29. Tom Cobalt #2
“I think we can establish that I wasn’t strung out over sex as much as I was strung out over you.”
I start to smile.
“That feel good?” he asks. “Or do you hear it all the time, nepo baby?
“Not all the time. Definitely not with a nepo baby attached.” I realize now that things have already changed between us.
We can’t rewind to the moment we wrote “Nuclear Winter” or when we recorded “Dirty Rise,” and what if the rest of the album turns out weak as a result?
But what if it becomes worse if we sit in stagnation at a red light?
What if our sound becomes even better if I let myself be with him?
What if, what if, what if.
The what ifs in life are variables and paths I can control. I can choose which one to take, but I can’t decide which path is the best for us and our music. I have to believe it’s one in the same—that what’s good for us is what’s good for the band.
I gaze up at Phoenix as he pushes his hair back again. We’re lying on the bed together, but while he’s propped on his palm, he’s slightly hovered over me, looking down at me with questions spurred by silence. My pulse hammers in a new beat of anticipation I want to jot out and memorize for later.
“What if…” I can’t stagnate here. We can’t stagnate. “What if the red light turns yellow? Maybe I can do yellow and everything won’t fall apart.”
“I need more than a maybe.” His chest collapses in a deep breath, like I’m wrenching him up a stadium of stairs. “Tom.”
“I can possibly do yellow.”
His eyes grip hold of me, but the rest of his body has gone still. “We’re playing red light, green light.” He doesn’t say it like a question.
“Red, yellow, green. Yeah. If you finally researched my family, you’d know we like games. Chess, Scrabble, Battleship—I fuck hard with Snakes and Ladders.”
“Shut the fuck up.” Phoenix releases a rough breath. His graveled, throaty noise is a new sound I want right against my ear.
“What if I don’t?” I breathe just as hard, just as staggered. I stretch even higher on my elbows, depleting the aching space between our mouths. “What are you going to do to me?”
His hand clasps my jaw, and his thumb makes a tormenting trek across my bottom lip. Holy shit. “More than you can fucking handle.” The dark threat in his eyes is rushing blood to my cock. “I can’t hit the gas until you change the light. Until you fucking say it. You get that?”
“I get it.” I bring my forehead to his, our gazes fisting. I can’t catch my breath. Tendons in my neck, legs, arms pull blisteringly taut. My body is vibrating against a frequency of resistance and desire, and all I want is to let go and be set free against his hands, his mouth, his affection.
“Dis-le.” His forceful whisper in French is hot against my lips. My pulse skips fifty beats. I might be deceased, and even though I know exactly what he said, he translates out loud, “Say it.”
Say it.
I take one hand off the mattress to bury my fingers in the back of his hair. I am holding on to Phoenix, our mouths a tormenting inch apart. His thumb slides to the edge of my jaw as he cups my face with strength and longing.
Say it.
“Fuck,” I grunt out into a deeper moan, my chest caving, my breath ragged. That’s not the word I need to say. I’m gripping a gear shift. I’m the one in control.
“N’aie pas peur,” he breathes, staring down at my lips, then back into my eyes. He’s telling me to not be afraid. He can’t promise this won’t trigger the ending of all we’re working toward, but what is the band without Phoenix anyway?
A shell of itself. Soulless. The music I’ve loved most has been the music I’ve made with him. Why stop now?
“Yellow light.” I say it.
His lips crash into mine, and I grip him close while every nerve ending in my body is torched like a city on fire. I am burning alive.
Phoenix kisses deeply, powerfully—like he’s claiming my mouth and laying waste to my fears.
He tastes unbearably good. Mint and something distinctly him.
His tongue makes sensual work against mine, and I’m fighting to keep up and not just fucking crumble beneath the feeling of him.
Of his hands raking across my body as he claims my face, my chest, my flexing abs.
I try to ravage back, but fuck me—like seriously, fuck me.
He’s hooked his leg between mine, and his knee digs in the mattress between my thighs as his body naturally moves over me. While we’re lip-locked, he fists the back of his long-sleeved shirt and yanks it over his head between breaths.
I want to skate my hands down the ridges of his muscles, but I’m gripping the curve of his neck, just hanging on while I meet his ardent, relentless kisses with fierce ones of my own. Then his hand slips beneath both my Warped Tour tee and the white long-sleeved shirt underneath.
The second I feel his callused palm trail across my bare skin, a moan ejects from me, but he catches the sound in his mouth.
Nothing about him is slow. He is the vicious, untiring beat of his sticks against the snare.
I can’t even think about shedding my clothes.
