The Key of G
An Exclusive Bonus Chapter
from Off the Record by Blair Lennox
This bonus scene takes place after the events of the novel. Contains spoilers and explicit content.
The Nashville apartment smelled like paint and cardboard and the particular chaos of two women who had never successfully merged their lives with another human being attempting to do so with a U-Haul, three arguments about bookshelf placement, and a bottle of champagne that had been warm for two hours because neither of us had thought to buy ice.
“The books go by subject,” I said, standing in the living room in paint-stained shorts and an old concert tee, surrounded by approximately four hundred paperbacks in various states of unpacking. “Nonfiction separated from fiction, fiction alphabetized by author, journalism references on the top shelf.”
Wren was on the floor, cross-legged, surrounded by her own boxes—guitar cases, candle collections, a truly unreasonable number of flannel shirts. She looked up at me with the particular expression she wore when she found my organizational instincts simultaneously absurd and attractive.
“Rowan. Baby. We have been in this apartment for six hours. We haven’t eaten since the gas station breakfast tacos. The bed frame isn’t even assembled. And you want to alphabetize.”
“Structure first. Comfort follows.”
“I can think of several ways to be comfortable that don’t require a functioning bookshelf.”
She stood. Crossed the room. She was barefoot, hair up in a messy knot, the tank top she’d been moving boxes in damp with sweat and clinging in ways that made my carefully constructed organizational priorities feel suddenly irrelevant.
She took the book out of my hand—a hardcover investigation into pharmaceutical pricing that I’d been trying to decide between P for pharma or H for healthcare—and set it on top of the nearest box.
“The books can wait,” she said.
“The books—”
She kissed me. Slow, warm, tasting like champagne and the salt of a woman who’d spent a day carrying furniture up two flights of stairs. Her hands found my waist and pulled me against her, and the full-body contact—skin to skin through thin cotton, her warmth against mine, the easy confidence of a woman who knew exactly what she was doing and intended to do it thoroughly—shut down every remaining cognitive function dedicated to alphabetization.
“We haven’t christened the apartment,” she murmured against my mouth.
“We haven’t assembled the bed.”
“Who said anything about a bed?”
She walked me backward. Past the boxes, past the dismantled bookshelf, past the kitchen where our mismatched mugs sat on the counter like a negotiation in progress—her ceramic collection versus my stolen-from-hotels fleet. My back hit the wall next to the window that overlooked the Nashville skyline, and Wren pressed against me and kissed my throat, and the city glittered behind her head like a backdrop designed specifically for this moment.
“I want to play you something first,” she said.
“Now?”
“Now.”
She retrieved her guitar—the acoustic, the one she’d carried in its case with more care than she’d shown any other object during the move, including me. She sat on the floor with her back against the wall, the instrument settled in her lap, and looked up at me with those green eyes that I’d been falling into for months and showed no signs of climbing out of.
“Sit.”
I sat. On the floor, facing her, my knees against hers in the narrow space between boxes. The apartment was quiet. The sounds of Nashville filtered through the window, but inside, the space was ours. Unpainted and half-furnished and entirely, irrevocably ours.
She played the song. The G-major love song—the one about a woman who kept her life portable so she could leave before staying started to mean something. The finished version. The melody was simple. Acoustic guitar, her voice, nothing else. She sang about hazel eyes that dared the camera to waste their time. About the sound of someone mouthing words as they read. About a woman who hung a picture on a wall—one picture, after eleven months of empty space—and how that single act was the loudest love letter she’d ever received.
The song ended. The apartment was quiet.
“That’s the one?” My voice was rougher than I intended.
“That’s the one.”
“You’re going to make me cry and we haven’t even plugged in the lamps.”
“Then let me give you something else to do with your face.”
She set the guitar aside—and then she was on me. One second the guitar was in her hands and the next her hands were in my hair and her mouth was on mine and she was pushing me backward onto the bare hardwood floor of our apartment—our apartment, the word still new enough to taste like a revelation—and kissing me with the focused hunger of a woman who had just finished singing her heart out and needed a different kind of release.
The floor was hard. I didn’t care. Wren was on top of me, her weight pinning me down, her hips between my thighs, pulling my shirt up and over my head with the practiced efficiency of a woman who had been undressing me for three months and had gotten very good at it.
“You’re not wearing a bra,” she observed.
“I’ve been carrying boxes. Support structure seemed optional.”
“Support structure is very much not optional. I’ll be your support structure.”
“That’s terrible.”
