Chapter Five
Ashland
I pumped my cock harder, my gaze on Renee and hers on me.
“Yes!” the naked blonde panted from her bent over position between my spread knees. Her face was so close to mine I could feel her hot breath on my skin. “Harder,” she begged, her passion glazed eyes dipping to my lap where pre-cum slickened my shaft. “Fuck me harder.”
“Babe.” My lip curled. I slowed my strokes. “You forget who’s in charge of this scene?”
“Ash, please don’t tease. I’m so close.”
“Grip her hips harder,” I lifted my chin making eye contact with the guy who was fucking her from behind. “She likes it a little rough.”
The guy groaned. His eyes were nearly black. He was beyond talking, but he complied with my directions. He slammed his cock inside her.
“Oh!” Renee approved whimpering then crying out as his thrusting deepened. Her breasts bounced in front of my face, but she didn’t lose her hold on the leather ottoman that separated her from me. I stroked my cock faster. The sounds of their heaving breathing and flesh slapping together was the only other sound besides my measured respirations inside the room.
“Faster. She’s nearly there.” The guy grunted and picked up the pace. He started drilling her. Renee squeezed her eyes shut. She was there and so was the dude. His body stiffened. He planted himself deep. His fingers dug into the skin at her hips. She moaned low and long. Her thighs quivered. Shuddering, I watched her come. Then I closed my eyes a couple of seconds, used my imagination and felt the wet heat of myself as I erupted all over my hands.
A moment later, I opened my eyes and snapped a couple of tissues from the box on the table beside me. After doing what I needed to do, I drew my jeans up, buttoned a couple of buttons and stood. “I’m getting cleaned up in the master bath. You two are welcome to use the guest room for whatever.” No one went inside my room but me. Not even Renee. Without another word, I stalked from the room. I made it to the mouth of the hallway behind the kitchen before it hit me, the flicker of disappointment in Renee’s expression and the shit-ton of it inside of myself.
Suck it up, Ash. This is your life. And this was our arrangement. A consensual arrangement. She knew the score. The guy she had called up on Tinder and brought in had certainly been apprised. Voyeuristic scenes where I called all the shots and watched someone else get fucked used to be a preference. Now they were all I had. All I allowed myself anyway.
Inside my room, I tried to strip off the feeling of dissatisfaction as I peeled off my jeans. I folded the pants neatly and dropped them in the hamper. The hardwood floors felt cold beneath my feet as I continued toward the bath. No reason to linger in the bedroom. It was an uninspired space. King mattress on a frame, boxes for nightstands, a dresser with a mirror. I hadn’t gotten much beyond the living room with furnishings that had a cohesive vision. No time. Not much interest really. The only personalization within the bedroom space that really mattered to me was the floor to ceiling windows that faced the ocean that I loved and had missed so much during all those years on the road.
I stopped in front of them, naked though it didn’t matter since the windows were unidirectional. I could see out, but no one could see in. Much how I had structured my life. I stared out into the cloudy night for a moment. I couldn’t see the stars just the waves crashing into the concrete pier. The water churned, almost as if it were angry. It would be cold. The spray that lifted into the arcs of light from the pier would sting exposed skin. My thoughts drifted. Her again. Even my thoughts pursued her. Was she cold? Had she tended to the abrasions on her hand? It had clawed at my insides all day that she had been injured trying to get away from me. And the way she had looked at me, her eyes stormy like the ocean was tonight. Stormy like my thoughts. Did she have somewhere safe to go on a cold, unsettling night?
As much as I loved the ocean, I found no answers to my questions in the waves. Shaking my head, I sighed and almost wished I had taken Ramon up on his offer. It would have given me a distraction from my own tumultuous thoughts.
I turned away from the windows and entered the bathroom. Going straight to the shower, I popped open the door and flicked the dial all the way over to hot. I avoided my reflection in the long mirror over the double sinks. No way in hell did I want to acknowledge, let alone confront the me who stared back. “You got off,” I mumbled at him. “Get the fuck over yourself.”
I got in the shower. I scrubbed. I lathered. I washed my hair, rinsed and got out again. Snagging a big white towel from the heated rack, I dried off, tucked it around my waist and reentered the bedroom.
“Shit, Renee.” I stopped short. “What the hell?”
“He’s gone. The guy I picked up for us on Tinder.”
“That’s well and good, but…”
“Don’t you even want to touch me anymore, Ash?” Her expression crestfallen, her voice hitched on my name. My fingers twitched. Renee and I had been through a lot. Over the years, I’d allowed her in more than most, but the boundaries were set, established. She could come to the line, but not go across it. No one could. That was a place reserved for only one. Me. I kept my arms by my sides.
“You know that’s not the way we are,” I reminded her.
“One time…”
“One time that didn’t work out and that was before my diagnosis.” I could feel my expression hardening as I recited the facts the doctors had given me. “I’m HIV positive. I can continue to be sexually active with minimal risk to my partners as long as I use protection. I can live out a life as normal as anyone else provided I take my antiviral meds religiously.”
“This isn’t normal, Ash. And you’re barely living. You’ve taken it to the extreme, these parameters you’ve set for yourself. The no touching thing during sex we do now, I don’t understand it. And I don’t understand why you gave up the band when you love music so much.”
“I only gave up touring,” I corrected. “It’s too exhausting and makes my body too susceptible to secondary infections. I still have my music. I just produce and compose it now.” My eyes narrowed. “What is this really about, Renee?”
“This isn’t working for me anymore.”
“It was working for you just fine fifteen minutes ago.”
She flinched, and I felt like an ass.
“I’m sorry.”
“I am, too, Ash. I need more from you. That connection we used to have grows fainter each time I come over. It’s almost like scening with a total stranger now.” I didn’t argue with her. She was right. I felt exactly the same way. “I can go clubbing if I want something like that. Just do a hookup with someone random like that guy tonight.”
“That’s not smart, Renee.” My fingers curled into fists. I wanted to grab her by the upper arms and shake some sense into her. But I wouldn’t touch her or anyone else when I was pissed. I was in control of myself. A man wasn’t a man if he wasn’t the master of himself. Another valuable truism from my father. The clincher on that lesson had been seeing the marks Linc’s father left on his body and deeper ones on his soul. My cousin and I both had damage we carried on the inside from our childhood. His from his drunken old man. Me from my mother’s struggles with mental illness. “Promise me you won’t put yourself at risk like that.”
Her shoulders went back.” You don’t control my decisions outside the things we do in our scenes, Ash.”
“I know that.”
“And you’re fine with that?” She cocked her head to the side. “You’ve got your life arranged just like you want it.” She sighed. “I guess that the fact that I’m in love with you doesn’t fit your neurotic narrative.”
I stiffened.
“Case in point.” She rolled her eyes. “My emotions are my own. Deal with it. But unlike you I want to nurture my feelings not neglect them. I won’t keep going on like this. We either move beyond the lines you’ve drawn or we fall back to just being friends without benefits.”
I watched her stomp out of my room, then glanced at the rustic hardwood beams and scalloped ceiling as if there were answers up there about how to deal with women. Renee. The homeless girl. It seemed all I had lately were women running away from me.
Fuck it.
I grabbed a set of sticks from the dresser and headed for the rooftop where I had my kit. I didn’t want to rot in my own thoughts anymore. I didn’t want to worry about what I was going to do about Renee’s ultimatum. And I sure as hell didn’t want to consider what it meant that I couldn’t stop obsessing about the Lakers Girl, and that it had been her not Renee or anyone else I had been imagining tonight when I had closed my eyes and jacked off into my hand.