6. Tommy
CHAPTER 6
Tommy
T his wasn’t the plan, no, visiting Margo was a spur-of-the-moment decision. I saw her text and drove to her apartment instead of responding like a normal human. The reckless feeling coursing through my body scares me—like it’s a part of my brain I can’t control. Everyone knows how I feel about control. I need it. I crave it. Right now, I want something else more. Margo. The very last thing I desire is to put her job in jeopardy, and I know this is bad, but as I close the distance between us, her warm body underneath mine, I’ll do everything in my power to protect her in every possible way. As my lips meet hers, I feel the connection multiply, then explode. The chemistry isn’t just there, it tastes like heaven. She moans into my mouth, her small hands on each side of my face, pulling me toward her, seeking more.
I’m rarely shocked by anything, but this kiss and what it’s doing to my body is eviscerating everything I thought I knew about myself. Opening my eyes for a moment, I glimpse her face—eyes closed, flawless skin, perfection unlike anything else. A kiss never felt like it could change the course of my life. No, it was always just something you did when you were with a person, and you were trying your hardest to not allow it to move on to something more. Even though that thought process is spinning in my mind, somehow, I can push it aside because I’m getting what I want. Margo looks like an angel when I let my lips draw away from hers. She’s staring back at me, big eyes probing mine. “What’s the verdict on the chemistry?” she asks, chest heaving as words push through her swollen lips.
I swallow hard, resisting the urge to kiss her again. “As expected,” I growl, tone low. “For you?”
She passes her tongue over her lips. My gaze tracks the movement. “Exactly as I expected. Tommy?” My name is a question.
Leaning in, I place a kiss on her neck. “Yes?” I ask.
Her sigh sounds more like a shudder. “I want you.”
“I want you, too,” I reply. “More than I’ve wanted anything else in the world.”
“This is going to be complicated to hide.” It sounds as if she has more to say, but she reaches up and brings my head down to hers, locking her legs around my waist. This kiss is angry and passionate. I lose my breath and feel my heart pound against my chest at the same time. This is falling. With a mere kiss. To deny myself these thoughts would be lying. Her tongue glides against mine, and the soft sounds escaping her mouth force my thoughts down to my cock. It’s steel-hard pressing against her.
She pulls away this time. “That’s going to be hard to hide,” Margo says, grinning. “This will have to stay behind closed doors.”
I pull away. “I will do everything in my power to protect you and this.”
“Everything?” she breathes, writhing her body against mine making our predicament impossibly harder than it already is. I want her body badly. I want to mark her as mine. Maybe no one else can know, but I want her to never doubt that fact.
I press my lips against her neck. “Yes,” I whisper against her skin. “Especially now.”
“Why now?” Her lips curl into a smile against mine. My whole body feels warm, and her attention aimed at me is filled with genuine love.
“I’ve tasted you, and it’s so perfect I want to write about it.”
Margo’s laugh could fix a bad mood in an instant. She says, “If you want, I’ll write a passage in your diary detailing our first kiss.” I pull her up to sit but hold her hand.
“First?So, you’re saying there will be more to follow? Do we have a plan then?”
“As long as I stick to Jeannie’s rules, and my job is safe, I can’t say no.” Her smile fades. “It is scary.”
“Scary how?”
“This,” she motions between us. “Is everything I’ve been avoiding. When you walk into a room, it’s like everything else fades away. When you were kissing me, I would have agreed to kiss you anywhere in the world, even at the gym, if your lips stayed against mine. I don’t think straight, and I’m not a woman who gets confused often.” She closes her eyes. “So that scares me.”
“That means you believe I could be what you need?” I ask.
She nods. “Yes.” There’s no hesitation in her voice.
Jeannie raps on the bedroom door and calls Margo’s name in a fake tone that tells me she’s irritated she’s in mixed company. Margo crosses to open the door, and her friend lingers in the doorframe—eyes focused like lasers on me. “Hey, sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to see what you wanted to do for dinner.”
Margo laughs. “Really? Dinner?” Another peal of laughter. “Don’t worry, we were only talking, Jeannie, and he knows about the five-date agreement. I am going with him to Texas to meet his family and show that he has recovered from his breakup. We are helping each other.” Margo looks back at me, then to her friend. “Tommy is a keeper.”
