I threw the door of the roof open, alarming the security guy who had clearly inconspicuously followed us up here. Harry could learn from him a thing or eight about stealth.

"Sorry!" I said and the anger simmering in my voice was already changing, the tremor was apparent to my ears and I could tell by the soft look in his eyes that mine were about to runneth over.

All those bubbling emotions that I had expected to effervesce were an empty crib. I was so sure, so sure. I was still confused by his reluctance. If this was a crush, if the way he acted wasn't love, I'd be unable to take it when the real thing happened.

My mind raced as my heart ached, I'd barely made it to the door in the stairwell by the time I'd decided to fake sick and go home a few weeks early and I was crafting my lies to avoid the shows in Australia next month.

And, maybe I'd go to uni. There were things I wanted to study. Not compelling amazing experiences I was passionate about sitting in a classroom listening about, but a lecture hall was way more appealing than having to see the dimples face of my heartbreak all the time if I tagged along with tour again.

I tried to convince myself it was better this way as I made it back to the deserted hallway where the drunken revelries had yet to migrate to. I had ambitions I was lukewarm about that I may grow into if given the opportunity to pursue them away from thrilling strutting distractions.

I'd just about sold myself on a creative writing course at a small school near home when I heard a bing from the elevator behind me. I turned back to see who was being carried home first and admired the blue neon that ran the walls. For just another hotel this one had amazing details and an eclectic mix of big city chic and dive bar kitsch.

It was with a start I realized that it wasn't a lushy pal, but harry dashing out of the elevator calling my name.

"Melody," he bellowed runnin at me and I worried he would trip over his own feet. For someone who had started boxing, his agility sucked. I thought of other benign criticisms as he came to me and stayed in my fugue state until he reached me. I didn't even try to run, I just stood there and waited for him to come smash me into smaller pieces.

I was more shocked then when he reached me. He cupped my chin and planted his lips against my own along with a flag in my heart. This was a new kiss, full of feeling, not just longing or lust or contrition. Harry put so much of himself into the meeting of our lips I wasn't sure I needed words, but he gave me some.

"I can't, um, I can't say it.... not yet. I'll tell you why when I can, but....Melly," he pulled back from his intrusion into my personal space and gave me just enough room to feel the distance. "But, you're right, Melly, you're right..I, um, I feel.....," and he placed the hands he had clasped over his beating heart.

As he tripped and tumbled over his semi confession, I felt a huge lightening of my heart, as though the weight of his heavy words and restrictions were removed from the scale suddenly and the plate shot up. It fell down just as quickly when I realized I didn't know what any of what he hadn't said actually meant, still.

I needed more words.

I pulled my hands gently off his crashing chest and opened them between us.

"And?" It was all I could think of to ask.

"And..." he was at a loss. The boy knew every two letter word and how to make girl's scream with a turn of phrase, but his inability to say what he meant made me want to yell.

I turned to walk away, back down the hallway, to my brother's room. Dispossessed of heart and bed.

"No, Melody," he hugged me from behind, "and, um..." I went to turn to him, "no, it'll be easier this way," he kept me facing away and kissed my cheek tenderly. "And, I want to be with you, like really. I want to stop playing house, and build something with you. A home, let's," I felt him take in a fortifying breath, "you make even this empty place feel less lonely. You make me feel at home, no matter where we are."

I turned then, and he looked exhausted after stringing all those big words together. "I want to be with you too, but, what does this look like?"

He deflated, "Melody, baby," my scales tipped up again. "Can we have all the other hard discussions tomorrow, can we just be kissing now?"

And I let him get away with it, because he was charming and grinning just enough to show the slice in his cheek. So I kissed him again, because I could, and he backed me into his room, our room.

He'd been inflated again and was grinning against my giggling face until I ran my finger nails over his v-lines and he sucked in a breath.

He slicked his tongue into my mouth then and the abrupt shift in tone and intent had me shaking. Suddenly I think we both knew what we were there to do.

