Chapter 11
They kissed the whole way home. If you could call the wet, chaotic melding of their faces kissing. Tabby didn’t know where you hired taxis with a partition between you and the driver, but they were fucking useful. She spent the entire ride on Toby’s lap, grinding on him hard enough to start a wildfire in his pants. That was until he pulled his cock out and growled, “Suck it. Now.” She slid onto the seat beside him, wrapped a hand around his shaft and started blowing him as fast as she could in a moving vehicle. She’d never done it in a car before, and road laws be damned, it was so hot—her mouth stretched around Toby’s dick, his hand on the back of her head, urging her deeper as street lights flashed by.
“That’s it, get me ready for you,” Toby said. “The second we’re at mine, it’s going back in your pussy and staying there.”
Tabby had never minded giving head, but this was something else. Blowing Toby was getting her so hot, she might as well have been the one receiving. When they arrived at his front gates, he had to actually pull her off him. Her clit felt like a live wire, primed to explode with the slightest finger circle. Not that Toby seemed inclined to give her one.
“I gotta pay the driver,” he snarled. “Get in the house and get ready to be fucked.”
She obeyed, grabbing her clutch and staggering up the pathway, firmly refusing to look back at Toby or whoever was behind the wheel.
Toby’s front door was unlocked, and she found her tattooing duffel bag waiting inside like an orphan at a bus stop. She looked away, unwilling to be reminded of the past, the future; anything that wasn’t right now.
She considered several ‘get ready to be fucked’ positions before tossing her clutch aside and kneeling on the polished marble of Toby’s foyer. She pulled her skirt around her hips and waited on all fours, her palms trembling, her bare ass pointed at the door. There was a short silence when it opened before Toby let out a snarl. He didn’t bother to close the door, just fell to his knees behind her.
“That’s how you’re gonna wait for me from now on,” he said, sliding his condom-covered cock deep. “Bent over for me, just like this.”
Tabby garbled affirmations as he leaned over her back, his stubble rasping along her neck and shoulders. He wrapped a hand around her throat and fucked her slow.
“That’s it,” he said, hips slamming into her ass. “Right where you like it, huh?”
Tabby’s brain had lit up, every corner crackling. She struggled against his hold, his weight too heavy to shift, his grip unbreakable. The realisation, combined with the slow stroke of his shaft, had her moaning loud enough to let the entire city of Melbourne know she was going to come.
“Please?” she whimpered. “I’m so close. Please, go faster?”
“Don’t fucking tell me what to do. This isn’t about you and your soaking cunt, Tabitha.”
She gasped, genuinely shocked by how cruel he was being. And because she was a fucking freak, it turned her on.
“Here, you need something?” Toby asked. He let go of her neck, reaching between her spread thighs to press his fingers to her clit. He teased her, tapping lightly as his thrusts became even more drawn out. The stimulation was too confusing for her to come, even in her frantic state.
“Toby, please do it properly? I’m so close…”
“I know you are.”
His heart hammered against her back as she struggled and shook, and then he did what she’d asked for, speeding up his pace as he rubbed delicious circles around her clit. The friction was exactly right and Tabby threw back her head as her orgasm detonated, accidentally smashing Toby in the nose.
“Bitch,” he snarled, but it didn’t matter. She was coming, impaled on his shaft, squealing and writhing as pleasure rippled through her.
“You’re gonna fucking pay for that,” he warned.
“Whatever,” she gasped, still coming. “It was so fucking worth it.”
“Yeah, we’ll see.”
The second the intensity of her climax dipped, Toby straightened, transferring his soaking fingers to her asshole.
“You want it here?” he taunted. “Want it in both holes?”
What was there to say except what she’d already said a hundred times tonight? “Yes. Yes. Please, yes.”
His cock still impaled inside her, Toby pushed a finger inside her asshole. The tight ring of muscles contracted, and he withdrew slowly. “Breathe, sweetness. Breathe and let me in. You trust me, don’t you?”
He was saying it to be a dick, but the thing was she did trust Toby. Maybe not with her thoughts, but with her body. This version of him might fuck like a demon and dirty talk like a pornstar, but he was still someone she knew.
