Lyla Simon was breaking a sweat, skin glistening like wet obsidian while the band drove her hard through fatback anthems of desperation and betrayal. She was an avenging angel of lust in every song, full of anguish and the perfume of human strain. She moved around the mic stand like the bass line was coming from the center of her body, her voice slicing the humid air like a whip above the heads of a packed crowd.
In a black, sequined minidress - not loose, not tight, glittering half as much as her voice – dreadlocks flowed around her shoulders. Her arms and legs were hard and slender to the point of looking stingy, yet she stalked the stage like an animal born to rule the bars of its own cage – vital and strong, yet something haunted and emaciated inside.
She almost looked out of sync with the power of the songs, singing to the ether as if she were sculpting air inside her throat. Standing little more than five feet, her style was too eclectic for the mass market. She was too rocky for the soul lovers and too soulful for the rockers. Her concerts were always in small venues crowded with fans who followed her with cultish loyalty. She was the Haitian born Medusa, turning them all to stone with the wrong voice in the wrong body.
Case Rawlins was listening from the balcony, standing rock still with his hands on the metal rail. He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off Lyla since the beginning of the first set. The sight of her gleaming thighs and throat flexing as she sang made it feel as if the music were coming from somewhere else in the universe and pouring into the world out of her body. So he closed his eyes to listen and lose himself in the raw purity of a wailing angel. He was dancing on the inside, beautiful and weightless. When the explosion ripped through the air he wasn’t sure it wasn’t part of the music until everything gave way to chaos and screams.
When he opened his eyes, Lyla was staring straight up at him from her place onstage. There was a look of dazed shock in her eyes, and she was singling out Rawlins’ face as if she were looking to him for confirmation of what had just happened.
Flames were eating up a chunk of wall behind the bar. The room was just beginning to fill with smoke, and people were clamoring to get out. The bouncers near the entrance were screaming at everyone to stay calm. The crowd was rushing toward the sound of their voices, passing under the balcony toward the doorway out to the street, out of Rawlins’ sight. But there were too many bodies and not enough room to handle the bottleneck.
The band were looking around for the best way offstage, and while the balcony emptied out fast, worsening the glut toward the only exit, Rawlins felt a sense of calm drop over him. He gave Lyla a calm, slow nod to reassure her nothing was going to happen to her. It didn’t change the look of abject fear on her face, but there was a feeling of absolute certainty so deep in his bones he didn’t think to doubt it. He gave her subtle smile.
Bottles full of high proof liquor heated up and burst, the liquid igniting and pouring flame down on top of flame. There was no one left behind the bar, and Rawlins assumed the bartenders must have bolted out a back way no one else knew about. There had to be another exit or the club would never have gotten a license.
There was a stairway going down on each side of the balcony, but they were still choked with people trying to get down them without causing a stampede. The flames were spreading fast and the air was beginning to fill with fumes. A fresh wave of yelling and screams underneath made it sound like someone fell down.
Rawlins ran his fingers through the fine strands of dark brown hair he could never keep from dangling in his face. He wanted to take a deep breath to brace himself, but the smoke was building and rising.
Yet that surreal calm he felt inside stayed with him as he took the next few seconds to survey the room. The air was quickly growing thick with fumes. Only Lyla remained onstage now, gazing off at the crowd choking the only exit with a look of hopelessness, as if she’d already decided she wasn’t going to make it out. Her band was down on the floor surveying the massive crush toward the exit.
A woman in high heels on the stairway to Rawlins’ left had twisted her ankle and the man she was with was half carrying her down. The people behind them were pushing dangerously close.
Case realized the greatest crisis he’d ever faced was being too many runs behind in the late innings of the farm team baseball he once played. He’d been adequate for the B league and never made it any further. He’d graduated college as a B minus student, and now drove for a rideshare service at night despite owning property. They used to say he could’ve gone to the big league, but in the end, his heart had never been in it. It was never more than just something he knew how to do, nothing he loved enough to sweat for.
Then there’d been the ugly, public catastrophe with his ex-fiancé, but his life was simple now and he didn’t have the slightest desire for a change. He didn’t have to wonder if he was handsome, but he had the kind of good looks people had to look at for a while to decide were there.