Jeannie leans back. “Oh, I see. Well then, let me apologize for my brusque greeting then. I’m sure Margo told you why I’m acting crazy then?” I can’t tell if it’s a question.
“She told me about the rules if that’s what you mean, and don’t apologize. I think more folks need friends like you in their lives. The world would be a little less messed up if everyone cared more.”
“Jeannie is a little crazy in how she cares, but we’re both okay with that,” Margo chimes in. “I love her for it.” She turns to her friend, and it’s then that I see the questions in Jeannie’s eyes.
Clearing my throat. “I fully intend to stick to the rules and won’t let this affect Margo’s career. No need to have any fears.”
They both seem surprised I seem to be sliding into their conversation being had telepathically. “Okay,” Jeannie drawls. “It’s my job to play devil’s advocate. How can you possibly keep this out of work? I can see how you’re looking at her.”
“How exactly am I looking at her?” I crook one brow.
“In a way that tells everyone in a several-mile radius that she belongs with you.” Ah, so she’s shrewd, or I’ve just got it bad. I refuse to believe the latter.
Margo smiles in a way that tells me she’s embarrassed. “I look at her like she’s mine.” It’s not a question. “I’ve endured a lot of hard things in my lifetime, and I assure you feigning disinterest a couple hours a day at work won’t be a problem. Trust me.”
Jeannie opens her mouth, then closes it. “Usually when people tell me to trust them, I do the opposite. Somehow, you’ve managed to bypass that thought, and I’ll trust you.”
Margo laughs. “Why? You never trust me.”
Jeannie coughs to cover a laugh. “I don’t trust you because I know you personally. Tommy merely has to pretend he’s not into you in public. If America’s most elite fighters can’t do that, we would be in World War Three by now. It’s basic math.” Margo moves to stand next to me, and Jeannie’s gaze locks on mine. “My apologies again for trying to scare you away when you first got here. I’m going to order Chinese. Do you want your usual?”
Margo nods. “Do you want to stay for dinner?”
“Sure,” I say because the idea of leaving her is unbearable, and I want to kiss her again. Longer next time. All night long if she’ll let me. “I’ll have what she’s having.” I know what that order is because it was on her dating profile relating to how she always enjoys life’s simple pleasures. “If I’m not crashing,” I add so it can be Jeannie’s choice, too.
“I’d love to pick your brain,” Jeannie says.
We spend the next hour and a half eating kung pao chicken and talking about Margo’s home life. She grew up wholesome, very like my upbringing if we’re being honest. She went to church on Sunday but didn’t continue when she left for college because she wanted to find herself outside of what others suggested she be. Margo has a lot of friends and a love for animals. She’s never had a pet because she wants stability and somewhere to call home before she gets a pet. She recognizes it’s a lifetime commitment, not a fling.I like that. The one tumultuous occurrence in her life seems to be her ex, Hollis. She gets updates on him occasionally, but I can tell it’s only because she wants to know if he’s gone, gone and not because she wants him back.
Margo is over Hollis. She’s not over how she lost him. She seems to be comfortable talking about it in casual conversation in front of Jeannie and me. I guess that’s not a normal thing because Jeannie brought it up a couple of times, shocked that Margo seemed okay with speaking of the biking incident. Another dot connected from her dating bio. “Down for anything but biking busy roads.”
After the kitchen is clean, Margo’s friend tells us goodnight and goes into her room, closing her door. “We’re alone,” Margo whispers, drying her hands on a kitchen towel and grinning over the island. “What should we do?”
“Should or want?” I ask.
“I know she’s kind of crazy, but she loves me.”
I chuckle. “Jeannie is great. I don’t have anything negative to say. I don’t think it would be the same if you spent dinner with my teammates. Well, most of them.” Then it hits me. “Not that I could introduce you to them in this kind of atmosphere.”
Her smile fades into a frown. “Yeah, I suppose they would recognize me. Even being just friends might be weird. Best if we stay strangers to everyone else.” Margo slides the towel across the counter as she rounds it to stand on the other side, leaning her back against it. “I guess meeting your family will suffice.” She sighs. “And maybe Jennifer L.”
