“Jesus, Tom, you’re going to need to hold me up or lay me down. You made my legs into noodles.”
He could feel her trembling. He backed off, nodded at the scar on her thigh. “What happened?”
“It’s a burn. Edge of a hot saucepan when I was ten.”
“And the tat?”
“Fifteen. You don’t like it? I don’t care.”
“It’s perfect.” He tucked his thumb into her panties and pulled them down, put his face against her again. This time she jerked, already sensitive. Once she was out of them, he stood, kissed her forehead, cheek, chin, lips, keeping his hands away. Hers went to his ass, slipping inside his sweats and briefs.
She pulled her body into his. “You’re hard all over, Tom.”
And she was smaller and softer and pliant, strong but unbreakable all the same. He braced his hands on the wall behind her head when she pushed his pants down, when she wrapped her hand around the length of him, watching her, getting off on the excitement radiating out of her.
“Dear Lord, that is gonna feel so fine in me.”
“Too much attention and I’m not gonna make it inside you. Feels like I’ve been this hard since last night.”
“You want my mouth on you?”
He was already leaking and she used the fluid to lubricate her strokes. “I want to be inside you more.”
“We should do that then.” She added a twist to the motion of her hand and his knees buckled.
“Get on the bed, Flick, before this is the most disappointing sexual encounter of your life.”
She ducked under his arms and went to the bed. He got rid of his pants and got a condom.
She sat in the middle, with the covers pulled back and her leg outstretched. “Your bed smells like wood chips.”
“It’s the soap.”
“I want it to smell of sex.”
“I think we can do it.”
“That won’t be too messy for you?”
He reached over the bed and took her by the ankles and dragged her to the end, bringing the covers with her. She fell back, laughing. He’d give her messy. Wet, dripping, sheet-tearing, throat-straining messy. He’d make her sweat and squirm and chase her high like she had last night, only this time he’d be ready to follow her, ready to repeat it, till neither of them could take it anymore.
None of that was messy to him. It was good and pure and right, and with a person you cared about it was powerful, grounding, uplifting. With a person who thrilled you, like Flick thrilled him, it was an unknown quantity, an adventure on a trail he’d not yet walked and wasn’t familiar with. There could be fallen trees ahead, crumbling sides, danger, but hell, that was half the fun.
Flick jerked her leg and he let go of her ankles. She came up on her elbows, her body was laid out for him to play with. “What are you looking at, Tom O’Connell?”
“My evening’s entertainment.”
“You sure know how to flatter a girl.”
He went to his knees. “If I thought you were after flattery, I’d bake you a cake.”
“You can do that after we call for a pizza.”
“Spread your legs.”
She groaned, bent her knees and opened them out. Her hair was trimmed neat and close; she glistened inside.
“All that pretty pink is for me.” He stroked a finger through her and her hips tilted. He did it again—slower, with more pressure—and she dropped her shoulders back to the bed, reaching for a pillow to prop herself up. She wanted to watch. He wouldn’t be satisfied until she couldn’t.
That first taste was all about watching her face, her mouth opening, her eyes pinned wide, listening to her breath catch. He slipped his hands under her ass and lifted her so his access was unrestricted. A few strong licks in, she’d reached for his hair, then came the gasps and murmurs, the involuntary twitch of her hips and her thighs clamping around him.
He pushed her knees back and stopped teasing, moved to sucking, the occasional graze of his teeth. He didn’t know if it was enough—he wanted her trembling, moaning. He got that when he added a finger, a firm upward nudge and release of her clit. Her sigh bottomed out into a gasp, and she yanked on his hair and her eyes slammed shut. Now he had her. He kept the rhythm up while she got breathless and desperate, and when she came, she thrashed, bucked and stiffened. He licked and stroked her through it, and while she was drifting, sat back and wiped his mouth.
“You’re a trip, Flick Dalgetty.”
She opened her arms. “Come fly with me.”
He crawled over her, knelt across her legs. “First class.”
“Mile high.” She watched him suit up, her hands gripping his thighs. “I want to ride you. Do you like a woman on top?”
He lowered over her, the shock of their skin meeting making him lose the conversation. He tucked his face into her neck, skimmed his hands up her body. Heat came off her in waves, and she smelled of the soft leather jacket she’d worn. God, he was so ready, ground against her pelvis, and with one hand under her knee, lowered himself into position.
“Roll.” She bit his ear and he rolled them.
From above she used her hand to take him inside, rocking up and down on her knees, a hand flattened on his chest for balance. He held her waist and let her run the show, but he couldn’t stop his hips bouncing. It became a pattern, bucking into her smooth, wet slickness, dissolving into her tight softness. The plan to watch her face got lost as soon as he felt her contract around him and shake through her peak. He sank inside his own head, focused on the buildup, the need, the quick hot spark up his spine and the flash of light across his closed eyes.
At some point in all that he eased her forward, tucked her head under his chin. Their breathing was chopped up and he wrapped her more firmly, wanting to contain the heavy peace of the moment before he questioned it.