“Come on,” she said, shaking her ass. “Give it to me.”
“Right. Safeword?”
“Milk toast,” she repeated dutifully. She’d chosen it to fuck with him, back when she’d significantly underestimated his ability to fuck with her right back.
“That fucking safeword,” Toby muttered. “That’s another thing you’re getting punished for; being a mouthy little whore.”
He withdrew his cock, and she held herself steady, painfully empty. The next second, Toby’s finger plunged so deep into her asshole, she whined. It felt good, but it was so fucking intense, especially with all her sensitive tissues swollen from orgasm.
“We’re gonna play a game,” Toby hissed, pumping fast. “It’s called ‘What makes mouthy little whores come the fastest? Getting done in the pussy or taking it in the ass?’”
Tabby screamed as sensations blared through her. Toby cackled, his free hand gripping her hip hard enough to bruise. He held her in place as he worked two fingers in and out of her ass. Just as she was getting used to the fullness, he pulled out, shoving his cock back into her aching pussy. The switch sucked the air from her lungs. “Toby…”
“That’s it. Say my name.”
He took her fast, with what felt like all the strength in his body. She spasmed around him, already on edge, the promise of a second climax billowing like fog.
“Looks like we might have a winner,” Toby muttered. “But hang on…”
His fingers returned to her asshole, the tips penetrating slowly.
Tabby inhaled as best she could, her asshole giving way to the stretching pressure; the line between pleasure and pain paper-thin.
“Relax,” Toby commanded. “Think about me eating your cunt.”
“I… I…”
His fingers pulsed, and Tabby pictured it. Two Tobys—one inside her, one on the floor with his mouth fastened to her clit. Her oversensitive body jolted, and Toby slid deeper into her ass.
“That’s a good slut. You love getting double fucked, don’t you?”
“Yes! Yes!”
She lost track of how long he rode her. Long enough that time blurred, and drops of sweat and tears formed a puddle under her chin. She pleaded for things that didn’t make sense, begged for what she wasn’t sure of. Mercy, maybe. Or just to come again.
Toby knew whenever she was getting close, and despite the title of the game, the objective wasn’t to make her come fast—or at all. The motive seemed to be reducing her to a weepy, shaking wreck on his foyer floor.
“Let me finish,” she pleaded as he withdrew his fingers once again. “I’ll do anything you want.”
“You’ll do that anyway.” Toby leaned forward and shoved his hand in her face. “Tell you what? Suck, and I’ll think about it.”
Sobbing, Tabby opened her mouth and drew his fingers in. She tasted sweat and skin, and it wasn’t gross, but the way he laughed set her brain ablaze. Then he pulled his fingers from her mouth and plunged them back into her asshole. Tabby whimpered as his cock and fingers met inside her, stroking the wall that separated them. Sweat burst across her neck. She felt skewered, helpless and unable to move. Braced on the cold floor, she barely felt the stiffness in her knees. The pressure in her ass was taking up all her remaining attention. Toby could so easily hurt her right now, and part of her was convinced he would, whether by accident or because the game would get out of hand.
She looked over her shoulder and found him looking back, red-faced but focused.
“You good?” he asked. “Does it hurt?”
His expression shifted from mean to concerned like a desert mirage. Whiplashing her once again with how much things had changed between them. She thought back to two years ago, her and Toby doing anal in her bedroom. He’d been so gentle, even with his inexperience and giant donkey dick, and they’d gotten it done. More than got it done—got it amazing.
“It’s just super intense,” she whispered. “I’m just so full and so sensitive.”
“That checks out. Wanna stop?”
She shook her head. “Can you just… can you…?”
Toby waited, but she couldn’t get the words out. It was too embarrassing. Forget fucking him in a public bar or sucking his dick in a taxi; this was apparently where her heart drew the line. At asking Toby to tell her she was beautiful, that he wanted her, that she was the hottest woman he’d ever been with, even if it wasn’t true.
“Keep going,” she said quietly, turning back to face the dark expanse of his house. “And be mean. Even meaner than you were in the bar.”
“You sure?” he asked, and there was a heat to the words Tabby couldn’t interpret.
“It’s what I want. It’ll make it easier to just… Make me take it.”
