Rhythm by Marie Lipscomb
Chapter Five
Beth
“Okay, spill.”
Sadie cackles triumphantly on the other end of the phone. “Good morning to you too. He’s the drummer for a band called Vixen’s Wail. They’re a symphonic metal band.”
As she grabs a towel from the bathroom, she notices how transparent her shirt has gotten in the rain. Great.
With a grimace, she turns on the shower and leaves it to warm up. “That’s… actually pretty cool.”
“He’s the only guy in the band. There are seven members; your drummer boy, five women, and their violinist who’s non-binary.”
“Find me something to hate about him,” Beth instructs as she switches to speakerphone and starts to undress, wrapping herself in a towel while she waits for the shower. “Is there like a bio or something? Photographs of him kicking puppies? Anything.”
In the silence her mind starts to whirr. She heads into the living room and sits on the sofa, pulls her sketchbook onto her lap and starts to draw.
Her jaw clenches as the noise starts up below, muted but still audible. Tap tap taptaptap. Tap tap taptaptap.
She rolls her eyes as Sadie’s voice comes from the speaker. “Is that him I hear?”
“Yeah. He puts these rubber pad things on the drums to make them quiet.” She frowns as she sketches, and it isn’t long before the image becomes clear. It’s him, eyes screwed tight in furious concentration, his hair disheveled as though someone has already run their fingers through it.
Sadie gives a short, sympathetic laugh. “That’s the quietened down version?”
“Exactly.”
“I can see why that would be annoying, but honestly, he sounds pretty good,” Sadie says. “Ah… okay. It looks like he’s dating the singer. And she’s fricking gorgeous.”
“Oh—” She tries not to sound disappointed, but she’s not at all convincing. “Well that settles—”
“Wait. No. He was dating her. They broke up but they’re still good friends and write all their music together. Yeesh.”
Yeesh indeed. A good relationship with his ex, probably means he’s a decent person, which in this case, is extraordinarily inconvenient. She keeps sketching, adding a pair or vicious boar tusks to his bottom teeth. “Keep going. There must be something.”
“Nothing I can see. He seems like a nice guy…but there are pictures. Oof… he has no shirt on here.” Sadie chuckles on the other end of the phone. “Damn, that’s a lot of boy. You’re right. He is cute. Maybe I’ll just happen to knock on the wrong door when I head on up there to pick you up…I can come now if you like?”
“No.” The possessiveness in her tone startles her. She distracts herself from Sadie’s laughter by shading a pair of curling, satanic horns coming out of his head.
“You’ve got it bad, haven’t you?”
As Beth releases a breath, she’s frustrated to find that Sadie is right. When she thinks of him her stomach flops. She almost wants to keep going downstairs to complain so she can see him again, and the thought of him, shirtless, sweating, is…honestly, it’s turning her on. “I’m going to put some music on, try to drown him out, and get some work done.”
“Call me with updates. I want to know when it happens, I want all the gory details. Length, girth, positions, everything. Got it?”
Beth draws a sharp breath and forces out a sigh as she disconnects the call.
Finn
How doesshe know about Vixen’s Wail? And what’s she planning to do with the knowledge?
He scours the forums on his band’s website, looking for shitty comments from a new user, but if she’s on there she isn’t saying anything. In the bottom corner of the screen, he can see there are four members online, and one guest. Perhaps that’s her.
She’s chattering away upstairs, probably on the phone to the cabin’s owner, complaining about his antisocial behavior. She’s in for a surprise when she does, but he’ll probably still get his ear chewed off. His grandma is proud of her cabin, and her near-flawless five-star reviews.
The reviews. His blood runs cold. Beth can complain to him all she wants, but if she messes up Gigi’s average and her overall rating dips below a 4.9 because of him, he’ll never hear the end of it
With a sigh, he throws the silencing pads back on his kit and starts to play, softly, carefully, trying not to disturb her.
If I piss her off enough though, maybe she’ll come down again in those see-through little pajamas.
He tells the voice in his head to shut up, but plays a little harder regardless. He can’t quite shake the image of her ass jiggling as she ran up the stairs.
An-i-mal! An-i-mal!
The fantasy of her haunts him, filling his head, pushing out the music, the rhythm, the beat, until there’s nothing but her. He closes his eyes and imagines her knelt between his knees, her nipples pressing against the sheer, wet fabric of her pajamas, her full lips wrapped around his cock, slowly stroking him to climax.
He opens his eyes and pushes out a breath. This is ridiculous. He needs to get her out of his head.
He stops drumming, lays his sticks down, and heads off to the bedroom, cock so hard it aches. She’s nothing more than a distraction. A prissy, sexy, annoying, gorgeous distraction, and damn, does he ever want her. He lies back and uses both hands, one cupping his balls, the other tugging at his cock as he imagines her trying to keep him quiet by sitting on his face.
His breath shudders as his rough hands grip his sensitive cock. He wants her, wants her softness, her tender touch, wants to hear her voice shatter until all she can do is whimper. What he wouldn’t give to make her come.
