Track 17: All I Need is You
“The world is new.
All I need is you, three chords,
And a tune.”
RECKLESS. DANGEROUS.
Like skydiving without a second parachute.
This love was treacherous.
But nothing safe was worth the ride.
“Even high in the mountains, Blake Tyler forms intimate bond with fans, bringing them further into Lovestruck romance!”
I tried to listen to Tay’s warning. Zach and I even talked about it and agreed that we needed to keep the mind-blowing sex to nights when and where we knew it was safe. But then he would look at me on stage like I was the only star in his sky and before I knew it we were ducking out of dinners and conversations, meeting frantically in hallways or elevators or behind the band’s instrument cases. Touching. Kissing. Loving.
What started out as a simple tune, quickly became a melody layered with walks on the beach, sneaking out late, and soul-stealing kisses that transformed it into our song.
“I feel like I can still smell the weed,” I teased as we climbed the final flight of stairs towards the Red Rocks stage. We’d finished our show here at the Amphitheater a few hours earlier, the open venue echoing out into the red-glazed Colorado mountains. Zach had warned me—and he’d been right—about the heady marijuana scent that clung in the air. Thankfully, it was less now that the crowds were gone.
We headed back to the hotel in Denver as planned, changed, and then Zach texted me to bring a light jacket and meet him in the lobby in ten minutes. Yoga pants, lace bralette, and a loose crop top were a quick and sexy choice, my whole body anxious to know what he had in store.
Imagine my surprise when (after a thigh-squeezing make-out session in the car) we drove back out to the stage that we’d just left about an hour earlier.
With the lights off, it almost—
“Reminds you of home doesn’t it?” My head tipped back towards him as we strolled lazily through the open-air theatre, sparks flying through my body as he read my mind and his knowing eyes made my belly clench.
“With the lights off, yeah,” I agreed with a sigh.
It’s funny how some things look one way under the lights and feel completely different outside of them. Like two sides of the same coin.
Like Zach and me.
It was called Red Rocks for a reason; the stage was nestled among jutting red-orange sandstone formations, named Creation Rock, Ship Rock, and Stage Rock. (We’d gotten a brief tour of Red Rocks Park earlier before the show.) Even now, just with the moonlight, the entire place was still vibrant, still burning.
This time, I walked along the seating area that was littered with screaming fans only a few hours ago. A few rows up from the stage, I turned to look at it, barely illuminated and only the shadows putting on a show.
In the distance, I could see Denver sparkling on the horizon, buzzing and still alive. Even though we were only a few miles away, it felt like so much further because of the vast peacefulness of the park.
The air was washed clean from the scent of weed with the freshness of the full moon. I breathed deeply, soaking it all in. This was a rare view for me: no fans, no lights, no camera—and looking at the stage instead of out from it.
“Why did you bring me back here?” My eyes were still locked on the empty platform as he trailed a finger along my shoulder and down the back of my arm.
He climbed down to the next row of benches, heading for the stage. “Beautiful. Secluded,” he answered, pausing to look back at me. “Sometimes it’s a good reminder,” he nodded to the stage before hoisting himself up onto it, “that it’s just metal and wood.” He stomped on the platform. “That even though it can feel like a whole different world up here, it’s not. And you don’t need to try to be anything more than who you are or anyone besides yourself to step onto it.”
My arms hugged my chest as his words soaked in. Over the past year before this leg of the tour, I’d been slowly losing myself. Step by step. Until that day when Tay told me that my reputation was tanking. It stopped me in my tracks and when I looked back, I couldn’t even see the path that I’d come from; I couldn’t see how to get back to myself.
There are many excuses for how I got there: trying to please everyone (which is immeasurably harder when ‘everyone’ includes millions of fans), seeing the world as I wanted it and not as it was… and then believing I could will that world into existence. Not so unlike my sixteen-year-old self who thought she could trick the boy who’d grown up with her into thinking she was someone else, the self that thought a song would change his mind.