I laugh, sauntering up to her until she’s in reaching distance. When I set my hands on her hips, she shudders. I swallow hard. “They’re going to love you.”
I pick her up and set her gently on the counter island. She wraps her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck. She doesn’t kiss me though. She holds my gaze, enraptured, breathing in and out. “They loved Dani, hell, they may still love her. They’ll probably hate me or the idea of me.” She holds a finger up to stop me from speaking. “And that’s okay because by the end of the trip, they’ll love me more than her.”
I grin. “That’s a bold statement, ma’am, and it’s one I agree with.” Pressing my lips against hers, the kiss is light, just enough to taste her. A small hit of the feeling that I’m unaccustomed to.
Margo pulls her mouth away from mine. “You wanted to talk about the game plan for the trip. Was that real or an excuse to get inside my bedroom?”
I kiss her once more. A peck. “That was real, unfortunately.”
She quirks a brow in question.
“Along with a family BBQ that will feel like half the town is there, there’s also Dani’s engagement party I was invited to when my visit was made public knowledge. My parents got my invite.” Swallowing hard, I try to gauge her reaction. “I can go solo to that, but figured I would throw that out there so you’re not shocked.”
“I mean I’m kind of shocked. She wants you at her engagement party? That’s…outrageous, but I respect her gumption. I’m happy to go with you to that if you want. If you think it would be easier to face alone, that’s fine too. I don’t know if I could do the same thing without creating a scene.” She looks off to the side, probably imagining how badly this could go. “Would not showing up be an option?”
“She needs to know I support the union, I think. I’ll give it to her as a last gift, and I’d love if you’d join me. That will be the real gift.” She smiles, and my stomach flips. “Can we go into your room and kiss more? Test the chemistry, I mean.”
“I thought you’d never ask.” I pick her up easily and rush into her room. She closes the door with her foot a little too aggressively, and Jeannie calls out from her room—a reminder about the rules, no doubt. Does it really matter at this point, though? When there’s no doubt in my mind Margo is it for me? It’s not nonsense either. I’m sure of it. In the same breath, if I know this for a fact, I could wait as long as it takes for her to be sure of me. Margo laughs as I toss her on the bed, grab the back collar of my shirt, and pull it over my head. With her gaze fixated on my body, I toss the shirt to the floor.
“It’s almost not fair, your body is textbook perfect, and I’m charged with improving it.”
“You’re comparing me to a textbookas a man stands before you at the end of your bed?”
Margo shakes her head. “It’s rare we get to see this in person, Tommy. Trust me, it’s the best compliment I can give you. I won’t even note that you didn’t follow diet tonight.”
I grin. “I was hoping you would. Give me a black mark.”
“I’d like to mark you in other ways,” she says, climbing to her knees, hand trailing down my abs to my obliques. I lose my breath as she leans in and kisses my pec. She drags her lips lower to my abs, her tongue lashing out causing a frenzy of sensations. Warm, hot, my dick straining to be set free. My eyelids fall to half-mast as she pulls down the top of my pants to expose my V further and sucks the skin over my muscles at the top of my pants. Her big eyes glance up to meet mine, and it’s the single most erotic sight I’ve ever seen.
“Fuck,” I hiss. She moves over to the other side, dragging her tongue as she goes and sucks the other side. It makes me feel like I might hyperventilate. I rest my hand on the side of her face as she pulls away, spit dripping from her lips. She wipes it away, and I change my mind, that’s the most erotic thing I’ve ever seen.
“You said I was yours, and now you’re mine. This proves it.” She points to the symmetrical hickeys, a smile of satisfaction spreading across her face.
I exhale a pent-up breath and watch as her breathing races as she gazes at me. My mind is blind to everything else. It’s just her. “Take off your shirt. I want to mark you.”
She obliges, and I’m absolutely terrified to see if her body is as fucking perfect as it is in my dreams. I attack her, kissing her everywhere above the belt as she squeals when it tickles and moans when it feels good.It’s an exploration mission I never want to end, but I know my limits. For tonight at least.