"Are you cold?" Harry pressed the question to my lips. As though I was aware of any part of my body that wasn't feverishly pressed to him. He pulled back from where he had been reacquainting our mouths and ran a fingers down my arm with a little smile tugging at his lips. "You have goose pimples."

"Ugh, that is the ugliest word ever." I blew out. And giggled with him. "Besides, you know what you're doing isn't going to help."

"I have noticed that certain ways I touch you causes your skin to get all in an uproar." He grinned against my mouth before kissing me.

"Oh," I said around his kiss. "Because you are so immune?" I ran my fingers under his henley, nails slightly scraping from ribs to his might as well tattoo again and then under his waistband, the one with another man's name, leaving a trail of tiny bumps behind me. He even shivered. "What were you saying?"

I expected the playful mood to continue. I pulled back with a triumphant grin, but instead of a dimples and teeth, all I could see was the blown out pupils of his eyes. His lips were open, but slack and all I could do was bite my own in response. His hands went to my hair and my heart was between his teeth.

"Melody?" My name was a question, but we both knew the way tonight's song ended.

Though there was no physical hold on my tongue, I couldn't find any words. Every part of my body and mind wanted to say yes on the letters of his name, but instead, I tensed up and pushed away from him. The pleasant shivers we had both been trying to tease each other with were turning into shivers not of delight.

My mouth suddenly started running. "Do you think anybody has noticed we are gone? I know it is supposed to be my party, but I think that was really just an excuse, especially for Michael, he has been talking about coming here since you guys picked them for tour. Have you ever been here before? Did you like it? I mean I guess it has its appeal, and you could see that. But it doesn't really seem like it's your kind of town."

I kept asking and answering my own questions and I'm not sure how long I would have run along my stream of thought, but Harry stopped my word flow the way he had begun it: with a touch. He pressed up against my back and hooked his face over my shoulder. He kissed my check and his breath stirred across my cheek.

"Relax, Melly. It's just me." His laughter vibrated against my back. I could feel rather than see it.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," I convinced absolutely no one, least of all me.

"You're shaking, baby."

Baby. That rang through my body as well as my head. Harry called me lots of things, mostly some variation of my name, sometimes darling, or fucker, but never baby until tonight. My stomach tensed up more but the rest of me relaxed just enough.

"There, better." He hugged me from behind then and rocked me back and forth a little. "I'm gonna call down for another bottle of champagne since you destroyed my other birthday present to you. Shame on you!" He tickled me a bit and I laughed off a few more nerves.

"You can fuck right off with that, somebody at the venue gave you that champagne, mate! That does not count as a gift!" I elbowed him.

"Oof, did you just call me mate? Mate? I'll show you a mate!" Picking me up while I squealed a little bit.

"Right! Sorry! best friend! Go call for my 'birthday present' best friend."

He put me down, laughing. But whispered in my ear on his way. "You can call me baby, too, you know." My knees knocked. I could hear him pick up the phone and he called my name, I looked over my shoulder at him. "But you are my best friend, too, Melody."

It wasn't an I love you, but it sure sounded like it.

In the bathroom, I looked up to find a high color on my cheeks and a laugh in my eyes. This was like a dream, even if he didn't say the words, he lived them, and I knew, with absolute certainty he was going to love me tonight.

My hand rose to catch the giggle at my lip that bubbled up and I could see in the mirror that my hand was still shaking a little bit. I washed my hand hoping the nerves would be diluted down the drain and i wondered if I should wash up somehow. At that I outright laughed at myself. I had a flash of washing my bits in the sink and got nervous all over again. I stared at myself for so long that I heard room service arrive.

10 minutes after that, Harry knocked on the bathroom door. "Melly, are you alright?"

"I'm fine." My voice was shrill.

