Track 09: Sweet Dreams
“I see you. I touch you. I taste you.
Nothing is what it seems.
I want you. You’re here. You’re mine.
Not even in my sweetest dreams.”
I TURNED OVER AGAIN, GROANING loudly into my pillow—a process that had now been repeated several times.
Maybe I should try reading again. Or writing new lyrics.
Something.
Anything.
Because lying here, all I focused on was that I couldn’t sleep. And I couldn’t sleep because of how much I wanted Zach.
I texted him as soon as I walked in the door. Just like he told me to. I also may have asked if he’d made it back ok, too… Not because I was desperate to hold on to whatever had been happening on the dance floor. Of course not. Superstars don’t get desperate.
A few minutes ago, I saw that he’d finally read the text message but still hadn’t responded.
So why wasn’t he answering?
Maybe something happened.
To a group of five guys, four of whom were or looked like they should have been football players?
It was possible, I argued with myself.
And drunk me was always right.
Or at least she was quicker than rational me, pushing the ‘Call’ button before I could stop myself.
One ring.
Two.
I clenched my teeth. He was the one who told me to text and now, he couldn’t even freaking bother to—
“What’s wrong?” Zach’s deep voice rasped over the phone.
“I… Ahh… Nothing,” I sputtered. “I just… I texted you, but you didn’t respond.”
There was a beat of silence before he spoke again. “You should be sleeping.”
“I can’t,” I whispered honestly.
“Why not?”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t ready to admit why I was so restless. I wasn’t ready to confess that my entire body still hummed with the thought of his pressed against it. The fire that was lit on the dance floor still kindled through me, sparking and arcing for release.
“You’re a good dancer,” I said, completely ignoring his question and trying to ignore the ache between my legs.
Silence.
He cleared his throat. “Why can’t you sleep, Baby Blake?”
My legs squeezed together begging me to keep my mouth just as shut.
“Because you touched me.”
I heard a muffled curse. I was afraid of what might come next, but I was also excited. There was a danger in telling him something that I shouldn’t and that made me hotter. He deserved to hear what he did to me. Especially since I felt what I’d done to him.
“And?”
He was going to make me say it. Whatever. I wore embarrassment so well when I was around him.
“And now it aches… I ache. I can’t stop thinking about the beach… and if they hadn’t found us.”
Now, he really did swear.
“Blake…” His voice was so hoarse I wouldn’t be surprised if it was rubbing my ear drum raw as he spoke. “I told you that the beach… I made a mistake.”
He didn’t say it as coldly or as cruelly this time. He said it as though the fact tortured him. It didn’t make it hurt any less, though.
“I know. But you’re not here,” I responded. “You can’t touch me through the phone. You can’t… make a mistake.”
Silence.
There was so much silence I thought he’d hung up and I was too drunk and delusional to hear the beeps from the line going dead.
“Are your tits hard like they were earlier for me?”
My eyes widened. What? Had… Did he just… Was I dreaming?
“Are they?” The hard voice said again.
If it was a dream, it was certainly persistent.
My hand drifted to my right breast even though I didn’t need to feel to know that they were.
“I-I was cold.”
His deep chuckle echoed through the line. “Baby Blake is a little liar.”
My breath rushed out of me.
“You want me to make you feel better? Is that why you called me, Baby Blake?” he growled. “All that dancing made you hot and achy and now you want me to fix it like it didn’t do the same thing to me.”
I gulped. He was angry. Always angry to hear how I wanted him.
“Yes.” It was barely a whisper.
Silence.
My hand still at my breast, I toyed with my nipple like it was a pen I was clicking out of nervousness, each flick causing my legs to squeeze together even tighter.
“Are you wet for me, Blake?” Dream Zach asked.
No Baby. Just Blake. And pure need.
Fire licked through my veins because I knew the answer. The heat between my thighs hadn’t dulled since I’d left the bar; the alcohol kept it in my system. I shifted in the bed again as my hand slid down to rest on my stomach that was rapidly rising and falling.
“Answer me and I’ll make it better,” he demanded.
A soft cry escaped me before my tongue mumbled thickly, “Y-yes.”
Harsh breaths were the response.
“Touch yourself, Blake.” I froze at the command. “Put those fingers of yours down your panties and touch yourself. I want to know just how wet.”
I stared up at the ceiling that seemed like it was a million miles away as my fingers crawled beneath my pajama shorts and the elastic of my underwear. I sucked in a quick breath as I slid over the sensitive nub at the top of my slit.
“How wet?” he asked again with a low voice.
Would slip-n-slide be an inappropriate answer right now?
I groaned because it was the only thing I could think of.
“Very.”
He let out a harsh laugh. “You can do better than that. Tell me how wet.”
Well, he asked for it.
