And whisper them back.
We crawled onto the bed and he paused at my thighs.
I reached for him, bringing him up to me. “No, not that, not now.” I cupped the back of his head and pulled at him—he knew what I wanted, what I needed, and he kissed me.
Kiss isn’t the word.
His mouth sang against mine, a song without sound, a melody of lips and tongues and teeth, and the chorus was his soul matching mine. I let myself want nothing but to kiss him. To feel just this—love through lips. He knew it, and didn’t push us past it. Just kissed me, and kissed me. I scoured his hard shoulders and broad back with my hands, dug my fingers into his hair and ran my nails down his spine. He braced over me with one hand and held my face with the other, a gesture of such sweet possessive intimacy that it stole my breath—I didn’t need to breathe, because he was the oxygen in my lungs. I clutched at the hard taut bubble of his buttocks and spent a few moments there, just enjoying the feel of it in my hands, cupping and squeezing, digging my nails in and just petting it for the beautiful thing it was. He just kissed me. As if we’d never kissed, as if everything that had happened between us had been a dream, a rehearsal, and this, finally, was the real thing.
Each moment the kiss went deeper, and the deeper we went the more my heart opened. Blossomed. Brightened, as if the sun was finally rising—no, that’s not right. The sun has always been shining, I’d just had the shutters and blinds closed all this while. He kissed me, and put all his soul and all his heart and all his love into the kiss, and the shutters and blinds of my heart opened. Burned away, so the sun could finally shine in and brighten the corners and chase away the shadows.
His love was the sun.
I let my eyes burn with it, with a molten swell of emotions that was beyond happiness, beyond joy.
He finally came up for breath and saw the tears on my cheeks. Wiped them away with his thumb. “What’s this?”
“Good,” I breathed, stopping him from wiping them away. “It’s good.”
That was all I had words for.
The rest had to be shown.
I knew what I wanted, and I knew exactly how I wanted it. I pushed gently at his shoulder, and he rolled to his back. He knew where I was going with it—his hands gripped my waist and as I rolled he lifted, and then settled me on his belly. He stared up at me.
“This okay?” I whispered.
He ran his hands up my thighs, over my waist, up my sides—cupped my breasts. “More than okay.”
I held his eyes, hoped he saw in them the fullness of what I felt shining out. I leaned forward, braced my palm on his chest. Lifted my hips. Bit my lip, eager for this and a little nervous as well. I reached between my thighs and found him, thick and hard and ready; took a moment to appreciate the feel of him in my hand, plunging my fist down around him, thumb and forefinger leading the way to his root. He let out a gruff moan.
“Love the way you touch me, Lex.”
I just stroked him. “Like this?”
“God, yeah.”
His hands roamed over my shoulders, down my back. Curled over to cradle my ass. “You are so fuckin’ beautiful, Lex. You take my breath away.”
I laughed, taking my time touching him, enjoying the feel of him; drawing out the moment I would take him naked inside me, nothing between us. “I take your breath away, do I?”
“Yeah.”
“Then let me give it back.” I sealed my mouth to his, bent over him with my breasts pressed against his chest.
He growled, and I moaned, because one of his hands had left my ass and was sneaking its way to my sex, finding my clit and circling gently.
God, I did not need the head start this time.
I couldn’t wait anymore. Didn’t want to. The fear of being with him bare was gone. Residual nerves, sure. But I knew he loved me, and this time I was choosing this.
I guided him to my slit, snugged him inside me, just barely within me.
“Hold on, wait,” he murmured.
I waited.
“I love you, Alexandra.”
Already choked up and fraught with a thousand wild and intense emotions, hearing that, right then, at the moment I needed to hear it most, broke me. But in a good way. I started laughing and crying at the same time, blinking through the tears and laughing. “How do you always know what I need to hear?”
He lifted up, kissed me. “Because I see you, Lex. I’m yours and you’re mine.”
“Belonging,” I whispered. “Not possession.”
“Exactly.”
