16

sebastian

 

“You ever play before?”

I placed my full glass of whiskey and the bottle onto a table next to my DW Collector’s Series kit and sat down on the cushioned leather stool, lowering the seat until it was uncomfortable. I grabbed one of the sticks resting against the snare, and watched her as the birch spun between my fingers.

Tabby was standing with her back to the closed door, her fingers clutched around her empty glass. “No,” she replied, shaking her head. “Greyson rarely plays around me, let alone lets me try.”

“First time for everything,” I said with a lift of my lips. I scooped both sticks into one palm and held them out to her. “Come on.”

“You want me to play?”

“Yep.” I stood up, walking around the kit and encouraging her to take the sticks.

Reluctantly, she handed me the glass and accepted the sticks in trade. I welcomed her to sit on the throne with a grand sweep of my arm. She rolled her eyes, but accepted the invitation, walking around and sitting down.

Positioning myself behind her, I crouched down and lifted her feet, placing one on the bass pedal and the other on the hi-hat pedal.

“Heels up,” I instructed with a smile, not oblivious to the intent way she stared at me as I maneuvered her body. Like a doll.

Standing up, I took one of her clenched hands and pulled the stick free. I manipulated her fingers around the stick, positioning her grip just so. I was satisfied to find her mimicking with her other hand and nodded my approval.

“You’re a good student,” I praised, gripping her forearms and positioning the tip of one drumstick against the snare; the other against the hi-hat.

“Thank you. All my teachers thought so.” She surprised me with a fluttery giggle. She’s nervous. “I’m going to suck so badly at this. I have zero coordination.”

“Nah,” I insisted, shaking my head. “It’s your first time. I’ll be gentle.”

Tabby sucked an inhale through her teeth at the blatant insinuation I wasn’t at all sorry for.

Kneeling behind her, I said, “We’ll do something totally basic. We won’t even worry about the pedals yet, okay, so put your feet down.” I pressed her Chuck-covered feet against the pedals with a hit of the bass drum and the closing of the hi-hat. “Just like that. Keep them there. What you’re gonna do is up here …” I covered her wrists with my hands and felt the beat of her pulse beneath my fingertips. “You’re gonna hit the snare twice, hi-hat once. Like this …”

Bum-bum-chh. I moved her hands, playing the simple beat, with my chest to her back and my temple to hers. God, was this only a ploy to get closer? Yes and no. Mostly yes. But she was tense and desperate for a release I wasn’t sure she’d accept through sex. The next best thing I could offer was this—the only other thing I could offer.

I assisted her again—bum, bum, chh—and she leaned back a little into my chest. I smiled, nudging her forward.

“No slouching,” I scolded teasingly.

“Sorry,” she muttered, poking her tongue between her lips.

With a reluctance nagging at my nerves, I released her wrists and sat back on my heels. “Okay, Thumbelina. Flying solo now. Try it.”

“Oh God,” Tabby groaned, throwing her head back.

The words. The toss of her hair. A dirty sequence of images flashed through my mind and I had to pinch my eyes shut and shake my head to chase them away.

“Come on. Just try it once and I’ll let you off the hook.”

With another low groan and a deep breath, she bobbed her head to the tune I’d instructed. Then, with stiff arms and gritted teeth, she made a solid attempt.

Bum. Bum. Chh.

“See?” I grinned, absurdly proud over something so basic and lacking in skill. “Not so bad, right?”

Tabby looked over her shoulder, beaming with pure joy. “Oh my God, I feel so completely stupid for being this happy.”

Chuckling, I moved to kneel beside her. “Wanna really blow your own mind?”

“Hell yes,” she grinned with confidence, suddenly uninhibited.

“Okay, with each hit of the hi-hat, you’re also gonna hit the bass. Think you can do it?” And although she eyed me warily, I talked her through every step, puffing her up with confidence. Then, ten minutes later, she was playing with both sticks and a pedal. She played like a toddler taking their first steps—nervous and unsure—but still she played and the excitement emanating from her swallowed me whole, and I grinned with her.

“I can’t believe I did that,” she sighed happily, handing me the sticks.

“Told you.” I smiled encouragingly.

“Now, you play,” she directed, standing up and pressing her back to the wall behind the kit.

“After what you just did? Hell no, I don’t think I could stand the humiliation.” I shook my head profusely, crossing my arms.

“God, you’re an asshole,” Tabby muttered around a sigh.

“I’m just teasing. You really should be proud,” I insisted, adjusting the height of the stool. “I just don’t want you to feel bad. I don’t want you to compare what you—”

“Sebastian,” she drawled impatiently.

“Fine,” I grumbled, already quirking my lips and itching with the anticipation of playing. I positioned my feet on the pedals and pointed a stick over my shoulder at her. “Now, my beautiful assistant, I need you to do me a favor.”

“What’s that?” Tabby asked lightly.

Guiding her with the stick, I instructed, “Over there is an old-ass iPod sitting in a speaker dock. Be a doll and hit play.”

With a grudging sigh, Tabby pushed away from the wall and walked around the drum kit. I followed her with hungry eyes. The enunciated sway of her hips in skin-tight jeans. The lift and drop of her shapely ass. The heart-shape it took on when she slowly bent over to eye the device, ensuring I was sufficiently aroused and shifting uncomfortably on my seat.

After turning on the music, the room filled with the Foo Fighters and I was instantly disappointed when she stood up and turned to face me. A coy smirk shaping her lips. “By the way, I know you had the remote next to you.”