"Alright, come on out, please! I don't want to open the champagne without you, but I will." His laugh was meant to relax me, and it did. I realized then, that if I could just get that explosive laugh out of him not the half-cocked snort he just forced, but the real one, then we would be us, only fuller, us with abandon, and I'd be able to go through with this, to share this with him, and not be sorry for it, even if it was only this night.

I'd be ok.

But I'd be better if tonight was the first of many.

So, I squared my shoulders and determined to go have champagne and shenanigans until Harry laughed the laugh that made me fall in love with him maybe the first time I heard it.

"Sorry, I was trying to get out of this dress and into something more comfortable, but I can't reach the zipper," I struck a pose with my hip all the way out like a Betty Page still.

He laughed then, not the right one, but a beginning. "Oh yeah, were you gonna come out in the buck and put the moves on me Melly?" He looked up from unscrewing the tin hat over the cork. He was so gorgeous, standing there in women's jeans because they were stretchier and a see-thru white henley, his hair curling wildly from the shower he took, lips reddened from kisses and remnants of my supposedly impenetrable lip stain with his eyes green and his summer tan bronze.

"And if i did?" I wanted honesty. Would he laugh at me?

"Well, um, first I'd ask your name, cuz that would be very out of character for my Melly," he popped our second bottle of the night. "Then I'd kiss whoever your alter ego is, um, she's pretty fun when she visits, like that first night and like the red dress night." He handed me a flute. "Then I'd tell you to go put your dress back on, because taking it off is my job." He looked me in the eyes then and it felt like my dress was already off. "Cheers!"

I grinned at his cheek and returned some of my own, "What If I asked you to draw me like a French girl?"

And I won all the things, because he laughed, an explosion of sound and expression, his face scrunched up then opened and I knew that face was the same at 19 as it had been at 6.

"Oh Melly." He used his empty hand to cup my chin. "You are perfect." And I believed. "Now, drink your drink, it's bad luck to not finish a cheers."

"Says who?" I asked as I tipped my glass back.

"Says me." He giggled but then his face sobered. "Also, it'll help with the nerves, calm you down, you are wound pretty tight."

"Are you calling me repressed?" I faked offense, but finished my glass.

He laughed again and I was so happy there was so much merriment in this sacrament. "Yeah, definitely, I want you relaxed." His finger ran down my arm, raising my flesh again. "And I want any twitching you do from here on out to be caused by me." He meant it, and I shook a little.

I extended my glass while he looked me over, "Can I have another glass, since you are trying to get me drunk?" My hand shook a little, and he smiled knowingly and took it.

"Not drunk, just merry and bright." Harry filled the glass halfway and caressed my cheek. "From the look of you, we are already half there." He said it low as he brought his lips back to mine, buttoning our mouths together, sealing us up like a secret. He put a hand around my waist and clasped me to him. My glass sloshed, he pulled back and set both glasses down decidedly before bringing both arms around me, one to the opposite side of my waist, the other to my bare shoulders. He kissed me until I was breathless, then moved to my neck until I was quaking, and not from nerves. At my collarbone, he pressed kisses from the beginning of my bones the shoulder to the small notch at the base of the center., "Did I mention how much I liked this dress?"

My tongue was once again seizing, so I nodded. He went back to painting my skin with kisses until he got to where the fabric ran across the top of my bust. "It looks lovely on you," He looked from the off the shoulder part down to the hemline at my mid thigh. "But I want to take it off." His hand had found the little metal sentry holding the garment on me. "Can I?"

I found one word then. "Yes." And shivered in his arms while he brought the zipper to its base at the foot of my back. This time, he didn't let the fabric stay between us, but pushed t down over my braless breasts and hips. All I was left with was the nude seamless panties that didn't show under the tight silhouette he had just relieved me of. They seemed all wrong for the occasion, utilitarian, unsexy, not white. Harry did not seem to mind them as he ran his finger tips over my back and hips, the trace of his nails bringing up those tiny puckers of delight again, before he gripped the parts of my ass that were not covered by the cheeky cut and lifted me on to his hips. I circled my thighs automatically. He carried me into the bedroom, continuing his maddening caress and looking me in the eye the whole time.