I was still laughing and crying in some strange mixture of emotional overload, and he was almost but not quite inside me, splitting open my nether lips with a teasing intrusion, a seductive promise of what I wanted, what I needed more than anything…
This.
I sank down on him, and he speared deep, his hardness sliding into my softness, and I cried out with a wild unbelieving groan of homecoming bliss, and my tears and laughter became a wild whimper of everything. I clung to his neck and rested my forehead on his and was too overcome by sensation, and fullness, and him, and us to even be able to kiss him. I sat on his hips with my shins beside his thighs, my breasts draped on his chest, clutching at his face with my hands and breathing him—just feeling him.
He was still and quiet, his breathing deep and even. His hands rested with loving and affectionate possession on my ass.
I rolled my hips, a slow shallow movement. Testing. And oh fuck it was so much, with Myles, like this. With his love for me making this a new and beautiful thing, erasing the old and the painful and replacing it with the glory of us. Stilled again, I clung to his neck and breathed his scent and his breath and his heat, and writhed just a little, getting him deeper. Until he was as fully within me as he could physically be, and he was bare inside me, and so thick and so huge and so hard that I could feel all of him, every throbbing inch.
He growled, hips moving, and I knew it had been a long time and I suspected he hadn’t even helped himself out in that time, so I knew he was close already and needing me to move. I just…couldn’t. I needed to luxuriate in this moment.
I tugged on his lower lip with my teeth and kissed his chin and clung to him and whispered— “I’m sorry, Myles. I know you need to move. I just…I need…I need this. I need to just feel you—feel us.”
His hands slid soothing lines and circles up my spine to curl over my shoulders and then down my back with lightly scratching nails, returning to my bottom, which he squeezed and caressed and petted. “Take what you need, Lex. All the time you need. I’ll wait forever. I can’t promise I can hold out for long, but I’ll do my best.”
I moaned as I lifted up, letting him slip out of me most of the way, held him there, and then sat down slowly to take him in me again. “I don’t care about orgasms right now, Myles,” I breathed. “For the first time in my life, sex isn’t about getting the O…it’s about just…us. Feeling us together. Come when you need to come. I don’t care if I do or not—I know you’ll take care of me. I just need to…to live in this moment as long as I can.”
“Yeah, love. That’s all that matters. You and me and this moment.”
But I couldn’t just sit on him either. I had to feel more. I rolled my hips and felt him slide through me. In, and out, slow, gentle, unhurried. All of him beautifully bare inside me, and then the aching space of emptiness as I drew away, and then glutting on him as I took him into me again. My face near his, his breath on my lips.
And now I had to kiss him.
I tasted his tongue and the salt water on his lips and I took his breath for my own and let my hips define their own rhythm upon him—slowly rolling him inside me and rushing through then pulling away so I could take him in again, and each time he filled me I cried out with renewed ecstasy. He was moaning, a soft almost boyish sound of pleasure, the moan fading as I drew away and becoming louder as I plunged down on him. The moans became a whisper of my name, and then a chant, almost sang in a rough voice—
“Lex...Lex…Lexie, oh god Lex, yes my love…”
“Call me baby, call me love, call me sweetheart, call me darling,” I murmured to him, moving with slow consistent rhythm. “Tell me how much you love me. Tell me how good I feel.”
He let himself move now, too, his hands on my hips, gripping roughly and helping me to slam down, encouraging me to move faster, harder, even as I resisted so I could make this last forever. “I love you so fuckin’ much, Lex, baby—you feel so incredible like this. I love watchin’ you ride me, darlin’, love to see you feeling good on top of me. I wanna watch you come, baby—come for me, Lex. Touch your pussy, make yourself come so I can hear you scream. Come for me, Lex, right the fuck now, baby. Come for me and scream my name and tell me you love me while you’re coming on top of me.”
“Oh fuck—Myles,” I gasped, bent forward to crush my upper body onto his, forehead on his chest as I rolled my hips in a faster rhythm and slid my hand between our bodies to obey him—because his order was exactly what I wanted, what I needed.