When he cleared his throat to speak she stopped him with a kiss, another, another, until he quit worrying she wouldn’t like the taste of them. Rolling her to the side let him withdraw. He didn’t want to leave the bed and she didn’t want him to, clinging with a leg thrown over his hip and a hand to the back of his head.
“If I let you go, will you promise to come back to bed?”
“Cross my heart, hope to die.”
She let go. “Now your bed smells of sex.”
They both took a bathroom break, but Flick beat him back to the bed. She put her hand to his face when he climbed in.
“You washed.”
He’d considered shaving. If he was going to keep kissing her, he didn’t want to taste bad or score her skin.
“Considerate. But you didn’t have to. I like all the funk of sex, the smells, the tastes, the bruises.” She pushed him to his back and draped over him. “That was fun.”
“It was.” He was mellowed out from it.
“I could hear you thinking.”
“Ah.” He gave her hair a tug. “I wanted to be enough for you.”
She sat up. “Why would you think you wouldn’t be?”
“You like everything. I’m not built that way.”
A blunt fingernail circled his nipple. “You’re built to please, Tom. This body, what you did to me. It was enough.”
Enough. Solid score. Keep the job, but lose out on the promotion.
Again that nail, circling. “We can do better.”
She meant he’d need to. Shit. This was make-up sex anyway. Better that it was good, not great. Easier for them to continue living together if they weren’t craving each other. Easy for her to leave.
She flicked his nipple. “Whatever you’re thinking, stop.”
“You’re hungry. We should order in.”
“I’m not finished with you.”
He held her shoulders to sit. “I’m starving too.” And all the soreness from his nature wrestling was visiting, the
muscle-ache heavy.
“You’re not listening to me.”
“I heard you. It was fun, good enough. You like my body.” He shot his legs over the side of the bed.
“How did I not figure you’d have performance anxiety?”
“What the fuck, we both came.” He rocked forward to stand and she grabbed him with her arms and legs and held him down.
“You were thinking the whole time, right until your own orgasm hit.” As soon as he peeled an arm away, she snapped it back around him. “You wanted everything for me and took almost nothing for yourself.”
And yet she complained.
“Take everything you want from me, Tom.”
“Let me up, Flick.” A beat, two. He’d have to hurt her to get free. Enough tussling for one day.
“You can’t leave your own bed angry.”
Flick’s palm sat against his heart. “I’m not angry.” She might feel it. The disappointment, the unexpected bitterness.
She kissed the back of his neck. Stayed wrapped around him. “You made me forget and I needed that. I needed you.”
Proximity. Obligation after abandoning her last night. He’d certainly had worse sex. Left a bed quicker. Wanted to shower it all off.
“What happened to you today?” he said.
“Let me kiss you and I’ll tell you.”
He was a sucker. There were worse ways to end with her. He hauled her around his body into his lap and let her kiss him.
Chapter Eight
Flick had never had a lover as considerate as Tom. It was unnerving.
It wasn’t that he was bad at sex. He wasn’t hesitant. He didn’t have lousy technique or poor rhythm and shit timing. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy himself. He gave. He’d done for her beautifully, he watched, he listened, he followed, but he didn’t know how to take. He stayed in control, on track, kept to the plan. Not robotic, but not spontaneous, not free.
He didn’t let go so much as endure.
It might’ve hurt her heart to see he was that way. Constrained, even in how he took his pleasure.
A hundred other women wouldn’t complain. A hundred other women would make Tom happy by letting him be the giver.
Flick wanted him to understand it could be different. She wanted him to know what chasing pleasure for its own sake felt like. Not out of guilt, not for opportunity or expectation, or habit. She wanted Tom to know how to reset his life because he’d kissed someone, fucked someone till he was blind on the experience of it, scoured clean and reborn and ready to deal with whatever the world could throw at him with his massive shoulders squared and his chin up.
He deserved that. And then he could choose how to be. Free or constrained by those rigid self-made rules he was hemmed in by.
It all went some way to explaining how he walked away from their session in the living room. It’s why he wanted to leave the bed now. He resented her even as he let her kiss him, make him hard again. And it was impossible to imagine he wouldn’t hate her for pushing him.
To do that she needed a plan. Tumbling him into bed again wasn’t it. She couldn’t let him leave the room angry and she’d made him feel uncertain. He would set her aside again. He’d withdraw as soon as he had the chance and she didn’t know if she had what it would take to show Tom O’Connell how to fuck the limits he imposed on himself.
He made her come again and she was loud, came shouting his name. He came too, almost silently, jaw tight against his feelings.
Someone had made Tom think discipline only had one face and that face was hard work, regularity, sacrifice, adherence to standards, no surprises.
Flick knew discipline was a multi-faced goddess on her period. A cranky whip cracker, a procrastinator, a shirker, a boring plodder, a superstar. Not one flavor, all of them. The lows to create the highs. The highs to shatter the ceiling.