Excuses.
The reason I was lost was because I was trying to find him.
My gorgeous god.
From his rejection, I’d developed the bad habit of needing to please even at my own expense. From his memory, I searched for him in every guy that I met. I looked for forever in guys that were clearly only about the moment—and their moment in the spotlight. And from his presence, I was finding my way back.
I still didn’t feel right going out on stage and fooling the crowd with something that was real. Not that they would ever know.
But I would.
And I was the type of girl who sang her heart on her sleeve because it wasn’t right to hold those kinds of things in. Through everything, it was my fans that had kept me going. Their love. Their encouragement. Their support. As the world tried to tear me down, they stood around me and in return? I lied to them.
And that needed to change. Which meant I needed to talk to my brother.
But not tonight.
I made my way towards the stage, watching Zach as he slowly spun, looking up at the stars that turned the night into an endless diamond sky. His head tipped down to me just as I wrapped my arms around his waist.
I still felt a pinch of anxiety every time that I was the first to initiate any intimacy, afraid that he was going to pull back and push me away. But he didn’t. The instinctive thought barely formed before his hands cupped my face, tilting it to the side so that his lips could kiss along my cheek.
I mewled like a content kitten, sighing into the embrace. “It’s a beautiful night out. All the stars… that’s what reminds me of home.”
He stared at me—the intensity hitching my breath. “Of all the stars in the sky, Blakebaby, you’re the only one I’ve ever wished for,” he whispered.
My heart felt like it was performing a drumroll in my chest, ‘Introducing the most perfect man of all time…’ it announced.
My mouth parted, but no words came out. How could there? How could there be any response that would be enough?
I caught his grin just before he kissed me softly, his tongue slipping between my lips, grazing too quickly over the edges of my teeth and meeting the tip of my tongue before it was gone. “Will you sing for me?” he murmured, sucking gently on my lower lip.
I moaned and tightened myself against him, needing to be flush against his hardness. “You know I can’t stop myself,” I said breathlessly. “My body only knows how to sing for you.” I rolled my hips against his and shuddered, feeling his long, hard length against my stomach; it had been there since our lusty kiss in the car and still it grew thicker as I stayed pressed against him, trying to ease the ball of tension that rolled through every inch of my sex.
He smiled against my mouth. Actually, he laughed a little and I pulled back, my eyebrows scrunching up at him.
“I know that, babe,” he rasped, dropping a kiss on my nose. “I want you to sing for me though. With these lips.” He kissed my mouth quickly.
My face flushed, realizing he hadn’t been implying anything sexual; he actually wanted me to sing for him.
Amused by my expression, his chest rumbled against my heavy breasts. I tried to pull back, embarrassed, but his arms locked around my back, caging me to him.
“Don’t worry,” he promised, “I’ll let your other lips sing for me soon.” The red in my face deepened as the glint in his eyes shimmered devilishly. “I’ll even let them use my dick as their microphone.”
I choked on my breath as warmth rushed into my panties. At this rate, I wasn’t going to be able to find my voice to sing for him.
“I can’t believe—” I began to sputter before his mouth covered mine in a hard kiss, silencing me.
“Sing for me.” It wasn’t a question this time.
“I sang for you earlier when we were on stage,” I insisted, my words losing steam. My breath backfired sharply into my lungs when one of his hands slid up underneath my shirt to cup my breast. My eyes drifted shut as he toyed with its hard peak through the lace.
The echo of my moan was the applause he deserved for the way he played with my breasts. I could write an album—maybe two—on all the things his touch on my nipples did to my body. I wouldn’t though. God only knew what that would do to my reputation.
Was he sure he wanted me to sing for him? Because I wasn’t going to be able to do it like this…
“I want you to sing the song.”
My eyes flew open. The fire in my skin now felt like I was being raked over the coals. I shifted uncomfortably, pulling back from him.
No. No, no, no, my mind unwilling to relive the pain of the past insisted.