As he watched the fire begin to cover the entire wall behind the bar, a strange knowledge came over him this would not be his night to burn. Nor anyone else’s. He felt it with a clarity he would never question or understand.
He grabbed the balcony rail with both hands and vaulted over it, taking the ten-foot drop and landing on his feet. He quickly oriented himself and surveyed the room, now seeing where the fire had already spread to form a barrier between the exit and the main room. At least fifteen people were stuck inside a nightclub in violation of even the most basic fire codes.
He went to the woman with the twisted ankle first, helping the man she was with get her off the stairs so the people behind them could get down more quickly. Then he turned and spotted Lyla, still onstage, looking off at the burning exit while her drummer was searching for a way out behind the stage.
Case felt bad when he saw the mortal fear in her eyes. Nothing would happen to her tonight, but she wasn’t in a position to realize it now.
He walked toward the bar and around the far end where the flames hadn’t reached. He went through the passageway behind and into the storage area he knew had to be there. There was a small alcove with pocked wallboard and a heavy metal door onto the alley. When he tried to open it, it wouldn’t budge. It had to be blocked somehow, or else bolted. The latter idea was unthinkable – criminally negligent at best, or just plain evil.
But despite the implications, Case found himself hoping it was only bolted. It would be easier to break through that way. He actually felt himself smile when he spotted the ax and the extinguisher. The possibility of evil and hatred did nothing to change that feeling in his bones. It was too late for a fire extinguisher, so he picked up the ax and started to swing the blunt side at the door.
The smile finally broke across his face as he remembered watching fastballs shooting across home plate. He swung the ax in swift, graceful arcs, losing count of how many, until he made a solid strike against the part of the door where the bolt on the outside gave way.
The door swung open and tepid, summer night air hit him in the face, but the idea of walking through it never occurred to him. He just dropped the ax on the floor and walked back out into the main room.
The fire was rapidly spreading down the wall along the corridor toward the main entrance where people were still trying to get out without trampling each other. Two people were already on the floor looking dazed and probably injured somehow in the crush. There was a woman passed out at the foot of the balcony stairway on the bar side. The room was thick with hot, acrid smoke by now, and Rawlins went immediately to the unconscious woman.
Lyla was down off the stage on the main floor standing with her bandmates. They were watching the flames spread into the main room. The look on her face wasn’t much different from the way she looked in the middle of a song.
“Over here!” Rawlins shouted to the people remaining inside. “There’s a back way!”
Anyone who was still on their feet rushed toward the passageway where Rawlins was standing. He noticed Lyla holding the spikes she’d been wearing onstage. Then she was shoved off balance by bigger people rushing past her, oblivious to everything but flight. He could see her ankle twist as she went down with a yelp.
Then he realized he was the last one still on his feet left inside the room. A man and two women were lying unconscious on the floor, and then there was Lyla, sprawled on the floor, gripping her ankle in pain but at least still conscious.
Rawlins quickly went to the singer and squatted beside her.
“Can you walk?”
“I…don’t know.”
She sounded perfectly aware of everything that was going on around her, but she was looking at him like something she wasn’t sure was real. It felt strange having her look at him at all. He’d seen her perform half a dozen times and could barely blink as long as she was onstage. It was almost as if everything was out of place, except Rawlins was just as calm as he’d felt when he first heard the explosion. Lyla’s eyes didn’t belong on him. His belonged on her from some dark, obscure corner. That’s just the way things were meant to fall down.
Then he scooped her up in both arms and carried her outside. He set her back down in the alley, leaning back against the building on the other side. Just as quickly, he turned and went back in. He picked up one of the unconscious women and carried her out the same way. She hadn’t felt light and she hadn’t felt heavy. Rawlins got the other woman out the same way and went back for the man.
The man was a lot heavier than the women, but Case found himself lifting the unwieldy body just like the others. He could feel the extra weight in the strain of his leg muscles, cortisol juicing his brain, but he stopped long enough to look around the burning club and make sure there was no one left inside. Then he carried the man outside.