"You sure?" He asked once he had laid me out beneath him, his body pressed to mine and his lips just out of reach.

"Yes." It seemed to be the only word I knew.

Harry pulled back, and his shirt came up over his head, his necklaces coming free and knocking me lightly in the chin.

"Sorry." We both laughed.

"What are you sorry for?" he asked and I tried to shrug. The moment of levity should have broken the tension, but instead I became aware again of what we were about to do. The shakes came back. He smoothed his hands over me again. "You're ok, we're ok Melly."

I nodded and tried to smile at him, he laughed a little and kissed me some more and ran his hands over me lightly as we had what learned we liked. I was mewling and even flexing my hips against his before long. I ran my hands down to get at his jean fastening, he caught them.

"Not yet." My sound of displeasure was clear, so he kissed me some more, putting those perfect pink lips to good use. "Let me get you ready first. Trust me, it'll be better this way." He kissed my forehead and each cheek, then traced down to my peaked nipples and plucked and sucked them until I squirmed and said yes again before he asked any other questions.

When he reached my lower stomach, it quivered and jumped. "That's the kind of shake we want!" He smirk was so self-satisfied I would have rolled my eyes in my right mind. I didn't, I moaned a little before biting my lip as he pulled my panties over my hips and down my thighs, they caught on my heels, and he tugged. Tthey flew a little ways, but the motion also separated my thighs a bit. Harry widened the gap.

"Oh, look at you!" He blew softly over his lips, before wetting them. "Can I ?" He asked.

"Yes," I said again and hoped I knew what he was going to do. He seemed sure of what he was going to do.

Harry placed his hands on either side of my upper inner thighs and pressed down. Then he stopped and just stared.

I started to shake again.

"Sorry, You're just pretty." And he petted me with his fingers, tickling like he had over my back, hips and thighs. That time I shook the right way and he smiled before kissing each of my thighs.

The first swipe of his tongue over the center of me was exploratory, as I was undiscovered country. Each turn of his tongue, or flick of his fingers seemed to reveal a new marvel.

When he used his pointer to slip inside of me, my whole body flexed, first at the intrusion, then in welcome. He flipped his hand up and stopped his mouth work. I must have shook my head because he responded to my unvoiced question.

"I know, just a minute, baby." And he moved around a bit into me, shallowly and with pressure, then deeper, and again until he found a spot that had me biting my lip. He was happy with his new discovery and brought a flicking tongue back to my clit. The combination was deadly and he brought his large palm to my stomach to still me. When he sealed his lips around my nub to suck, I reached down and grabbed the hand on my belly.

He threaded our fingers together. I looked down a caught his reassuring eyes but had to close my own when he kept the seal around my center and rubbed the flat of his tongue up and down. I squeezed his hand so tight and my body clenched up, a roll starting at my toes to the top of my head. Harry held me fast and licked me through it until I pushed his head away and rolled to curl up.

He fitted his body behind me and held my body fast, turning my fast to the face he hastily had wiped on the bed sheet before kissing me gently. I felt done, like sleep was rising up to pull me down until he slanted his mouth and slid his tongue inside my panting mouth.

I could feel the pressure of his erection against my ass and found that I had to grind back against him. His jeans chafed my thigh, in that good way. But, not good enough to convince me they shouldn't come off. I rolled toward him and kissed his mouth while I got both hands down between us, one on his pant closure, the other his dick.

"Ok, stop, please, unless you want to be done now." I shook my head and squeezed him again, this time he winced.

"Sorry!" I'm sure I was blushing enough to be seen in the moonlight that washed him silver.

"It's ok, just not so hard, yeah?" I nodded, and he helped me get his jeans off, retrieving a foil packet from his wallet. He laid it on the pillow near me.  After, he stood off the side of the bed and looked unsure for the first time since we had made it back to our room. He squared his shoulder and pushed his boxer briefs off then as well.