I bit back a moan as I pressed my fingers against my slit, trying ease the throbbing. “W-wet like a slip-n-slide. At a waterpark.” His tortured groan made my core spasm and beg for more. “In the middle of a hurricane.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he swore vehemently. “You know how you strum your guitar, Baby Blake? The way your fingers pluck hard over each goddamn note?” Oh god… “Well, that’s what I want you to do for me right now. I want you to flick over that sweet little clit of yours until it hums.”
I moaned. The kind of moan that escapes when it’s the dead of winter and you take a sip of hot chocolate that burns your whole mouth yet heats every cell in your body. I was hot and burning as I did what he said. My fingers moved slowly just at first, but then rapidly picked up speed as my body found the path to what it was searching for.
“Stop.” The force of his tone jarred me. His voice changed from pissed off and cruel to desperate and demanding.
“Zach…” I cried out as my fingers obeyed him.
“Push one finger in. Slowly. Very fucking slowly, Blake.” I did as I was told, one finger slipping down from my buzzing clit to my entrance and pushing into myself. “Now you’re going to fuck yourself, Blay, but not enough to make you come. Because this is how I feel all the damn time around you: close enough to be tortured.”
“I-I don’t want to torture you,” I gasped. “I just want you.”
“Fuck.” I heard him grunt harder. “Take it out and suck on it.”
“W-what?”
“Just—” I heard him suck in a harsh breath, “for once, do what I’m asking you to do, Baby Blake.” A million memories of disobedient disasters laced his words.
I did what he asked, but only because I wanted to hear more. Hearing him so close to losing control was as close as I’d ever come to knowing that Zach Parker had lost anything because of me.
My finger popped out of my mouth and his exhale rushed into the phone.
“That taste should have been mine. Just like everything else about you…” The way he said it, the way need and regret sliced through every word, make me shake. I was forbidden. To him, at least. People said I was damaged. Delicate. Complicated.
They weren’t wrong.
Still, he wanted me.
“Three fingers,” he ordered. I complied, spreading myself wide with three fingers, the stretch sharp and delicious at the same time. Biting down on my lip, my back arched as I began to slide my fingers in and out, letting my thumb brush over my clit with every penetration.
In between the long spans of incoherent inebriation, where it took all I had to focus on moving my fingers faster and harder towards release, I heard him telling me not to stop, to keep moaning, and that hearing me was like music to his ears. I also heard the hard and heavy grunts and I wondered if he was pleasuring himself, too.
I whimpered. I was closing in on my orgasm and all I wanted to do was chase it. Hunt it. Overtake it. My breath caught as my hand picked up the pace, my fingers finding a rhythm that would carry me all the way.
“Christ, Blay,” he growled into my ear. The phone vibrated against my face, my hand was shaking so badly. He was pleasuring himself. “You know how bad my dick wants to be inside you? How bad I want to claim you when the world acts like you belong to them?” My lungs weren’t functioning. “That’s all I think about, Baby Blake. Marking you. Making you mine. Feeling the way that sweet little pussy of yours sings around my cock.”
The words were ripped from him like they ripped my orgasm from me. I convulsed, crying out into my pillow as I felt my body flex around my fingers. Vaguely, I heard a groan come from my phone that had fallen beside me.
All the tension, all the tightness, drained from my body and I could breathe again.
“Zach…” I whispered his name, tapping on the speakerphone button because I didn’t trust myself to hold the phone.
Silence.
And then, “Go to sleep, Blake.”
In the morning I’d wonder if this was real… and not just one more of my wildest dreams.
I was a fucking idiot. Christ.
One fucking night and yeah, I could pat myself on the back all I wanted for not touching her like I promised, but that was like making it to a party on time only because I’d run every goddamn stoplight in town. I’d made it, but I’d still broken the law.
I punched the elevator button again, impatient for the damn thing to get back to the lobby.
I’d woken up over an hour ago and after showering off what was left of my jerk-off session from last night, I’d trekked downstairs in search of some strong, black coffee with a side of renewed determination to keep Blake and me strictly business.
I prayed she was too drunk and too tired to remember what I’d told her to do.
Slip-n-slide.
I gulped down another sip of coffee letting it burn the hell out of my tongue.
The chime went off just as the doors opened and Taylor came crashing into me.
“Crap!” She dropped her phone and the notepad she’d been staring at. “Sorry, Zach. I-I didn’t see you.” She bent down to pick up her stuff and spilled more shit from the huge bag she was carrying. “Shit.”
I bent down and helped her scoop up the mess. “You alright? You look a little…”
“…Frazzled?” she finished for me with a laugh.
I nodded and shrugged my shoulders.
