Page 89 of Fame & Rhythm

Oh God, I hope Caleb doesn’t know what Aston plans to do with me. How embarrassing!

Aston pulls back from the kiss and looks me in the eyes. Every single inch of my skin is burning red hot. I love the way Aston is holding me right now. He almost has to hold me up because my knees aren’t doing such a good job of supporting me anymore.

“Aston,” I murmur, and he looks into my eyes and smiles.

“Yeah, Lennox?”

“Can you kiss me for a little while longer?”

“Sure thing, but this time I’m only going to kiss ‘cause trying to stop myself from touching you even more will be too hard.”

“Then touch me even more,” I whisper, feeling embarrassed that I even said that.

He chuckles. “Oh, I will, Annie, trust me, I will. But not here and not tonight. I’m not rushing into this with you. You mean too much to me to let me go all in, even though every part of me wants to. I want to take my time with you and cherish your body by worshipping you and the ground you walk on. You mean everything to me, and I do not want to fuck this up by moving too quickly,” he says, and my heart races and explodes at the thought of him with me. As much as I want to race to the finish line with Aston right this minute, I think for the sake of our friendship, going slow is the best idea. Plus, this is all new to me, and I have no idea what I’m doing, so some guidance would be great.

I swallow hard and look down at the floor. “I’ve never done anything like this before, Aston. I don’t know what I’m doing or how to do it,” I admit, and he smiles and lifts my head by my chin so I look directly into his eyes.

“I don’t know how to do anything either, Annie. I’m learning just like you are. The only difference is that I’ve done research and talked to Caleb about it. Let me take the lead, and I’ll tell you what and how to do things, okay?” he asks. I nod, and he smiles. “We’ll just take this really slow. I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do or that you don’t feel safe doing,” he says, and I nod again. He leans in and gently kisses me again while he pins me to the wall.

And right now, at this moment, things couldn’t be more perfect.

Strange and unknown… but perfect!

Chapter Seventeen

Annie

Aston and I finally come up for air and make our way back to the party. We’ve been gone long enough that I’m sure people have noticed.

I quickly wipe the smudge of lipstick from his mouth before we step out from behind the partition, only to find Caleb and Chad watching us with matching grins.

I glance at Aston.

He’s smirking.

“Do you think they know?” I murmur.

He shrugs. “So what if they do? I like you, Annie. I don’t care who knows.”

My stomach flips as he takes my hand and presses a soft kiss to my cheek, and we join the rest of Staked at a table, and he keeps hold of my hand beneath it for the rest of the night.

Later, after the after-party winds down, Rob gathers us together to go over how everything went.

And apparently… it went really well.

He’s already talking about ramping things up, more gigs this week to build momentum before we head into the studio to record the album. Then we’ll submit it to the label Dad was speaking to tonight.

They loved our sound.

Our chemistry.

Now they want to hear what we can do.

It’s all happening so fast.

Dad’s been glued to his phone, watching Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook blow up. Staked is trending, and the energy around us is unreal.

We’re actually doing this.