I CAN’T REMEMBER A TIME WHEN I’ve been nervous in the studio. Producing is something I learned, a skill I’ve honed over years. So much of my talent with the piano was just there, a natural foundation my parents built on. Producing is different. My time at Full Sail, years in the studio producing for other artists when I took a break from performing, even the lessons I learned at The School of the Arts—it’s all converged to make me a sought-after producer. I don’t do it as much as I used to, but for friends like Luke, or for projects that excite me, I will.
And nothing excites me more than Kai. It’s because of her that, for the first time, I’m nervous behind the board. I booked Cherry, my favorite studio here at Wood. They all have state of the art equipment and boards, of course, but this one adjoins a room that holds nothing but one of my pianos. I can slip in there and add the things in my head on the spot.
I should be thanking my lucky stars, if I have any, that she’s forgiven me. But, no. Hard-to-please bastard that I am, I spent the night under my piano again, instead of in that cold bed, resenting the fact that she doesn’t want people to know. There’s this tiny, insistent voice somewhere deep down that keeps asking me if there’s more to it. Is it really her career she’s concerned with? Does it have anything to do with Dub? Does she not want anyone to know? Or does she not want him to know?
“Ready, boss?” Our receptionist Amber asks from the door, smiling at the other guys in the studio. Two engineers already sit at the large soundboard, checking levels and prepping for Luke and Kai’s arrival.
“Yeah, I’m good.” I give Amber a quick nod. “You seen Marlon?”
“He’s in Birch.” Amber grins, flicking a fall of tawny dreadlocks over her shoulder. “Gettin’ high.”
“Should’ve known.” I take my seat behind the board. “At least it’s somewhat legal now.”
“The law finally caught up to Grip . . . somewhat.” Amber laughs. “I’m up front all night. Let me know if you need anything.”
I swivel my chair to consider her. She’s here all times of the day, but especially when Marlon’s here. All the girls like him, and he only likes one girl. Not that he lets that stop his dick.
“Don’t you have class in the morning?” I ask.
“Yeah, but I gotta close.”
“Nah.” I wave my hand at her. “I’ll close up. You hang as long as you want, of course, but leave when you need to. I got this.”
Kai’s laugh from the hall cuts our conversation short. I turn my head to watch her through the door. She’s talking to Luke, her back to the studio. Her t-shirt, knotted just below her shoulder blades, leaves the golden skin between the shirt and the waistband of her leggings bare. All her hair is gathered high on her head, pierced by chopsticks. Her petite frame is slim and fit, soft and curved.
“Holy shit,” Gus, one of the engineers whispers to the other. “Who is that?”
“Dayummmmm. I’ve only seen her from the back,” Monty, the other, whispers back, “and I already know I’d hit that . . . from the back.”
“Not and live to tell it, you wouldn’t,” I mutter without looking up from the knobs I’m twisting.
“What?” Gus frowns. “Dude, I—”
Kai looks down the hall to smile at someone, her delicate profile clearly visible for the first time.
“Oh, hell.” Monty wide eyes me, genuine regret all over his freckled face. “I didn’t know that was Kai, Rhys. Sorry, man.”
I nod, but just go back to my knobs. I have enough to handle tonight without throwing in a jealous fit.
“It’s fine.” I glance toward the hall, my attention snagged and held by her still standing there. “I mean, don’t say that shit again, but I get it.”
Luke and Kai come in, both smiling. Luke gives out fist pounds to everyone in the studio. He grins at me, blue eyes excited.
“This song is the shit, Gray.” He leans against the board. “Thanks for doing this, man. I know you got your own stuff you’re working on. This is gonna blaze right out of the gate.”
“Happy to do it. I didn’t envision it as a duet when I wrote it.” My eyes shift to Kai at his side, who’s taking in her surroundings and smiling at the two engineers. “But I think it’ll work.”
“Yeah, and Kai’s gonna be so hot by the time this song drops, if Malcolm’s got anything to do with it. It’ll be perfect timing.”