By the time he got the man out into the alley, Lyla was gone. The other two women had regained consciousness, but they were still lying where he’d put them down. He carried the man out toward the street. The fire trucks were just arriving, and he laid the man’s body down close to the curb where the rescue teams would find him. Then he went back down the alley and helped one of the women onto her feet and walked her to the street.
“Sit here,” he told her, guiding her to the curb near the unconscious man. “There ought to be medics along anytime.”
He went back for the other woman and followed through the same motions. The firefighters already had hoses hooked up and were blasting water into the fire. The flames were out of control by now, and the street was crowded with people who’d just been inside.
No one paid Rawlins any attention once he faded away from the people he’d carried out. He stood in the middle of the chaotic throng, still feeling placid despite the pounding of his heart. His blood was rushing. He was alive and unscathed.
The most that would be lost now was a rundown old building. Rawlins stood where he was, but he drifted away. For him, it was already over and all he wanted to do was throw his arms around a beautiful woman let her remind him he was alive. He smiled, feeling foolish but strangely content. Then he zig-zagged his way out through the crowd and started to walk away.
On his way past the growing crowd of onlookers, he passed Lyla sitting on the curb with her knees up to her chest. The gusset of her skimpy white panties was puffed out between her dark, glistening thighs. She was this rumpled, fallen piece of elegance. She looked lost and yet keenly aware of everything.
“Hey! Hey, you,” she called.
Rawlins brought his eyes up to her face and smiled.
“You’re ok,” he said, not asking.
“Where are you going?”
The question made him stop. The whole of idea of where to go after what they were going through didn’t seem to matter. At the moment, it felt like there were only two places in the world: where they were right now, and everywhere else. “I don’t know,” he said. “Anywhere that isn’t here.”
He looked around as if he might be able to see the right place to go from where he was standing.
“Take me with you,” she said.
II
Her voice brought him back to that dainty, snow-white puff of panty gusset between her raised thighs. It seemed oddly comforting anything so fresh and pristine could survive the inferno the firemen couldn’t keep up with now. Her complexion was so dark her skin might have had a charred look if it weren’t for the way she was glowing. He wasn’t sure if it was because she was sweating from the unrelenting heat encompassing everything around them, or if it was something that just came with being born to cry for angels too timid to fall.
He raised his eyes to her face and felt the silent animal that lived inside him shift in its seat.
She reached up at the same time he reached down and their hands locked. She floated to her feet and then faltered on the injured ankle. Rawlins had to catch her body as she fell against him with a tiny grunt.
“Don’t think I can walk so good right now,” she said.
“S’okay,” he said. “What happened to your shoes?”
“Lost ‘em, I guess. Can’t walk in ‘em now anyway.”
“S’pose not. Just grab me around the middle and put your weight on me instead of your foot. Maybe that’ll work.”
“Yeah. Maybe that’ll work.”
He put his arm around her waist at the same time and they took a few strides before they were limping in tandem. She was heavier and stronger than she looked.
“You gotta car?” she asked when they reached the first corner.
“Mhm, yup, sure.”
The car was still three blocks away. Rawlins kept a slow pace while Lyla limped against him. Half way down the next block, they heard another explosion and a collective cry of surprise from the crowd on the street watching the firefighters at work. Lyla winced and briefly tightened her hold around his middle.
He stopped and they turned to look back. Nothing had changed except the strange glow of the fire.
“Can we keep on?” Lyla said after a moment.
They turned back in the direction to the car, making labored progress down the middle of the street. There was a blood red 1960 Invicta parked on the far corner of the next block. Rawlins led Lyla straight to the passenger’s door. It was covered in a film of desert dust, but was otherwise well preserved and cared for. Lyla leaned against him while he unlocked the door and held it open for her. Once she was seated, he shut her in and circled around to the driver’s side.
He fished the key out of his pocket and got in. After he slid it into the ignition, he paused and they sat quietly as people who’ve known each other a long time do, comfortable in the silence, momentarily lost in thoughts about whatever was going on beyond the silence.
Case watched her look at the dashboard a while. The streetlight laid a bluish silhouette over the lines of her face. After all the times he’d heard her sing, it was strange to look at her mouth set in place the way it was. He looked down at her legs. She was holding her hands clasped between her thighs like she was trying to keep them warm.
