Chapter 25
25
Even though she’d gone up to the suite to have a private cry, some part of Rose’s soul was still bewildered to find herself alone there. After she’d matched the curtains to the throw pillows? After she’d gotten the wires for the basement sound system invisibly taped to the baseboards? After Tom had nearly broken his neck getting the roof fixed? After the windows, the pool, the bees ? After Boyd Kellagher oozed his ambiguous sexuality over every piece of furniture in the foyer?
Was there a single thing she could have done to make this place more inviting? Was there a single way she could have made this easier for her family? Was there something wrong with the email? Had she not sent enough texts? Had they not seen the new pictures, or the magazine proofs, or the newsletter? Could they have somehow not realized it was time to sign up?
No. Even with every possible inducement, even with each tiny amount of friction eliminated, they didn’t want to come. Nobody in her family except Max had blocked a single day at the inn.
Maybe it was true, Rose allowed, that they’d never felt the same way about this place as her. They thought it was inconvenient to travel here. They were neutral at best on board games. They’d eaten the same meals too many times. But some part of her had thought that they’d do it for her, at least. They had to be somewhere on Memorial Day and Thanksgiving and Christmas, and she’d invited them to be with her. But it wasn’t enough for them that she wanted them here. She wasn’t enough.
Rose picked up one of the stupid floral throw pillows she’d spent hours embroidering and wrapped herself around it. Eleven years ago, when Max was still ruling this place with an iron fist, Rose had come out here for two weeks, fresh off filing for divorce, and tried to rearrange her ideas of how her life was going to go. She’d held her baby cousins and flipped pancakes for her uncles and driven her younger brothers to the movies, telling herself that she had a big family and she was never going to be alone. But there was no guarantee she wouldn’t be, no matter how many cushions or casseroles she made.
Ten minutes was enough time in one day spent indulging her suspicion that there was something fundamentally unlovable about herself. She needed to start dinner and pack. But the same part of herself that had engaged in what she now knew to have been a great deal of magical thinking about her family still wished that someone would come find her.
And Tom did; she heard his voice calling her name, not worried, just confused. She immediately wiped her face, but his expression fell when he saw her sniffling. He looked around, then shut and locked the door behind him before coming to sit next to her on the bed.
He put his arm around her and pulled her against him. “What happened?” he asked in that overly gentle voice of concern people used with small children who’d taken a tumble on the sidewalk. Hearing himself, he cleared his throat, apparently deciding that a different character was called for. “Actually, first tell me who . I’ll drag their ass in here, and that’ll give you a moment.”
Rose forced a laugh at his ominous tone. “That would fix the problem, actually. If you could drag them here.”
“Drag who?”
“My family. Did you see? Nobody signed up. Nobody blocked out any time here.” She laughed again and tilted her head up. “I thought it looked perfect. Max likes it. But she’s got early signs of dementia. Maybe it doesn’t look good. Maybe it’s too frilly.”
Tom rubbed her shoulders, face creasing in confusion. “Babe, this place looks great. It’s never looked better. You can’t even tell there was a storm.”
“That’s not good enough,” she said. She leaned back on her palms, hoping her nose would clear if she stared at the ceiling. “Or is that just another lie I tell myself? That there was ever a single thing I could have done here that would make anyone want to spend their vacation time with me.”
She was very glad that Tom was there with her now, just grateful for his presence, and had not really considered what he might think of her pity party. So she was surprised when he stood up and stalked away to the window. He set his hands on his hips, attitude agitated.
“Babe, tons of people wanted to spend their vacation with you. And did,” he said, and Rose realized she’d stepped in it. He’d been here almost three months when he could have been at least earning money if not having a wonderful time as an up-and-coming actor living in New York. Not to mention all the time Boyd had been here, and Ximena, and all the girls.
“Oh no, I’m not saying I’m not incredibly grateful,” Rose tripped over herself to explain. “You were incredible. Everyone was! This is not on you. No, oh my God—I could never have imagined everything you’ve done. You’ve been so good. I’m just sorry it ended like this.”
What a waste of everyone’s time. Jesus. She could have just sold it. Tom had told her, hadn’t he? Everyone thought it was a shithole, and he hadn’t wanted to stay. She should have just listened to him.
“That’s not what I mean,” Tom said sharply. “Rosie! What did you want? What were you doing out here for all this time?”
