A/n: This sex scene might have some light triggers. Sorry, but this is kinda  a huge story-build moment and had to be written like this.

We were at an impasse. My grandmother's wise words about the man at the crossroads and the prices that have to be paid echoed in my mind. Robert Johnson, one of the most talented musicians of his day took the sound. But he should have thought about the price that would have to be paid. All the choices to come and all the prices somehow became so vast. People think there's a devil at the crossroads. Maybe that devil is in ourselves and our own desires because everyone knows what Eshu is going to do. Offer the choices you just have to remember the saying is Eshu eats first. Hold for whatever sword of Damocles comes from their own choices.

A feeling deep down in my gut was that the price Asher paid was so high that it destroyed him. The nebulous star I always called him was a little too true without me knowing when I gave him the name. He was a nebula after all because what is a nebula? The blown-out pretty glittery guts of a dying star. I wasn't looking into the eyes of Asher, my Asher anymore. This void, without stars and moons, was Asher Kells the rockstar. Asher Kells the rockstar paid all the prices to be who he was, and it was costly indeed.

Just like Robert Johnson the blues man who traded his soul to Eshu, maybe Asher did the same. We spent so much time looking at each other. So many things we could have talked about and done. But for some reason, even while he watched me, my tears didn't stop. It was me yet again crying for Asher because he didn't seem to be able to cry for himself. That little boy at the top of the Hollywood sign looking down at the city. A city so interconnected with the man. My blurry vision put the two images on top of each other. With each blink it was a man, a boy, swapping back and forth until one blink it became only the man.

My heart couldn't stop its sinking because I knew it was going to be fucked up. Not a little fucked up but being around Tucker and Paulie, it was going to be big fucked up. The kind of fucked up you can't fix and you can only heal from. Getting to the healing is a battle in itself.

God, did I love this man. I loved this man foolish. I loved him without regard.

And...I didn't know what to do with us.

Asher was in boxer briefs, all those inky tats dripping down his body. Every now and then the light from the window would bend toward him. L.A. below him by the window with a vast expanse of sprawling city lights on. The smell of smokey whiskey and spice was a swirl between us. His broad well-muscled chest was rising and falling but he wasn't coming towards me.

My hand moves before my brain tells it to and I reach for him. Extending out to him so familiar from our days together. He watches me not taking my offer. It hurts... waiting for him to take it. It took everything I had to keep it out for him. The wait-and-see slowly destroyed my hope.

Asher stood up from the chair, his hardness bold in his tented boxer briefs. Then he pulls down his briefs, his cock bobs up so hard it was curving back but he was still blank. A brutal purple vein going up the side throbbing. Everything I so loved was gone from him and nothing was left but his striking beauty. It was as if he was a stranger to me and another fan in his bed for the night. Maybe like Mia's mother was for Dustin. Just another one in a line of many.

He went past my hand getting on the bed. No mischievous smiles, not a single feather-light touch. My sharp breath in was shocking. I couldn't believe it at all and I was on the edge of breaking. None of what I was accustomed to. His breathing was ragged and the fast sound in my ears excited me in the worst ways. It was as if he was pulling a reaction out of my body instead of how we dance together to the music normally. He didn't touch my tattoo once. If anything, he treated it as an albatross around my neck. When an albatross became a curse instead of a majestic bird to guide you home.

Asher's touch on my thigh was hot, shifting the blanket I was under to the side. Pushing my thighs up and apart exposing my center to him. I was ready for him... I was always ready for him.

"Asher?" My voice wavered on the name like it was a flickering light.

I tried to catch his eyes again moving to make it easier for him as he got between my legs. But his eyes were nothing but the voids and the voids were what I feared. It was what I was terrified of in those moments when he became weird to me when all the stars disappeared.

"Asher..." no answer came from him as his thumb played at my center moving through my creamy wetness. "Asher?..." I was scared, not simply of him but of what he wasn't telling me. I needed him to talk to me. The more he didn't talk the more scared of today and tomorrow I was. I wanted Asher back. "I'm scared," I pleaded with him. Searching for my Asher but not finding him.