The image of a blackbird flying out the far side of a thunderstorm suddenly flashed through the back of his mind. A powerful urge descended on him to lay his face down against her thighs and feel the smooth warmth of her skin on his cheek. It didn’t matter who she was anymore, only that she was something very much alive. After the blurry swirl of everything that had happened in the last thirty minutes, it was the only thing that made sense. Touching her. Letting the lightest press of him and her together remind them they were still there.
“You saved my life,” she said in a tone soft and easy as ordering scrambled eggs. Her eyes were still trained on the dashboard.
“Not really.”
“And those others. You saved them, too. Everybody who was left inside.”
He turned his head and looked out his window into the street.
“Feels like I owe you something,” she said.
“What would you say if it was the other way around? Would you say I owed you?”
“Don’t know. Maybe I would.”
“Yeah. Well.” He shrugged one shoulder. The other was crammed against the door.
“Anyway.”
He realized his heart was beating hard. Back inside the club he hadn’t noticed. Hadn’t stopped to think about anything but the motions his body was going through. His pulse wasn’t racing, but beating strong and steady, and as he turned back to look at her again, she angled her head and met his eyes only briefly. She looked back at the dashboard, then out toward the street.
His gaze carefully followed the lines of her face. Nothing was supposed to be perfect, but he couldn’t think of a reason her face was anything but. It was perfect because it was hers. Because it fit the shape it was in. It fit her neck and shoulders. It sent her voice and words out into the air, and it made something smolder in the tributaries of his veins.
She sat still as he let his eyes drift over the shape of her body in that snug, glittery dress. He studied her thighs, parted ever so slightly and highlighted with blue lines cast by the streetlight. Her skin was perfect too, and he was suddenly overcome with a maddening need to taste the inside of her leg.
When his pulse began to feel stronger, it all seemed to swarm into a fist of aching heat between his thighs. He started getting hard and wanted to pass it off as a simple reaction to the adrenaline.
He set his sights back on the street in front of them, started the car and drove.
The further they got from the fire, the more normal everything seemed on the surface. Moderate weeknight traffic. People walking. Traffic lights and crosswalks.
He drove in no particular direction. It started to rain as he turned down streets he didn’t recognize anymore.
“Everything looks fucked up, doesn’t it?” Lyla said.
“Like nothing really counts.”
“Yeah. Like that. Just like that.”
The rain came down thicker and Case put on the wipers.
“I feel cold.”
“That’s the adrenaline crash.”
“I gotta sit closer, if that’s okay,” she said. Then she unclicked her seatbelt and slid across the wide bench seat without waiting for a response. She moved close enough Rawlins could feel the warmth rising off her skin, but not quite close enough to touch. She pressed her hands back between her thighs. Her spine was straight and she almost looked prim. Dashboard light flickered across her collarbones and Rawlins was overcome with the urge to put his lips on her skin.
“I think a piece of you is still back there. Inside,” he said.
“Big piece,” she nodded, pursing her lips, not looking anywhere but straight ahead. “Maybe you too.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I keep asking how can I be when I’m sitting here with you…breathing your scent. Do you figure it’s possible to be in two places at once?”
“Oh yeah,” she nodded. She sucked her lips in over her teeth, as if saying mhmmm but not making the sound. Then she let them relax again and moistened them with a subtle flash of her tongue.
They were driving along the wharf. Slowly. A long row of dark warehouses on the right. That thing she’d just done with her mouth made Rawlins want to crawl out of his skin and turn into something else, but the pounding of his blood was holding him back in the prison of everything he’d always been.
“I’m horny as all fuck,” Lyla said, calmly as if she were offering a cup of tea. “Is that really weird?”
“No. At least I don’t think so. I mean…I am, too. It’s probably the adrenaline. Something about being alive…or whatever.”
“Yeah. Being alive…or whatever. Only seems right to let you fuck me just for saving my life anyway.”
Rawlins’ cock had only kept on getting hard as he drove, and his vision was starting to blur. Or maybe it was just the way the rain was slanting past the occasional bubble of streetlight. He pulled the car down an alley between two warehouses. It was narrow enough, and the car wide enough, that they wouldn’t be able to open their doors. As they came out at the back of the buildings, there was a small concentration yard surrounded by chain link with razor wire across the top.
