The Sound of Us

Chapter Twenty-Eight. “All of Me” by John Legend

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“All of Me” by John Legend

SKYE

From the outside, Dante’s apartment looked like an ordinary garage suite. The roof tiles and worn siding on the rectangular building were a match for Noah’s two-story house and it had the same peaked roof and narrow windows. Inside the garage, a wooden staircase led up to a metal door, but there the similarities ended. As I crossed the threshold, I felt like I’d stepped into a music museum. Framed vintage band posters and signed photographs of musicians covered the walls, along with neon beer signs and wooden shelves bursting with music paraphernalia.

“Noah decorated this place before I moved in.” Dante closed the door behind me. “He thrifted the furniture from various stores and flea markets. He was going for an eclectic look. He said I could change things around, but I didn’t want to mess with his stuff. I kinda like it.”

“It’s very Noah.” The mishmash of colors, textures, and patterns somehow worked together to create a space that was warm and inviting, a reflection of Noah’s artistic personality.

“Where are you in here?” I studied the vintage guitars displayed in glass cases, some of which had been signed by musical greats.

“Right here.” Dante gestured to the big wooden desk in the corner. “Textbooks, coursework, pens, calculator, mail, bills, LSAT study guide—I’m taking the test this Friday.”

“Can I see your bass?” After watching him play all night, I was desperate to see it up close.

I could tell from Dante’s smile he was pleased I’d asked. He unzipped the case and offered it to me. Understanding the importance of the moment, I took the instrument carefully with both hands.

“It’s beautiful.” I ran my fingers over the shiny blue metal-flake surface. Despite the warmth in the room, it was still cool from our trip home.

“It was my first bass,” he said proudly. “It’s a Fender with a custom maple neck and jumbo frets. I used to play it out of a small GK amp that fell off the back of a truck.”

“You do like to play it close to the line,” I said, teasing. “Where did you get it?”

Dante’s smile faded. “The bass was a gift from my middle school music teacher. My dad wouldn’t agree to pay for lessons, so my teacher taught me after school and on weekends in exchange for yard work. He let me bring Sasha and she would help in the garden and play in his backyard. It was a sanctuary for us. I was devastated when he moved away. I didn’t realize at the time, but he was a pro session player and he’d toured with some big-name bands back in the day.”

Everyone had left him. How did someone deal with that much pain?

“I would show you a few chords, but’s hard to focus when I’m wondering what’s under your dress.” He returned the bass to its case, and then pulled me into his arms, his eyes hooded, primal, hungry.

“Why don’t you take it off and find out?”

“I would be delighted to strip you naked, but first…” He swept me up in his arms and carried me into his bedroom. “I had fantasies of doing things to you in my bed and I’m going to make every single one of them come true.”

“I’m happy to oblige.”

Dante released me, standing, at the foot of his bed. His room was decorated much like the rest of the suite, but with far fewer adornments. A king-size bed with a plain-blue cover took up most of the space with a vintage dresser squeezed into one corner.

“I want you naked.” He yanked off his T-shirt and I pressed a kiss to the bluebird inked on his bare chest.

“What a coincidence,” I murmured against his skin. “I want you naked, too.” I unzipped my dress and shimmied my hips until it fell in a puddle on the floor. I was wearing my only matching underwear, a white lace bra and panty set that I’d bought my freshman year when I’d had the world in my palm and thought that was the year I’d meet “the one.”

“I like this.” Dante slid one finger over the strap of my bra, then flicked it over my shoulder. “But I like you more without it.” He unhooked it with one hand and tossed it on the bed, his gaze sweeping over my breasts as he rumbled with approval.

“Your turn.” I trailed my fingers down his chest and over the trail of soft hair before I ripped open his fly and wrapped my hand around his arousal, hard and thick beneath my palm.

His breath hitched, firm hand clasping my wrist and drawing it away. “I want this to last. I want to take my time with you.” He kicked off his jeans but left his boxers on, and there we were, bare save for the thin material between us.

Dante leaned down and kissed me, gently, softly, slowly melting me until I had to wrap my arms around his neck to stay upright. We kissed and we kissed, and we kissed until I was wet and aching and imagining that talented tongue thrusting somewhere else.