He does it for me and chucks my two shirts aside before he’s back on my mouth.
All the while his hands draw up my biceps to my forearms, lifting them higher, and before I know it, I’m on my back and he’s on top of me, pinning my wrists to the bed.
I unleashed a head-on collision.
“You need a breath?” he asks right up against my lips, which is stealing more oxygen from me.
In truth, yes. I could use many breaths. Do I want them? No. I want to be so choked of air, I pass out under him. That’s how insane I feel.
So I just kiss him.
He catches my bottom lip, then deepens what I thought was a beautiful kiss into something epic.
Extraordinary.
That’s what it feels like in this moment being with Phoenix St. Pierre.
Holy fuck, don’t get emotional. My eyes sting. But isn’t that what we’ve been? This whole time has been me and him wading through all the emotions.
Why stop now?
It’s what I’ve really wanted.
Phoenix digs his forehead into mine, his thumb wiping the wet track out of the corner of my eye.
The depth of his gaze is fisting my heart.
I can feel more than just his desire twisting and constricting around me like endless vines.
Sharp thorns threaten to embed in my skin, deep enough to leave scars, but I don’t want to pull out a single one.
I want to feel everything with him.
While my head dizzies with lack of air, I buck up to kiss him, but he’s not letting me. He roots my shoulders to the bed, and he draws his mouth backward every time I try. “Catch your breath.”
“I think I’d rather just pass out under you,” I admit in a heavy pant, my lips stinging. “Think you can make that happen?”
“Only if you want me to call 9-1-1.” His hand is yanking at my belt buckle. My cock has never wanted a pair of lips more than his.
“No fun,” I tsk. “The only emergency requiring EMS will be the heart attack I give you when you come in your pants—”
“Tom.” His fingers move faster with the button of my jeans. I’m smirking at the threat in his eyes. “Shut the fuck up.”
“Make me,” I say against his mouth.
His next forceful kisses don’t quiet me. I tremble under him, and a sudden groan tears out of my lungs when he drives his hand down my jeans and fists me. “Phoenix,” I moan. “Fuck, dude.” I’m not going to survive this for long.
There is no fucking way.
Please, universe, God, whoever is listening, do not make this embarrassingly short.
“Okay?” he asks. “This fall under a yellow light?”
“Ye—yes, yeah.”
“Spit or lube?” he asks. In my one literal second of silence, he adds, “You have lube?”
“Uh, yeah. Spit, spit, spit.” I don’t think I can wait, and it’s not like he’s going to be inside of me. He’s just jacking me off.
Just jacking me off. Like this isn’t the most unraveling thing that’s ever happened to me.
He spits in his palm. That was too hot. I grit my teeth to keep my composure, but a noise still finds its way out of my shut lips when he wraps his fingers around me and strokes me in a toe-curling rhythm.
He leans closer at the same time, his mouth sending shivers up my whole body with deep, clawing kiss after kiss.
His tongue. His hands. He’s doing so much at once to me.
He even kisses up my jaw. He nips my ear.
I inhale a sharp breath. My abs flex tighter, and I shudder under him with a deeper, grittier sound between my teeth. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Fuck, Tom.” His sandpapered, hitched moan hits my ear, and I lose my mind. Truly.
By the way his hand works my erection, by the way he’s playing me like his drum kit, I feel like he’s obsessed with my sounds of pleasure. Like he’s mentally saying, Again.
I don’t know if I can go again.
I don’t know if I can handle his pace.
Holy shit.
“Phoenix.” I can’t even touch his cock. I can’t even attempt to free it and actually see what I could be taking one day.
I’m hanging on to his muscled shoulder now and barely able to prop up on my elbow. He’s on my lips. I can’t even see him pump me. I can’t even breathe.
“Dude, I can’t—” My legs writhe against his, and he pins me with his knees while the friction of his hand and the intensity of him—just him—detonates me.
I come so hard, I see stars. A million stars. I hope I’m among them. No, I know I am. Right next to him. Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.
I unload on my abs. He doesn’t let me catch the mess when I try.
His hand pushes mine away, and then Phoenix dips down and runs his tongue across my glistening skin.
He licks up the cum, and my lips part in a breath—no, many breaths.
I’m stunned and awed and crushing hard. Can you crush on someone you just got with?
I don’t know.
I don’t know anything other than that was the hottest thing anyone has ever done to me. And we only went to first base. Or was that second? Again, don’t know. Don’t really care.
I wipe a hand down my mouth while he swallows and smiles a little at me. A shadow of a smile. It somehow seems like the brightest thing in the room.