She blinked at him in confusion. She’d wanted to fix this place up so that her family would have somewhere to get together during the holidays again, and he knew that.
Tom tapped urgently on his palm, as though counting. “Because here’s what I see. You have me, and at one point, at least, you knew that I was your family. You have your Aunt Max, who is thrilled to come out here as soon as possible. You have this place, which has never looked better. And I have fucking filled it up with people who think you’re wonderful in every way.” He cocked his head at her, expression pained. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
What she wanted? She’d never thought of it. Never in her wildest dreams would she have imagined that letting Tom come help with renovations would set off a daisy chain of events leading to more than a dozen vivid artistic depictions of Rose in a clinch with both Tom and Boyd Kellagher. She hadn’t even thought that at the end of it she’d have Tom .
Tom shook his head. “I know this isn’t how you pictured it, but isn’t this what you actually wanted? Babe, it’s going to be great. We’re going to come back here this summer, as soon as the Broadway run wraps, and you’re going to love it.”
Tom sat back down next to her and tugged her into his chest, his hands curling into her hair to soothe her, even though she knew she was being a bit of a brat.
“Wouldn’t that be enough?” Tom asked. “If I’m there, and Max, and a bunch of our friends? Adrian and Caroline are back from Singapore this week. My parents would come if I asked. Every other inmate in this asylum is dying to come back. Is that enough?”
Rose scrunched her eyes shut, willing away the sting of disappointment because she heard the note of uncertainty in Tom’s voice. Of course it would be enough, if Tom really did show up. But hadn’t she asked too much of him already?
“You’re not tired of this place?” she asked tentatively.
“Never,” Tom said stoutly. He rubbed his face into her hair, lips warm against the shell of her ear. “I’ll be there, and I’ll make sure everyone else comes too. I can’t even get rid of Boyd. I’m sure he’ll be here. Didn’t I do that?”
“That was all you,” Rose agreed. She knew she was being coddled, but this was filling up a little crack in the very base of her, the part that only ever felt loved for the things she did, not the things she was. And Tom was enough to fill her heart all the way up to the brim. He filled it to overflowing.
Tom pulled her tighter against him. “Because don’t I take care of you?” he demanded. “Haven’t I done everything you asked?”
“You did! You did. I’m just sorry I asked you to spend so much of your time on this.” She could have taken Tom up on his offer of crashing at Boyd’s vacation house, and she could have been sitting under an umbrella with sea turtles bringing her coconuts full of rum this whole time.
“I’m not sorry,” Tom said fiercely. “I’m glad I got this chance. Because you know I can do it now. All the things I said I’d do the first time around.”
“What—this wasn’t a test ,” she said, finally realizing what Tom was getting at.
Tom scoffed. “Of course it was a test. But the important thing is, I passed .” He stood up and held her face between his hands. “I said I’d do it for you. And I did. Because I’m going to keep taking care of you.”
Rose closed her eyes and let the weight of that promise sink in. She wanted so badly to believe him. Tom’s thumbs stroked her cheekbones, soothing her, and the way she wanted it to continue scared her with the intensity of the feeling.
“Was there anything else?” Tom prompted her, fingers tangled in her hair. “Was there anything else you wanted?”
His tone was such a volatile mix of pride and uncertainty that Rose’s heart ached for him. “No, I couldn’t have asked for anything else,” she said honestly. He’d given her so much more than she’d ever expected to have.
She put her hands on his waist, just steadying herself against the solidity of his body, and he looked down at the touch. His mouth pursed.
“Oh wait,” he said. “I guess there was one more thing.”
She didn’t know what he meant by that, so she tilted her face up just as he leaned in to kiss her. His kiss wasn’t delicate or gentle in the way he often approached her these days. He held her still with both hands so that he could kiss her at his pace—a hot sweep of tongue in her mouth and the sweet pressure of his lips claiming hers. He sat down again and wrapped her in muscular arms, holding her until she relaxed into his embrace.
She could have done that for a long time. Kissing Tom was an activity that didn’t allow for a lot of extraneous thoughts, and she would have welcomed the opportunity to drown out any inner voices that told her she was doomed to be alone in the fully absorbing activity of making out with him. She couldn’t do anything else while kissing him; she never wanted to be doing anything else while kissing him.