It was lit but dim, and there were a couple rows of metal shipping crates stacked along the back end of the fence. Rawlins stopped the car, put it in park, but let the engine keep idling. He’d just put in new plugs and wires a few days before. He’d set the points by ear. The whispering rumble of the motor was full of tranquil power.
“It’s funny…you sitting right here in my car like this after listening to you sing all these years.” He put his hand on the flesh of her thigh and her legs parted just an inch or two to give his hand room to slip in between. Her skin felt like a summer night after a day that was too hot. Silk-soft and humid.
“You’re beautiful, and your talent just makes it all worse. It’s only fair to tell you I probably never wanted to fuck a woman as much as I want to fuck you. And that’s probably weirder than anything…wanting to fuck someone you never even met before.”
His fingers pressed into the flesh of her thigh and calmly slipped toward her pussy. He was touching those crisp, white panties he remembered from seeing her sitting on the curb outside a burning building, but they were wet now.
“Thing is,” he went on, “I can’t fuck you if it’s just because we walked out of that building together. And it can’t be just ‘cuz you sing the way you do.”
He leaned back against the seat with his head half turned her way. She leaned against him and kept looking forward while he calmly dug at the warm puff of her mound through the honey-slick soaking her panties. She took a deep breath and widened her thighs. They watched the rain spatter their little, forgotten corner of the world, and Rawlins’ fingers slipped around the edge of Lyla’s panties and touched the wet lips of her smooth pussy.
“Okay,” she said, with a slight hitch in her breath. “How’s about we fuck just ‘cuz we’re alive and nobody else would really fit the bill right now?”
“That sounds like a much better reason,” he said. He turned toward her and let his finger slip inside her body. She was all hot cream churning inside. “If I don’t kiss you real soon I think I might implode.”
“So shut the fuck up and do it, okay?”
“Okay.”
He slid his finger deeper into the hot clutch of her simmering pussy and sealed his lips over hers. Her mouth was already open by the time he got there, and her tongue danced into his. Her breath went into his throat, and when he realized that was at least half her voice pulsing into his body everything broke down.
He started sliding his finger through the sap drizzled lips of her tender slit and groaned into her, scooping at the flow of her breath with his tongue. He didn’t know when her hands made it onto his face and neck, but they were caressing and clutching at him all at once. His finger slipped back and he circled the tip around her clit until her hips rocked back at him. Then he brought his hand up and shoved his finger between their mouths, their tongues both curling around it, lapping up its honeyed coating.
When one of her hands moved between his legs, searching out the shape of his rigid cock through his jeans, he started to yank down on her panties. She arched harder against his mouth as she shifted her body to let him pull the panties down. She ground her palm against the aching, stone heat of his cock while his hands searched her dress for a zipper or clasp. She pulled away slightly and shifted as she grabbed the hem of the dress and peeled it upward, lifting it off over her head.
Sitting naked on the wide, leather seat of the car, she seemed to change into someone else. The bluish, halogen glow from the only light in the yard slanted through the rain speckled glass of the windshield and tinted her body. She was a breathing river of dark electricity.
Case wanted to dive back into the hunger-breathing moment they were in just before Lyla took off her dress, but all he could do just then was slide his hands around either side of her neck. Her pulse vibrated against his palms. She was all open eyes and parted lips. Light gusts of her breath touched his face.
“That look in your eyes is a little scary,” she said.
His hands slowly slid down over her collarbones until he was cupping her onyx-tipped breasts in his hands. “Sorry,” he said. He squeezed her warm flesh, her nipples transforming into burning knots of skin under his grasp. “Maybe my face is stuck like this.”
“Can’t say as anyone ever looked at me quite like that before,” she said. “It’s okay. Just so long as you mean it.”
“Never meant anything so much in my life.” He trapped her rigid nipples between his fingertips, tweezing and rolling them until she mewled softly. “But I think I just realized something,” he told her. “It’s like…I dunno…you can only sleep in a house. Sit there and eat and scratch your ass. But it’s your feelings you live in. That’s our only real home.”