“I don’t want to ‘make you take it,’” he said with that same strange intensity. “I want you to enjoy it.”
“I will,” she said honestly enough. “I just want this to be dark.”
“How dark?”
“Dark as you can make it.”
Toby hesitated.
“Don’t worry about me,” she said, irritation flickering alongside her arousal. She didn’t want to wait, didn’t want more hand-holding negotiations. She needed release, for sensation to obliterate the childish reassurances she’d wanted from him. She was sexy, and she was probably loveable, and she needed to be fucked hard and rough.
“Do it,” she snapped. “I want it, and I trust you.”
“Fine. You okay with me fucking your asshole?”
“Yes. Now shut up and do it.”
He growled, slapping her ass with what felt like genuine anger. “You fucking cock-hungry brat.”
He wrenched his dick from her, and she’d barely moaned a protest before his fingers pumped inside her ass, making her scream.
“Oh, she likes that,” Toby told an invisible audience. “She wants it in the back even more than she wants it in the front. Don’t you, you hot bitch?”
He withdrew his fingers, and when he pressed the head of his cock to her asshole, she knew this was it. He was going to fuck her, and if he so much as rocked inside her twice, she was going to come.
“Fuckin’ hold still,” he barked. “You move, and I’ll throw you outta my house.”
She did as she was told, inhaling softly as he eased past the ring of muscle. She was already wet and open from his fingers, but it was still a lot. She liked anal, but it had been a long time. How long? With a throb, she realised she hadn’t gone there since Toby, two years ago. He pushed a little deeper, and she clenched around him.
Toby sucked in a breath. “Still real fucking tight back here, aren’t you? Been a while?”
“Yessss. Not since you.”
She didn’t mean to say it, but it was already said.
Toby snorted. “Don’t bullshit me, Tabitha.”
“I’m not.”
She turned to see Toby’s look of confusion. For a second, they paused, each staring at the other, and she watched his mask slip again. Saw something like softness enter his pale blue eyes. She smiled, and the next second, he was blank and angry, spanking her ass. “Turn the fuck around. Look at the floor.”
She did, braced for brutality, but Toby showed mercy, settling into a rolling pace. She relaxed as much as she could as the beautiful, compressed feeling spread through her aching cunt and up her spine. It was too much. It was exactly enough. His heavy balls smacked her clit as she chewed her lower lip, willing the sensations to build to an apex.
“That’s it,” he muttered. “Come on my cock for the hundredth fucking time. That’s what you want, right? As much as you can get from whoever wants to give it to you?”
“Yes. No,” Tabby prattled. It didn’t hurt anymore. It felt like flying; the hot, slick glide of his shaft in the wrong place.
“The second you’re done, you’ll suck me clean,” he warned. “But you’ll like that, won’t you? Anything for more dick.”
He bent forward, shoved his fingers back into her mouth, and as he pushed inside her at both ends, climax hit Tabby like a freight train. Only dimly aware of Toby’s grunts, lights burst behind her eyes. It was an oxytocin overload, driving every thought she’d ever had far, far away.
Toby’s fingers slid from her lips, his hand closing around her throat as sparks cascaded through and over her. His long fingers pressed tight against her neck as his pace sped up, and she knew he was chasing his own pleasure. The unrestrained speed of his thrusts, their pure selfishness, prolonged her orgasm. Whimpering with every slap, she turned to watch as Toby came. His handsome face was tight, his eyes closed. He drove deep and groaned, going rigid as his cheeks and neck burned red. “Fuck, Tabby. Fuck!”
Yeah, she thought. Me. How do you like it, sweetness?
He held for a second and they were there together. Satisfied and safe. Then, panting like a wounded bull, he gently removed himself from her. She watched as he tied the condom in a knot, his broad chest rising and falling like waves. He was such a man now. A grown-up. She studied his scarlet face and sweaty tangle of hair and felt a strange turning in her chest.
Who are you? she thought. Who am I? What is this?
Realising she was still very much bent over with her ass out, she sat back on her heels and rubbed her eyes, groaning as her knuckles came away black. Unsurprisingly, all the sweat and tears had ruined the makeup Neve had so carefully put on her face.