He hooks an elbow around her neck, and I can see the fraternal affection he’s developed while they were on tour, but I still don’t like him touching my girl. I’ve heard about the lap dance she gives him every night on stage as part of the show. I have so many reasons to be glad when this tour is over.
She glances at me nervously, moving from under Luke’s arm. She knows me well.
“Let’s do this.” I pull out the charts I marked up, handing one to each of them. “I think you both got my notes, but I had some other thoughts today.”
We talk through the changes I’m proposing to the bridge. Kai nods, dark brows pulled together in concentration. She wears no makeup, and I could just stare at her all day, especially after two months of not seeing her at all. She looks up, catching my eyes on her, smiles a little before looking back to the chart.
“Let’s lay Luke’s verse first.” I roll out a chair for Kai. “You listen, Kai, to the things I tell him because a lot of it will hold for your verse, too.”
Luke’s good. Always has been, but the fatigue in his voice is evident. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to record this while they’re on tour. We’re professionals, used to singing through anything, but Malcolm sets a much more bruising pace than I would set for myself, or anyone else.
The raspiness fatigue lends Luke’s voice actually works for his verse, deepening it and adding grit. He’s a seasoned pro, so he takes guidance well and adjusts easily. He and I have worked together ever since I accompanied him for his performance piece junior year, so we know each other. He knows I don’t settle. I push. He’s prepared for it, and doesn’t push back, but just gives me what I need to make the song work.
I hope Kai’s watching because she’s up next.
She looks back at me from inside the booth, headphones looped around her neck. By now I know Kai like the first Bach symphony I ever learned. Literally I could play it half asleep. I anticipate Kai like my next heartbeat, and I can tell she’s nervous, though I doubt anyone else can.
“Let’s take it from the top of verse two, Kai,” I say through the system so she can hear me in the booth.
She nods and the track starts. From the first note I know this won’t go well. As much as I love her . . . because I love her . . . I can’t tolerate less than the best I’ve heard from her. She can do better. I feel Luke and the other engineers watching me, seeing if I’m going to give her special treatment because she’s my girl, or used to be, in their minds. They’ve seen me press until I hear from that booth what I’m hearing in my head.
“Hey, Kai,” I cut in over her singing. “You’re flat.”
She blinks a few times, her mouth dropping open.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I—”
“Lift your eyebrows.” I keep my tone impersonal. “You’re just barely under the note, especially at the top of the verse. I need that first note clarion clear. Dead on.”
“Okay. I can do that.” She adjusts the headphones, closes her eyes and waits for the track to begin again.
It’s still not what I’m looking for. I wrote this ballad before I met Kai, so to my ears, the lyrics about love lack a certain intimacy. I wrote about an idea of love. Kai brought it to life for me. The lyrics hold power if delivered properly, though.
“Still flat,” I interrupt, my voice sharpening with the impatience I always feel when an artist isn’t getting it. “And I need more from you. Tonally and in the delivery. It’s emotionally flat right now. Again.”
Kai looks back at me, crimson flooding her cheeks. She bites her lip and nods.
“Sorry. I-I’ll do better. Can we take it again from the middle of the verse?”
“No, we need to take it from the top. None of it was right.”
“Got it.” She lowers her lashes, pulling the chopsticks from her hair so it falls past her shoulders. “I’m sorry, Rhys.”
“I don’t need an apology. I need you on top of that note.”
She nods, the fine bones of her jaw clenching.
“Amber.” I turn to find her standing in the door, eyes wide, probably over the way I’m talking to the woman I introduced as my girlfriend not too long ago. “Go make that throat coat tea concoction for Kai. Her voice sounds ragged.”
Gus clears his throat and Luke shifts in the seat next to me.
“It’s not that bad, Rhys,” Luke says.
“Yeah, man. We can fix some of that in post,” Monty says. “Give her a break.”
“A break?” My voice whips at them both. “You want the first track you release to be mediocre and flat, Luke? Because right now that’s all she’s giving us. And, Gus, if you could stop admiring her for two minutes, you’d realize she’s a professional and can take direction. Or at least she usually can. I have no idea why she can’t tonight.”
“Your finger’s still on the button,” Luke whispers.