It stopped before she was ready. She didn’t expect it when Tom gave her a light shove against her shoulders that had her landing flat on the mattress. She gave a single surprised huff of amusement, because Tom had been treating her with kid gloves, and she’d wondered when he’d decide to reopen the question of whether she was allowed any kinky shit if she used her words correctly. She expected him to climb up onto the bed next to her and continue things on a horizontal plane, but her laugh turned into more of a gasp when Tom none-too-gently rolled her to her stomach so that she was bent over the side of the mattress.
She pushed up on her elbows to look back at him.
“Um,” she said in a skeptical tone of voice. She was fully dressed, and so was he. What was he even planning to accomplish with her in this position?
“You asked for it, Rosie,” he said calmly, hands at his belt and eyes warm on her body bent over before him. With unhurried movements, he undid his belt and yanked it free of its loops with a heavy snick of leather against cloth. Even then, Rose didn’t connect any dots until he loomed back over her and gathered her two wrists in his right hand.
“You’re going to need to scoot a little,” he said, giving her a light slap on the ass to urge her down toward the foot of the bed. “If you still want me to pin you to the mattress and rail you. In a loving way. In a respectful way. Do you want that?”
The noise she made through her nose was mostly one of disbelief, but she was seized with a sudden molten impulse of want that slid through her core like a drop of water down a hot pan. Yes. She did want that. She wanted to be the desired thing for once. She wanted the heated undercurrent of desire in Tom’s voice. She didn’t move, not sure whether she was actually supposed to.
Tom leaned back down and put his mouth next to her ear.
“Are you going to be a good girl and move, or are you going to be a bad girl and I move you?” he asked, and thank God he was an actor, because there was no way Rose could have ever delivered a line like that and not died of embarrassment, but he sounded like he’d never made a more serious offer in his life.
Rose considered whether she wanted to be good or bad. This was the choice, as Snowy would have put it, of the whole vibe. She could have Tom’s big hands gripping her hips or maybe the back of her neck. The idea behind being bad was that she could make up for it, and then she’d be good. But she wanted to be good from the start. She wanted Tom to think she was good, to whisper You look so fucking pretty in her ear. She wanted to do it just right for him. So she moved down to the edge of the bed and put her arms straight out in front of her.
Tom looped his belt around her wrists and neatly tightened it so that it held her wrists together. He ran a thumb over the places where the leather rubbed against her skin, checking that it wasn’t too tight.
“Jesus Christ,” Rose said, blinking at the adept way he’d done that, the practice it implied.
“What, did you think I didn’t know how to do the kinky stuff?” he asked, sounding warmly amused. “I know. I just didn’t think our first night back together needed to be a softcore bondage scene.”
He ran his hands all the way down the length of her body from her wrists, letting her know he could touch her anywhere. His fingers lingered on her hips, cupping her ass in a possessive way before hiking the skirt of her dress up to her waist.
“I, um,” Rose said, trying to imagine how this was going to go and coming up blank. She’d never done this. She couldn’t even recall talking about this other than in a joking way. She laughed politely, feeling the absurd need to distance herself from this act even with her wrists tied together. “I was bluffing, really. You don’t have to do this.”
“Babe, I’m tying you up so that you don’t have to do anything,” he said, hands petting her ass over the satin of her panties. “I mean, if you want to make some really good noises, I’d like that. But I’m going to take care of you. That’s what it’s about, right? Control. Having it. Losing it.”
He slipped his hand around her hip, under the elastic, and curved it in toward her core, just parting her folds with the tip of his thumb. He traced his fingertip back and forth in a small soothing orbit, his other hand tightening on her body. He leaned back in. “You’re really wet for someone who was bluffing,” he confided softly, mouth dipping in long enough to catch the edge of her earlobe with his teeth. Rose shivered violently as Tom eased her underwear down to her ankles.
She was totally exposed to him, bare from the waist down, bent over like an offering. Tom nudged her legs apart with a foot as though considering his options.
“I don’t think this is enough,” he said thoughtfully, and she felt a cool breeze on her exposed legs as he stepped away, returning in a moment with the two curtain tie-backs from the window. When he tied a loop around one foot and secured it to the foot of the bed, Rose took a deep breath and held it. Yes. She really couldn’t do anything from this position, her hands and legs tied. Tom would take care of her with his strong hands and big cock and better ideas of how to fulfill her very vague idea of doing something kinky.
“Do we need a safe word?” she asked, feeling hot and shaky through her stomach even though he’d barely touched her. Was there anything else she was supposed to do?