Rolling onto his stomach, he bucks his hips against the mattress and uses the friction of the sheets to get himself off. He buries his face in the pillows, pretending they’re her thighs, imagining her hot little pussy beneath his tongue. Each thrust brings him closer.
“Beth,” her name leaves his lips like a wish, stifled against the pillows.
Beth
The music blasting out from her Bluetooth speaker drowns out her gasps.
“Oh, shit.” She sucks her breath between her teeth as her little bullet vibrator buzzes against her clit. Pressing her head back against the pillow, she can see stars, lost in the rolling waves of pleasure as her toes curl, and her climax builds quickly.
His tongue. His hands. His cock. She wants him all. She imagines him standing at the end of the bed, her feet pinned to his shoulders as he thrusts into her. Her hands all over his stomach and chest as he teases her clit with his calloused fingers.
“Fuck… Finn…”
Her thighs shudder as she comes. A ragged, almost-pained cry escaping her lips as her pussy pulses beneath her hands. Immediately oversensitive, she turns off the vibrator, tosses it back into her bag, and lays back, basking in the afterglow of pleasure.
Her music is turned up loud, and that’s how she’ll keep it. If he wants noise, he’ll get it. Silence would have been preferable, but music comes with the added bonus of pissing him off. Occasionally, she can listen to instrumental music as she works, nothing with lyrics, and for now, definitely nothing with drums. Fuck drums. Fuck Finn.
Climbing out of bed, she straightens out her clothes and heads into the bathroom. The shower has been running ever since her conversation with Sadie, and the mirror is completely steamed up. “Oops.”
With a grimace she switches it off. She’ll shower later. For now, she’ll paint. The monstrous portrait of Finn snarls at her from the sofa, as if he knows what she just did while thinking of him. Even as a drawing with tusks and horns she wants him. In fact, if she’s being honest, the tusks and horns are pretty hot too.
A sharp knock at the door raises the corners of her lips into a smirk. She stands completely still before her easel, brush poised to paint.
“Beth?”
The way he says her name, so sharp and commanding sends a thrill through her body. Her cheeks are still flushed, and as she saunters toward the door, she wonders if he’ll figure it out.
He arches an eyebrow as she opens the door, and her music blasts out to meet him. Cold air and harsh morning light rush into the cabin. It’s still raining, hard.
“Really?” He has to yell over the blasting music.
She gives him a one-shouldered shrug and smiles. “’Sup?”
His cheeks are flushed, almost as red as hers, and his bottom lip is sucked pink. He has clearly made some attempt to slick back his hair, but it’s unmistakably tousled. Her nipples tighten as she lets herself imagine he was touching himself too, thinking about her. She’s going to need more batteries before this weekend is over.
“Listen,” he huffs. “I need to shower, but all the hot water has gone.”
“Oh.” The rhythm of her heart kicks up. “Yeah, that was me. My bad. I switched it on and kind of forgot about it.”
His eyebrows shoot up a little at her admission. “Alright, we share a tank, so please be considerate.”
Considerate? Heat flares along her jaw. The man who awoke her at the ass-crack of dawn with thundering drums, is preaching consideration to her. The urge to tear him a new one rises in her chest.
“And please turn your music down.” He blinks as the rain batters him. “I made my drums as quiet as I could. I’m making compromises. You’re just being loud for the sake of it now.”
He’s right, and she knows she’s being petty, but nevertheless she smirks. “I thought you like noise?”
“I like my noise. Yours is… what is this?”
“Music,” she shrugs. “It helps me think.”
“You can’t possibly work with it turned up this loud.”
“It’s better than listening to your awful drumming all day.”
His face hardens. “Awful?”
“Yeah. It is. Have you ever sat and listened to nothing but drum solos for hours on end—?”
“Yeah?”
“—No, because everyone knows drum solos suck. I don’t want to listen to it.”
He recoils a little, his eyebrows furrowed. “Why don’t I come in and take a look at your art and tell you everything that sucks about it? Music is my art.”
Beth scoffs. “Art?” Her heart lunges against her ribs as she stares him down. “There’s nothing remotely artistic about that noise. A chimpanzee could do it.”
She expects anger, retaliation, but he’s silent, and in a way it’s worse. If she was a fraction less stubborn, she’d apologize, but she’s tired and cranky, and it’s his fault entirely.
The way he stares at her, hard-eyed, undaunted, unyielding, sends lighting prickling along her skin. She braces herself, half expecting—and half hoping—he’ll slam her up against the wall.
Finn’s lips part. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. It’s just mindlessly hitting things. It sounds absolutely terrible.”
A huff of bitter laughter bursts from him. He shakes his head and raises his eyes to the dark, rainy sky. She’s wounded him, deeply, but she doesn’t feel victorious, not in the slightest. Guilt creeps through her ribs like a vine, its thorns pricking her heart.
Finally, he speaks. “You want to be this way? Fine.”
As he turns and stomps down the stairs, cold dread trickles down her spine. She didn’t mean it, any of it, but he’s hurt, and she can’t stand to know she caused his pain. “Alright, I’m sorry. I’ll turn the music down,” she calls after him, but he doesn’t break stride. “Shit.”
The door beneath her slams, and moments later the air erupts with ear-splitting thunder.