“My song,” he insisted. Meanwhile, my traitorous body screamed yes as his fingers rubbed and tugged the fabric of my bra over my painfully aroused nipple, turning the undergarment from tempting into torture device in the beat of a quarter-note.
I moaned, my head falling forward onto his shoulder. Dammit. I’d do anything he said if he said it with his hands.
And then his touch was gone, the night chill washing over me.
“Zach!” I gasped at the loss.
He grinned roguishly at me, dropping a kiss on my nose before stepping back just a few feet from me and sitting on the floor of the stage, unrelenting eyes staring up at me and the stars.
“Sing it for me, Baby Blake. Just one more time…”
“Why?” I sounded desperate, begging him to retract his request.
Even with how we felt about each other… with what we now were… I still knew that the song from graduation would open so many old wounds that I’d rather just forget.
He stared at me for a long moment, heavy emotions rolling through his eyes and washing over me. Desire. Need. Regret. Love.
We hadn’t said it to each other, but like any great melody, love wasn’t something that needed words, love was something that hums its way into your heart and gets stuck there, playing mesmerizingly over and over again because you just can’t get it out of your mind… body… or soul. And you don’t want to.
“I want to hear you sing it for me again. Now. So I can finally listen to it without having to hide how it makes me feel.” His voice broke and I realized how important this was to him; I realized how important making that day up to me was for him. “I want you to sing it for me so I can give you the response I should have nine years ago—the one that came from my heart.”
I swallowed, my arms holding my stomach so that I didn’t rush over to him, fall onto my knees, and blurt out just how much I loved him. (Also, so that I didn’t vomit from nervousness.) For a second, I panicked, thinking that I’d forgotten the words.
A thought almost as foolish as the one about how I was over my feelings for him.
And then my mouth opened and, for the second time in my life, I sang like my heart depended on it.
“In your eyes, I am the sunrise.
Always there and taken for granted.”
The first lines wavered. No mic. No sound system. Not even Marty to strum along with me.
“In your eyes, I am the sunrise.
Easily ignored, too familiar to be enchanting.”
All acoustic. All authentic.
“Here I am, day after day.
My heart, it rises for you.”
All my heart. All my soul.
“So, don’t walk away,
My heart, it rises for you.”
All of me.
His stare was glued to me as he stood and stepped towards me. My voice wavered but I kept singing as he got closer, his face ragged with emotion.
“Don’t turn me away.
My heart, it rises for you.”
It’s amazing how a song… a lyric… that melody… can take you back to a moment in time. The specific moment when the crowd of family and friends disappeared from my vision. When I could feel each ray of the summer sun beating on my skin, highlighting the racing of my heart as my gaze locked with his.
It didn’t matter that his beautiful eyes were the most familiar sight of my entire life; they were the only future that I wanted to look into. They grounded me and made me feel like I was flying all at the same time.
“Don’t turn me into a sad little story:
And leave the mess of my heart
That had the nerve to adore you.”
The last came out as a throaty, raw plea that would have made Adele proud.
Pure and utterly frightening silence surrounded us again. Heavy breaths the only reminder that time was still moving around us even if our love stood still.
“Beautiful.” His hands gently cupped my face, thumbs swiping lightly over my cheeks, wiping away the overflow of my emotions.
Sometimes words are enough. Sometimes words set to music are enough. But other times, what you feel for someone can’t be written or sung. This was one of those other times; the syllables and songs were nothing but drops in the emotional ocean, lost in the powerful waves that swallowed them whole.
For years I’d written about this man, but the only music that could ever convey what was between us were the beats from our hearts, the rising and falling scales of inhales and exhales, and the lyrics that my body sang from only his touch.
This love was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.
And I broke down. Tears that had been streaming down my face since the last verse, now flooded with new. He pulled me tight to him, raining kisses down on my hair and face. “I’m so sorry, Blakebaby. I’m so sorry I hurt you.”