“Just say stop if you want me to stop. I won’t remember what you mean if you start yelling colors,” Tom said, voice already rougher and deeper. He stayed on the floor behind her once both her legs were secured, but Rose was still shocked at the slide of both his hands up the backs of her thighs. She tensed when his palms gripped the globes of her ass.
“Up on your tippy toes, Rosie,” he said, and then she felt his breath right against her entrance. She obeyed more out of instinct than because she understood what was about to happen, but Tom’s hot, wet mouth landing over her core was a thing she both wanted with every fiber of her body and would never have been able to ask for.
She buried her flaming face against one arm, mind snagged on the delicious image of herself bent over the side of the bed with Tom kneeling behind her, his face buried in her pussy. Both of them still mostly dressed. It was hot .
Tom’s thumbs spread her for his mouth, and tension coiled faster than she could have thought possible. She held her eyes firmly shut as he devoured her. She couldn’t have thought of colors. Or numbers. She didn’t count how many times his lips and tongue rolled over her, because her mind went blank and fuzzy with sensation. It never happened this quickly for her. Her orgasm wasn’t its usual slow, twisting climb up an impossibly high summit but a hard, careening rush that rocked through her body like a sudden impact with the floor. She gasped, immediately sensitive and aware of the textures of Tom’s mouth.
“Already?” Tom said, sitting back on his heels and rubbing his jaw with one palm. “God, I’m amazing.”
Rose tried to turn over to look at him—to laugh with him, thank him—but Tom stopped her with a hand on her lower back as he stood up. She didn’t have the time to feel self-conscious again, because Tom was moving decisively.
“No, no,” he said. “I’m not done with you. Stay still.”
He didn’t bother to undress, just undid his jeans, shoved them to his ankles, and let her feel his hard cock pressed against the seam of her body. Oh. She was already adrift. She felt the need to grip the world to hold on to herself because she was lost in the moment. Her hands weren’t secured to anything but each other, but she knit them together and went on her toes again when he notched the tip of himself against her core.
“Breathe, baby,” he said, rubbing his hand over her lower back.
She’d once had the idea that the two of them were fundamentally built on different scales, like puzzle pieces from different sets, and this position had always made him feel impossibly big. He had to work at her, coaxing her body open every time. Even the wetness from her previous orgasm didn’t make it much easier, and there was nothing she could do to control the angle or the speed at which he filled her. She just arched her feet and took it, inch by inch, until Tom’s weight was spread over her back and her mind was wiped entirely clean by the hot press of Tom’s body inside hers.
He hadn’t even moved yet, and her heart was pounding as though she’d run a marathon. Tom lowered his face to the side of her neck and ran the flat of his tongue against her pulse there. The unexpected sensation jolted her, and he slid fractionally deeper inside her.
Sighing with satisfaction, Tom wrapped one arm around her chest and splayed his palm over her collarbones, just over her heart. “There,” he said, rolling his hips experimentally. And, yes, there. Exactly there. Precisely there , which nobody else in the world would ever know but him.
It made her head swim like a third glass of wine, the sensations he was pulling out of her with every slide of his hips. It was slow, but not lazy. Controlled, but only by him. In and out. This was new, the intimacy of his focus on each tight movement.
“I want you to come again,” he said, each word clipped with effort.
She wanted that too, but that usually didn’t happen. Tom was the only one who’d ever consistently gotten her there the first time. He gave a sucking kiss to the side of her neck, hard enough to leave a mark, and let her feel the edge of his teeth on the muscle of her shoulder. Her body tightened with desire, but she could barely predict her next breath, let alone whether this deluge of sensation was going to wash into another orgasm. She couldn’t think herself into or out of it. She could barely think at all.
“I know you weren’t bluffing,” Tom rasped out. “So you’ve got to do this one thing for me. If you’re gonna make me top you, you’re going to at least come on my fucking cock.”
This was the hottest thing anyone had ever said to her, and she would have done anything for him at that moment. She wanted to do everything he asked. Faster than she’d thought possible, she was lost in such a vibrating rush of feeling that she was barely aware of Tom freezing in place, his palm clenching against her chest. She’d done it, hadn’t she? She’d been good. Her body was floating like dandelion fluff, though Tom’s weight anchored her to the bed. He pressed his forehead against the mattress next to her, weight falling over her back.
“Shit,” Tom said.