His hand froze on me, and then he pulled back sitting back on his heels. Asher's hard cock stands straight up and back straining. Fast inhalations of breath as if he were running a marathon. At the tip of his cock a lazy pearl of pre-cum rolls down his length. He takes another big breath, his shoulders relaxing. Then Asher wipes the wetness from my cheek. The city night at his back in the big window with the lights from the city touching his inky skin.

He nods at me and starts to get up to leave. But I stop him. I wanted my Asher back but if I loved him I'd have to love this side of him too.

"It's ok, I got you," I said softly. Not a sound could be heard in the empty house. It was just the two of us. But those few words released a pressure valve and that was all it took. Asher climbs back between my legs, his fat head rubbing back and forth between my wetness. Legs push back as his other hand squeezes my thighs holding me up and to the side. Wide open for him, exposed. His frantic eyes dark voids as he punched himself into me hard.

He was so rough and fast. Impaling me deeply, filling me past the brim. And the sharp pain had me crying out without room for anything else but Asher. He stopped mid-thrust in his frenzy and paused in his tracks. He hurt so good. His big shoulders shook, holding in place. What the fuck is up with Asher? The fear, pain, and hints of pleasure mixed making a toxic brew in my belly. The acid eats away at the good things we had together as surely as a hole in a spaceship kills the crew.

Slowly, an inch at a time slick and coated in us he pulls out. But that last inch gets me out of my daze. I sit up wrapping my arms around him to stop him.

"You need this?" I whisper it into his ear. He doesn't reply, and he doesn't move in my arms. His muscular body was so hot it was like he ran miles. Asher needed this, he needed me or he wouldn't have spent more than an hour just looking at me. We were in a fucked up place right now but we both seem to always need each other. I hold him in my arms. He doesn't move inside me, he doesn't make eye contact.

First one tear, and then the other because tears are stupid and once you start they don't want to stop. Even when I don't want them, the stress gets to me. I breathe in and out slowly gathering myself together. "Asher, I told you... I got you." With my head on his shoulder, I feel his nod. "I got you," I repeat again in a whisper. A tremor moves through his body. "I'm ok. We're ok." The words were just whispers. "I promise Asher, we're ok."

He believed me and whatever iron control that was keeping him from moving was released all at once. A deep thrust back into me was followed by a groan so anguish I was worried. But my hiss when he got deep in me joined his groan. I was too lost in him to think about the pain. His pace was unstoppable and sweat trickled down his back. With his pounding pace, I open to him riding the wave of his lust. Even with the pleasure, it was wrapped in the wrongness. Even as my body soared higher, it was tainted by my sorrow. The absence of my Asher whose hand casually touched my tattoo when we were together. Who makes eye contact? Instead Asher Kells the rockstar was fucking my brains out. The part of me that wasn't teetering on the edge of a mind-blowing orgasm wanted to go back to crying for the loss.

Asher rolls me to my back, pushing my legs back up. Leaving me so exposed to his force. My blood pumped and my pounding heartbeat rang through my ears. The sloppy sounds of our coupling and my heartbeat matched. I couldn't tell which one was faster than Asher's sac slapping against me. The pleasure was fire hot as his pace pushed him up against my clit. With each pass, it shot me higher in the air but for once that higher came at a cost. It was without Asher. He rips the orgasm from my body, and it was white hot. My core clenching greedily and milking at his thickness pulling him back in when he wanted to go faster in me.