I pulled back so I could look at him again. “It’s ok.” My weak and watery smile probably suggested differently.
“I didn’t deserve you… I don’t deserve you,” he whispered hoarsely, his voice torn up by the ragged emotions that had been locked away for so long. “I was stupid… so fucking stupid.”
“Zach…” I whispered his name, my lips searching for his.
Obliging me, his mouth slanted over mine. His kiss was demanding yet gentle, like a rip current, pulling me with a dangerous force that could only be felt underneath the calm waves. His tongue slid between my lips, searching and stroking mine. He explored every corner and licked every crevice of my teeth like he wanted to taste whatever remained of his song.
I sighed, slowly blinking up at him when his mouth pulled back slightly.
“That is what I wanted to do,” he began softly. “When you finished singing that day. I wanted to walk up on stage and kiss you like this—like I’d been dying to ever since the day you fell off your bike and onto me—the day you forced me to realize that you had breasts and long, long legs… and that you were no longer a little girl.”
“You did?” I asked dumbly simply because I just wanted to hear him say it again. Correction. The fifteen-year-old me that had been suffering inside wanted to hear him say it again because she never thought this moment would come.
He nodded, his thumb brushing over my cheek. “And then,” he continued, “I wanted to look into these shining, midnight-blue eyes and tell you that, all this time, I’ve loved you in secret.”
My heart exploded—like a star or an asteroid that finally collides with something greater than itself. A million little pieces fragmented around a love that was greater than our past, greater than our pain, greater than this ruse, and greater than my reputation.
“And I loved you without reason,” I confessed. “My heart has always been yours.”
The stakes were high, but I’d waited long enough for this moment where this love was ours.
And seventeen years after the day when I learned that sometimes losing something can be the best thing, I also learned that a heart exploding is vastly different from a heart breaking even though they both ended in pieces. That’s what the stars were in the sky—shining bits of my heart that couldn’t hold together with the love I felt for him, shimmering in their splendor.
My heart beat out of my chest. My soul shone through my eyes.
Blissful and utterly petrified. Completely and desperately frightened of what can happen when you finally have everything that you want. His lip twitched, only inches from mine. His body solid and burning against mine, his arousal creating a permanent hollow in my stomach, his intoxicating blend of pure male and potent desire invading every pore, his lips touched mine before he mouthed, “Blakebaby, I don’t deserve your heart, but it’s the best thing that’s ever been mine.”
I moaned into the kiss. Some love stories might picture this kiss as the epitome of sweet and loving. Not ours. Ours was hot and needy. Our love was raw laced with ravenous. I was on fire as his hips ground against me, still seeing stars even though my eyes were closed. My whole body salivated for more of this friction.
My arms locked around his neck and I climbed him like ivy around the thickest, hardest… hottest tree. I needed all of him and I needed him now.
I needed to replace the last bit of that memory with this—with Zach taking my willing heart and my needy body.
He groaned into my mouth as I rolled my core against his erection, quickly losing my mind as the friction set off warning flares everywhere in my body.
I barely caught his curse before my back was flat against the floor I’d been standing on hours ago, Zach jamming his arousal against where I wanted him.
“Zach…” I breathed.
He reared back and I choked, thinking he was going to leave us both hanging.
His stare was love and desire that mingled predatorily.
With a sexy smirk, he said hoarsely, “As much as I love the yoga pants, Baby Blake, all I want you wearing right now is starlight.”
He took his good ‘ol torturous time, first pulling my shoes off. Then, leaning over me, tugging my shirt up over my head before reaching one hand under my arched back and deftly unhooking my bra, my breasts spilled from the lace. I watched the battle inside him play across his face as he stared at my swollen and needy tits. My chest rose and fell unsteadily, so desperate to be touched by him. And then I watched the moment he lost, his mouth swooping down and latching on to one taut peak.