“You’re laughing.”
I was. She kissed the laugh off my mouth and then her lips moved down—my throat, my collarbone, the freckle she’d been obsessed with since the tour. Her mouth found my breast and she sucked my nipple into her mouth and I stopped laughing and started making a sound that was considerably less composed.
Her hands were everywhere. My ribs, my stomach, the waistband of my paint-stained shorts. She pulled them down—underwear with them, no ceremony—and her fingers slid between my legs before the fabric hit my ankles.
“Already wet,” she said against my breast, with the satisfied tone of a woman confirming a hypothesis.
“You sang me a love song and then attacked me. This is a predictable outcome.”
“I like predictable outcomes.” She slid two fingers inside me, and the sound I made was not predictable at all—a sharp, cracked gasp that echoed off the bare walls of our unfurnished apartment.
“Neighbors,” I managed.
“Let them hear. Consider it a housewarming.”
She fucked me on the floor of our apartment with the Nashville skyline glittering through the uncurtained window and her mouth on my breast and her fingers deep inside me, curling and pressing with the instinctive responsiveness of a musician playing a familiar instrument. Her thumb found my clit and worked both together, watching my face, adjusting angle and pressure with the attention she brought to everything she cared about.
“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me what you want.”
“Harder. Don’t stop. And put your mouth on me—I want your tongue when I come.”
Wren’s eyes went dark. She moved down my body, and when her mouth reached where her thumb had been, the contact—warm, wet, the flat of her tongue replacing the pad of her thumb—was so intense I had to press both palms flat on the hardwood floor to keep from arching off it.
She licked me in long, slow strokes while her fingers maintained their rhythm inside me. I was loud. The apartment amplified everything—no furniture to absorb sound, just bare walls and hardwood floors and the specific, obscene reverberation of a woman moaning in an empty room.
She brought me to the edge with her typical patience—the deliberate, almost cruel control of a woman who enjoyed watching me lose mine. Tongue circling without quite pressing hard enough, fingers moving without quite reaching deep enough, until I was shaking and my hand was in her hair pulling hard.
“Wren. Please. I need—”
She gave me what I needed. Mouth closing around my clit with focused pressure, fingers driving deep and curving hard, and I came with a shout that rattled the windows. My body clenched around her fingers in rhythmic pulses that went on and on, and she stayed with me through every one.
I lay on the hardwood floor, breathing, staring at the ceiling of our apartment.
“We need a rug,” I said.
She crawled up my body and kissed me. I tasted myself on her mouth and the familiar intimacy of it sent a secondary wave of arousal through me.
“My turn,” I said. I pushed her onto her back. Pulled her tank top over her head. Her sports bra followed. I unbuttoned her shorts slowly, holding her gaze while my fingers worked the metal button.
She was soaked through her underwear. I pressed my palm against the damp cotton and felt her hips lift—instinctive, urgent. I pulled the fabric aside and my fingers found her slick and swollen. I entered her with two fingers and she gasped—the honest, involuntary sound she made when the first contact hit.
I set a rhythm. Slow at first—deep, purposeful strokes. I knew the angle that made her hips buck. I knew the depth that made her swear. I knew the combination of curl and pressure that would make her grab the nearest surface and hold on.
She grabbed the leg of the dismantled bookshelf. Held on.
I added my mouth. Tongue on her clit, fingers inside her, the synchronized rhythm she’d taught me and I’d refined through extensive, enthusiastic practice. She arched off the floor and the sounds she was making filled the apartment like the most honest song she’d ever produced.
“Rowan—oh god—right there, don’t you dare move—”
I didn’t move. Held the position. And she broke apart underneath me—thighs clamping around my head, her voice cracking on my name as the orgasm rolled through her in waves.
We lay on the floor of our apartment—half-dressed, thoroughly wrecked, surrounded by boxes and dismantled furniture.
“I love you,” she said. Casual. Like she was commenting on the weather.
“I love you too.”
“Good. Now help me find the sheets. If we’re going to keep doing this, the floor is going to destroy my back.”
“The sheets are in the box marked BEDROOM — PRIORITY 3.”
“Of course they are.”
We found the sheets. We assembled the bed. We christened the bed too, because the floor had been a proof of concept and the bed deserved equal attention, and by the time we were finished, the Nashville skyline was dark and the champagne was even warmer and neither of us cared because we were lying in a bed we’d built together in a room we’d paint together in a home we were making together.
In the key of G. Always in the key of G.