Creative Process Page 15

  “Our bed.” Reese’s voice was rough.

  “Oh God. Our bed. Reese, if you were here I’d—”

  “Pretend I am there,” Reese interrupted. He wanted, and he was done waiting. He let his fingers slip between his legs. “What are you doing, Owen? Tell me.”

  Owen groaned into the phone. “Oh, I… I just dropped to my knees in front of you and I’m moving my hands over your thighs.”

  “Mmm. Good start. I’m running my fingers through your hair.” Reese cupped his balls and rolled them firmly through his fingers.

  “I love it when you do that, and when you pull a little.”

  “I know. Or a lot.” His voice was low and quiet. “Want me?”

  “God, yes.” Owen swallowed audibly. “I’m tasting you now, exploring with my tongue and my lips. You always smell so good. Musky and… dark.” Owen’s voice had turned into a purr. Reese ran his thumb over the head of his cock. “Licking it all the way up to your hips and then back down.”

  “Oh, that’s good, babe. I love your mouth. I love your voice.”

  “Are you hard, lover?” Owen was teasing him now, and he kind of liked it.

  “God, yes.” Reese growled. “I told you I almost had to start without you. Aches.”

  “Wrap your fingers around your cock and stroke for me, babe. Come on. Do it.”

  Reese moaned. “You weren’t going to let me control this were you?”

  “Fuck no.” Owen purred. “I give you plenty of control when you’re home. Let me do this for you.”

  Reese was in absolutely no condition to argue. He did exactly as he was told and stroked himself slowly, breathing consciously through his need, keeping control. God, it felt so good. “Yes, Owen.”

  “That’s it, lover. That’s my mouth on you. My tongue playing underneath, my breath in your curls. That’s it. Oh, I can hear you, babe. You’re on fire.”

  “Jesus.” Reese panted and swallowed hard. “Yes, yes. More.”

  “I’m hungry for you. So hard. I want you to fuck me, Reese. Take me. Your cock in my ass, over and over until I scream. God, I want you so bad.” Owen’s own control was faltering. Reese could hear him breathing heavily now. It just made Reese want this more.

  Reese grunted, and behind his closed eyes, all he could see was Owen underneath him, arching and moaning. Owen’s smooth, brown skin covered in sweat. The fingers of Reese’s free hand gripped and tangled and tugged at the sheets. “Fuck yes.”

  “Yes! In me, babe. Like that.” Owen moaned and grunted. “More, please!”

  “Fuck, Owen. Getting… close,” Reese confessed. He wanted this to last longer, but there was a roaring in his ears and an inferno raging in his groin. His fist flew hard and fast, and his heels dragged in the sheets, sending him hurtling toward climax. “Oh. Fuck!”

  “Yes! So good, so close! Harder, oh God!” Owen was talking too, the two of them together, raving and begging. Listening to what they couldn’t see, stroking off in a shared fantasy with hundreds of miles reduced to what was just behind their eyelids.

  “Now! Oh fuck, now! Owen!” Reese’s knees pulled up and he curled forward as he came. His body jerked and trembled, and he soaked his hand and his abs.

  “Ah! Yes! Fuck!” The line fell almost silent except for Owen’s distant ragged breathing. “Oh, fucking hell,” Owen said finally. “Jesus, Reese.”

  “You good?” Reese asked, breathless.

  “Yeah. Oh fuck yeah. And you sounded magnificent.” Owen sighed.

  “The hotel staff is going to hate me.”

  Owen chuckled. “You better leave a big tip.”

  “I so want to kiss you right now.” Reese licked his lips, trying to taste Owen, but not quite managing it.

  “I miss you.”

  “It’s been two days. We’re disgusting,” Reese told him. “Are you still able to come up?”

  “Oh. No, I’m sorry, love. I know I told Chad that I thought I could, but now I’ve got a section rehearsal tomorrow. We’re pretty rough, and opening is next weekend.”

  “Opening already?” Reese stretched out on the bed and sighed. He should go clean up, but his legs weren’t ready to cooperate just yet.

