When I eased on top of his beautiful, writhing body, and took his mouth, Theo moaned, opening to me as sweetly as a ripe peach split by two thumbs.
“What do you want, love?” I asked.
“You, you, you, please you, always you,” Theo chanted, and the worship in his voice took my breath away. I fumbled with my fly just enough to push my jeans down over my hips, letting out a moan of relief as my hard flesh was released.
“Just like this,” Theo said, rolling his hips up.
I pressed into him slowly, and his face was ecstasy as he wrapped his legs around me. We moved together, already on the edge, the grip and slide of our bodies pure, sweet pleasure. Theo clutched at my shoulders and I knew he was going to come by the way his neck tightened and he threw his head back. It was always my favorite moment. The moment his breath caught, like the pleasure was too large for him to do anything but feel it as it ripped through him.
He came with a silent cry, heat spilling between us, breath sweet against my face. His body shuddered beneath me, around me, and I couldn’t hold on any longer.
When I came it was like a dark wave, sweet pulses of pleasure that washed through me as I lost myself in Theo’s body. He cradled me like I was coming home.
Theo
“Oh my god, I’m gonna puke.” I squeezed Caleb’s hand so hard that he winced. He leaned in to give me a kiss, to calm me down, but I said, “No, seriously. I’m seriously gonna puke,” and he moved back, with wide eyes and a pitying smile. Thank god he was patient, because I’d been a nervous fucking wreck for days.
My album, which I’d been working on for the last four months, was about to drop. I’d decided on a simultaneous e-release so it could be downloaded immediately, but now I was regretting my decision, since it also meant that people could hate it immediately.
The two songs that I’d written while I was on tour with Riven set the mood for the album, and while at first I’d found myself writing in the patterns of Riven songs, eventually my brain caught up to reality and realized that I didn’t have to do it that way anymore. That I could write any way I wanted. Anything I wanted. I had about a week where the sprawling freedom of infinity made it so I couldn’t write anything, but then I settled back into my usual writing routine, and I felt giddy, like a kid. Well, a kid who had someone else’s life, since even as a kid, I’d never felt like I could do what I wanted.
It had taken about a month for the chaos that followed my leaving Riven to die down. I hid at Caleb’s for most of it. He took my phone and my tablet and put them in the closet so I didn’t have to deal with any of it. Of course, I knew where they were, could have accessed them whenever I wanted. But he’d given me the option of living a life without fame for a little while, and I’d jumped on it.
Part of which was distancing myself from Lewis, and getting a new manager. Clarissa Kane was young—only two years older than me—and she called me soon after the news about Riven broke and left a message saying that she was interested in a new kind of music distribution, one that used new media and current technology to let the artist control the content, and allowed the consumer to buy more directly. If I would be interested in talking with her, she’d said, I should give her a call.
I had turned my apartment in Manhattan into a kind of ersatz recording studio to cut my record, since all I’d really wanted was privacy and complete control. Exactly what I’d never had when recording with Riven. Caleb was amazing, helping me contact a producer, and people to play on the album, all things I’d never had to do before.
I was awed by Caleb. His strength and his determination humbled me. I started spending most of my time at the farmhouse, coming back to the city once a week or so to get more stuff. Eventually, I decided it was silly, and one morning as we lay in bed, I’d told Caleb that I was moving in. He gaped at me, and I saw all the fears and all the arguments flicker through him, so I put a hand over his mouth and said, “I already did it. I live here now. I know you want me here, so just deal with it.”
His eyes cycled through fear, then desire, then relief, and I took my hand away so he could kiss the shit out of me, since he clearly didn’t have any words.