Chapter Twenty-Two
Twenty-Two
“That was so hot, ” Molly says, tying her river of shiny black hair into a knot atop her head. “When did you guys plan that?”
But I can hardly hear her. I may look the same, walk the same, give Pete my mic and Lionel my backpack the same, but I am far from it. Tonight has changed the atoms of my makeup. Rearranged them into something hungry and wanting and new.
I need to find Tom. I cannot allow another night to go by, me in my coffin-bunk, him in his suite, separated by flimsy plastic and sheet metal.
Molly says something else, but I’m already moving.
My phone is dead and I can’t bring myself to ask anyone where he is after that performance of ours.
Cursory glance over the greenroom complete, I hurry through the hallway.
My pulse is practically going at light speed when I reach the private spot he was holed up in before the show.
I crane the door open and find the room empty. No Tom in sight.
“He’s on the bus already,” a pleasant voice rings out. Indy.
I spin, caught.
“I’m just—”
“Clementine.” She smiles. “It’s fine. Nobody’s going to care.”
She’s right, of course. “He doesn’t want anyone to know.”
“He almost mauled you in front of twenty thousand people.”
“It was just the song.”
She purses her lips. “Well, whatever it was, Jen thinks it’ll be great for the socials.”
I stand around dumbly. My feet hurt and my neck is hot beneath my loose hair. I need a scrunchie. And an ice bath.
“Go,” she encourages. “I’ll tell them you’re helping me get some content. You have an hour or so before we’re gonna leave. Everyone’s having a drink here since the drive is so short.”
Indy is honestly the coolest. “You are such a good friend,” I say. “I owe you.”
She shakes her head and her long braid sways. “All you owe me are the dirty details.”
“We’ve only kissed.”
Indy’s eyes grow wide, her mouth twisting deviously. “Holy hell. Why is that even better?”
“Tonight,” I promise her, giddiness slipping into my expression. I can’t help it. I can feel the dam waiting to break. “I’ll tell you everything.”
And then I’m off, through the halls, past security, sprinting out to the tour bus. This time, when I climb the stairs, Salvatore is drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.
“Hey there,” I greet him, breathless.
“How was the gig?” Salvatore’s voice is thick American Italian, and though he sounds like a mobster, he’s a gentle giant. A week ago, stuck on a closed-down highway, he showed Conor and me the pictures of his grandkids he keeps in his wallet. All nineteen of them.
“The best yet.”
I make a beeline for Tom’s suite, then chicken out right before his closed door because I’m a little coward.
I duck into the bathroom instead, wash my hands, and borrow someone’s mouthwash without letting my lips touch the rim lest it be Conor’s or Grayson’s.
I enjoy my life STD-free, thank you very much.
I choose not to study my skin in the mirror at the risk of self-judgment weakening my resolve, but I do kick off my shoes and leave them in the junk bunk. I take a breath as I leave the bathroom and rap my fist against Tom’s door.
“Come in,” he calls.
Tom’s suite is smaller than I expected. Shadowy save for the pool of light from a reading lamp attached to the wall, with only a double bed, window, television, some built-in drawers, and a door leading to what I assume is his bathroom.
He’s lying on top of the covers, feet crossed at the ankles, though they’re nearly hanging off, reading Homer.
He squints up at me, the stark light from the front lounge slipping into his cozy, low-lit enclave.
“Am I glad to see you,” he breathes. “Jesus Christ.”
I close the door behind me with a click.
We are submerged in flickering darkness.
It’s a good thing he’s lying down, as it allows me to climb directly on top of him without overthinking it.
His eyes widen for a snap of a second, as if he can’t believe his luck.
But then he tosses his book to the floor and his hands find the curve of my waist. He settles me atop him, thumbs curling over the length of my hip bones.
He sighs and it sails over my parted lips.
Shimmering tension thickens the air. His heart thumps under my palms.
“Will you greet me like this after every show?”
I have no reason to freeze. We’ve made out. We’re going on a date soon. He’s seen me puke my body weight in vodka. It’s fine.
Except that it’s not, because there’s a guarded hope hidden in his husky bedroom voice, and it does something brand-new to my heart.
He’s hoping this will continue for who knows how long.
Though I’m straddling him in his bed—a bed I have dreamed about—awash in his astounding beauty, all I can think of is crawling off him and bolting until I hit Fenway Park.
He sits up a little, bringing us even closer. “Don’t get skittish on me now, Clem.”
“Too late,” I whisper, eyes casting down.
“Hey.” His voice is edged with concern. “Look at me. Let’s just hang out?”
“And do what?”
His brows knit with something like pity. “We could read. In here, together. I saw your nose in that mystery novel. Or…play Mario Kart ?”
“ You? Play Mario Kart ?”
“I am a human male. I play video games.” His thumb traces over the skin of my arm. “We don’t have to do any—”
When I press my mouth into his, our sighs harmonize. It’s so fitting for us. His low and a little tortured. Mine a near squeak of both pleasure and surprise. There’s no trading of pecks, no waltz of barely there tongue. The minute my hands move up to his jaw, we combust.
Lapping and toying, clumsy and teasing. Nothing has ever felt as good as being kissed with reckless abandon by Tom Halloran. His kisses are like his music: passionate, thoughtful, devastating .
There’s a new quality to this kiss, too, though. As if we both know we’re on the precipice of something. Higher than a cliff or bridge. This kiss feels like falling at warp speed through the stratosphere.
Tom’s exhale is guttural as I push his T-shirt up. It’s hard to do while I balance myself atop him, and our faces press together, my hair falling like a shield around us both. He sits us up with ease and I’m reintroduced to our height difference. My belly flips. He is so huge.
Tom pulls his shirt overhead in one swift movement.