“What?” I look into the booth and realize that Kai heard everything I said. Hurt gathers in her eyes, but she looks down before I see it fully formed.
Shiiiiiit.
“Gimme ten.” I stand. “Grab a coffee, a blunt, whatever it takes you to survive me tonight. I think Marlon’s getting high over in Birch. Go keep him company.”
All three guys get up and head out, and I step into the booth. Kai doesn’t look up from the small square Persian rug she’s standing on. She slides her hands into her back pockets, waiting.
“I’m sorry about that.” I lean against the door, crossing one ankle over the other. “I didn’t mean—”
“You didn’t know I was listening, so I know you meant it.” She finally looks at me, her eyes still hurt, but inlaid with resolve. “Just tell me how to fix it.”
“Vocal rest, for one.” I walk over to her, and unlike that time all those months ago in Grady’s studio, I don’t ask permission to touch her. I lay my hand against the muscles of her stomach with the ease of possession because now she’s mine.
“You’re not thinking about your breathing, so your phrasing is off.” My index finger strokes across her belly ring. “The phrasing is a huge part of the delivery on this song, so it’s not convincing. I don’t believe it.”
“Okay.” Her eyes fix on my finger still stroking the smooth skin at her waist. “That’s not helping my breathing.”
I smile, slipping my hand down her arm and over hers in her back pocket. I step closer, bending my knees until I can press our foreheads together.
“I’m sorry for being a jerk.”
“You’re not. You weren’t.” She shakes her head against mine. “You’re right. If I want to be a professional, I have to perform like one.”
“Yeah, you do.” I pull back, leveling a sober look at her. “Your voice is ragged, Kai. I know what you sound like rested. You need vocal rest.”
I brush a thumb over the dark circles under her eyes I didn’t notice yesterday when makeup camouflaged them.
“You need rest, period. I’m concerned.”
“I’m fine.” She grips my wrist. “What else?”
“I know I wrote that first phrase ending on the G, but resolve it. It’s not working the way I wrote it.”
“Got it. Anything else?”
“The biggest thing, and this is an intangible, but it’s the most important part. Emotion.” I grip her hips and catch her eyes. “You’re delivering this song with zero emotion. I know you know about love, so sing like you do.”
“I guess I am tired.” She runs a hand through her hair. “I’m having trouble connecting to the lyrics. Having trouble communicating it.”
“Sing it for me,” I say softly.
My suggestion would seem presumptuous if I didn’t know how deep our connection goes. Her dark eyes warm and soften when she looks up at me. I pull her into me, close enough to smell her hair and feel the heat of her body.
“Will you sing it for me, Pep?” I whisper in her ear, spreading my hand over the silky skin of her back. “Pour everything you feel for me into it.”
She lays her head against me, her breath quickening against my neck.
“Can you do that for me?”
She nods, sliding her hand up to grip my neck, fingers piercing into my hair. The booth door opens, and she jerks back, turning away and linking her hands behind her head.
“Sorry.” Amber glances between Kai and me. “Thought you’d want this.”
I take the tea from her and give it to Kai.
“Drink this, Pep.”
She takes the mug, sipping and smiling gratefully at Amber.
“Thanks. It’s good.”
“That’ll help your voice some.” I turn to Amber. “The guys back?”
“Yeah, they’re in the studio.”
I look through the plexiglass, and sure enough, they’re back behind the board. I take one more look at my girl when Amber leaves. She already seems more confident.
“You got this.” I turn just before I exit the booth, connecting our eyes. “For me. Sing for me.”
I hear the difference immediately. I don’t know if it’s Amber’s miracle tea that has saved more than one voice on a rough night, or if it was our pep talk, but Kai nails it. She measures her breathing, every phrase spaced as it should be. Every note, properly supported. And emotion . . . God, as jaded as I am, it takes a lot for me to get goosebumps, but my goosebumps have goosebumps when she sings the lyrics this time. I don’t stop her once. I’m afraid to, scared I’ll ruin something magnificent by meddling with it.
