. But she was his fated mate. What was the use of putting layers between them, in any sense?
He dropped onto the bed next to her. She rolled on top of him and laid her head on his chest.
“That’s not going to be the only time we do that, is it?” she said, a statement more than a question.
“Oh, not at all,” he said. “And the next time, we can make it a little more exciting.”He hadn’t wanted to rush her too fast, but his mind had been filled all day with the adventurous positions they could try in the future. He had every intention of showing her some of his ideas.
“Too bad we only have a week,” she murmured finally.
“Oh, a week is a lot of time,” Mahes answered. “Besides, I’m already feeling just about ready for round two.”
ELEVEN
ADDIE
For the first time in a long time, Addie found herself wanting to write new songs.
At first, it was just little things. Mahes took her out to the beach, and she had an idea for a line about lying in the sand and looking up at a strange-colored sky. The next time Mahes had to excuse himself for business, she jotted it down.
And then, as she sat there, she started to see more promise in it. There was something that really worked about the idea of looking at something weird and different but feeling safe because you were looking at it with someone you trusted. She started to write more about seeing someone and thinking you could do scary things with them. Things like exploring a new planet or staying with a stranger for a whole week.
Then she came up with a neat guitar lick that would really pull things together. And then, she had an idea for a really cool bridge.
“You look like you’re up to something interesting,” Pritesh said, peeking in through the door. Addie was startled. She hadn’t noticed anyone approaching.
“Oh, just playing around with some ideas,” she replied hurriedly. “Nothing too serious.”
“Mahes wanted to tell you that he should be done with this meeting in about an hour or so. That’s Earth time, right? Hours?”
“You’ve got it.” She was glad she had a little more time to work, though she was also very excited to see Mahes again. She didn’t want to show him the song she had written, but she wanted to feel the emotions she was trying to sing about again. Writing about emotions always made her hungry for them.
“Is there anything else I can get for you?”
“No, thank you,” Addie said. “And thanks for checking in.”
With that, Pritesh headed out.
She didn’t know if the studio would like this song. It was a little lighter and sillier than most of her stuff. She was just having fun trying to put down a feeling rather than trying to share some big, important message about grief or loving yourself. Maybe that was still worth it, though.
Besides, that wasn’t the real reason she was nervous about that song. She was nervous because the more she wrote, the clearer it was she wasn’t writing about just a one-week fling.
“Together while the world spins round, together till the stars fall down …”
The lyrics had flowed out of her, out of what she felt when she was on a date with Mahes. That thrilled her, but it also scared her. What if Mahes didn’t feel the same way? Worse, what if he did?
The two of them went on more dates. They went to the city and saw the crowds of shifters in all their various forms moving around the city. It was like being inside a zoo, except all the animals were totally polite and just wanted to go about their day. She noticed that Mahes wasn’t the only one. Shifters on Nova Aurora were larger and looked tougher than shifters on Earth.
They had gone to a gallery where they stared silently at the pieces that they liked and joked about the pieces that they didn’t like. Toward the end, their hands had started to run over each other’s bodies. They’d made their way home quickly, where they’d nearly run to the bedroom to start exploring each other again.
Addie ended up writing about the excitement of someone who was so new to her.This song will be fine to show Mahes,she told herself.It’ll just be about us having fun together.
But the more she wrote, the more longing ended up in it. She kept thinking about how the best part of all this newness was imagining what would happen later when all this would be routine. She wrote about what it would feel like to look back on this moment together and how she loved trying to imagine it.
“Dreaming about us old and gray, dreaming about looking the other way …”
It wasn’t the song she had meant to write, but it was the song that came to her. It came to her easily, the way things had all the way back on her second album.
Pritesh stopped by the door again while she was working out a bit of the chorus on the keyboard. “Whatever you’re writing sounds really fun. It’s very peppy and cheerful.”