It’s the backward, haphazard way men do and it makes my mouth water.
What he reveals underneath is better than I remember it from all those weeks ago in that Raleigh hallway.
Long, lean torso and sculpted arms. Nothing superhero-y or over-the-top.
No abs on abs on abs. I’m startled every time I remember he’s a real person.
That he’s tangible. He’s here. And those corded arms and flat stomach are strong and warm and caged around me as if I’m precious cargo.
Tom brings his mouth to my neck, sucking hot kisses into the sensitive skin beneath my ear and at the center of my throat. I tangle my hands in his hair and the soft thickness between my fingers is mind-bending.
He must not be able to get a good enough angle like this—me in his lap, hands against his scalp, him bending to mouth my shoulder—so he lays me down across his bed in such a simple, swift movement I feel like a dinner napkin. Folded and spread however he pleases.
“You’re strong,” I babble. I’m nervous and I know he knows it.
Tom only chuckles into my shoulder, his lips working down, down…
His mouth finds my breast, and he doesn’t even stop to pull my tank top up.
He circles my tight nipple with his tongue and the warmth of his breath makes my core throb.
The hum that slips from my mouth is obscene—I sound like a wounded animal.
But Tom isn’t deterred. He sucks me through the cotton until I feel like a balloon about to pop, and then brushes his thumb across the aching point.
I writhe from the pleasure, desperate for some kind of hard contact.
When he pinches me there I moan in earnest, and the sound seems to purge a similar noise from him. He doesn’t stop, groping at my chest, worshipping my small tits over my shirt until I’m dizzy with need. I’m rubbing myself against his upper thigh without shame, but the friction isn’t nearly enough.
“I think you just got my tank top pregnant,” I whine.
Tom stops his ministrations long enough to bury his face in my neck and laugh. “Shite, Clem,” he says, coming up for air. “You can’t just say things like that.”
“I need more,” I tell him, as serious as I’ve ever been. “Please. It hurts.”
“Baby.” His eyes darken. “I’ll take care of you, I swear it.”
“You’re going so slow .” I have half a mind to kick off my lucky jeans and give myself the release I’m craving.
But Tom only tips his hand under my shirt, fingertips stroking the skin of my ribs, the underside of my breast. Soothing, but also coiling me tighter. “Relax, will you?”
He’s so powerful when he speaks like that. That low, cajoling timbre of his voice. I nod, chastened. But it seems my pleas have not fallen on fully deaf ears, because Tom peels my shirt up and over my head and lets his eyes fall to my naked breasts.
He looks like he’s been stabbed with a dull knife. Makes a sound like it, too. “You’re perfect,” he says faintly. “I can hardly stand it.”
Then he brings his mouth back down to my chest, and without my shirt as a barrier his rough beard scrapes along the sensitive skin deliciously.
I attempt to breathe as he sucks my nipple.
He’s kissing my skin as soft and slow as I can fathom, each bite and nip a current of pleasure to my core.
I can’t take it a minute longer and cry out, canting my hips.
Tom grunts, and rubs a hand up my thigh as if in praise for my wanton noise. As if to say, See? You can take it—
I’ve all but wrapped myself around his torso—arms and legs clawing—and can feel how hard he is beneath his jeans.
Despite all my fears, the worst of which are indescribable in their ambiguity and all the more frustrating because of it—I’m practically humming.
Tom’s battling a desperate, starving need, too.
I’m not alone—he wants this. He wants me.
I reach my fingers between us and find the button of my jeans. Tom is pressing open-mouthed kisses down my stomach, below my navel, and over my hip bone when he realizes I’ve nearly gotten my pants down to mid-thigh.
“Not tonight.”
“They won’t be back for an”—I sigh as his tongue traces low on my belly—“hour at least.”
Tom’s eyes burn when he pins them on me. “I’ll need far longer than that to do with you all the things I’d like.”
“Do them now,” I beg.
His blazing eyes don’t change, but he can’t hide that edge of a smile. “You’re going to have to learn a bit of patience.”
“I’m American,” I tell him, kicking my jeans off to reveal the floral thong with the bows underneath. “We’re big on instant gratification.”
Tom seems about to laugh again, but is distracted by my near nudity. His gaze gobbles up every inch of my skin. His hands skate up my thighs. “Jesus Christ.”
I tremble. “They’re just my legs.”
It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever said. Heaven help me when I open my mouth around this man.
“Nothing about you is just anything.”
And I can see it in his eyes. That look of reverence, of worship. Of white-hot desire. He’s going to wring me out and make me beg. He’s a man who tortures himself—you can hear it in his music—he’s a glutton for punishment, for driving the edge of the knife deeper.
My eyes catch on his jeans, still sagging low beneath the line of his briefs…
and I don’t think about it—I just push him onto his back and shimmy his jeans off.
He’s laughing, and I know he could stop me easily—that he’s a mountain lion and I’m a flitting candy wrapper in the wind left behind by littering hikers—but he doesn’t.
He lets me handle him and pull his limbs this way and that, and I’m laughing, too, at my sheer determination to get this man naked.
I’d be ashamed if we weren’t having so much fun.
“Aha,” I say, a little out of breath when I succeed and Tom Halloran is lying beneath me, bare save for his black briefs and the brutal-looking bulge scarcely concealed beneath them.
“What shall you do with your hard-won victory?” The clear intent in his voice—the growling rasp —tells me I haven’t won anything as much as he’s given himself to me.
It’s perverse, the way I eye him. He’s like a Greek god with his mythic hair and Adonis body and coarse beard. I can’t even look at his hands, or think about the tender way they caress my skin. I’ll pass out.
“Remember what I said about instant gratification?” I purr. “I’m going to show you what all the fuss is about.”