“I need to taste you.” He eased me back onto the bed and lifted my heels to his shoulders, licking his lips as if I were a delicious treat. “Don’t move.” His voice was a low, teasing whisper in my ear as the rough pads of his fingertips glided through the wetness of my arousal.

Moaning, I jerked my hips up, chasing his touch. “More.”

“You’ll get more when I’m ready to give you more.” He circled my clit with his tongue, making me shudder. His fingers were on the insides of my thighs, curling around from behind to spread me open, treating both legs the same. Scars or no scars, he was pulling me apart.

“Please.” My cheeks burned but I was beyond caring. I fisted the covers, digging my heels into his shoulders.

“There’s my good girl.” He rewarded me with the thrust of a thick finger as he lowered his mouth back to my clit. So slow. So gentle. Not nearly enough.

“Are you trying to drive me crazy?”

He looked up, a wicked smile spreading across his lips. “I like you crazy. I like you begging. I like you totally out of control.” He pulled out and pressed two fingers deep inside, sweeping his tongue through my folds in a rough, sensual stroke.

An inferno built inside me, my moans turned into whimpers and then sounds—pleasure, need, frustration, desire.

Dante added a third finger, stretching me deliciously wide as he continued to torment me with his tongue. He took me to the brink and let me hover until the pressure of anticipation verged on pain.

“Tell me what you want me to do,” Dante said, his lips wet with my arousal.

“I want you to make me come. Please.” I groaned, rocking my hips against the thrust of his fingers.

“Say my name.”

“Dante. Make me come, Dante.”

“Good girl.” He closed his mouth over my clit and applied a slow, relentless gentle pressure that built and built, swelling up through my body, winding me tighter and tighter until finally I crashed over the edge, pleasure breaking over me like a cresting wave.

Dante’s fingers never stopped, moving in a gentle rhythm inside me, stroking that sensitive spot that kept my pleasure at an erotic peak.

I sobbed a moan. “I can’t… Too much.”

“You can.” He pushed up and stripped off his boxers, then rolled on a condom from his nightstand. “But this time with me inside you.”

“Like this?” I drank in the sight of him standing in front of me, his chest and pecs covered in tattoos, the ink swirling down his arms, his cock hard and thick with promise. He had a magnificent body. I could have stared at him all day.

“Are you done looking at me like you want to eat me?”

“I could…”

“Later.” He grabbed me around the waist and flipped me over, positioning me on my hands and knees on the bed. “Right now, I want to fuck you looking at that sexy ass you teased me with all night. I want to fuck you knowing that all the other men in the bar wanted you but it’s only me who gets to be inside you.” He grabbed my hair with one hand, pulling my head back as he ran a rough hand along my spine from my nape to the cleft of my ass. “I’m going to be the one to make you scream.”

“I like that you were thinking about me that way.”

“You’re gonna like me fucking you that way even more.” He shoved my knees apart with his thick thigh then plunged inside me, releasing my hair to grip my hips instead. I sucked in an unsteady breath and pushed back, taking as much as he was giving me, showing him I wasn’t fragile in any way.

“Skye. God, you’re so fucking tight.” His voice was thick, hoarse. I liked that I could do that to him. That I could affect him that way.

“You can be rough.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.” He kissed the scars on my back, the sensitive spot at the base of my spine. My hips arched in his hands, taking him deeper, showing him how far he could go.

“Do you like it hard, buttercup?” He pulled out and thrust faster, harder, rough in the most delicious way.

“Yes. Make me feel good,” I murmured. “Make me feel bad. Make me just feel.”

“I’ll make you feel fucking everything.” He sped his thrusts, his hips slapping my ass. “You’re gonna be a good girl and take it all.”

My fingers curled into the bedding, gripping hard to brace myself as my body rocked with his thrusts. Holding me firm with one hand, he yanked my hair back and slammed me into orgasm with his hard, pounding rhythm. Moments later, he followed me over the edge, his guttural groan melding with mine.

His arm wrapped around my waist, and he rolled us until he was on his back and I was lying on his chest, tucked under his arm. He stroked his fingers in and out of the dip of my waist while we came down from the high. I liked the small intimacy of his touch, the way he connected with me as we shuddered together.