Tom didn’t try to stay out of the bed this time. Came back immediately after he got rid of the condom and crashed down beside her to sleep. She dozed too, head full of disjointed, nonsensical scenes. Burning her hand in a microwave. Tom pushing a Walmart cart. Feeling panicked on Constitution Avenue with no place to live.
“Flick.” She opened her eyes to Tom’s smile, his hand on her forehead. “You were dreaming.”
He smoothed her hair and she pulled on his neck so she could have his lips. Walmart, Tom noticing her burn scar, and the perennial bad dream of being homeless. That one would make more sense if she’d ever been without a safe bed to sleep in, but still it arrived whenever she faced a change as if to remind her how far she could fall.
“Did I say anything to make you doubt my sanity?” she asked.
“Nothing I could make sense of. What was the dream?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Something that happened on your visit home?”
He wanted to help. She nibbled on his upper lip, but he didn’t engage. “Nothing happened. Nothing out of the usual. It’s always awful. But it preys on me. I support my older sister and her two kids because she’s a single mom, sometimes, and sometimes she’s married to an unstable, unreliable douchebag. I send Mom money because Dad drinks his pay away. I’ve been doing that since I got a good job. When I got better jobs, I paid off my student loans and kept sending money home. I don’t know how to stop sending money home.”
“What would happen if you stopped?”
“No one would be homeless or without food or clothing.” Not immediately, anyway. She’d have a chance to save, to build her own future, buy a condo like Tom’s so she never needed to have the homeless dream again.
He hooked his arm behind her head and they lay facing each other. “You could stop, but you don’t. Why?”
It was difficult to shrug, lying down, but she gave it a try. He palmed her breast, kissed her forehead. He liked her body. Tuck that fact away for use later. “It feels wrong.”
“Because you have more money than they do?”
“Because I have prospects, choices, and they don’t.”
“Your siblings had the same choices you had.”
“No, I was different.” Never satisfied, a pain in the ass, so everyone said. “They did the best they could.”
“You believe that?”
It was either that or hate them. “On good days.”
“No one starves if you stop. No one goes without a bed, or warmth, or shoes.”
She ruffled his hair. The bruise on his cheekbone was darker now, and his eye socket was shadowed in an ashy smudge. “But everyone deserves more than that.”
“There are people with less. Much less. You could spend your money a different way.”
“Ignore my own family to buy a condo like you.”
She blinked when he bopped her nose. “Don’t put words in my mouth. Secure your own future before you look to other people’s. Prioritize.”
This wasn’t like on an airline, the drill about fixing your own oxygen mask before you helped others. It couldn’t be. “Or drag them up with me.”
“Do they want to change?”
That was the problem. There was nothing she could do for Dad or the boys. Mom could leave. Elsie could make better decisions and have help to do that.
“I have this recurring dream about being homeless. I’ve never been homeless. It’s like the ultimate fall, the supreme failing. In the dream, I’ve made terrible mistakes and I’ve ended up with nothing. I’m in a strange place and I have a suitcase and that’s everything I own and I’m panicked.”
“That’s the dream you had just now.” She nodded. “Is that why you pushed me about moving in?”
“No.” Maybe. She laughed. “Dammit. Why did you let me move in? You didn’t want me. I figured I pushed you into agreeing in front of Jack because you wanted something from him.”
“Hmmm.”
“Is that true?�
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“On a good day.”
She tapped a finger on his closed lips. “Tom, tell me why you agreed to me moving in.”
“You were persistent and yeah, in front of Jack, and I did need him to agree to write a story, and you know how he hates taking tips from flacks.”
“I’m buying half that answer.” Her stomach made a rude whining sound.
“I’m buying pizza.”
They didn’t eat it in bed, but they did sleep together, big and little spoon. Tom at her back banished the dream this time. She woke refreshed but alone. He’d left a note. He’d gone to the office. It was the practical start of his withdrawal.
He avoided her, but not like before. They talked. They ate breakfast together, crossed over in the kitchen at night. She caught him watching her when he thought he was safe to without being seen, a look of longing on his face, part lust, part regret. There were no kisses, no touching, no invitations to his bed.
He was busy. He had a meeting coming with Rendel’s MD to talk about his promotion to office leader. It was a big deal. He had a hundred-day plan to write up. He told her all that so she wouldn’t have any expectations of him.
She had them anyway.
He focused on the top of her head or her hands when they were together and he was excessively cheerful. A distraction technique. It was such a wrong note from him. He wasn’t cheerful. He was pissed off his big meeting kept getting canceled.
She offered to check his injuries and he brushed her off. He was fine. Didn’t want to bother her. She left her satchel on the counter and a jacket over a stool and he didn’t comment. If she wanted a reaction she’d have to push him harder.
And she wanted the reaction.
She wanted Tom. She couldn’t look at him now without imagining him naked, that strength and hardness he downplayed. The gentleness he thought was the only thing he was allowed to give. Her vibrator got a workout and she hoped he heard it buzzing on the rock-my-world setting at night.
On Wednesday, he announced he was going to Des Moines Friday for a conference.
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