Well, isn’t this interesting. “Oh yeah?”

“Mm-hmm,” she nodded, crossing her arms.

“But you still chose to indulge me, huh?” I cocked a brow.

She sighed and lifted her gaze to the air, listening. “I love this song,” she mentioned lightly, ignoring my comment.

“Who doesn’t?” I nodded, lifting my lips into a lopsided smile, as “Everlong” filtered through the air. “It’s my absolute favorite.”

“To play, or to listen to?”

“Both.” I smiled as I reached to the side and grabbed a chair from the corner of the room, pulling it over and patting the seat. “Come. Sit.”

Tabby eyed me intently as I stopped the song with the remote and got it ready to play again, pausing while I waited for her to situate herself. I expected her to gingerly sit herself down, crossing her legs and folding her hands in her lap. But she all but shocked the shit out of me when she kicked off her Converse and pulled her knees to her chest, perching her feet at the edge of the seat. Her toenails were red and black.

“Those are my favorite colors.” I tapped the end of one stick to her biggest toe, and she hid her smile behind her knee as she nearly whispered, “Mine too.”

Grabbing the remote again, I pressed play, holding her gaze as the first guitar notes drifted through the speakers and I positioned my sticks, waiting for my cue. I could practically play this song in my sleep—it’d been one of my most-used since its release in ’97—and I was able to drift along through the heat of her gaze during those first few hits of the hi-hat. But after those introductory notes, my music pulled me in and my concentration took over, just as the base drum kicked in.

I gritted my teeth, exercising the muscles in my arms with the tedious taps of the hi-hat, broken with the hit against the snare. Each chorus was led with a whip of my hair, banging my head to the beat, as I sang along on autopilot to one of the most romantic songs I’ve ever known. And, with every kick of the bass and beat of a tom, I felt her eyes on me.

It wasn’t until the lull in the song, where all but the guitar stops, that I looked back to Tabby. With sweat beading against my forehead and hair in my face, I knew exactly how I looked, and yet her stare held nothing but the same hunger I’d been feeling all goddamn day. Her feet were now on the floor, as she teetered closer to the precipice of the chair. Ready to lunge.

My hands were begging to drop the sticks, to throw them across the room and pull her onto my lap, but I wasn’t going to. This was her call. Whatever she wanted, I would give, but she’d have to tell me first. She’d have to show me. The woman was so fickle, and I watched her as I finished playing, waiting for the moment when she would change her mind.

It didn’t come.

With the final guitar riff, I laid the sticks onto the snare, and Tabby was on her feet, her hands reaching out to grasp the sides of my face. The song was on repeat—it usually was while I practiced—and as it began again, she was tipping my head back, bending her neck, and pressing her lips to mine faster than I had a chance to react. Her need for control was immediately startling and so fucking refreshing, as her tongue coaxed my mouth open, diving in to acquaint itself with mine and my teeth and the inside of my lips.

Finally catching up, I responded with a groan. She tasted like whiskey and mint, fire and ice. A perfect combination of what I knew to be her. Reaching for her arms, I pulled her down to straddle my lap and tugged at the band holding her hair in place. It slipped away and all of that red came undone, cascading over my hands in waves. I thrust my fingers into it. Tangling, twisting, tying myself to her as our mouths opened wider, our tongues delved deeper, and I was almost certain she could swallow me whole if she tried.

It was when Tabby moved her hips against mine that I think her trance was broken. One press of my desperate erection between her legs and she was shaking her head, unthreading her hands from my hair and moving backward to stand up.

“We need to stop,” she abruptly decided.

I opened my eyes, finding she hadn’t yet, and replied, “Okay.”

“I shouldn’t be doing this. I … I have my meeting to prepare for,” she proclaimed, making excuses.

Still, I nodded, and still, I sat. “Okay.”

Stepping backward once more, her eyes still shut and unable to look at me, she nearly knocked over a cymbal stand. I reached out with an urgent grasp, stopping the teetering chrome from crashing to the floor, and chuckled.

“Easy there, Thumbelina.”

That was when she opened her eyes, now taking me in, and I allowed myself the moment to look at her. Really look at her. Her striking emerald eyes and her ruby hair in waves against the smooth pallor of her face. With the black shirt she wore, the tight jeans and the red and black polish on her toes, she looked like a punk-rock Disney princess. With “Everlong” on repeat, I felt that, for the first time since meeting her, I was seeing this woman for who she truly was.

And she was beautiful.

“W-what?” she stuttered, tangling her fingers together over her stomach.

I shook my head. “What?” I repeated.

“What are you looking at?”

“You are fucking gorgeous,” I blurted out, without a single care to hold my tongue. I never had before—why start now?

Shaking her head, she pulled her eyes away from mine. “You’re only saying that now because I just made out with you.”

“No,” I protested, grabbing her hands and putting a stop to the nervous twisting. “I’m telling you you’re fucking gorgeous, because you are. The fact that you made out with me was only a bonus, and it was a good one, but I promise, Tabby, I never say anything I don’t mean.”

Her gaze narrowed skeptically. “Why do you call me that?”

“What?”

“Tabby.”

“Should I not call you Tabby?”

“No, it’s fine.” She hummed thoughtfully, dropping her gaze to our hands, still linked together. “I think I’m gonna go prepare for my meeting tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“Good night, Sebastian,” she said, pulling her hands from mine and moving quickly toward the door.

“Night, Tabby,” I responded.

As she left the room, I grabbed the remote and stopped the music.