“We forgot the music,” he said, reaching for his phone. “I made a playlist for the night I could bring you here.”

“What did you call it? I hope it’s not something lame like Sexing Skye or Dante’s Dick Dance or Banging the Broadcaster .”

“How do you come up with these things so fast?” he asked. “You make my head spin.”

“You’re changing the subject.” I leaned over, trying to peek at his playlist.

“I called it The Sound of Us .” He held it up for me to see and I quickly scanned the first few tracks. “It’s our story.”

“I can hardly wait to hear it.”

As the first notes of John Legend’s “All of Me” filled the room, Dante moved down my body. His first kiss was on the worst of my scars, and then he followed the mottled rainbow of white and red and silver that streaked me from hip to ankle, his lips pressing softly on every inch of my skin. He lifted each of my feet and kissed my toes, my calves, the sensitive creases behind my knees. His rough stubble against the soft skin of my inner thighs made me gasp and beg for his mouth where I was wet and aching for him all over again, but he only teased me with hot breaths and whispered promises for later in the night. He knelt between my legs and feathered kisses over my mound, my hips, my belly, and curve of my waist. He spent a long time on my nipples, sucking and licking each one into a hard peak before he trailed butterfly kisses along the undersides of my breasts, the valley between and the soft crescents above. Finally, he moved to the hollow at the base of my throat, my jaw, my chin, my cheeks, my forehead, a nip on my earlobes, and then, yes, finally, he came back to my mouth.

“Look at me, Skye.”

I hadn’t even realized I had closed my eyes, but there he was, his pupils dark but full of light, looking at me as if I were the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

“That’s… it’s perfect.” His playlist was everything—deeply emotional, thoughtfully curated, exquisitely crafted, perfect in every way. It was about hope and longing and loss and love. It thrilled me and scared me at the same time. “I’ll have to make you a playlist now,” I said kissing his lips, so he didn’t speak the words he’d shared in his songs.

“Do you know what I want to hear?” He rubbed his nose against my cheek, a sweet, intimate gesture that I felt deep in my heart. “The soundtrack of your life.”

I had always imagined meeting someone who wanted to hear the soundtrack of my life—the roadmap of the major milestones that got me to where I was at that moment in time—because it meant they truly wanted to know me. There was no point denying it existed, and I was sure he had one, too.

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

“Deal.” He rolled to his side, propping his head on his elbow. “First song.”

“The Dora the Explorer theme song. I was three or four years old, and I remember standing outside my foster parents’ bedroom door in the middle of the night belting out ‘Doo doo doo doo doo DORA!’ I think that’s why they sent me away.”

“You’re too adorable to send away,” he said, feathering a kiss over my nose.

“You just want more sex,” I huffed. “Your turn.”

“‘Yellow Submarine.’ My mom had a yellow car, and we sang that song every time we went for a long drive. We thought they were fun road trips, but she was keeping us from my dad when he came home drunk.”

I squeezed his hand. “She sounds like a brave and loving mom giving you joy in the worst of times.”

His faced smoothed, eyes shuttering for the briefest of moments. Then he said, “You’re stalling. Next song.”

“ABBA’s greatest hits.”

“Seriously,” he said. “How old are you really?”

“I loved ABBA because my mom loved ABBA and I loved Coleman Hawkins and Frank Sinatra because of my dad.”

“My mom loved musicals,” Dante said. “We listened to the soundtracks to Moulin Rouge , The Sound of Music , and West Side Story on the way to school. My favorite was Les Misérables . I used to imagine singing ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ in front of my dad as a kind of defiant family uprising.”

“Dante…” I cupped his jaw, rubbed my thumb over his bristles as if I could take away his pain.

“Sorry, buttercup.” He turned into my hand and kissed my palm. “This is supposed to fun.”

“It’s supposed to be real,” I said quietly. “Thank you for sharing it with me.”

“What’s next on your playlist?” he asked, turning back to look at me. “It’s tween time.”

“Katy Perry’s ‘Roar.’ I felt like I’d been given the words to express all my complicated tween feelings.”

