“Sebbie?” She calls me by the nickname I’ve hated my whole life until just then.
“Yes, Mary?” I retaliate.
She scrunches her face up for a moment, then continues. “Push me out of the plane.”
“No.” I answer, “Anything else?”
“But I want to die.” She says surprisingly, but if I know anything about her by now, there’s a reason for it, that will come in its own good time.
“Maybe later.”
“Ok, but promise me you’ll think about it,” she pleads.
“How ‘bout this? If you keep eating those chocolates and don’t leave me any, I’ll not only think about it, I’ll do it, film it and put it on YouTube.”
“YAY!” She raises her hands in celebration of her strange victory.
“Why do you want to die?” I have to ask.
“I’m just so, so happy. Everything’s gotta be downhill from here,” she explains, sighing.
My heart warms and I reach across the little table between us to squeeze her hand. “Oh. In that case, let’s just jump out of the plane together.”
“THEN who will film us?”
“We’ll post on Facebook that we’re doing it...naked... then there’ll be no shortage of people filming it.”
“Pfft, filming you maybe,” she scoffs.
“What do you mean?”
“Who’d want to see ME naked?” She snickers.
I look at her like she’s crazy. Because she must be. Right now, with her legs tucked up under her, her sweet, curvy ass in the air as she’s bent over staring out the window in our private plane, I’ve literally had to tighten my seatbelt about three times just to stop me from getting up and ravaging her in that very position.
“Hey!” I say loudly and she jumps a little, startled. “Get that sexy ass over here.”
She grins and blushes a little. I nod and she climbs off her seat and looks around.
“Don’t worry, no one’s coming.”
“Oh yeah, they’re used to your flight booty calls, no doubt.” She jokes, and then her face darkens a little, and my chest twinges a little to see it.
I undo my seatbelt and reach for her hand, pulling her towards me and she stumbles and falls into my lap.
“Hey...” I say, softer this time. “Look at me.”
Her face angles down so our eyes lock, her hair tumbles down around us, creating a curtain and enveloping us in our own private little world.
“You are so goddamned beautiful that I hired some strange man who claims to be a pilot and told him to take me anywhere in the world you told him to go and didn’t even try to get it out of you. That’s how insanely fucking gorgeous you are. And I haven’t even seen you naked yet. But I’m hoping my first time won’t be as we’re hurtling to our deaths, but if it comes to that, so be it. I ain’t dying without see that.”
“Oh, Sebbie,” she says and clutches at her heart. “It’s a good thing you do instrumental covers of love songs...because that’s the most unromantic thing I’ve ever heard!” And she falls off my lap and to the floor laughing.
“Erm.” I nudge her with my foot. “Excuse me.”
She only laughs louder as my toe pokes her in the side and apparently catches the attention of our flight attendant.
“Um, can I help you with something?” she peeks through the curtain and looks down at the cackling woman on the floor of the cabin,
“Um, just some more tonic, thank you.” I say calmly and smile at her as she glances once more at Cadence before leaving to get my drink.
“Hey! Crazy!” I get up and stand over her, one foot on each side of her hips.
She stops laughing for a moment and lies back on her back and looks up at me. Her eyes look lit up like Christmas lights and her cheeks are flushed from her laughing fit. Her neck glistens a little from a light sweat and I just want to bury my face in the carpet of soft curls framing her face.
She reached a hand towards me and I take it, letting her pull me down onto the floor with her. I lay down and she curls up against me, her leg draping over mine and her head on my chest.
“Can we stay up here forever?” she whispers against my neck, and her breath makes the hair stand up on my spine, so sweet, so sexy.
“We might have to, I don’t know where we’re going.” I run my fingers through her hair and she rests her chin on my chest, looking up at me.
“You’ll see.”
“I can wait, I’m in no hurry to be anywhere but right here with you.”
She sighs a long deep sigh. “That’s much better. See? You CAN be romantic.”
“I sure can. Now show me your boobs!” I say and reach over and squeeze her gently on the chest.
“Um,” a third voice suddenly speaks up, “I’ll just put your drink here, sir.”
And it’s ten minutes before Cadence finally stops laughing again.
CADENCE
If I were to be abducted by aliens, probed and then brainwashed by their technology and finally returned to earth after a hundred years, I would still remember the look on Sebastian’s face when he looked out the window as we flew over Uluru.
“Oh my god.” He’d sighed, and I’d had to agree with the sentiment.
“It’s nothing like I imagined it would be.” He’d finally uttered after staring out the window in awe for the minutes the pilot circled the great red rock.
I’d only nodded. The experience of Uluru is a personal and unique one, and I didn’t want to influence his in any way.
