Above the Noise (17 page)

“Thank you both, so much. I’m so happy you enjoyed the show. Thanks for introducing yourselves. I love to meet our fans.” Now, I was uncomfortable. How do you cut a conversation short when you’re not leaving the room and have no other excuse to walk away?

“Could you sign our shirts? Sorry, we don’t have anything else with us.” Shelly handed me a Sharpie she’d dug out of her duffle bag.

“Soccer champs, huh?” I winked. They proudly smiled down at their matching hot pink tournament t-shirts.

“Yeah, we’re from Pennsylvania. We’re in LA for a national tournament,” Tiff finally spoke. Both girls were smiling from ear to ear as I signed my name across the backs of their shoulders.

“There ya go.” I looked up at Becki whose breasts were jogging just as much as she was, and I was quickly reminded of the boner I’d just gotten rid of.

“Thanks, Mr. Ridge.”

“Calon. I’m not old enough to be a mister.” I smiled and winked again.

They squealed and ran out the door.

I turned back around, reached for the lat bar and realized I had a perfect view of Becki on the treadmill in the mirror in front of me. She had popped her ear buds in, and her lips were moving to a song that I assumed was giving her the even pace she was keeping.

My muscles were stinging by the time I finished my set. I moved over to the chest press and planned to just keep going down the line until I couldn’t take the pain anymore. Becki was still running, and the line of machines was perfectly placed so I could continue to gawk.

It had only been a couple weeks since I was an enamored escort that made sure Becki got home safely after our shows. I thought back to the nights I left her without anything more than a ‘thank you’ or a long hug. It seemed like a lifetime since the days I longed to know what her lips would feel like on mine, yet it hadn’t been that long at all.

“MAYBE SOMEDAY YOU’LL
write a song about me.” Becki took my hand in hers as we walked the familiar path from Mitchell’s back to her dorm.

“Who knows. Stranger things have happened.” I smiled, and she bumped into me with her hip.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Our clasped hands swung between us, and I couldn’t ignore the tingling where our skin touched. I was stoked she’d grabbed my hand, because I was out of practice and terrified to come on too strong.

“Oh, I don’t know. Just thinking that’s a little too cliché for you.” I raised an eyebrow, even though it was too dark for her to see.

“Too cliché? Are you kidding? I feel pretty certain that one hundred percent of all women on the planet have, at one time, fantasized about just that.” She squeezed my hand, but I wasn’t sure why.

“Well, okay then. I’ll have to keep that in mind.”

We walked in silence, still holding hands, until we reached the street corner by her dorm. She stopped dead in her tracks and turned to me. She took my other hand in hers and locked eyes with me. She didn’t say a word. Her lips parted, and her chest heaved. She licked her lips and leaned in toward my mouth. Her lips hovered within millimeters of mine, and I could feel her warm breath on my face.

I’d been walking her home for weeks, yet our lips had never met. I’d left her dorm more than once with a raging hard-on. I’d even spent many of those nights curled up with her in her tiny twin bed yet, I’d never tried to kiss her. Part of me held Chloe and Gracie’s kisses as sacred, but the rest of me knew that one day I would find someone I could move on with. Was Becki the one?

Her hands were on my waist and clutching the untucked flannel she’d told me was a hot wardrobe choice earlier that evening. I dropped one hand to the small of her back and pressed her against where I ached for her the most. Both our chests heaved, and we gasped for air, though neither of us moved any closer.

Becki slid her hands under the t-shirt I had on under my flannel. Her soft, warm hands swept across my sides and up my back until she was holding onto my shoulders from behind. Her nails dug in; not enough to break the skin but just enough to buckle my knees slightly. There was a fire ignited in both of us during those few moments, one that would be nearly impossible to squelch.

“Calon?” She spoke between a couple deep breaths.

“Yeah?”

“I want to kiss you so badly.” She pulled back a little and looked up at me.

“Yeah.” I was speechless at how far she’d climbed into my soul without even kissing me. “I’d like that an awful lot, but I want you to let me know when you’re ready.”

“I’ve never been too picky about the guys I make out with.” She rolled her eyes and turned away from me a little as if she was embarrassed.

“Okayyy.” I drew out the word and chuckled completely out of discomfort. I had no idea where she was going with that comment.

“No, listen a minute. That gets old. It makes kissing as easy as—as dancing with someone. And, I read somewhere that kissing can actually be more intimate than sex. I think that’s what I want. I don’t want it to come too soon. I want to ache for it.” She blinked away the apprehension I sensed in her voice then smiled my favorite shy smile.

“Do you ache for me, Becki?” Yeah, I did that on purpose; pulled the sexy romance novel line right out of my head. She dropped her head back and groaned. We both burst out laughing, and I continued walking her to the door to the building.

“I mean it, Calon. You only had to turn me down a couple of times to make me reconsider giving away something so intimate, so quickly.” She looked away again and shivered a little in the cool night air. I’d never seen her so unsure of herself. She was letting down her walls.