“Ffffuck,” she whispered, her eyes hooding over.
The way she trapped her bottom lip under her teeth with the word made his blood steam. He leaned in to kiss her again but she slid away, across the seat, out his grasp. She opened the door and floated out of the car into the rain. The door closed and he watched her limp toward the front of the car, her breasts quivering with each of her painful steps.
He got out of the car and watched her make her plodding way toward the front, where her wet body shimmered in the crossbeams of the headlights and the halogen lamp up above the razor wire.
She looked as if diamonds were pouring off her skin.
He went to the front of the car, his jeans and T-shirt already halfway to being soaked through. His eyes were steadily trained on her. Her pussy was bald as a ripe plum. She was small, seeming smaller than she did onstage, and looking back at him with thinly veiled ferocity in her eyes. It felt like she was telling a secret.
“That look in your eyes is a little scary,” he said, borrowing her words as he leaned against the car. Painful throbbing of hard cockflesh beat against the confinement of his wet jeans.
“Sorry,” she said. She almost smiled, but caught herself at the last moment before it broke.
“S’okay. Just so long as you mean it.”
The smile made it halfway up to her eyes. “What about the other part?”
“You mean like if no one ever looked at me like that before.”
“Mhmm,” she nodded.
His hand drifted over his cock through his pants. He thought of licking the rain off her breasts as he squeezed his shaft.
“Not hardly.”
She tilted her head and studied him. “You ever stalk anybody before?”
He shook his head. “I never go where I’m not invited.”
Lyla was standing in front of him in two, faltering steps. She looked up at his face while she loosened his belt and unzipped his pants. She pulled out his cock and started caressing the hot, aching flesh with both of her hands. “In that case, let’s keep going.”
He gripped her by the neck and kissed her, her hands moving steadily over his hard flesh. Somewhere nearby a dog started barking. Lyla drifted away from his kiss. She winced with pain from her ankle as she lowered herself down and rolled her tongue in long swipes over the length of his shaft from every side. He sucked in hard breath.
“You taste like rain,” she said, looking up as she skimmed her fist along his shank.
Before he could answer, she wrapped her lips in a circle around his heavily ridged head and sucked. Her tongue and lips seemed to be moving in all directions at once while one hand wrapped around the base of his cock and the other cradled his balls.
He reached behind himself until he felt the hood of his car under his hands, bracing himself as he watched her intent face. Her hand and mouth were stroking his burning length together, and his hips began to rock in counterpoint to the rhythmic suck and glide of her mouth.
Taking as much as he could stand, he finally laced his fingers into her dreadlocks and pulled her back upright. He circled her body with his arms, pulling her in close as if he could shield her from the rain. He couldn’t, but he kissed her anyway, tasting himself on her lips and tongue.
Tightening his hold, she huffed into his mouth as he lifted her up and turned her toward the car. Setting her down on the hood, she leaned back on her hands and planted her feet widely apart on the bumper. Rawlins shoved his pants lower and gripped his substantial cock as he looked at her.
Firm hand stroking slowly. Thighs open in the rain like burnished mahogany saplings. Outer lips of her pussy swollen, gaping ever so slightly around the pale crimson lace of her slit. Serpentine torso taut, turned ever so slightly. Upturned scoops of breast meat rising and falling with her breath. Midnight nipples thick and hard, glazed with rain.
“Aren’t you gonna fuck me?”
The stark husk in the sound of her voice suddenly reminded him who she was. He’d just about forgotten, but the question sounded like a lyric from something she might’ve sung one time.
“I think you know I am,” he said, pushing the tip of his cock against her pliably soft pussy lips. His dome was slick with rainwater and precum as he gripped his shaft and rubbed his meat back and forth across the rigid pearl crowning her slit. “It’s just…”
“Just what?” She leaned back onto her elbows, freeing her hands to clutch and play with her nipples while she arched her pussy at Rawlins’ cock. “You look like you’re trying to memorize something.”
“That’s ‘cuz I am,” he said, sliding the long, underbelly of his cock along the slick furrow of her pussy.
She twirled her thick nipples and ground against his slip sliding cockshank. “Push that cock all the way up inside me and I’ll give you something you won’t forget anytime soon.”