And when I told her to sing for me, I didn’t expect her to sing to me, but she does, stretching a live wire between her eyes and mine. I’m not only transfixed, but also painfully aroused by the whole thing. It’s so incredibly personal to have my words in her mouth. It’s almost an erotic experience to see something that came from my mind, from my heart, dwelling inside of her. I scoot under the board as far as I can so these guys can’t tease me about getting a hard on for a second verse.
My synesthesia is in overdrive. I close my eyes, trapping all the colors the music shows me beneath my eyelids, not sharing them with anyone. Bright gold mixed with blue and green, a musical paisley splashed across the palette of my mind, splashed across my senses.
When she’s done, the studio stays completely silent. They feel it, too. It was only a verse, but it was so perfect it felt sacred, and they’re as scared to ruin it as I am.
“Was that better, Rhys?” she asks, voice husky, eyes wide, skin flushed like we’ve been touching each other in front of everyone for the last few minutes. And maybe we have.
How she can think anyone would see us in the same room and not know we’re together is beyond me. The heat between us, even separated by several yards, could melt the plexiglass wall of the studio.
“Much better.” I clear my throat and turn to Luke. “You wanna get in there for the chorus? If you guys can give me a couple of good passes, we’ll just stack the vocals to fill that sound out some.”
The rest of the song goes relatively smoothly. They knock out the chorus and the bridge. We lay some background vocals they do themselves. Kai guzzles a steady stream of Amber’s magical tea, and her voice, though tired, holds for the night.
It’s two o’clock in the morning when we’re done. So much of this industry happens in studios while everyone else sleeps. I’m exhausted, but color still swirls in my mind. I keep hearing new things that came to me while Kai sang, notes that will enrich the song. Everyone else packs up, but I’ll stay and hammer out the parts I want to add.
The energy from Kai’s verse still churns inside of me. Were it up to me, I know exactly where this energy would go. I’d pour it into my sweet girl. In our bed. Between our sheets. But she wants slow so that we get this right. And I want this right even more than I want what’s between those beautiful legs of hers. So for now, my piano will be my release, as it has been so often over the last two months.
I’m about to get started in the small piano room adjoining Cherry, when I look up to see Kai standing at the entrance. I wasn’t even sure she would say goodbye because I have no idea how “not public” she wants us. I’ll follow her lead on it because, left to me, she’d be wearing a Property of Rhyson Gray sign. I’d write it in the sky if she’d let me.
I gesture for her to come in, and she walks over to stand right in front of me.
“You got a ride home?” I lean against the piano and push the hair over her shoulder, my hand dropping to palm her waist. She’ll have to pull away if she’s concerned about someone seeing us because I can’t not touch her.
“Yeah.” She looks up at me, the same restrained energy in her eyes that churns inside of me. “I’ve got San’s truck.”
Gus and Monty come through to wave a final goodnight, their speculative eyes bouncing between Kai and me. After what they’ve probably read about us being apart, they must be as confused as I am half the time. With them leaving and Amber long gone, it’s just Kai and me in the studio. When she leaves it’ll be just me like it’s been so many nights since she left.
“I should go,” she whispers, stepping back.
“You were amazing.” I tighten my hand at her waist, hoping I can keep her for a few more minutes.
“Thank you.” She smiles. “I mean that. Thank you for bringing something so much better out of me than I thought I had.”
She opens her mouth like there’s more she would say, but she bites her lip and drops her gaze to the floor. I lift her chin with one finger until I have her eyes again.
“What is it, Pep?”
A breath stutters over her lips and emotion deepens the rich brown of her eyes to sable.
“Did you feel it?” The heat in her eyes mesmerizes me. “When I sang for you? Did you feel it?”
I don’t bother answering her question. I just haul her into me, hands cupping her ass and tongue in her mouth before she can waste time with more words. Who needs words when we have this? This living, panting thing that ignites every second we’re together. Lust and love rub against each other vigorously like two sticks making sparks fly, the first sign of fire. I feather kisses down her soft cheeks until I reach her lips again. She opens for me, warm and eager. My hands glide past her waist and up her body until I cup either side of her face, holding her still so I can plunder that sweetness over and over until I’m satisfied. Only there’s no satisfaction, just more hunger. It claws out of my belly and drags her closer.