Laving over the bud, his hand cupped and kneaded my other breast. I writhed on the floor, racing towards the pleasure he teased me with as my orgasm stayed just ahead of me out of reach. My hips arched, searching for his hard cock to rub against. Hell, I would have even settled for a leg. A thigh. A hand. Anything.
But he didn’t give in. No. He stayed and proceeded to bite and suck my other breast while I whimpered, feeling like I was reaching for the moon—right there but so far out of reach.
With a pop and a grin, he released my nipple, looking up at me from underneath hooded eyes. His golden gaze pinned mine as he continued what he started—undressing me completely, my yoga pants and underwear gone in one smooth motion.
Then his eyes roamed and mine trailed along. My nipples were rosy red and glistening in the moonlight, my stomach quivered as pent up desire made my body twitch uncontrollably.
His eyes flicked to the empty seats. “I wonder how many fans picture you naked when you’re up on stage.”
“I-I think,” I said with a weak voice, “that I’m the one who’s supposed to picture them naked.”
“Do you?” He raised an eyebrow.
“No!”
He nodded, his eyes flicking back to me, drifting down until I felt his stare on my sex.
“I picture you naked,” he continued with a sexy smirk, his hand that was resting on my knee slowly drifting down the inside of my thigh.
I bit my lip, feeling my sex clench, needing him to get to there faster.
“O-on stage?” The words just left my mouth when I felt one finger slide down my slit. My hips jerked up but his finger pulled away.
“Everywhere.” His expression darkened as he lifted that finger to his mouth and sucked.
“Zach…” I pleaded.
“Now I don’t have to picture it; now, I can remember it,” he growled. “Naked. On stage. This perfect pussy wet and ready for me.”
I couldn’t even get out a ‘yes’ before he pushed two fingers inside of me. One hand planted on my hips, pinning them to the floor as his other hand worked its magic. I whimpered and cried for more of his touch, but he wanted to watch. He stayed kneeling above me as his fingers pushed in and out of my slick channel, his palm rubbing over my clit.
My heels dug into the stage, trying to push myself up harder against his hand. He wouldn’t let me, but he gave me what I needed. In and out, he hit the same spot every time. And when I reached the point where my breath was gasping in but not releasing out, he curled his fingers hard into that sweet spot and I exploded. His hand couldn’t control my hips that were powered with my climax as they jerked against him.
“Wow…” The word rushed out, hardly even sounding like me.
I heard his tight chuckle. “We’re not done yet.”
Goosebumps washed over my body. “No?” I swallowed hard watching him begin to lie down between my shaking legs.
“You should know, Blakebaby,” he blew over my swollen folds, the warm heat of his breath making my inner muscles clench greedily for more, “every song has at least three refrains.”
My brain processed his words in staccatoed syllables while my body interpreted them as whole notes. I cried out as his tongue flattened at the base of my sex, sliding all the way up to swirl around my clit.
“And my name on your lips as you come is your refrain.”
I shoved my fingers through his hair, grateful that he hadn’t worn his iconic baseball cap. Threading through the locks, I tugged harshly, partly as punishment for torture and partly because my sex was desperate to feel his tongue.
I felt the warm rush of air from his laugh before his mouth sank down over me. There was no more teasing. I felt it in the way his fingers dug into my hips, the way his body felt tight and on edge between my legs, and the fury with which he shoved his tongue inside my passage—he was close to losing control.
There was a brand-new Blake Tyler song being sung from this stage right now—one that would never come out the exact same again. Moans spiraled from my mouth as his tongue drove into me over and over again, the firm velvet rubbing against my muscles and licking my juices from them.
My head ground back into the hard wood of the stage and the stars in the sky mixed with the ones in my head as Zach sucked hard on my clit and my climax rocketed through me.
“Fuck.” The word was a Band-Aid over my pulsing sex.
I lay limply as he pushed himself up and ripped his shirt off over his head. I wasn’t sure if I had limbs anymore. Or if they worked.
