I’m moving hard and fast along his body now, hovering over him with my hands on his chest, not needing to touch myself to be on the edge of climax, but it’s not a climax, it’s the apex of all sensation, it’s orgasm times love times infinity. His groaning and mine harmonize, our bodies move and meet in sinuous waves, and we’re lost in each other, shouting and cursing, and it’s music, we’re a symphony together.

And then he sneaks a hand between our bodies and finds my clit with his fingers, strums my clit and I snap like an over-tightened guitar string.

“BEN!” I scream, shrill and breathless.

“I’m right there with you, Echo, oh god, I’m coming too, coming so hard,” he growls.

Everything narrows down to the infinitesimal instant when I come and he comes, and it’s a moment of perfect unity, our eyes locked, our bodies merged.

His finger is pushing in and pulling out, mirroring the action of our joining, and I’m coming apart, thrashing on top of him, screaming wordlessly, crashing down onto him hard again and again, and he’s moving and thrusting up into me, and I feel him explode inside me, feel the hot gush of his release, and the universe that was within me is expanding out of my pores, fire in my veins and heat in my blood and I can only scream through gnashing teeth, biting his skin until he grunts.

We come, and we come, and we come. It’s a never-ending tsunami of ecstasy bashing through us.

When it’s over, I cradle his handsome, sexy face in my palms and stare down into his deep brown eyes. “I love you, Ben.” I whisper it, breathless. What just happened between us, it dragged the truth out of me. Wrenched it free from deep down. And now that I’ve said it, the phrase pours out of me. I’m sobbing it over and over again, overcome by how truly I mean it, by how deeply I feel it. “I love you, I love you…I love you, oh Ben, I love you so much, Ben.”

His mouth finds mine, and his lips tremble and I taste tears, his or mine or both I neither know nor care. “I love you so fucking much, Echo.”

I can take no more, so I reach back and tug at his hand. He understands, and gently, so gently pulls his hand free. I gasp at the shocking emptiness I feel.

Ben rises, washes his hands and gets a clean towel from the bathroom, returns to clean me.

When he’s done, he lies back down beside me where I’m collapsed facedown on the bed, trying to put my body back together again.

I grin at him. “Good morning.”

He laughs at the utter absurdity of the greeting, at the non sequitur of saying such a thing after what we just did. “Good morning.”

“I love you,” I say, just to see if I can say it again, now that we’re not in the throes of the most intense sex I’ve ever had. I grin, because I can, and it feels good to say it. “We should start every morning like that.”

“With my finger in your ass?”

“Or your cock.”

His gaze heats. “You want my cock in your ass?”

“Oh, it’s happening. We may have to work up to it, but it’s so happening.”

“Let’s go back to the part where you love me.”

“Yes, let’s,” I agree.

He takes my hands and draws me to himself. I’m dragged up and up until I’m sitting on his lap, curled on him, my head against his chest, his palm on my hair, the other on my hip. And oh…oh, being held like this? After such a wrenching, wracking orgasm and such a fierce and explosive epiphany of love, being wrapped up in this man is just too much. So perfectly, beautifully, too much.

I can only weep, deep wracking sobs that Ben doesn’t question. He just holds me through it until I can twist my head to peer up at him. “I love you with all that I am, Ben Dorsey.” I palm his cheek and whisper this against his mouth. “It’s crazy. It’s like one second I was falling, and then now I’m just…I’m there. It’s love so big it hurts, so much it’s scary. So big, so much, all at once.”

He rolls with me, pressing me with a delicate gentleness to the mattress, hovering over me. He’s huge and beautiful and broad, all dusky skin and sleek muscles and bright eyes that breathe with potent love. “You can fall, Echo. I’ll catch you. Because I’m falling too, and I need you to catch me, too.”

“Now and forever, come what may,” I tell him.

And when we join again, it’s slow and with all the fragility of newborn love, each of us shaky as a newly birthed foal. My heart gallops as we move together, wrapped up in him, tangled up in him, loved by him, loving him back with a heart freshly opened to the long-pent-up and long-building well of passion that flows free like white raging river water from a burst dam.

When we come together, it’s with whispers, mine and his weaving together and overlapping: “I love you, I love you—god, I love you…”

SEVENTEEN: Falling Away

Ben

One year later

The thunder of hometown applause is deafening. I stand backstage, watching as Echo the Stars takes the stage for their first live performance since Echo’s incident, now almost a year and a half ago. They’re signed with Calloway Music, Kylie’s parents’ label, and with the Calloways producing and guiding and honing them, Echo the Stars have found a sound that people all over the country are clamoring for. In that time, they cut their first EP, Miles To Your Door, followed less than six months later by a full-length album, Sweet Refrain. They’ve put up a slew of YouTube videos as a band, and Brayden and Echo continue their stripped-down duet journal-videos, but the band hasn’t appeared live until tonight. This performance takes place as the opening act, preceding Oz and Kylie—who now perform under the moniker O+K—then the Harris Mountain Boys, and then Colt and Nell themselves.

The applause reaches a crescendo as the band settles in with their instruments, Atticus getting comfortable on his stool and twirling his drumsticks, Will picking up a dobro from the side-by-side stands holding that instrument, a banjo, and an electric guitar. Mim brings her bass to an upright position and settles it against her ample chest while Vance cradles his fiddle under his chin, propping it there and adjusting the tuning. Echo is absent from the stage, but she’s standing in the wings, waiting until the crowd is screaming and howling and whistling.

Brayden stands tall and lanky at center stage, hooks the strap of his mandolin over his shoulder and clips it, adjusts the angle, and then reaches over to the microphone beside him. “What’s up, ya’ll?” he shouts. The crowd shrieks, and Brayden glances around the stage at each of the members. “Wait a second, wait a second. Someone’s missing.” He grins and glances at Echo, clearly stoked and ready to jam.




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