“Rhyson, oh God,” she husks against my lips. “I-I . . . need . . .”
Her arms wrap around my neck, pressing our bodies so close not even a breath would dare intrude. But her words intrude. What she said yesterday in the barn about going slow and getting it right, it intrudes as much as I don’t want it to.
I pull back, hands at her hips, to look down at her.
“Pep, you know where this goes.” I shake my head. “If we don’t stop, I won’t stop. You know that, right?”
The hunger in her eyes answers me.
“Yeah.” She blinks rapidly, her hand tightening behind my neck, fingers plowing into my hair.
“You know I want this.” I feel the window closing, that window where I give her a choice in this, where I let her go home. “But you said slow, baby. I just . . . I don’t want you to regret this, or see it as a setback for us. It wouldn’t be to me.”
“I just . . .” Her eyes pick up where her words leave off, telling me that I’m not the only one lonely or needy tonight after so long apart. “What we felt tonight in the studio, I need that.”
“What are you saying?” I know what she’s saying, but she’s gonna have to say it. And once she does, that’s it. The timetable, the slow pace—all of it goes poof, and good riddance.
“I’m saying you can have me, we can have each other tonight.” She seals her fate by tipping up on her toes to lay a soft kiss on my lips.
That may be the last soft thing between us for a while because what burns in me isn’t soft or slow or gentle. I’m done questioning this. I’m not asking for permission or waiting another minute. Her singing my lyrics tonight, holding my words so close they became a part of her—I’m still hard from that. There’s only one way to satisfy this hunger.
I spin her around and bend her over the side of the piano, with frantic hands peeling her leggings and panties down over her hips. I can’t even wait for her to get them off, leaving them bundled around her ankles. I fumble with my zipper, want making my hands tremble.
“Hurry, Rhys.” Her voice shakes with need. “Please hurry.”
I drop my pants, align our bodies and plunge into her tightness as deeply as her body will take me. I slide my hand up her back, pushing her neck, her cheek into the piano. I’m as gentle as I can be while I grind into the curve of her ass.
“You don’t ever keep this from me again.” I thrust into her roughly, watching the blush wash over the downy skin of her neck and cheeks. “I can’t . . . I can’t be without you, Kai.”
“I know.” Her voice shakes.
I can’t speak, the force of the pleasure too intense. I want to savor being with her, inside of her again, but it’s been too long. I thought our first time together again would be long, leisurely love in my bed, or by my pool, naked with the cameras off. Instead we steal this rough fuck in the back of my studio. One hand grips her hip and the other presses into the fragile line of her spine. Dammit, I don’t want to hurt her, but I’m pounding into her, my hips out of control, shaking the piano, the superb acoustics of the studio echoing back my grunts and groans. But she takes it, wants more.
“Deeper, Rhys,” she pants, eyes closed, bottom lip captive between her teeth. “Baby, don’t hold back. I can take it.”
Then I can give it. I push impossibly deeper, harder until she’s up on her tiptoes. My hand shoves the knotted t-shirt up her back. She reaches behind her, hurriedly unhooking the bra, and my hand slips under her to squeeze one plump nipple.
She groans, slamming one palm to the piano, pulling it into a fist and banging until she’s matching the rhythm of my thrusts, mixing with our erratic breaths and the guttural sounds of our pleasure, an erotic symphony with just our bodies and our love as instruments.
“Damn, this is good, Pep.” I bend my knees, sinking into her more, painting her back with the sweat falling from my face and shoulders.
“Yes, don’t stop. I’m almost . . .” The words strangle in her throat.
“Touch yourself, baby.”
Her hand disappears between her legs, and the sight of her touching herself, the sound of her release wrenched from her lips, the clench of her body around me when she comes, sets me off so hard my body jerks rough and rapid until I’m coming, jetting into her body. And for the first time, it’s so intense it’s the same as my synesthesia, colors overtaking my mind, red wrapping around green, pink fusing with yellow, purple interspersing with blue. Vibrant hues coalescing into an aurora borealis that takes my breath, revealing to me the color of love.