“Just trying to get everything ready to leave and apparently there was a miscommunication at the hotel in New York about what time we are getting there. And then, she has a whole day free that I have a million people clamoring to schedule up for photos and interviews. The press is up my ass about you two last night—which is good because at least it’s not about her talking to Ron—but then I also have Bruce on my ass about scheduling this interview for Blake in Texas—” she barely stopped to gasp in air, before continuing, “And to top it all off, Blake is hungover with a headache from hell, so I’m down here trying to find some Advil or something to help her because she’s crawled up in bed, practically in tears. There’s no way she can get on the plane like this—”
She broke off because my hands gripped her shoulders and shook her back to the moment because the damn girl looked like she’d lost her mind and her mouth was trying to talk its way into finding it.
“Breathe, Taylor.” She blinked up at me, remembering where she was and who she was talking to.
“Sorry, I—”
“Don’t apologize,” I insisted with a sigh. Don’t do it, Parker. Don’t fucking do it. “Look. Why don’t you do what you have to do and you let me take care of Blake?”
Congratulations to me. I’d just gone from plain horny idiot to certifiable fucking moron.
Even the words leaving my mouth sparked an impossible want
Her eyes widened. “Are you sure?”
I nodded again.
“I… ahh… ok. Thank you.” She gave me a small smile and, as much as it was going to kill me to be in the room with Blake after last night, I was glad I offered. “Here’s her key. I’ll just text her and let her know…”
“No. Just let me handle her, you’ve got enough going on.”
With another mumbled ‘thank you’ and apology, she took off, on the phone a few seconds later dealing with the first fire on her plate.
I didn’t knock because I didn’t want her to feel like she had to move or worse, wake her if she was sleeping.
Letting myself in, I made for the bedroom.
“Tay?” I heard her strained voice rasp from the room that was shuttered in darkness.
I stood for a moment, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness as I closed the door behind me.
“It’s me, Blake,” I said quietly.
“Zach?” I heard the rustling of the covers before the nightstand lamp flicked on which was immediately followed by Blake doubling over in the bed, trying to hide from the light. Judging from her cry, it sounded like a hundred knives just stabbed her in the head.
“Christ, Blay.” Three steps had me by the side of the bed and flicking off the torture device.
Even in the dark, I could see the way she clutched her head, slowly rocking herself. Ripping open the bottle, I dumped four pills into my hand, unscrewed the water bottle with the other, and nudged her shoulder.
“Take these.”
She didn’t question. She reached for my hands and I gritted my teeth as her touch set my body on fire, knowing where those fingers had been touching last night at my command. I wondered which one had gone in her mouth.
“Thank you,” she groaned and sank back down into the bed.
I hated seeing her suffer. And when I had to be the cause, I hated it even more.
And, striving to be the best fucking tortured moron I could be, I walked around to the other side of the bed and slid in next to her.
“What…” she rasped, breaking off as I pulled her soft, warm body against mine. “What are you doing?” Her breath moved unsteadily, just like my heart. “Are you here to yell at me?”
“Yell at you? For what?” I demanded gruffly, continuing before she had a chance to respond. “I’m not here to yell at you, especially not when you are like this.”
“What happened last night?”
“Blake…” I trailed off. This was the last thing I wanted to talk about so close to her—and the last thing her head needed.
“Tell me why, Zach,” she begged.
My walls, my resistance were being worn down. No. Not worn. Ripped down with violent, determined strokes. I clung to what was left, willing it to be enough. “How long will it take you to learn not to ask questions you don’t want the answers to?” I replied gruffly, adding, “Alcohol. That’s why.”
Alcohol was a good excuse for many things; it was also the wrong one.
“How long will you lie to me?” Her voice was even softer than before. Barely a thread. But it was made out of steel, hard and glinting with the truth.
It was a good thing her eyes were shut and she couldn’t see my face. I had enough left in me to create words that were untrue; I didn’t have enough left to fake a callous expression to match.
“For as long as it takes for you to believe it.” Her body tensed against me. Ever fearless, I sensed as she prepared to fight.
“I’m not here to yell. For once could you—” I broke off, realizing I was about to repeat words that I’d said last night. “Just relax, Blake.” This morning wasn’t about fighting; it would only make her feel worse and I didn’t think either of us could stand that.
Her head insisting that she was in too much pain to argue, she slumped against my chest and I heard her breathing begin to steady.
“Where does it hurt?”
“Head. Everywhere.” She shivered and my arm that was around her tightened. Along with the extremity in my pants.
Bed. Blake. Fuck. There were so many things I’d envisioned around those two words, especially recently. It took me a minute before I could move—or respond—before I made another mistake.
That’s how bad it was; she was hungover to the point of migraines and all I wanted to do was strip her down and fuck her until her body felt like it was going to explode for a whole different reason.
But I also wanted to hold her and care for her and take her pain away. Jekyll and Hyde had nothing on me right now.
Gently, my fingers trailed up the velvet skin of her arm before moving to the back of her neck. My other hand rose to the top of her head and, at the same time, I began to rub slow circles in both spots, ignoring, with every stroke, the way her body fit perfectly against mine. The perfect harmony.