Rawlins inched back and nudged the head of his cock just inside the slippery aperture of her pussy. He moved his cock in a stirring motion around the mouth of her channel. Just as he was bracing his body to lunge deeply into the hot grip of her core, he pulled his hands back and grabbed her legs from the undersides where her knees bent. He pushed her legs high and wide, lifting her ass slightly off the warm metal of the idling car.
He leaned down and pressed the flat of his tongue against the knotted pucker of her ass rim. She was so open. Silken yet firm everywhere he touched or tasted.
“Fuck,” he could hear her rasp from his low perch between the spherical cheeks of her ass. “You…are…not…going to…do…what I…”
Then he slowly plowed his flat, wet tongue upward, smearing the wet evidence of his hunger up along her cleft, following the trail up over her slit and scraping every last one of his taste buds across her clit. At the last moment, he caught the simmering bud between his lips, sucking as he rolled his tongue over her throbbing bundle of nerves.
Lyla’s body went rigid as she sucked in a fast, deep breath and held it. Rawlins released her clit and repeated the long, wet journey his tongue had just taken through that garden of rich, syrup-drizzled flesh. She blew the air out of her body and sucked in another sharp gasp, her body beginning to make small, staggered jerking motions.
The moment he felt her fingers digging into his hair, he pulled away and stood back upright, his pants still trapping his ankles. Lyla held her legs high and wide, just as he’d been holding them. He gripped his aching cock and rained wet, smacking spanks against her pussy with his solid stalk. She gripped her own legs from under the bend of her knees the same way he had, pulling herself as high and open for him as she could.
He pressed his cock into her slick maw and ground his shaft inward, feeling the heat of her body envelop him as he deepened inside her. He ground deeper, until his balls came to rest against her ass and she released her grip on her legs and wrapped them around his waist.
His hips started to move in a rhythmic, circular glide as he stroked his cock in and out of her snug pussy. He braced his hands against the car but lowered his face to hers. He wanted to kiss her, but he wanted to study her face just as much. So new and yet so familiar, she was no one with minor fame or a major voice right now. She was no one he’d ever met before. She was a writhing organism, pure heat rocking back against the rampant fuck strokes of his starving cock.
She was his forever in every moment their bodies were linked, moving together like a single entity.
He opened his mouth to say something about oblivion and desire, but Lyla caught him, cutting him off with a snarl and pumping her hips at the grinding thrust of his cock.
“Talk less,” she moaned. “Fuck more. Stop thinking.”
The rain was calm and steady, but it was all thunder and lightning as their bodies scraped and slapped. Lyla leaned up quickly and nipped at Rawlins’ bottom lip. He took her entire mouth back in return, their tongues curling around each other while even the heavy, steel machine idling beneath them began to rock under the rolling tide of their bodies.
Lyla’s head was pinned backward against the car while Rawlins kissed her deeper and harder. Staggered gasps suddenly shot out of her throat straight into his, urging him to fuck harder and deeper. When her pussy started to ripple against the length of his driving shaft, his spine arched and his head reared back as he pumped his spasm-wracked cock with the whole force of his body. Hot cum rushed through his shaft, flooding her core around his driving flesh.
When their bodies finally stopped rocking against each other, they lay on the car and let it rain. Rawlins buried his face in Lyla’s neck and heard the explosion again in his mind. He didn’t think he flinched, but he wasn’t entirely sure. He just kissed her throat once, then her mouth, and pushed himself up off her and the car.
She followed, and after pulling his pants back up, he helped her walk back to the passenger’s side.
Lyla sat naked and wet on the seat, hugging her arms around her wet body while he circled to the other side and got in. Rawlins’ clothes were soaked through, and he flipped the lever to let the heat blow.
The singer’s skin slowly began to dry, but Rawlins’ clothes would feel damp and clammy for some time to come. She slid across the seat and leaned against him. He shifted the car into drive and put his arm around her, holding her close as he pulled around the yard in a wide circle. He drove back down the narrow alley between the two warehouses, back onto the service road along the wharves.
Lyla snugged into him as he drove, keeping his arm tightly wrapped around her bare form. He held her protectively, even if it was the last thing she needed him for.