“What?” Toby asked.
“I must look like a horror villain. Like Pearl in the movie where she’s all old and shit.”
“X?” Toby asked. “I liked that one.”
“Me too. Have you ever heard Mia Goth talk in real life? She sounds nuts.”
“Like Bubbles from The Powerpuff Girls?”
“Yeah, it’s crazy. She can do, like, a million voices, and that’s the one she settled on.” Tabby returned her gaze to the floor. It was cleanish, but still, obviously, a place people walked on with shoes. She wondered how fucked up her formerly white dress was. Somewhere between ‘ruined’ and ‘utterly destroyed,’ but that was probably the point. Toby had bought something pretty just to trash it. The dress and the woman she’d been in the bar.
His front door was still wide open, and she listened to the rushing wind and the faint roll of the ocean. Her brain was ticking but in a placid, inoffensive way, still too full of feel-good chemicals to worry about much of anything.
“So,” Toby said, sounding awkward for the first time all night. “What should… do you wanna hang out…?”
Tabby laughed, and the feeling of it bubbling through her was like pure confidence winding around her arms and looping her thighs. She might have come, begging, with fingers that had recently been in her ass inside her mouth, but that was okay. That was sex. She was still her. She stood slowly and saw her duffle was still parked by the door. “Why don’t we multi-task? We could hang out while I do a couple of hours on your tattoo?”
Toby blinked up from the floor, his mussy hair and open shirt giving him a sweet, rakish air. “You sure?”
She shrugged. “Why not? Just point me to a bathroom, and I’ll try to de-Pearl myself first.”
* * *
She and Tobywere back in his living room, him on the massage table, Nina Archives playing through her JBL Clip. Wind battered the trees lining Toby’s house, branches smacking into the windows, but its cold fingers couldn’t reach them in the heated space they occupied. Tabby moved her tattooing needle across the upper arm of the guy who’d just fucked her senseless. She was still in her white gown, which had held up amazingly well considering the evening. Her makeup wasn’t too bad either. The copious amount of setting spray Neve had sprayed directly into her face had done its job, and a couple of damp wads of toilet paper were enough to remove the fallout. Mopsy, newly injected with pain medication, was snoozing on the couch nearby. Tabby had almost cried when the aging cocker spaniel had clambered slowly into her arms.
“She seems so much older,” she had told Toby. “She used to be so energetic!”
“Yeah, the years have caught up with her. I’ll just give her meds before we get started?”
She’d watched as Toby fed Mopsy slices of ham before injecting her backside. She’d given a slight whimper but licked her owner’s nose as soon as he was finished.
“Good girl,” Toby crooned, rubbing her ears. “You’re such a brave girl, Mops.”
Tabby had found herself turning away, jealous of a dog and embarrassed to be so, but as Toby settled, shirtless, onto the massage table, she felt oddly gentle toward him. Mopsy had been there in the old days, and one more person knowing they were hanging out, even if that person was a dog, made everything feel different. There was an accountability there, a feeling that it wasn’t just the two of them trapped in a bubble.
But there was also the power shift. She was in control now, her tattoo gun in hand, causing him pain. Toby was at her mercy, semi-naked, his free wrist thrown over his eyes as she drove the needle into his skin over and over. Sadistic as it was, it felt good to have a little leverage—something to compensate for her willing humiliation at Prism and Toby’s wide-open foyer.
She moved the needle into a fresh patch of skin beside his elbow, and Toby winced. “Hurts more this time. It’s manageable, though.”
Tabby smiled at his bravado. “I’d say ‘get a drink,’ but that thins your blood. That’s probably why it’s a bit tougher now. The champagne.”
“Fucking champagne,” Toby groaned. “I can handle it, though. Keep going.”
“I will,” she said, squinting down at the stag. It was coming together nicely. It would be over half finished if she could last another hour or so.
Toby uncovered his eyes, and she felt him study her face and hair. “I can’t believe you went brunette. It looks fucking superb.”
She kept her gaze on the deer, though her face heated. Did he think she’d done it for him? To be more of a conventionally attractive plaything? Was that why she’d done it? “Thanks. Good to keep people guessing, I s’pose.”