“Zach…” she groaned my name and I couldn’t stop my hips from shifting underneath her; my name from her lips sounding dangerously close to how it had last night. “That feels… so good…”
“Shh,” I said softly, for my sake just as much as hers. “Just let me do this.”
Whether she actually listened to me for once or just fell asleep, her breaths turned shallow and her soft curves pressed deeper against me.
I continued to rub her head and neck. I should really get up and leave. I wouldn’t though. She felt too good—too right. This was one moment where I didn’t have to fight against how I felt—how right this felt. Where I didn’t have to single-handedly hold up all the walls between us.
This was my goddamn problem.
She thought she’d had me with this stupid arrangement. She thought if the fame wasn’t enough, it would be the guilt eating away at me for turning down someone in need who I’d been close to.
Bullshit.
All of it.
I said ‘yes’ for this moment. I said ‘yes’ for all these moments—all these mistakes—that put me here with her. Because, for a reason I was unwilling to admit to, she was one mistake that I would never learn from. And when it was over—when she was gone—I’d still tell myself that the high was worth the pain.
I tensed when I heard a knock on the door. I had no idea how long we’d been lying there, but apparently our time was up. I assumed it was Taylor, finally finished with her million-and-one to-dos. I wanted to hate her for pulling me from Blake. I wanted to hold her forever; but I should probably be thanking Taylor instead.
Gently shifting her to the bed, I slipped out of it and quietly left the room. Like a starving man forced to walk away from a feast, I took one last regret-laden look at her dark, curled up mass.
I pulled open the door, but it wasn’t Taylor waiting on the other side.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
Ash.
Best friend or not, his casual expression had flipped to explosive anger in the space of a second. He’d kill me—or at least try—if he could read my thoughts. It was a good thing that no matter how long a friendship has gone on, it still didn’t guarantee mind-reading capabilities.
“Bringing meds and water to your sister.”
He was still tense, like the barest thread was holding him back from letting go. “Why?”
I did my best to meet his stone-cold stare. “I ran into Taylor who was about to have a meltdown in the lobby with all the shit she has to do and she told me Blake didn’t make it out unscathed from last night. So, I offered to grab some Advil and bring it up to her.”
Not untrue.
He gave me one last hard look like it could break through to what I wasn’t saying before he pushed past me into the room.
“Where is she?”
“Sleeping.” I nodded to the bedroom.
“Did you go in there?” he demanded.
“Of course, I did. I brought the shit in and made sure that she took some so that her head didn’t explode.”
He still stared. Maybe he could know what I was thinking. Maybe he did know that the promise that I’d made to not touch her was shaping up to be the only one I’d ever break. Right after it broke me.
His shoulders dropped with a loud sigh. “Shit. Sorry.” And just as quickly as the anger came, it was gone. “I know. I know you wouldn’t… that you’re not… It’s just so fucking hard to see you two plastered all over the goddamn internet and not think that something is really going on.”
I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t. I couldn’t add another lie.
“Sometimes, I just want to wring the necks of those shitheads that work for the tabloids.” He let out a grating laugh. “Sorry, man. Ronnie asked me to check something on our Instagram and I log in to a feed of photos from you two dancing last night. And then you opened the door… Just fucked with my head there for a minute. Thought you’d been here all night.”
I choked and made a weak attempt to turn it into a laugh. Fuck.
Clearing my throat, I responded lamely, “Yeah. Well, Taylor saw a bunch of people taking photos of Baby Blake and Ronnie talking. She probably doesn’t even remember, but—”
“Yeah,” he cut me off with a nod. “I know. It would have been bad. I already got an earful from her this morning.”
I believed it. Taylor was in rare form today. Then again, she always seemed to be in rare form around Ash. I pulled my hat off and ran a hand through my hair. Guilt was squeezing my chest and if I stayed any longer I was sure Ash would start to hear my ribs crack.
“Alright. I’m gonna go finish packing.”
“Yeah, I should too. I just wanted to check on her.” He stepped toward the bedroom door before turning back to me and adding with a voice that, after almost twenty-five years, I knew was still laced with a threat, “Sorry about earlier. I know you’d never actually touch her if it wasn’t for this.”
My head jerked towards the door and I hoped it looked like a fucking nod because it was all I had.
Once in the elevator, my fist slammed into the wall. Fucking fuck.
What the hell was I doing? What the hell had I done?
I closed my eyes because her face stared at me on the poster that was plastered on the inside of the doors. It didn’t make a difference. She was plastered in my mind, too. Ubiquitous. Doubts trickled through my blood. Was resisting her worth it? Her smile. Her song. The way she moaned my name as she came.
At this point, was resisting her even possible?
I was starting to see the hard truth that it wasn’t and I had no idea what the fuck I was going to do.
And certain parts of me had far too many suggestions.