Happily Ever After

Shouldering her practice guitar’s case, Sage pushed her bedroom door open. A long, stressful day of putting together songs with chunks of unfinished material complete, she was ready to place her practice guitar in the corner where it belonged, pour herself a cup of wine, and curl up on the couch to watch movies. Preferably those featuring plots so obnoxiously ridiculous she could make fun of them. But Sage’s visions of a quiet evening spent home alone evaporated, her body frozen in the doorway of her room, by what—or, better yet, who—took up residence on her bed.

Cadeau, clad in nothing but thin panties, lay in her bed. Her naked breasts pressed against Sage’s neatly arranged comforter, delicious treats hidden from her roving eyes. And her performance guitar rested at the foot of her bed, nearly touching Cadeau’s breasts, further blocking the view. Cadeau trailed a delicate finger over the new bridge, and her sapphire blue eyes held Sage’s.

What was she doing in her house? Almost naked on her bed, at that. How did she get in? What was going on?

Her questioning thoughts, however, dissolved at the sound of Cadeau’s husky voice. “I finished your guitar. Try me out.” She gave a throaty chuckle. “I mean, it out.”

It was like a line from a tacky pornographic movie. The whole scenario could have easily been a plot from some porno that Hayden watched. But this was Cadeau laying in her bed. This was Cadeau wearing skimpy panties. This was Cadeau talking in an enticing tone. This was Cadeau smiling up at her. This was Cadeau tempting her with her body.

And it was quite possibly the sexiest thing Sage had seen.

Sage leaned her practice guitar against the wall, not at all in its rightful place near her bed, and walked to her bed, stopping at the foot of it to stare. Cadeau gazed up at her, patiently awaiting her next move. But Sage was frozen, taking in every inch of naked skin she could see, deciding which part of her would be devoured first.

Cadeau’s ass looked even nicer up close. Framed in those cute, lacy pink things. Delicious.

But Sage’s guitar was still in the way of Cadeau’s chest, blocking her view. That needed to be remedied. Immediately.

Sage grabbed the neck of her guitar, gently took it from its spot—because she wasn’t completely willing to ruin her baby for the sake of possibly catching a glimpse of Cadeau’s naked breasts—and eyed the luscious swells. She didn’t pretend to analyze the work done on her guitar, instead unabashedly stared at Cadeau’s breasts. Which were still hidden, pressed against the bed, everything Sage desired to see out of sight.

Damn.

She was getting desperate enough to flip the damn woman on her back.

“Try it?” Cadeau asked, challenge lacing her husky voice.

Try what? Flipping Cadeau on her back? Couldn’t be that hard. Cadeau couldn’t weigh that much, and Sage had a little bit of muscle. Well, maybe her arms were just toned, but still, some muscle was better than no muscle. Or was Cadeau talking about the guitar’s altered thing? Sage couldn’t even remember what she had altered. She was sure whatever it was, it was perfect. Cadeau knew her way around a guitar.

For a moment, Sage debated between her two options and decided to take the safer bet. She perched on the edge of her bed, guitar balanced on her lap, and strummed the strings a few times. Sounded fine enough. She wouldn’t know for sure until she plugged it in, but, damn it, she didn’t care. Cadeau was naked. In her bed. And Sage was going to thank her for her spectacular work the right way.

Before she could turn and suggest just that, a body pressed flush against her back. Hard nipples pressed into the fabric of her tank top, heat encompassed Sage, and the scent of lavender tickled her nose. Arms wrapped loosely around Sage’s shoulders, breath tickled her ear. Cadeau. All of her.

Desire blazed in Sage’s stomach, almost unbearable. She had to touch Cadeau. Needed to. Would explode if she didn’t.

“Do you like it?” Cadeau murmured, lips brushing her ear.

“Oh, yes,” Sage breathed.

She turned her head and was trapped by Cadeau’s blue eyes, her senses overwhelmed by the longing there, a longing that seemed to match her own. Their faces were close. So very close. A good kind of close that Sage actually liked. Their noses bumped against each other. She could make out the flecks of grey dotting Cadeau’s eyes. And she was comfortable in the close proximity of their faces. Wanted to bring them closer, in fact, so close they’d become a tangle of naked limbs in Sage’s bed.

And she could do that. Cadeau would let her, wanted her to. Sage could tilt her head and easily close the distance between them with no resistance.

How lovely.