“Thank you.” He turned to me as the pilot finally flew towards the Ayers Rock airport.
I hadn’t said anything, because if anyone owed anyone a thank you, it would be me to him.
We’d just stared out our respective windows and watched the red sky sink into the red earth.
***
“The car will be ready in a minute,” Sebastian comes back after talking to the car hire guy at the booth.
“Ok, and the hotel room’s ready any time we get there. It’s about fifteen minutes from here.”
He nods and pulls me in against him, his hand resting against the small of my back. Since leaving Sydney, it seems he can’t stop touching me, wanting to be close to me. And there’s no reason for me to complain. I’ve left all my worries and concerns back in the classroom.
“You tired?” He says gently, caressing my cheek.
“No, I’m good. Happy.” I give him a smile to reassure him.
“Regret your choice?”
“No, I love it here.”
“I didn’t mean about the location. I meant...about the choice of company.”
I open my mouth to make a joke and then stop, realizing he doesn’t have any reason to trust me more than me him, and it’s not the time to test that.
“No. Except, maybe, that I didn’t make it sooner.”
***
It’s dark when we load ourselves into the rentalcar. The hire guy tells us that our resort isn’t far from there but to make sure we have our cell phone charged because there’s hardly any traffic at this time of day and into the night, and if we need help, the best thing is to call rather than wait for help.
“You ready?” Sebastian asks once I’ve clicked in my seatbelt.
“As I’ll ever be!”
We drive in a comfortable silence for a moment. It’s almost pitch black once we leave the main highway, and I look out into the dark and wonder what is looking back at me. It’s unnerving but somehow poetic at the same time. The refocus of our senses when any stimulation of one sense is completely nil. It reminds me a little of the opening of the band’s intro.
Our ruminations are interrupted by the vibration of his phone.
“Seb, we said no phones.” I remind him, when he takes his eyes off the road for a moment to glance at his phone.
“I just...I just have to take this one call, sorry.” He says before swerving to the side of the road and pressing the answer button on the phone.
“Hey.” He says.
And I can hear the female voice reply. It’s Hailey.
“Hey, what’s up?” Her tinny voice through the earpiece says.
“Yeah, um, just letting you guys know that Cadence and I won’t be at rehearsal until Monday, probably. Can you let your Dad and the guys know? And I won’t be reachable until then either.”
There’s a pause.
“Why?” She asks, and I turn towards my window, hiding the scrunched up look on my face.
“Just tell them, Hails.”
“You OK?”
“Better than ever.” I hear him reply and he pokes me gently in the back.
“You with her?”
“OK, relay the message, OK? Thanks. Talk to you soon.”
He hangs up the phone and turns to me. “All done, no more calls, I promise.”
I can’t face him yet, so I continue staring out into the dark.
“Hey, you OK?”
“She’s always going to come between us, isn’t she?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Hailey.”
“Oh god, not this again.”
“Yes, exactly, that’s exactly what I think. Every time.”
“I told you. There’s nothing –” He starts to deny.
I cut him off. “No, listen to me. You might not have any feelings for her, I don’t know, but she definitely does for you, and she makes no effort to hide it.”
“You’re crazy.” He scoffs and runs his hands through this hair.
“Do you know she’s supposedly slept with half the band?”
“No. She hasn’t.”
“Yes, she has. She said it herself! Sarah heard her bragging about it in the bathroom.”
“Look, I get that women are weird around her, but I told you, there’s never been anything between us. What you’re seeing is just very close friends. She’s been on tour with us, in the hard times and the good times, that’s all it is.”
“Well, I can’t compete with that...” I admit, and suddenly, I’m so tired.
“You don’t have to.”
“I just...I need some air...”
I throw open the door and step outside. It’s suddenly cold and I wrap my arms around me.
“Cadence! Get back in the car!”
I ignore him and hear his car door open and his footsteps crunching in the dirt as he runs over to me.
“Cadence!” He grabs me from behind and pulls me hard against him, his face burying in the back of my neck.
I try not to melt against him, reaching up to brush a tear from my eyes. “Why is this so hard, Sebastian?”
“It doesn’t have to be. Just trust me, why can’t you just trust me?” He spins me around and in the dark I can just make out his face through my tear-filled eyes.
“Make me. Give me no other choice, Sebastian. Make me not care, make it so nothing else matters, the fear, the distrust, the not knowing. Make it so...I can’t help but be with you.”
His eyes burn into me, and I’m suddenly hot.
“Goddammit, Cadence, don’t you know how much I want you? How hard it’s been this last month to force myself to hold back from you? Do you? Do you know how much it physically hurt not to just bury myself inside you? How much I wanted to make you mine and only mine for all time?