I touched myself and felt lightning gather low in my belly, building to quaking thunderheads. He moved, gave me the speed and friction and rhythm and fullness I craved, and my circling fingers gave me the clitoral stimulation to fling myself to the edge, closer to the wild hot screaming threshold of orgasm, and my thighs shook and my belly tightened and my breasts heaved and trembled as I gasped helplessly, my ass slapping down on his thighs to meet his roughening, desperate thrusts.
“Myles,” I whispered, my voice too ragged and lost in emotion to speak properly. “Don’t stop, baby, please don’t stop, I’m so fucking close.”
My fingers flew wildly, and his thrusts were hard and fast and shook my whole body with vigorous force, and I loved each one, loved each naked thrust of his cock into my aching clenching sex.
“Come for me, Lex. Please, I need to feel you come.”
I was crying again and didn’t care, now, because it was all too much. I was there. “Ohhh god, oh love, oh god Myles—now, now, now!” My voice broke as I came, and sobs racked me as white-hot lightning seared and crackled and shot through me, centered in my core and making my whole body seize, thrashing, and then a scream was wrenched out of me as I found my voice.
I heard him roar, but the rushing in my ears of my hammering pulse was so loud even his roar was drowned out, and I was blinded by lights flashing behind my tightly squeezed eyes, and I couldn’t move, was paralyzed by the ripping intensity of my climax—
And I felt him loose his own orgasm. Felt his cock throb, swelling thicker inside me, felt him push up so his spine was arched off the bed and his heels were scrabbling at the mattress and lifting me up higher even as I collapsed on him and clung desperately to him and shook all over and felt my pussy squeezing and I bore down, squeezing harder and his cry went ragged.
I felt him come.
“Oh fuck, yes, Myles, I fucking love you Myles, I love you, oh god I love you,” I said, my voice ragged and broken and wet with tears and shaking with awe. “More, Myles—give me more, give me more.”
He sank down to the mattress, and I pulled away, up—his hands clawed into my ass, clutching with mad bruising strength, and he jerked me down, hard, thrusting into me, pouring his cum into me in a hot flood of thick spurts, growling and gasping with each one, and I felt them, accepted his orgasm into me and squeezed around him and rode him frantically as my own orgasm continued, expanded, broke open into another, a harder one. I sat up, then, balanced on him and leaned backward, head tilted up, breasts thrust to the ceiling, and his hands covered them and squeezed them and then he pinioned my hips and helped me roll and ride and lift up and slam down. He was still throbbing inside me, still pouring rush after rush of seed into me and I was screaming and he was groaning—
And then his eyes flicked open at the same moment as mine did, our gazes locking as our mutual orgasm finally released us, and we stilled. I sat on him, squeezed around him and felt his cum seep out of me around his pulsating, subsiding erection.
“I love you, Myles,” I whispered, no longer saying it from the wild insanity of climax, but in the tender glow connecting my soul to his. “I love you.”
“I love you more, my sweet, darlin’ Lex.” His voice was soft and rough and low and awed and thick with his emotional Texan twang.
I laughed, and fell forward, wrapped my arms around his neck and he clung to me, hands on the back of my head and neck, clutching at my ass. “Hold me. Don’t let go, not ever.”
“I won’t, I can’t.”
We gloried in the afterglow. How long? I couldn’t have told you. Yes, it was messy, but I didn’t care.
And then at some point, after a timeless beautiful eternity of dozing in his arms, I felt him thicken and swell against me, not quite inside me anymore. And I writhed against him until he was ready for me and we lay on our sides and I accepted him into me and we moved like that, face to face, my thigh over top of his, slow and tender the whole while, gasping together in almost-kisses. We came together without a word, and he overfilled me yet again and I loved it all the more.
He told me he loved me as he fetched a towel and cleaned me as well as he could. Then he carried me to the bathroom and we showered together and it was just a shower, but an intimate one, washing each other and sharing the stream of lukewarm water.