I took off my flannel and draped it over her shoulders then ducked down to catch her offset gaze. “Becki, I want you to know I haven’t kissed anyone since Gracie.”

“Okay… one, mentioning making out with my best friend just moments after we almost kiss for the first time just docked you a couple points.” She poked me in the chest. “Second, dude, that was like two
years
ago. You can’t be serious.” She shook her head in disbelief then let it fall against my chest.

“Okay. One, I’m sorry for mentioning it. Second, yes, I’m serious.” I needed to touch her again, so I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her into me, making it look like it was partially to keep her warm when really it was a sure way to feel her against my body again. “I have no doubt a kiss between you and me, whenever it happens, will be worth the wait.
You’re
worth the wait.”

I felt her sigh, and she shook her head against my chest, then pushed herself away from me slowly. “Look, smooth talkin’ rock star, I’ve got a huge exam tomorrow, so you need to go home. Now. I won’t be able to sleep if you stay here getting all deep and shit.”

“Oh, sorry for getting all deep and shit.”

“I like your deep shit. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t ask you to take me to dinner tomorrow night.”

“Right.” I chuckled at how weird she could be. “Okay, then go! Go study. I’ll see you tomorrow. For dinner.”

We shared one last way-too-sensual hug, then she bounced through the door and she was gone. I floated home, just me and all my deep shit.

“SO, SWEATY PANTS,
what are you thinking?” She stood behind me, breasts right behind my head as I finished my last set of abs.

“I was thinking about the night we had our almost-kiss.”

“Oh, our almost-kiss?” She smiled knowing exactly what I was referring to.

“Yeah. Very hot.” I took a slow deep breath, so I could calm what was in my shorts and finally stand up.

“Very, very hot.” As soon as I stood and turned, she leaned into me. Her breasts were covered by just a sports bra, her nipples were alert and pressed against my chest.

“Becki. You can’t—”

She grabbed my face and crashed her lips into mine.

“Are you going to make out with me, right here? In the hotel gym?” I put my hands on her small, bare waist and pulled her hips into me. It was futile. I was not getting out of that gym with a limp willy.

“Yeah, I am.” She put her hands on my biceps and used them to steer me backwards toward the unisex restroom by the door.

Once inside, we tore at each other’s clothes and threw them on the floor. The whole one wall was a vanity with a mirror. I took her by the waist and lifted her up onto the edge of the ceramic counter.

She sucked in a sharp breath. “Shit! That’s cold.” She wrapped her legs around my hips and thrust her hands up through my hair. “Make me scream, Calon.”

“God, Becki.” I shuddered at how sexy her voice was when she said those four words.

I plunged deep within her, and she called out my name. Her heels pressed into my ass and pulled me into her as soon as I‘d pull out. She pressed her hands down beside each of her hips and leaned back against the mirror. Her head was back, and her mouth open. I ran my hand up her stomach, to her breast, and up her neck, until I dipped my thumb in her mouth. She moaned and sucked hard.

She let go of me with her legs and put her feet up on either side of her ass on the edge of the counter. The view she created for me was my undoing. I grabbed her hips and thrust into her over and over and over, each time something extraordinary built within me.

All of a sudden and without a warning, she came. It was loud, and she bucked and writhed against the mirror. I slowed my pace to let her come down a little, but I couldn’t walk out of the bathroom without coming. Something else was going to have to happen to get me off because there was no hiding what she did to me.

“Don’t stop, Calon. Harder!”

I was dizzy and out of breath. Sweat dripped down my back as droplets formed all over her chest and stomach. I did what she asked and took her higher with each pump. There was something about the rigidity of the counter under her that made the sensation of being inside her so intense. My knees started to buckle, but I straightened them as best I could, and I took her until a wave came over us, and we both lost it. We were both vocal, calling each other’s names and grunting as we came to the end of what was definitely one of the most intense things I’d ever experienced.

I leaned forward to hold onto the counter. She was still shaking with her legs wide open to me. I leaned down and kissed her pussy. She panted. She smelled like me, but tasted like my Becks.

“God, Calon. You are what women dream of, do you know that?” She slipped off the counter and rifled through the clothes on the floor.

“I don’t know about that. However, I do know…” I pulled her into me. “That was hands-down the most indescribable thing I’ve ever experienced. Ever.”

She smiled wide and kissed me. “Me, too.”

A quiet thunder rumbled under our feet. The vibration of something getting closer and closer. The gym door slammed open against the wall of the restroom, and what sounded like a hundred squealing girls flowed into the room. Their voices and giggles getting louder as the room filled up. Becki and I were both wide-eyed. I reached over and quietly turned the lock on the door and rolled my eyes at our careless oversight.

It suddenly went silent.

One girl called out, “That’s not funny, Tiff! We believed you!”

“Guys, I swear! Look! He signed our shirts! Calon Ridge was here.”

“So, where’d he go?” A high pitched squealer begged.

“I don’t know, but he was here. I promise you. He touched me. His voice. God, I almost came in my shorts!”