Jane's Harmony (Jane's Melody #2) Page 17

  “And what image is that?”

  “You wearing nothing but that sign.”

  “Can I wear the whistle too?”

  “Sure. Maybe you can blow it when I hit the right spot.”

  He filled Jane in on everything while she drove them home from the airport. He told her all about daydreaming on the stage and agreeing to go through as a duet without even realizing it. But despite her reassurances that he had done the right thing, he must have sensed some of her doubts.

  “You sure you don’t mind?” he asked. “Because I don’t have to go back, you know.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “You have to go. This is your big chance for big money. And even if you don’t win, they’ll be paying you per episode now. I read the rules. You get to join the TV union and everything.”

  “Yeah, but what about Jordyn? Doesn’t it bother you?”

  “Should it?” she asked.

  “No way.”

  “Then it doesn’t.”

  She drove in silence for a minute or two. “But it’s not a good sign if you have to ask me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, would you be asking if it bothered me if it were Sean you were partnered with?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then see? Why are you asking about Jordyn? Either you think I’m insecure or you don’t trust yourself around her.”

  “That’s not fair, Jane.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “No. You know damn well it isn’t the same thing as if I were paired up with Sean.”

  “Why isn’t it?”

  “Because he’s a dude and Jordyn’s an attractive girl.”

  “So you do think she’s attractive.”

  “Oh, come on, Jane.”

  “It’s okay. I think she is. I watched her seductive videos on YouTube, and I was almost ready to switch teams.”

  “That’s not funny. Let’s just change the subject already.”

  “Fine. And just so you know, I trust you, Caleb. I trust you completely. If you wanted to be with someone else, it would kill me inside, but I’d rather you be with them. I won’t have you unless it’s of your own free will. So I’m not bothered about Jordyn. In fact, I’m rather flattered.”

  “You are?”

  “Yes. I’m pretty sure you could be with her or any other woman, and the fact that you’re here with me makes me very proud. Proud of us. I want you with me because you want to be with me. Not because of some piece of paper or some ring.”

  “I want the same thing from you,” he said.

  Jane smiled. A mile or two later, she said, “But I’m still counting on a wedding, just so you know.”

  “We could turn around this minute and go back to the airport and fly to Las Vegas.”

  “Are you kidding me?” she asked. “I’m not getting married in Vegas. And besides, I’m taking you home to practice the honeymoon right now.”

  When they arrived, Jane had hardly put the car in park before Caleb was out and around at the driver’s door waiting for her. She stepped out and he kissed her. Then he took her hand and pulled her toward the apartment building.

  “What about your bag?” Jane asked. “Your guitar?”

  “They can wait,” he said, practically dragging her up the stairs at a run.

  The apartment door hadn’t even latched behind them before he had her up against the wall and was unbuttoning her blouse. Jane pushed him away and she saw him frown, thinking he was being rejected. Then the frown curled into a smile as she handed him the sign and unbuttoned her blouse herself and stripped it off. She took her bra off next. His eyes moved to her chest. She took the sign back and draped it over her neck, along with the whistle.

  “Is this what you wanted to see?” she asked.

  He nodded that it was.

  “Good,” she said. “Now take off your shirt.”

  He peeled his T-shirt off over his head and Jane flushed at the sight of his long torso. It looked as though he’d lost a little weight on his trip and she could see every muscle.

  “Are you flexing your abs to impress me?” she asked.

  “Maybe,” he said, grinning.

  “Come over here.”

  Caleb stepped toward her, and she took his head in her hands and kissed him. There was something about his taste that made her think of sex and only sex. She gripped his thick hair with one hand, pushed the sign aside with the other, and pulled his mouth down to her breast. She let out a soft moan when he took her nipple gently between his teeth. His hands feverishly worked on her zipper, but she pushed him away again.

  “I want you on the bed,” she said. “Now. Do as I say.”

  “Wow,” he replied, looking shocked. “A girl gets a badge and some pepper spray, and suddenly she’s a dominatrix.”

  “You can refer to me as Mistress,” she said. “Now, get on the bed before I get my whip.”

  He paused at the bedroom door just long enough to say, “Hey, I thought you broke the bed and needed me to fix it.”

  “I fixed it myself,” she replied, pushing him into the room. “If you think I need a man for everything, you’re wrong. I’ll show you what I need a man for, though. I’ll show you right now. Get on the bed and lie on your back and close your eyes.”

  Caleb looked cautiously excited as he crawled onto the bed, stretched out, and turned to look at her. She waited for him to close his eyes, and then she took the sign off. When she caught him looking at her again, she brought the whistle to her mouth and blew on it.

  “Busted, buddy. Now, I said close your eyes or else.”

  He smiled and closed his eyes.

  Jane opened the drawer and took out the handcuffs she had purchased. He must have heard them rattle, because his eyes cracked open a slit and then opened wide.

  “You didn’t,” he said.

  “You address me as Mistress or you don’t address me at all,” she said, crawling on top of him. “Now, close your eyes and give me your wrists.”

  He laughed and offered up his wrists.