“I don’t believe you.” I say and he growls.
I run my fingertips over my lips then reach out and press them against his mouth.
“Show me.”
Those two words release him from any restraint he ever enforced on himself.
He grabs my arms around the biceps and pushes me back against the car. Tucking his hand under my ass he lifts me up and wraps my legs around his waist. Leaning me back against the car door, he drags his lips along the line of my neck.
I feel his teeth graze the skin. A moan comes from somewhere, and I think it’s me. My hands come up to tangle in his hair and I feel his hand run along my thighs as he tightens them around his waist.
“Cadence. Baby, you drive me so crazy,” he groans as I grind against him.
His tongue is hot against the valley between my breasts as he drags his head up to meet mine, pausing for just a moment to take a breath before ravaging my mouth with his.
Lost in his kiss, I barely feel him reach between us to fumble with his zipper.
“God, I’m so fucking hard. You have no idea how much I’ve dreamt of this, Cadence.”
I can’t even tell him, that I’ve fantasized about him just as much. His mouth is suddenly everywhere, on my mouth, on my neck, suckling my nipples through the thin material of my dress. My back arches, cleaving to him, wanting more, wanting every inch of my body, my skin to feel his.
“Make me yours, Sebastian,” I hear myself rasp.
He growls and I feel his hands fumble with my skirt, pushing it up my thighs to bunch at my waist. And suddenly, his fingers are inside me. I feel myself part, taking him in, feeling him make his way deeper and deeper.
“Fuck.” He groans, and I can’t breathe for wanting him.
“Are you this wet for me?” He wants to know. I can only groan in response.
“Are you ready for me?” he asks, pressing the ball of his hand against me, driving his finger in deeper. I hold back a moan and nod and bite my lip. I’ve been ready for him for weeks. I feel him reach into his pocket and the sound of a foil wrapper tearing.
And then suddenly he stops. Leaning over me, he stares me in the eyes, they’re darker than I’ve ever seen them, and I just want to dive inside them.
He kisses me softly, a moment of sweetness that makes my heart dance, and gently touches the side of my face.
Then just as I’m about to whisper his name, I feel him position his hips, and slide all the way inside me.
The breath catches in my throat, and I almost choke. His cock is thick and hard, and he’s driving himself as far as he can into the core of me. My body tenses and contracts, trying to make room for him, but it’s not meant to be easy. Fucking him is exactly what I thought it would be, hard, furious, overwhelming.
All I know is that with every thrust he’s filing me up, more and more, and I’m taking him, deeper and deeper, making him mine as well as becoming his.
“Cadence, baby, Cadence. You are so sexy. Take me, please, just take me,” he moans over and over.
I arch my back and meet his thrust with a grind of my hips and he roars, and the sound echoes in the dark. I lift myself up by pulling on his neck, rocking my hips and he growls his approval. Each motion has him grazing against my aching bud and I know it’s coming.
I can feel it, in the pit of my stomach, feel it build.
He pace quickens and I know he’s right there with me.
My legs tighten around his waist and his thrusts become shorter and faster, each one pushing me closer and closer.
His breath cools the sweat dripping on my neck.
“Oh, god, Sebastian,”
“Yes, yes, yes...”
And then, something breaks inside me, and a flood of pleasure spreads like wildfire from the roots of my scalp through every cell in my body.
I hear a faraway scream and Sebastian pulling my body into his arms. He grunts again and again and his hips grinds against mine, and I feel him explode, his body shaking and shattering.
He crushes my mouth with his and our breaths and lips fight to find room around our climax.
I fall limp back against the car and he leans against me, my legs still loosely gripped around his waist.
I try to catch my breath, but it’s only coming in short spurts. My body is still convulsing from the receding waves of orgasm.
My eyes closed, I feel his head rest on my chest, his breathing short and fast.
I wonder if it happened after all, that he pushed me out of that plane, and that was me falling and falling into him and this eternity of pleasure.
Sebastian’s hands come up to hold up my legs, my muscle power all but lost.
“So, I guess we can really consider our contract null and void.”
I giggle and run my fingers through his hair, pulling his head back down to me for a kiss.
“Hmmmm.”
“Maybe we can write up a new one instead.” I suggest.
“Ok. That one will be easy.”
“Yeah? What do you think I should put in it?”
“Just the one line: Cadence’s wish is Seb’s command.”
I sigh and tremble from the aftermath. “In that case...I would like to invoke the terms of our contract.”
“Ohh? You little minx.” He tickles my neck with his tongue and I feel his finger slip through the drenched folds of my sex. “And what is that?”
“Feed me! I’m so bloody hungry!”
He roars with laughter and I can’t help but think how it sounds even better than his cello playing.