  “I know, can you believe it? It’ll be nice to have some free time again. My fingers are tired.”

  “Oh, I’m sure they are,” Reese said in a leering tone.

  Owen snorted. “Oh, ha-ha.”

  “Ha-ha, nothing. You love me.”

  “I do, actually. And you love me.”

  It was the truth, Reese knew, but still so strange to hear sometimes. “Maybe we should date.”

  “You mean do something other than write and rehearse and fuck?”

  Reese nodded, not that Owen could see him. “Yeah. Like, dance.”

  “Oh, could we?” Owen’s enthusiasm made Reese smile.

  “I’d love it. Remind me of that too.”

  Owen chuckled. “I should clean up.”

  “Yeah.” Reese sighed. “But I don’t want to hang up.”

  “Call me again tomorrow night? Maybe we can Facetime.”

  Jesus. That was so happening. “With pleasure, you.”

  “You.”

  Reese looked at the phone another second and then ended the call.

  Chapter XIV

  “THAT METALLICA cover needs work,” Lisa suggested. “Oh shit,” she swore as she dropped a drumstick. It skittered across the floor and into Owen’s foot.

  Owen grabbed it. “Got it.”

  “That was me,” Carla confessed. “I had a fingering fuckup during the bridge.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t just you, Carla. That whole section was rough for me too. It moved faster than I’d practiced it, and I haven’t spent enough time with the arrangement.” Owen handed the drumstick back to Lisa.

  “Thanks.” Lisa put her drumsticks into a red stick bag and put that into her road case. “We covered well, but it’ll be the first on our list for practice on Monday, yeah?”

  “You got it.”

  Lisa was the percussionist for Six Hands, but she was also the group’s music director. After they graduated from the conservatory, Lisa went on to grad school and got a Master’s degree in music education. She worked as a high school music teacher these days and was the conductor of the school orchestra. There wasn’t a percussion instrument that Owen had ever heard of that Lisa couldn’t play, and over the years he’d seen her turn most everything in the city into some kind of drum as well—from subway poles to trash cans, the sides of buildings, even the sidewalk under her feet. If something was off with the Metallica piece, or any piece, Owen trusted her to fix it.

  “So, Owen, where’s your boo?” Carla closed the piano cover and started gathering up her music. Carla was an excellent pianist, and she worked as an accompanist all over the city. She kept crazy hours, playing for auditions, benefits, voice lessons, and rehearsals at all times of the day. It was hectic and unpredictable, but she loved it. Good for her. Owen had kept that kind of schedule for a couple of years, and it had driven him mad. He was just about to give up on it and go back to bartending when the audition for the symphony fell in his lap.

  Owen loosened the tension on his bow and got out a cloth to wipe it down. “Reese is at a convention.”

  “Oh, a convention.” Carla snorted.

  “What?” Owen looked at her.

  “Just sounds so stuffy.”

  Owen shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe it is. I don’t really know what he’s up to. He’s speaking or something, and sitting on some panels I think.”

  “Well, as long as Hemingway is out of town, you wanna get a drink?”

  “Sure. Lisa?”

  Lisa pointed to Neil, her boyfriend, who was waiting patiently and sipping an espresso.

  Owen grinned. “He’s a lucky man.”

  “He will be shortly.” Lisa winked. “Good night, guys. Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow,” Owen repeated.

  “Tomorrow!” Carla called out. Then she looked at O
wen. “Cosmos?”

  “Let’s go.”

  CARLA GAVE the cabbie the address and Owen grinned. “Nice.” Carla had chosen a little club uptown that they all used to frequent as students at the conservatory, and where Owen got his first bartending gig. It was a live-music-all-night-long kind of place, and it used to be packed from opening to closing. When they finally arrived, Owen climbed out of the car and offered Carla his hand as she got out after him.

  “Still looks the same to me,” Owen observed, looking over the front of the club. The same tall bronze letters spelling out HAZEL hung over the industrial-looking façade. Owen smiled, feeling at home instantly. “Come on.”

  Once inside, they scouted around for a table. They’d just about given up when one opened up right next to them. Owen thanked the couple who gave it up and pulled out Carla’s chair. “This is perfect!”