“You as a tween…” Dante shook his head. “I can’t imagine.”

“I was a good tween. Five years after the adoption, I was still afraid my parents would send me away.”

“I was a mess.” He toyed with a strand of my hair, twisting it around his finger. “My mom had just died. I missed her so much. I spent the first few months playing David Guetta’s ‘Without You’ on repeat.”

Emotion welled up in my throat. It was a song about loss, about not being able to go on without the person you love. I moved closer and wrapped my arms around Dante, pulling him into a hug. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“It got better when my middle school teacher offered to teach me bass,” he said, burying his face in my hair. “Green Day’s ‘Welcome to Paradise’ always reminds me of those days.”

“I’m glad you had some happy times.”

“Teen Skye,” he said, perking up. “What was she listening to?”

“Omi’s ‘Cheerleader.’ It was all about friends. They were my cheer squad.”

“I tried to be Sasha’s cheer squad,” he said quietly. “I used to play Avicii’s ‘Hey Brother’ at full volume to let her know I would be there for her no matter what, but it wasn’t enough. She saw what my father did and couldn’t live with it. She took her life when she was fourteen and I was the one who found her. My soundtrack ends with Chord Overstreet’s ‘Hold On.’ Sasha died and a part of me died, too.”

“You had to be so strong and so brave for so long.” I brushed his hair back. “How did it not break you?”

“It did,” he said. “I left home the day after her funeral. It was a dark time. Drugs, alcohol, anything to numb the pain. I wound up busking on the street and Noah found me. He let me stay here, helped me clean up, and gave me a job at the station. I broke ties with my dad and changed my last name so the family line would end with him. Revenge gave me a reason to go on. I’m going to destroy his empire and make sure he goes to jail.”

My heart ached for him. He was living his life for someone else instead of living it for himself. But wasn’t I doing the same?

“My last song is ‘Tears in Heaven.’” It was a beautiful song about guilt and loss and regret that encapsulated the most devastating moment of my life. “I was arguing with my dad in the car right before the accident. He was so angry because I told him I was probably going to be cut from the team. He accused me of not working hard enough, of not trying hard enough, of not wanting it enough. He said I was the greatest disappointment of his life. And maybe…” I drew in a deep breath. “Maybe he shouldn’t have adopted me.”

“Jesus, Skye.” His arms tightened around me.

“The thing is…” I struggled to put all the tangled emotions into words as eloquent as Eric Clapton’s lyrics. “If I had tried harder, or if I’d been the player he wanted me to be, we wouldn’t have been arguing in the car that night, and he might have seen the drunk driver cross the center line in time to avoid the collision.”

“Don’t do that to yourself,” he said firmly. “His death is on the idiot who got into a car drunk. It’s not on you. It will never be on you.” He kissed my forehead. “You need a new last song.”

“So do you.”

“We should write our own song,” he said. “Something upbeat.”

“I think it should be a song that shows we learned from our experiences and can move forward unburdened by the past.”

Dante gave an exasperated sigh. “I’ll write the song. You can dance naked when I play it for you.”

“I could dance naked for you now,” I offered. “Put on some Joe Cocker.” I’d never done any kind of sexy dancing for anyone, but I felt lighter after sharing my burden and I knew in my heart there was nothing I could do to screw this up. Dante accepted me with all my flaws.

Dante scrambled up the bed while I pulled on my clothes. He leaned against the headboard, gloriously naked, and folded his hands behind his head. “Dance,” he demanded.

I lifted an admonishing brow. “Bossy boyfriends don’t get treats.”

“I’m your boyfriend.” He gave a satisfied grunt.

“Yes, you are.” I had to fight back a smile.

Dante licked his lips. “I’m going to get a treat.”

I struck a pose, waiting for the first notes of “You Can Leave Your Hat On.” “Only if you ask nicely.”

His gaze darkened. “I’m your boyfriend. Boyfriends get treats.”

“Yes, but you don’t always get to be in control.”

“Please.” The word rumbled from his throat, carrying with it the promise that I wouldn’t be in charge for long.

I unzipped my dress and rocked my hips in time to the music. “Good boy.”