One part of me still worked; still throbbing, my core clenched as I watched Zach unzip and chuck off his jeans and boxer briefs. I swallowed the pool of saliva that collected in my mouth seeing his long erection jutting out from his hips.
I was about to have sex. On stage. Under the stars.
With Zach Parker.
I may be a popstar, but I never thought I’d be classified under this type of exhibitionism.
I let those thoughts drown me for a second, my gaze held captive by his, and wondered how this dream turned out to be a reality.
He knelt back down between my thigh, his hands shoving them wide. Desire rushed from my core as he stared at me. He loved to do that, I’d learned over the past few weeks—to stare and take a moment to appreciate my sex spread wide for him. He liked to watch as it made me hot and impatiently horny. He liked to watch me squirm and my pussy drip in anticipation.
Leaning back over me, his mouth took mine with long slow strokes of his tongue. I felt him prod at my entrance that was gasping for him. Supporting himself on both hands, his hips flexed and pushed the blunt head of his arousal just inside of me.
Don’t get me wrong—I loved his fingers and his tongue.
But this fullness and the need for it was what drove me out of my mind.
“I’ll never get tired of being inside you.” His lips etched over mine as he slid all the way home.
A silent, strangled gasp escaped my mouth before he swallowed it. I was still reeling from the last two ‘refrains,’ my core sensitive and used, but still he took. And I willingly gave.
I arched my hips, needing him to move faster. I inhaled his growl before the moment of sweetness was over and he slammed into me. The amphitheater was perfect for resonating the sound of our flesh frantically slapping together, the moans and grunts of desperate need in a delicate situation.
For the first time in my entire life, I was on a stage and not putting on a show for the rest of the world.
At least I hoped I wasn’t.
This moment was just for me—and all for us.
I felt it coming. Every muscle fiber tensed like I was preparing to take the biggest hit of my life. I braced myself as my pulse quickened like a drumroll for desire.
Zach had brought me here—he’d taken a situation so public and turned it perfectly private. He’d taken the Blake the world knew and grounded her to the Blake that I was.
“Blakebaby,” his hoarseness drifted into my mind. “I love you.”
The dam broke.
My orgasm crashed around me, the potential of it held back for so long behind the wall of words that hadn’t been spoken until this moment.
My fellow stars now knew to whom I’d hitched my shine as I screamed his name. My body clenched around him, pulling him deeper and harder inside of me. I felt his low drawn-out groan before I heard it. I felt the way his body shuddered. I felt every push and pulse of his dick against my muscles. And I felt the hot jets of his release soak into every part of my body.
We gasped for air like it was going out of style—chests rising and falling together in an angry tug of war for the limited space between us. I didn’t want to move. I never wanted to move.
“Holy shit, Blay.”
I tried to laugh but he was heavy lying on me so it just sounded like I was gasping for air.
“Fuck.” He pushed up and stared down at me. “Sorry.”
I stared up at him, wondering again how all of this could be real.
“Say it again,” I whispered.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated before kissing my nose with a grin.
“Not that part.” I rolled my eyes because he was doing this on purpose. “The part where you said that you loved me.”
The grin fell away, replaced with a look that burned red—red with desire and possession and untouchable love.
“I love you, Blakebaby.” The words felt incredible—better than the shows and the fans and the Grammys and the fame. The words filled me. He completed me.
I licked my lip, soaking in every millisecond before speaking. “I love you, too, Zach.” The faintest hint of a smile tried to break through the heaviness of what those words meant to him.
Unspoken. Unreasonable. Untouchable, this love of ours.
He kissed me again softly, sealing in the words that couldn’t be unsaid, before he pushed off and rolled to the side, leaving us both lying there, on the Red Rocks stage, looking up at the stars. They winked at me in my flickering vision, knowing that what I’d found down here was worth the fall.
Good or bad, I always knew this love would leave a permanent mark, but tonight, our love was glowing in the dark.
Letting it go free, I never thought I’d feel this way again, but this love came back to me.