  Carla nodded. “Great view, easy access to the bar, far enough back we can talk. Score!”

  “I haven’t been here in ages, Carla.”

  “Lisa says it gives her hives to come back. I figured since it was just you and me….”

  “Sure, good call.” Owen picked up a couple of pretzels from a bowl on the table. “So where is—”

  Carla held up a hand. “Don’t ask until I’ve had alcohol.”

  “Oh boy.” Owen shook his head. “First round’s on me.” He stood and maneuvered his way to the bar. He loved this place. When he first started at the conservatory, he was broke and stressed and exhausted all the time. But late at night when he needed to blow off some steam, he’d come down here to see who was playing and treat himself to one strong drink. He’d hang in the back, get lost in the music, and let it all go. It was his therapy. Eventually it also became his livelihood.

  The bartender sat two cosmos in front of Owen and instead of paying, Owen opened a tab. That made him grin. Those broke and stressful days were long gone now. He wasn’t rolling in cash, but he was comfortable enough to take a friend out for drinks.

  “One for you,” Owen said sitting a cosmo in front of Carla. As he sat, she raised her glass.

  “Here’s to not starving anymore.” They clinked glasses, and Owen took a nice long sip.

  “Seriously.”

  Carla leaned back in her chair.

  That first year had been so hard; Owen remembered how much he worried about making sure his tuition was paid, his rent, his expenses. He would work every minute that he wasn’t practicing or in classes. That was the year the rift between Owen and his mother had formed, and it only got wider as he made his way toward graduation.

  “Remember how you used to sit back here all night and nurse one drink?”

  Owen nodded. “And how sometimes we’d share it?” Owen’s mother, the oncologist, told him back then that there wasn’t any money in music. He was a decent student in high school, and she told him she and Papa would pay for Owen to go premed or prelaw. She made her position clear after he applied for admission to the conservatory anyway, that if he was going to “throw his future away,” he was going to have to come up with the cash for it himself.

  Papa wasn’t in any position to help; he was a high school history teacher. Mom was really the breadwinner in the family. But when Owen was accepted, his father helped him figure it out. Owen entered into a work-study program with the conservatory and applied for every merit scholarship he could possibly find, scraping together just enough to get through.

  “A gin and tonic, and a bowl of free pretzels.” Carla laughed. “Can you believe we did it?”

  Owen shook his head. “Feels so far away now. Like another life.”

  “It kind of was.”

  Lisa had been at the conservatory too, but she came from money and didn’t have the issues that they had. She was generous, though, and sometimes she’d bankroll both of them between paychecks. Both Carla and Owen knew it was very possible they might not have made it without her help.

  “Hey, did Lisa ask you about recording?”

  “About what?” Owen wasn’t sure he’d heard that right. “Did you say recording?”

  “Yeah. Lisa says she can work a connection of hers and get us some studio time. Are you interested?”

  “For like, YouTube?”

  “No, Owen. Like for promotion. For sale. An album.”

  “No way, really?”

  “Could be fun, right?” Carla watched him carefully.

  “Definitely.” Owen nodded. “Let’s talk about it on Monday.”

  Carla smiled. “Yeah? Good. We were hoping you’d say that.”

  Owen raised an eyebrow. “Did you think I was going to say no?”

  “Well, maybe. I mean, we didn’t know, I guess. You have a professional position now. We weren’t sure how long you were going to want to keep… you know.”

  “Are you kidding me? Carla, I love Six Hands. I can’t give it up. I’m so in.”

  Carla smiled, looking relieved. “Excellent!”

  “You guys were seriously afraid that because I got a ‘real job’ I’d forget my crew?”

  “Well.” Carla shrugged.

  “Well, nothing. I love you guys. I love what we do together.” Owen sipped his cosmo to buy him a minute to think. He’d never had any intention of leaving the band. He could see how they might worry now that he had a steady paycheck coming in, but their music was important to him. They were his best friends. He wondered if that was really why Carla invited him out tonight, but rather than ask and embarrass her, he decided to leave it where it was and he’d reassure them both at Monday’s rehearsal just how important they, and Six Hands, were to him.