Her hand left the neck of her guitar to run through Cadeau’s silky hair and then cup her cheek. Her hair was soft, her skin was soft, her lips looked awfully soft. There was only one way to be sure of the latter.

“Let me thank you,” Sage mumbled.

Cadeau’s eyes dropped to Sage’s lips, then met her gaze again, the corners crinkling with her smile. “Absolutely.”

Sage titled her head, drew closer, their lips touched.

And Sage’s eyes fluttered open. Darkness cloaked her bedroom, only disrupted by the moonlight streaming through the window. Cold air chilled her naked skin, the comforter meant to protect her kicked somewhere in her room, no clothing covering her due to her penchant for sleeping nude. And her bed was void of another body, no Cadeau curled against her to keep her warm. She was alone. Completely and totally alone.

“Fuck,” she groaned.

Her body was still brimming with lust, liquid heat pooling between her thighs. The remnants of a dream that didn’t get an appropriate ending. She’d been left wired, in need, and now, she wouldn’t easily get back to sleep. Not with images of Cadeau nearly naked flitting through her mind.

She’d never even gotten see Cadeau’s breasts. Shame.

Sighing, she pushed herself up, swung her legs over the side of her bed, and stood, hooking her hands over her head and stretching as she did so. She shuffled to her dresser, rubbing the remains of sleep from her eyes, and yanked opened the second drawer. Blindly, she pulled out one of the many oversized shirts that filled the drawer and threw it over her head. Which one she wore didn’t matter. Walking around her home in the middle of the night was, more often than not, safe enough. Her friends weren’t likely to be lounging in her living room—she would have heard them by now—and she had no girlfriend to be sneaking about—not that her attire would matter much in that case. In fact, covering her body with a shirt while walking around her home should have been unnecessary.

But there had been that one time when the paparazzi got a picture of her through her windows… Well, more than one time. Regardless, she’d learned her lesson. She’d take a small ounce of precaution when walking around during the night.

She left her room, walked through the hallway, and into the connected dining room and kitchen, feet dragging the whole way. Something to drink would be great, a start to possibly falling back to sleep. A glass of wine paired with infomercials would do the trick. Maybe a bit of her leftover Chinese food. Sounded perfect to her.

Almost as perfect as acting out her little dream with Cadeau.

Before she could begin to dwell on that thought and everything that went with it, she flipped the light switch, allowing the blinding lights to distract her. She blinked, adjusted to the sudden light illuminating the darkness, and made a mental note to herself to have a dimmer switch installed for late night snacks like this.

She hoped late night snacks prompted by dirty dreams featuring a certain drummer wouldn’t happen often enough to make that necessary though. But she didn’t know which solution she’d prefer: the dreams ceasing altogether or having Cadeau ready and willing in her bed.

And she didn’t particularly want to think about it.

Until she had to.

Shaking her head to rid herself of the persistent image of a naked Cadeau in her bed, she moved across the tiled floor to the kitchen, stumbling around a dining room chair that jumped out in her path. The inbred grace her foster parents had beaten into her always seemed to abandon her when she was tired.

Funny, she had been pretty good at carrying herself on minimal sleep when she was a kid. Out of necessity, of course, but she was slacking on her old age.

Her foster parent’s condescending gaze glared at her from the picture on her refrigerator, their disapproval of everything she did more than evident. But she ignored the stupid picture, because it was, after all, just a picture despite the past pain and continued effects it represented, and pulled the fridge door open. She grabbed the container of leftover Kung Pao Chicken and the screw cap wine bottle, shut the door with her foot, and grabbed a wine glass and fork from the neat row of drying dishes near the sink.

Less-than-classy rock star repast cradled in her arms she ambled back across her kitchen and dining room, avoiding the chair that nearly killed her on her way in, and crossed the hallway into the living room. She placed her meal on the coffee table and flopped on the couch, making herself comfortable on the large cushions before flipping on the television. As she expected, some infomercial was playing on a channel she didn’t care to check, because it didn’t matter what channel she was watching. It was that point at night where every channel she enjoyed was playing infomercials.

She knew she should be doing something more exciting, something people expected of her as the lead guitarist of Say Goodbye, something her past girlfriends expected of her, something the press expected her to do. But she liked infomercials and wine and leftovers. And her band mates, the only people in the world she considered friends, didn’t care what she did.

Where would Cadeau fall in the spectrum of opinions?

And Sage killed the last question with a large bite of chicken.