The roaring in my ears sounded just like the roar of the falls. A thunderous cacophony - the sound of a flood - swelled up around me.
Only it wasn’t water. It was music.
I hunched over the piano, ignoring all my training to get closer to the music. My fingers moved so fast my brain could barely keep up.
This feeling was still new enough to catch me by surprise. Though it shouldn’t have. Not any more. It had been happening this way for weeks now. I’d come home from an appointment with my therapist and sit down at the piano and just… play. Trying to translate all the feelings into music, the language I was best able to understand.
I saw Dr. Wright every day at the start. But at the last session, she’d set down her pen with a smile and told me she thought it would be okay if I started coming every other day.
I realized how far I’d come when I’d eagerly agreed, telling her - without irony - that the daily sessions were starting to cramp my social life. “I’m helping Xavier with his website tonight, and I’m supposed to meet Brynn and Autumn for coffee tomorrow, plus Derek has like no groceries in his cupboard so I have to fit that somewhere in there as well. What?” I asked when Dr. Wright started laughing.
“You don’t have to get better all at once, Aria.” She’d smiled.
“I know.” I smiled back. Because I did know. There were certain things that would take me longer to get past than others. But I wouldn’t know what those things were until I found them.
And I wouldn’t find them unless I went looking.
I stopped the flood of notes mid-measure to jot some notes on the pad I kept beside me. In the sudden quiet, I heard the sound of the Jeep climbing the drive.
I looked up and smiled.
Derek was home.
Eagerly, I stood up from the piano bench and stretched. He’d been leaving the house a lot more often too. Most often he returned smelling of stale coffee and complaining of about his new sponsor’s habit of calling him ‘champ.’
I always kissed him before he could get too growly about it, though.
I was looking forward to kissing him right now.
It was the first of December and the snow was falling gently when a stranger walked up to my door. A stranger with carefully combed hair, and a crisp blue flannel shirt tucked in to completely unfaded blue jeans. The stranger was clean shaven, and walked with his shoulders thrown back, and when he got my door he shot me a wide crooked smile, amusement dancing in his dark, beautiful eyes.
I opened the door. "Damn," I said looking Derek up and down. "You clean up nice."
He stepped towards me, sliding his hand into the back pocket of my jeans. “Date night is a special occasion," he said, leaning down to brush a kiss across my lips.
I stood up on my tiptoes, reaching for him eagerly. "Is this the shirt from the outfitters?” I asked, thinking back to our day in town. The corset had been fun, but hadn’t lasted very long at all. I felt slightly bad about destroying an antique that way, but wow had it been worth it.
“Yes, it is," Derek sighed, plucking at the lapel of his new shirt.
I looked up at him and grabbed his hand. "You let me dress you," I said, licking my lips. “I kind of love you for that.”
“Kind of?“
“You know I love you,” I chided him.
“Hell yeah you do.” I also loved the way his eyelids grew heavy when he looked me in the eye. "
I grinned. “Do a little twirl for me."
He obliged me, turning in a sharp circle. "Your ass looks fantastic," I teased.
"Your ass looks fantastic," he growled stepping forward and cupping his hands against it. "But it looks even better with your clothes off.”
He backed me into the house, his lips already at my throat. I was laughing, and gasping at the same time, and even though desire coursed through me, I was careful not to mess up his shirt, or his pants. This time I threw them carefully onto the couch instead of on to the floor.
He noticed, and gave me a wry smile, before going to his knees. He pressed my back up against the wall, and pulled my legs free of my jeans. “Right here, baby," he said, patting his shoulders. “You wanted a date night? Well there's nowhere else I want to be than right in there."
I wrapped my legs around his head. "Aren't you suffocating baby?"
"If I do," he said, his voice muffled. "Then I’ll die happy. And I won't have too far to get to get to heaven."
My laugh was cut short by a gasp when his tongue met my center, sliding against me with an incredible heat. I arched upward reaching out to grab a hold of something, anything, and in the process I knocked all the cookbooks off the counter and sent them crashing to the floor.
Derek didn't even budge. He worked like a man possessed, his thumb and fingers finding parts of me that somehow still hadn’t been awakened, and by the time the orgasm tore through me, I was screaming his name.
“Now,” I begged him.
“What?” He kissed me as I slid down to cup his face.
I wrapped my hand around the back of his neck. Holding his gaze. I leaned back.
“Baby?” His questioning eyes searched my face.
I pulled him until I was flat on my back. He braced himself, hovering over me without touching his chest to mine. Mindful not to cross that invisible barrier we hadn’t crossed….
Yet.
“I want you to be on top.”
Seven little words. Seven tiny, single-syllable words. But they contained volumes. And he knew it.
He didn’t ask me if I was sure. He knew to trust me. And he knew I trusted him. He kissed me once, before freeing himself from his jeans. “I love you,” he breathed in a ragged whisper against my neck.
“I love you,” I gasped as he slid inside me.