  She clasped the cuffs around one, then fed the chain through the metal headboard and clasped them around the other. Her breasts were hanging in his face as she secured the cuffs, and when he lifted his head and licked her nipple, she felt her spine tingle. She pushed his head back down onto the pillow and kissed him. He instinctively moved to wrap his arms around her, but the cuffs caught with a clatter on the bed frame and he was trapped.

  Jane giggled and kissed her way down to his neck. He tasted like the outside and like soap, and she was so turned on she could hardly keep up her little game. But she did. She moved her mouth down to his chest and tickled his nipples with her tongue, lying there and watching them go hard. He had just the right amount of soft hair that grew in just the right places, and it turned her on like crazy to feel it against her cheek. She traced his abs with the tip of her tongue, moving down to his belly button, his waistline. He was bulging against his jeans, and she cupped him with her hands and put her mouth to the denim and blew warm air through the fabric. She heard him moan, and then she heard the cuffs clatter on the bed frame.

  “This is fucking torture,” he said.

  “Good. It’s supposed to be.”

  She undid his belt slowly, first yanking it tight, then gently releasing it. Next, she undid his button. Then she pulled the zipper down. Caleb wasn’t wearing any underwear, and as the zipper parted he rose from his pants and stood erect and throbbing in front of her face. She felt her insides tighten with anticipation, felt herself get wet.

  Not yet, she told herself. Not yet. Make him wait.

  Jane stripped off his shoes and pulled his jeans completely free, tossing them onto the floor. Then she stood back for a second to look at him, stretched out and handcuffed to the bed frame, completely naked. He wa
s looking at her from between his upraised and cuffed forearms, and she thought she’d never before seen such a look of chained desire.

  She bent and put her mouth to his calf and kissed her way up his long leg. When her tongue hit his inner thigh, she felt the muscle tighten and twitch. A tiny moan slipped from his lips. She had her hands now on either side of his waist, her thumbs resting in the V that ran down to become the crease leading to his erection, and she looked up at him as she teased him with her tongue. Just around the base. She saw the vein there thicken and she saw him harden even more, pulsing with spasms of need that seemed now to be beyond her control not to satisfy. She rose up and took just a taste. Salty and sweet and just like him.

  “Oh, fuck,” he said. “I need to be inside you right now.”

  She grinned up at him, flicking her tongue in and out against the object of his torture. “Maybe if you beg,” she said.

  “Please. Please. Please.”

  “Please, Mistress,” she said, correcting him.

  “Yes, Mistress. Please, Mistress. I need to be inside you right now. Take these cuffs off and let me make love to you.”

  He rattled the cuffs, but she shook her head.

  “How about we leave them on and I fuck you.”

  “Okay,” he agreed, nodding fiercely. “Yes, Mistress.”

  She backed off of him and stood and stripped down to her panties. Then she turned away and folded herself in half in one of the only yoga poses she could remember and looked at him through the gap in her legs. He was writhing in the cuffs like a man drowning.

  “You like?” she asked.

  Caleb nodded, but by the size of his hard-on she already knew the answer. She stripped off her panties and tossed them at him. Then she crawled on top of him and straddled him on the bed. She was resting with her ass on his thighs and her pelvis just beneath his, and he rose so far up her belly she couldn’t believe all of him would fit. She raised herself up and leaned forward, resting her weight on one hand and reaching back behind with the other and wrapping him in her fingers—and then she lowered herself down, guiding him to her, down, down, guiding him inside her, down, down. He closed his eyes and exhaled the breath he had been holding, and she watched his face slacken with ecstasy as she rode him, up and down, sliding her hips forward and back, feeling him, deep and pulsing, the man she loved back inside her where he belonged.

  Jane meant to go slow and continue his torture, but even for her the game was up. She placed her hands flat on his chest and fucked him like she’d never fucked another man. She was riding him hard, clutching his chest and flailing her hair, feeling her breasts bounce and letting herself go completely with wild moans of pleasure, when there was a tremendous crash and they both dropped. But she hardly could have cared. She was swimming in deep ecstasy, as if she were there in the room but yet she wasn’t. Then every thought and fear she had ever had in her life was swept away, as if they had never been, as she was caught up in a flood of sweet relief so vast, it threatened to sweep her away to a place from which she would never wish to come back. Had she been able to think at all, she would have known without a doubt that it was the best orgasm of her life.

  Jane was lying flat against his sweaty chest, quivering and panting, and when she finally looked up, she saw that his poor hands were caught up high above his head because the mattress had fallen again through the frame and was resting on the floor. And he was looking at her with an expression that suggested both admiration and fear. Then Caleb laughed.

  “I’m so sorry, baby,” she said. “Are your wrists okay?”

  “I think my wrists are all right for the moment, but there’s something else I need released.”

  “Oh, baby, what’s hurt?”

  “I didn’t come yet, honey.”

  “Oh, gosh. I’m sorry. It always happens at the same time when they’re doing it like this in the books I read.”

  “Is that where you’ve been getting these ideas?” he asked, laughing. “How about we get these crazy things off me so I can make love to you.”