When we were clean, we dove naked into the warm ocean and swam together.
We made love on the sandbar in the sun with the water lapping around us—sitting up on our knees, him behind me, his hands clutching at my breasts, as he pushed into me, and I had to reach awkwardly behind my head to clutch at him, or behind my back to find his flexing ass and pull him against me, and then as he began to reach his climax I fell forward into the water on my hands and knees, the water lapping around my thighs and low-swaying breasts and he grabbed my ass and began to just fuck me with abandon, and I screamed as loud as I could to encourage it, feeling him slam into me and shake me all over with the power of his thrusts, and he came like that, taking his orgasm without pause or thought of me, exactly what I wanted: to feel him lose control and give me all of his wild alpha dominance. And then it was my turn. We swam back, and I lay on the porch of the hut in the golden hour evening glow and he knelt between my thighs and gave me orgasm after orgasm, until I lost count and he claimed his jaw had gone numb.
And that was just the beginning.
The seaplane came after a week of nonstop lovemaking, and dropped off supplies, and I told Captain Callahan to come back in another two weeks because I wasn’t even close to being done with Myles.
We made love everywhere there was—in the shower, on the porch, in the water, at the peak of the island’s summit, in bed, in the hammock; and in every position we could think of and a few I think we made up.
If anything could heal me and erase the specter of John David Henley, it was that month in paradise with Myles North.
The only shadow on our time there was the knowledge that this perfect idyll would end and I would have to have a very hard conversation with my mother in the near future.
Myles
I’d had to reschedule four shows: Dublin, Glasgow, and back-to-back shows at Wembley in London.
Cost me a shitload of money and some pissed-off sponsors and venues, but my only concern, outside Lex, was the fans. I’d put up a video I’d taken on my phone explaining that I a sudden and unavoidable personal emergency, and that I would honor all tickets and offer full refunds to anyone who wanted them. Almost no one asked for refunds, and in the end the venues accepted my rescheduled dates at the beginning of the fall. I still wasn’t sure if the Myles North band was starting another domestic tour then or not, or if we were going to take time out to record another album, or take time off.
It didn’t matter. I’d figure it out later.
For now, I had all that mattered: Lexie, her head on my lap as she snored her way across the Pacific. The most incredible, memorable, unforgettable month of my life behind us, and a beau
tiful future ahead of us.
I knew she was still scared to talk to her mom, and I’d offered to fly my personal therapist up to Ketchikan to facilitate the conversation, but she’d declined, saying she needed to do it herself.
So, we were en route back to Ketchikan—unannounced. No one knew where we’d gone. The public only knew I’d canceled four sold-out shows at the end of my most successful tour to date, and that Lexie had vanished with me, and I’d gone totally radio silent for a month—highly unusual for someone as active on social media as I was.
I’d had offers before, of course, from some of the most highly sought-after publicists and social media gurus to manage my accounts for me, promising increased viewership and revenue, but I’d always declined. I wanted my socials to remain authentically and organically mine, run by me personally. So, when I fell off the face of the earth to sort out the love of my life and the future of our relationship, it meant my socials were silent as well.
I didn’t care.
I’d post an update when I was ready, and my fans would be there, hungry to know what I’d been up to, and I figured I’d probably release some surprise new music or something.
It was a long, long flight from the South Pacific to Alaska; we stopped to refuel in Hawaii, and spent a day there shopping, as incognito as we could be.
Finally, after almost two days of travel, we were on the ferry from the Ketchikan airport. I was wearing my ball cap pulled low and mirrored aviators despite the overcast day, and Lexie was, well, just Lexie. Ultra mini denim skirt with scarlet fishnet stockings and knee-high black leather shitkicker boots, a loose, flowy silk blouse with no sleeves and a wildly plunging neckline showing the entire inner swell of her cleavage, bold smoky eye makeup, and her hair done in stiff spikes every which way, the tips temporarily dyed bright pink.