I lost it in seconds, my orgasm blasting through me and taking me apart. My dick spewed over Caleb’s fist, and my ass spasmed so hard around his cock that he felt twice the size. Dark pleasure unspooled deep inside me and rocked through me, leaving me wrung out and shaking as the waves subsided. Caleb was groaning, thrusting wildly above me, and as he came he thrust so hard it slid me up the bed, leaving us in a sweaty, come-streaked tangle. He moaned brokenly into my neck and pulsed his hips a few more times, as the last of his peak shuddered through him.
I could feel him inside me, tender flesh spitted on his length like he’d claimed the territory and would always be there. I bit down on what I thought was his wrist because I needed something—anything—to hold onto, and let myself go limp and trembling against him.
We muttered incoherencies into each other’s skin, and I meant to thank him, for letting me come to the show tonight, for giving me the music and then taking me out of myself, but I didn’t have the words.
Chapter 8
Caleb
“What the fuck’s wrong with you, bro?”
“What? Nothing. What.”
Rhys dropped heavily into the sprung chair on the porch, wiping his forehead with his bandanna and squinting at me like I was a puzzle he couldn’t quite suss.
“You’re all…” He made a series of illegible gestures, like he was casting a spell in the air between us. “Weird.”
“Very enlightening.”
“No, but…you’re not…you’re still…”
“No, I’m not using; yes, I’m still fine.” I tried to keep the irritation out of my voice, since it was a perfectly reasonable question. How long would I need to stay clean before that wasn’t the first thing that would cross Rhys’s mind?
“Sorry, man. You’re just all…spacey or something. Distracted. And since I’m totally fascinating, you know, gotta wonder.”
I toasted him with my lemonade and scowled at the garden we’d just come from. A basket of sun-hot tomatoes rested between us.
“I’ve been…there’s this guy. And I’m stupid into him, but I think it’s a disaster. And another disaster is about the last thing I need right now. But I can’t stop…thinking about him. Wanting to be near him.”
“Fucking him,” Rhys added in a winking voice.
“Yeah, well.”
“You don’t know it’ll be a disaster, C. Maybe it’ll be great.”
“Your optimism is noted, appreciated, and dismissed.”
“What does Huey say?”
“I haven’t told him. That’s where I met him, though. He came in while I was playing. Just messin’ around. But he liked my song.”
“Well, la-di-da, fastest way to Caleb Whitman’s heart,” Rhys teased. “Who is this guy?”
“He’s a musician. He…uh, that’s kind of why I think it’s a disaster. He’s…remember when you were here last time and you looked at the computer—”
“That pretty kid in Riven? Holy shit, for real?”
He was sizing me up like he’d underestimated me.
“His name’s Theo. And that’s the thing, right, is that he’s—”
“A fucking rock star.”
“Yeah. So, that comes with a hell of a lot of nonsense I don’t need. Not just the lifestyle, but the scrutiny. Getting away from that is why I moved out here in the first place, you know? The idea of being thrust back into all that…”
Terrified me. I had been feeling good lately. Strong. But I was painfully aware that feeling came and went. And it was in the moments that I felt…susceptible that I needed the isolation, the safety of miles and miles between me and anything that rubbed against the itch and teased it into an inferno. Which was exactly what dating a rock star was almost guaranteed to do. Yeah, it was definitely a disaster.
“Besides,” I added, “he’ll probably get bored soon. I’m just this guy who does nothing and lives on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Who the fuck would want any part of that?”
The wood of the porch was cracked and brittle from years of expanding and contracting throughout the heat and cold with no wax or stain. I should probably do something about it before the whole thing fell to pieces.
“If I thought you actually wanted to hear it, I’d tell you all the reasons someone would want to be with you. I am intimately familiar with them, after all.”
I grumbled but kept my gaze on the floor.
“But since I know you don’t, I’ll say this. You’re in an in-between place right now, man. You’re figuring shit out in a lot of different categories, and I know that feels like you’re doing nothing. But you won’t be here forever. Whatever you decide to do about my album”—he elbowed me—“you’ve still got the music. Don’t know what you’ll do with it yet, but there is no goddamn way that Caleb Blake Whitman gives up making music. You practically radiate it. What was that you were singing in the garden, hmm?”