“Think Sam and Nix’ll freak?”
Tabby didn’t want to think about her sisters and what they might say about her ‘back to a standard colour’ hair. She shrugged, pausing to wipe a little blood off Toby’s skin. She’d never minded blood. Never minded injuries, even broken bones. In another lifetime, maybe she’d become a surgeon. Fixed up hearts or stomachs. Saved lives.
“Tabitha,” Toby said, with a little of the velvety roughness he’d had back at Prism. “Do you wanna talk about what we did?”
For the first time since Prism, she craved a drink. The feeling made her wonder if that was all the urge ever was—the desire to do something that would make her feel different as quickly as possible. It was a lonely thought, and the accompanying rush of sadness pissed her off. “I don’t know. Do you want to talk about what we did?”
He huffed a little laugh. “Yeah, maybe.”
“So, talk. We’ve got nothing but time.”
He shook his head. “All the shit I said to you before, and now you’re prickly.”
‘Tell you what? Suck, and I’ll think about it.’
Lust bubbled through her, and she scrunched her nose, praying it didn’t show on her face. “That was different.”
“How?”
She shrugged again. Let him walk the tightrope. Take the risk.
“Okay,” Toby said slowly. “Feel free to ignore me if you don’t like the suggestion, but what about a truce?”
“A truce?”
“Yeah, no sniping, no pushing. What about for as long as you’re tattooing me, we talk like we used to?”
A tight black hole opened in her chest. She ignored it. “That would require a time machine, Toby Tennant.”
He watched her for a long moment, his mouth moving wordlessly. Mopsy sighed and turned over on the couch, and the hole opened a little wider. Why was it more straightforward for Toby to push her body to its upper limits and call her a thousand filthy names than it was to let bygones temporarily be bygones?
The answer came in pictures. Jo’s flowers. The back gate where she was supposed to wait for her all those years ago. Her dad’s empty bedroom, his boxes of old maps and sketches meticulously dusted by Nix. Nix crying as she cradled her stomach. Noah smoking silently on the porch. Scott coming in from the office, grey-faced from interviewing Toby’s replacements. Sam slamming the oven door.
It was harder because it was. This was already too cozy with Mopsy and the wind in the trees. It’s harder because things have changed. And so had she, and she had no idea how to make them normal again.
“I’m sorry, Tabs.”
She lifted her needle and looked up, finding Toby’s pale blue eyes burning into hers. “Huh?”
“Sorry for taking off. Sorry I didn’t explain. I thought I was doing the right thing, but I wasn’t. I should have kept in touch, and I’m sorry.”
He didn’t say it like the old Toby would have. There was no blush on his cheeks, and he met her gaze squarely, but she saw her friend waiting for her like he used to on Sundays when they walked the dogs around Brunswick together. The tight black hole in her chest loosened just a little, and she exhaled for the first time in what felt like hours. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”
“Good,” Toby said quietly. “I want you to be honest now. Are you okay with what we did? How I treated you?”
She grinned, returning her needle to her work. “More than okay. It was fucking hot.”
“Cool,” he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. “It was fucking hot. Y’know, I’ve never been to Prism before.”
Tabby gasped. “Seriously? I thought you were a pro!”
“Thought or hoped?”
She laughed. “I still can’t believe we banged in front of people.”
“Behind a curtain.”
“Still counts.” She glanced up, and they smirked at each other. “So, if we get to be honest, can I ask you anything?”
“Fire away.”
“I’ll start easy. What’s the deal with your ass?”
“Sorry?”
“Your ass. Your thighs, too. Not that you weren’t built before, but you’re a fucking brick house now. Are you on steroids?”
Toby snorted. “No. It’s resistance bands. Weight training. I’ve been going at it pretty hard for a while now, and I’m good at building muscle, it turns out.”
Boy fucking howdy. Tabby wished she could have seen his ass flexing as he fucked her in his foyer. Maybe they could do it near a mirror next time. Another flood of lust tingled down her chest and into her still-soaked pussy, and the atmosphere between her and Toby grew heavier.
“How long do you want to keep going?” Toby asked, the smirk evident in his voice.
Fucking mind reader…
“At least another forty-five?” Tabby guessed. “I want to get the stag done.”