Asher didn't slow down with my orgasm and my over-sensitive folds paid the price. I was one big shiver shaking with his attention. His big body covered mine so completely that the headboard thumped with each of his thrusts. That thickness stretched me out deliciously. His hips moved at a frenzied pace. I met him, pulling him back down to me. My teeth sank into the meaty hard flesh of his shoulder. He tasted of spice and filthy fucking sex, the kind of sex you can tell no one you had. The haze of our lust overtook me. My feet pulled his ass into me harder. I was so gone. All was pleasure rolling into the next orgasm way too quickly, it was too much. When I was flying too high, Asher would be there. I'd reach for him and he'd be there. But he wasn't there, and I was too high. I was too close to the sun, and the star was burning me up. He was lodged so deep his heavy chest rising and falling above me. But all the stars weren't there. When he seated himself all the way into me growling out his orgasm. I joined him burning all the way down from too high. Spinning out of control. Milking the last of his pleasure from him into my greedy, greedy core. My hand reached for his cheek and any connection I could get. All that pleasure was forced out of my tired body. His hot breaths raced as he looked down at me. My thumb caressed his cheek. I hope for my Asher to be back. It was a chant in my mind. As if the chant after crashing back to earth could somehow lead me and my broken wings home.

Asher. Asher. Asher.

As I repeated his name again and again. A bitter truth was written on my heart in an endless echo. I loved him... all of him. I loved him without reserve or regard. I loved him foolish.

He pulled out of me, coated sticky in both of us, with just his tip nestled still inside of me. The person who looked back at me was Asher Kells. And Asher Kells the Rockstar even after his orgasm was still hard. The thick purplish vein of his cock angry coated in our cum. Forcibly thrust back into me pulling a groan from the center of my soul. He worked me hard as sticky sweat coated my body in the cool air. My overtaxed muscle moved with him taking him and keeping pace with his need. The chant for Asher never stops for me. But god did Asher Kells own my body, he owned it and my greedy hips treated him even with every bit of strength I had left. I came again, and again and the orgasm circled in on each other. Then gravity pulled me down every time. And damn that man made me rise, and rise again so high. Every time getting too close and burned all the way down. When he came inside me again, I was a sloppy mess.

Sweaty hair stuck to my face and Asher pushed the hair out of the way. His kisses plunder my mouth. My tongue chased him and I fed him my lust as he fed me his. Desire, angst, and fear blended together spicy in my mouth. He dragged his rough thumb through the messy wetness between us. Then he flicks across my oversensitive clit. And my body lifts off the bed like I just saw white Jesus. I bite his lip, he's not done. He was never done. He took me again and again beyond my body's limits until I was a limp thing on the bed. The sheets stick to my sweat-soak body. Sleep drags at me as my vision flickers blackness creeps in. Asher gathers my weak body to him. His touch burns my feverish skin. In all the dark void there was a single star. It was more stark and desolate in the absence of the nebulous that was normally there.

Asher was back. My Asher.

As haggard as I looked, he was artfully disheveled flush face dripping in tattoos and sweat. If you'd put this man on a magazine cover. He could have single-handedly brought print publishing back to life. But the worry was in his gaze. The feather-light touch as he brushes my hair out of my eyes.

Tears rolled down my cheeks. I was so tired.

"I'm sorry," Asher says, his voice cracking on the word. Sleep pulled me down and the will to reach out that I wanted to I couldn't muster. "I'm like my brother." He was getting more upset. Asher reaches down and gathers my limp body up to him. Easily wrapping me up in his arms. He shifts my weak hand into his hair. I move my fingers through his thick locks. Normally, hair touching wasn't my thing. Because keep your hands out a black woman's hair unless invited but if it made Asher feel better, ok. His words were dipping in and out for me. I was so tired, sad, and completely emotionally spent. It was the fear that did it to me. The uncertainty that this was the new normal and I couldn't handle it. Fear that I would have to throw everything about us away. The orgasms had an ugliness to them that tainted what we did. Maybe when we first met, I could have had a random hookup with Asher Kells the Rockstar. He fucked me until I was out of this world. Cuming many so many times I lost count. I was a complete soupy fucking mess. It didn't simply own my body he owned my fucking being. Walking away unscathed from Asher Kells the Rockstar might have been but now, never.

The panic in Asher's voice was still there, and it took everything in me to focus my eyes on him. I'm not sure why he was so upset. I wasn't dying or anything, just tired and his panic didn't make sense to me. "I'm sorry," Asher repeats again. "I'm a sex addict," and with those few words ringing in my mind followed by a what the fuck? Sleep drags me down into the dark.