  “So.” He changed the subject. “I heard you tell Lisa earlier you worked auditions today?”

  “Yeah, they’re workshopping a new musical at one of the studios in midtown. I’ll be working all the auditions and then playing rehearsals.”

  “Good thing your sight-reading skills are Grade A.”

  “You’re telling me. The last time I did a workshop they were constantly rewriting things. It felt like a new score every day.”

  Owen nodded and sipped his cosmo.

  “And the symphony gig?” Carla asked. “It’s good?”

  “It is. I’m still such a newbie, and there’s a bit of a learning curve, but it’s going well. I’ve got a solid seat, and I’m working with some great people. It’s a little high pressure sometimes, but….” Owen shrugged.

  “But it’s not a courtroom.”

  “Ugh. Can you imagine me as a lawyer?”

  “Frankly, no.” They both laughed. “Speaking of which, how are things with your mom?” Carla asked and sipped her cosmo.

  “Oh, we’re going there, are we?”

  Carla nodded. “That’s what friends are for.”

  “Bitch. I guess they’re a little better, maybe?”

  “Maybe? Have you talked to her recently?”

  Owen sighed, and Carla looked at him, waiting patiently. “About two weeks ago. She was a little chilly, said she hoped the ‘orchestra thing’ works out for me. Papa says he’s working on her.”

  “He’s been saying that for years.”

  “Yeah.” Owen nodded. “I know.”

  “Well, it’s her loss, baby. You’re brilliant, and she just can’t see past her own nose.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’ll show her.”

  Owen grinned. He’d like that opportunity, actually.

  “Have you told them about Hemingway?”

  Owen snorted and shook his head. “His name is Reese.”

  “Oh, I know just who he is, baby. Everyone does.”

  “They do?”

  “Owen! He’s a New York Times bestselling author! He’s in every bookstore, airplane terminals, you name it. He’s got a TV ad.”

  “He does?” Owen didn’t know about the ad.

  “I heard they’re trying to make a movie of the first book.”

  “What? Really?”

  Carla shook her head. “You really need to rea
d a newspaper.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Or maybe his books. Have you read them?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sleeping with the guy, and you haven’t even picked up his books?”

  “I’m more interested in what’s between a different set of covers.” Owen gave her a wicked smile.

  Carla winked at him. “Okay. But he’s got fans. You better be ready for that.”

  “He’s very private, and he’s very careful.”

  “Good.” Carla tried again. “So, have you told your folks about Reese, or not?”

  Owen shook his head no. “I just don’t… you know. After Jude.”

  “Jude.” Carla spat his name. “Jude is ancient history.”

  Owen shrugged. His father had really liked Jude, and since they’d broken up, Papa asked him all the time if he was dating again. Owen had wanted to make sure this thing with Reese was real before saying anything. It certainly seemed real at this point, but there was a time he’d thought so with Jude as well, and Jude cheated on him. Owen needed more time.

  “Reese isn’t Jude.”

  Owen looked at Carla. “Yeah? How do you know?”

  Carla wilted a little. “Oh, Owen. You can’t think like that. Trust him until he gives you a reason not to.”

  He did trust Reese. He questioned himself, though. It was his baggage, and he really did try his best not to put it on his lover. “I know. I’m trying. I do trust him.”

  “Good. I like him.”

  “High praise. I’ll keep that in mind.” He swirled what was left of his cosmo in the glass. “So….” Owen regarded Carla meaningfully. “Want to tell me what’s going on with Jess, now?”

  “Ugh. Not drunk enough. Another?”

  “Nice try.”

  Carla rolled her eyes. “Fine. She’s… pushing.”

  “Pushing? I don’t follow.”

  “Well, we’ve been together four years. She wants to know where it’s going….” Carla made a gesture that implied there was more.

  “Ohhhhh.” Oh boy. From what he remembered, Carla used to have strong feelings about these matters. Strong, as in negative.

  “Jess wants to get married.”

  Owen put his drink down before he dropped it. “Shit, really?”