“Then I’ll wait to tell you what we’re doing next,” he said in his low, velvety sex voice.
She was growing way too attached to how he sounded when he was being all horny. “You can, uh, try to do it now? I’ve got great concentration.”
“That right, sweetness?”
Tabby ignored him, tattooing determinedly down one of the stag’s legs. He laughed again, stretching his free arm over his head. “Yeah? What if I put you in a spreader bar?”
“Pardon?”
“It’s a bar with two slots for your ankles?—”
“I know what a spreader bar is, Toby. I’ve been to Sexpo. What do you want to do to me once I’m in the spreader bar?”
“I dunno,” he said with deliberate-sounding vagueness. “Could put you on all fours and eat you until you pass out.”
Tabby considered it further credit to her non-existent surgical career that her fingers didn’t tremble. “That… could be good.”
“Yeah, I like the thought of you all locked up. I used to think about putting you in a cage. Sticking my cock through the bars and having you lick it until I came all over you.”
That one almost got her. Using every ounce of her will to keep her hands steady, she forced herself to roll her eyes. “Mate, where would you even get a human-sized cage?”
“They make them online. Custom. Expensive but…”
But what, dickweed? But fucking what? Why am I not in a cage right now?
“… but I didn’t want to be a guy with a human-sized cage in his house. Could freak people out.”
“I can see that. Have you… always been into this stuff? Or is this a new development?”
Toby hesitated. “I…”
“Honesty, remember? Your idea?”
He flashed her a remorseful grin. “Right. Well, I’ve always been into this kind of thing. BDSM stuff, I guess. Used to freak me out, actually.”
“Because of Jesus?”
“Probably. But there was also the feeling I wasn’t quite right.” He hovered a hand over his exquisitely muscled chest, across his heart. “Here. That I wanted stuff that was fucked, and I’d thought about it so much and watched so much hentai that I’d gone wrong. Made myself so weird I wouldn’t work properly anymore.”
“Oh, Tobes!”
He smiled, an easy, summer kind of smile. “Kinda sad, huh? I think that’s another reason why I didn’t want to, you know, hook up with anyone. I was scared about what might come out. But then my luck changed, and a beautiful woman took me under her wing. Showed me how to fuck for the first time. Made me feel like maybe I wasn’t doomed to the priesthood.”
Tabby felt herself flush and re-trained her eyes onto Toby’s bicep, wiping away more blood with a sterile bandage. “Sounds like a nice girl.”
“I don’t know about nice, but she was fucking amazing. Sexy too. Hottest lips in the world. I could spend all day looking at them.”
It felt like her skin was about to melt off. Why had she ever wanted Toby to compliment her? It was excruciating. “And then…?”
“And then I went away,” he said a little uncomfortably. “I, uh, met a few people, got some more experience and realised plenty of girls are willing to go there with me.”
He said it plainly, with no hint of a brag, but Tabby shrivelled in salty jealousy all the same. Who was willing to go there with you? Those bitches from Village Belle? I’ll kill them, I’ll poke their eyes out with my tattoo gun, I’ll?—
“Tabby?”
“Huh?” she said with all the feigned boredom she could muster. “Oh yeah, you’re big with the ladies now. Well, I’m glad you don’t think you have internet dick poisoning any more, but before you go giving sad dudes any advice on your podcast, I’d like to remind you that looking like an underwear model might have something to do with your hit rate.”
He laughed. “Thanks, I guess. But I mean it. It fucked my head, wanting to be as rough as I did with girls. Realising I wasn’t a twisted asshole was good.”
Unsure how to respond, Tabby turned the tattoo gun back on and resumed work.
Other questions jostled inside her head. Were you fantasising about this stuff back when we were friends? Did you pull off imagining me in your cage?
She’d always thought maybe he’d had a crush on her, but she also knew she was that kind of girl. The kind shy, awkward nerds could project stuff onto. It sounded like egotistical bullshit, but it had happened plenty of times and was never, ever fun.
Throughout high school and her early twenties, she’d hung around with dudes she considered friends, only to have them go all mean and possessive and ultimately call her a whore because she wouldn’t be the Harley Quinn to their entirely fictional understanding of themselves as The Joker.