I wanted to be as good as him and look him in the eye like he had me when I first was naked in front of him. Harry was better than me though, or more practiced. He wasn't the first man I had seen naked, but he was the first in so many other ways that he was still a wonder. I looked.

His penis extended out from his stomach where it caught on his waistband, but slapped his lower belly and stayed at 45 degrees with only a little bob at my stare.

I looked up at him and found my nerves had all rushed back, negating my orgasms relief. I trembled.

He saw.

His hand cupped my chin, and he smiled. "I promise it all works, and if I do my job right it won't hurt. But, we can stop, Melody."

Since words, my constant friends has decided to ditch me, I reached forward and clasped a wary hand around him, running it up and down lightly.

Harry groaned, and wrapped his hand around mine tightening my grip. "Like this," And we stoked over him a couple times. "But, we need to do that next time, Yeah?"

Harry leaned down and kissed me, using his leverage to lean me back onto the pillows. And then he just laid on me and kissed my mouth until it didn't feel weird that he was naked against my own bare body. Until it felt necessary and my legs relaxed and widened so he had a cradle between them and I could lock him in tight with my calves if he tried to go anywhere.

Then his kisses migrated, and his hands soothed and traced over me until they gripped and inflamed. The pressure between my legs was strengthened by the presence of his erection and I rubbed myself against in him in hopes of relief. He caught my hip and looked up from the nipple in his mouth. Popping off and returning to peck my lips. I looked up at him above me and smiled.

He grinned back and kissed me quick once more and brought his hand down to me. He spread my vulva and ran his fingers over my opening and up to pinch my clit. Then around. He brought his fingers to his mouth and sucked them with a happy groan. He grabbed the condom off its perch by my head. I watched him roll it on avidly.

"I'll show you how next time." He promised before sloppily wetting his fingers and wiping the saliva over the head of his erection. Harry grilled himself, with a tug for good measure before putting his wetted tip at my entrance.

I began to shake in earnest again, not quite sure how I got here, and with him. I bit my lip hard and think I would have retreated into myself if he had not spoken.

"Melody," he prayed and I calmed a touch, only really calming when he ran his free hand down my flank and kissed me again. I felt the press of him into me, an inch at a time. I squirmed at the discomfort.

"You ok?" A peck to my slack lips. "Hurt?"

"No, just." I wiggled again. "Can you move?"

"Yeah, just give me a minute." He blew out a breath and closed his eyes. "God, Melody." Another prayer and he pushed until his hips came to rest against mine.

Though welcome, his body inside of mine was an intrusion and I closed my eyes and chewed my cheek in response.

He rocked into me three times before it felt less strange, and I only opened up when he spoke again.

"Melody, baby, look at me?" So I unclenched my eyes and the fists at my sides and looked at him, his eyes shone in the low light and he cupped my face while I gripped his scapula. He held me fast while he rocked into me all the way. That got a grunt and recoil. "Sorry, you feel..." he trailed off. "Can you?"

I shook my head, I wasn't sure exactly the question, but I knew all I could do was hold on and maintain eye contact with him so far into me.

"Ok, ok, ok," he spoke to himself and blinked long before rocking a little faster and calling my name again. Then he froze and his jaw clenched casting shadows over my face. He seemed to collapse into himself then, certainly onto me. Harry burrowed his face into my neck and hugged me close for a moment whispering something. All I caught was the word die but before I could ask him to repeat himself he got up for the bathroom. I saw him tie a loop in the condom and thought about the peculiar logistics of sex. He closed the door behind him and I started to freak out a little, this time not accompanied by shivers. This was less nerves and more melancholy.

What happened next?

Before I could crawl inside my brain and disconnect from the pleasant ache of my body, the bathroom door opened and steam poured out behind him, obscuring his legs but emphasizing his wildly curling hair. He looked like a sculpted cherubim.

"Come take a shower with me, babe."

Apparently next, I got a second orgasm in the shower.