  Jane rose on rubber legs, still reeling from her orgasm, then retrieved the key and freed him. He immediately took her in his arms and laid her out on the broken bed and kissed her. His lips were soft and his hands gentle, a sweet contrast to what she had just experienced. His mouth was still on hers when he slipped inside her. She was drenched from the flood and he was harder than ever, so they coupled almost without trying.

  Caleb rested his weight on one arm and stroked her cheek with that hand while he cupped her breast with his other, and she could feel the cold steel of the handcuff that was still attached to that wrist. He never stopped kissing her as he thrust himself deeper and harder, as if he might meld them together into one being so that no man or woman would ever again see either of them as just one, as if by some miraculous fusion they might conjoin there on the bed and lie forever embraced, nothing between them but the constant pulse of pleasure and the sweet dealings of private love.

  He began to move faster, and his breath was pushing into her lungs with each thrust, and then she heard a kind of high-pitched cross between a scream and a whimper, and she felt his muscles clench and his entire body shudder and she was suddenly full and warm. It felt so good, Jane was sure she was going to come again, but she didn’t.

  He sighed and collapsed on the mattress next to her and laid his head on her chest. She could feel his breathing, still fast but slowing, and she could smell the salt from his sweat. The room seemed to float in empty space. She heard a siren outside somewhere, completely disconnected from her and his reality. Another world. Perhaps another time.

  Remember this moment, Jane told herself. Lock it away with absolute clarity to recall someday when you’re unsure of just what is this thing we call love. Because this is love and love is this. This feeling. This moment. This glorious afterglow.

  They lay there together for a long time, neither of them speaking. And she would have willingly lain like that forever had she not glanced up at the clock.

  “Oh, shit. I’ve gotta go, babe. I’m late for work.”

  He tried to pull her back down, but she was already scrabbling up out of the broken bed and rushing to the closet for her uniform. She had slipped on her panties and was pulling on the uniform pants when she realized that she had better hit the bathroom first to avoid an embarrassing emergency. When she came out again, she was dressed. Caleb was still lying on the mattress with a contented look on his face.

  “Your uniform’s way hot,” he said. “I didn’t know they fit like that.”

  “They usually don’t,” she replied, grabbing her work belt from the closet and strapping it on. “I shrank it in the dryer just to look cute for you.”

  “Well, I’ll bet you’ve got guys lined up at expired meters just begging to get ticketed.”

  She laughed. “I wish. There’s plenty of food in the fridge if you’re hungry. Do you need your bag from the car?”

  “Nah, it’ll be fine in the trunk.”

  “Okay, I’ve got the bar beat tonight so I’ll be home just after midnight.”

  “You sure you’re safe out there?” he asked.

  “I am now that I’ve got my whistle,” she said, smiling.

  She stopped at the bedroom door to take one last look at Caleb’s naked perfection, something to carry with her on her shift. “I love you, baby. Welcome home.”

  “I love you too, Jane.”

  She turned to go and had grabbed her purse and made it as far as the door when she heard him call her name. She glanced back. He was standing in the bedroom doorway with the handcuffs dangling from his wrist.

  “Where’s the key for these?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “A girl can’t be expected to keep track of everything. You’ll probably find it on the floor when you fix the bed.”

  “Fix the bed? But I thought yo
u didn’t need a man.”

  She smiled at him. “Why fix something yourself when you can get a man to fix it? That’s a woman’s motto, you know.”

  Caleb had the bed apart and nearly fixed by the time he found the key and freed his wrist from the handcuffs. He laughed as he slipped them back into Jane’s drawer. Then he took a hot shower.

  It was quiet in the apartment without Jane. Too quiet. Now that he was back, he wasn’t used to her having a job to go to, and he began to appreciate all those days she had spent alone while he had been working. He kicked around and picked a few things up, and then he decided to go out for a walk and clear his head.

  The air was humid. Dark clouds had piled up on the horizon with tendrils of rain dropping down and catching the last rays of sunset, giving the horizon a strange and heavy appearance, as if the sky itself were bleeding. Caleb stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked on.

  He heard chatter in restaurants that he passed and laughter in the bars. He heard bands warming up, street musicians banging plastic-bucket drums, and sirens crossing one another in the distance. He heard everything and it was all coming in as waves of color that he let wash over him as he trod the sidewalk at a steady pace, letting his footfalls keep the beat.

  He thought about his childhood dreams of being a musician and escaping the constant longing that came with cold streets and having little or nothing to eat. He thought about all the lonely hours crashed in strange apartments, writing songs about heartache and injustice. He thought about the day he’d first seen Jane’s daughter, Melody, and he remembered more than anything the look of impossible hope burning deep in those sad and tortured eyes. And he remembered seeing the same look again in Jane. Only her sadness had been more real, her hope more hidden.

  He sometimes felt as though Melody had crossed his path as a foreshadowing to his falling in love with Jane, the coin they had passed back and forth a talisman that would lead Jane to him. And he thought about the inequity of such a position, the injustice of fate. Oh, the hands that had passed that coin without knowing its ultimate purpose, the hands that worked somewhere still in the background, perhaps passing a talisman for each of us until it someday found its place.