Maybe that was why she’d kept Toby at arm’s length when they were friends. She’d liked him so much, and while there had always been… something, she’d been so fucking terrified that things would get awkward and all the good times would end. Scott would be mad at her for ruining his relationship with his favourite staffer, Sam and Nix would call her a homewrecker and a fuckwit as per usual, and Noah would hear the news and give her his patented ‘Really, Tabs?’ eyebrow lift.
Only in the end, she had fucked everything up. She’d been drunk and needy the day after Sam and Nix’s birthday party, desperate for something to shock her out of the lethargy already licking at her heels. She recalled Toby, beet-red in her bedsheets, confessing he was still a virgin. She’d taken in his pretty face and big, untouched body and felt ten feet tall offering to ‘do him a solid.’ Now, she shuddered at the obnoxiousness of her past self. In hindsight, she’d been so… reckless. Taking it for granted that she had the power to be such a big part of his sexual history. To throw herself at him like it didn’t really matter.
“I’m sorry,” she blurted. “I’m really fucking sorry, too.”
Toby frowned. “For what?”
“When we were friends, maybe I didn’t… maybe I shouldn’t have… fucked you. No, I definitely shouldn’t have fucked you. It was super rude and presumptuous, and we didn’t talk before, and we didn’t try to figure out how it would be after, and I’m just really fucking sorry.”
There was a long, torturous silence. Tabby was so grateful for the work keeping her fingers and brain busy as she waited for Toby to tell her that she sucked. She could be such a moron sometimes. Careless and downright irresponsible. Wasn’t that what her sisters were always saying? What every school report had echoed? What everyone really thought about her?
“Tabby,” Toby said. “It’s fine.”
“Yeah, but it’s not though. We were mates, and I shouldn’t have… you should have done it with someone better.”
“There is no one better.” He said it so fiercely. As though it was the most obvious truth, and Tabby wanted to cry. Instead, she squashed her outsized reaction into that deep black hole inside herself.
“Thanks. I don’t deserve it, but thanks.”
They didn’t talk for a while. She worked until the tell-tale twinges in the backs of her hands told her she needed to stop. She felt shy and stupidly self-conscious as she packed away the tattoo gun and rubbed Toby’s arm with healing balm, securing it with fresh Second Skin.
“So, I might leave after this,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “Big night, and what have you…?”
“And if I don’t want you to go?”
She almost dropped the roll of Second Skin, so relieved it was shocking. “Then, I guess… do your thing?”
“What about the plastic stuff?
“Oh yeah.”
He towered over her, a wall of anger and beauty, one hand rising to cup her chin. “You drive me fuckin’ batshit, Tabitha.”
“Good.” Tabby tossed the roll of Second Skin onto her duffle. “What’re you gonna do about it?”
In her heels, she was tall enough to rub against him, her satin-covered tits pressed to his chest, her mouth tipped to his. Toby kissed her roughly, shifted his weight forward and gripped her hair. He drove her against his living room wall, his hard cock grinding into her stomach. “What do you want?”
“Whatever you have to give.”
He laughed, grabbing her hand and dragging her toward the room where he’d first checked out her stencil.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Bedroom.”
She’d barely stepped inside the clean, boy-smelling space before Toby pushed her onto his mattress and shoved his cock between her legs. He fucked her fast, one hand clamped around her throat, calling her names.
“I can go all night, bitch,” he snarled. “You can tell your boyfriend that. I’m gonna keep you here until he comes knocking. Make him watch while you gush all over me again.”
Tabby lost track of how many orgasms she had. By the time he was done with her, she was sobbing and drooling all over his sheets.
Toby gave a low laugh, smacking her hard on her ass. “Same time tomorrow?”
“Yes,” she gasped. “One hundred percent.”
He fell asleep as she gathered her things and booked an Uber, and she told herself she was glad not to have to do the ‘Am I sleeping over?’ dance. But as she crept out of his three-story monstrosity of a house, she realised she wished he’d walked her to the front door. That worried her almost as much as the knowledge that part of her had wanted to sleep over. But there was no need to overthink things. After all, she’d be back tomorrow.