by Hazel Jacobs
Tommy responds to the shiver that curls through her body by pulling her flush against him, chest to chest, hip to hip, his lips never leaving hers, pressing so close that she feels his cheek bones against her. She tries to wrap her hands around his neck, but the angle is awkward so one hand goes to chest while the other caresses his cheek. Tommy kisses like he flirts—without mercy, without guilt. There’s a little growl in the back of his throat as he curls his tongue around hers and grabs at her hips. Sersha’s hips jerk on instinct and the two of them moan together at the feeling of him, already half-hard, pressing against her hip. Tommy thrusts again. Sersha feels herself pinned against the back of the couch.
He thrusts again. She thrusts back. It takes three good hits before she remembers who he is and where they are.
“Stop,” she mutters, pulling away. “Stop.”
He stops. She probably didn’t need to say it the second time, but it had been more a message for herself than it had been a message for him. She pushes against his chest and he goes willingly, moving away and standing up so that she has space to move.
Her arms are trembling. Sersha can feel her blood as it pumps through her veins. Tommy’s hungry, aggressive kisses have made her hyper-aware of her body, and all of the heat that has settled between her legs in such a short time that she’s dizzy with it. She looks up to see Tommy’s pupils blown out with lust, his cheeks flushed and his lips kiss-bruised. His chest heaves and when she looks lower, she sees the clear bulge in his sweatpants. It’s just about eye level and she has to look away, standing up and taking several steps away from the couch so that she doesn’t have to see it; so that she doesn’t have to be tempted by it.
“I’m sorry,” Tommy says quickly. He reaches toward her in an imploring gesture before his hands fall limply to his sides. “I’m… you’re not okay with this?” he asks.
“No,” says Sersha, shaking her hair out of her eyes and trying to force her body to forget what it felt like to have him thrusting against her, to have her pinned down, to have him assault her lips in a way that she’d never thought someone so sweet and kind could be capable of. “Not two minutes ago, you were comparing me to other women who want to climb into your bed, and now you’re kissing me? Not okay.”
“That’s not…” He runs his hands through his hair, his shoulders slumping. “You’re right. I did that, didn’t I? I’m—”
“Don’t say you’re sorry, for fuck’s sake.”
Because if there’s one thing she absolutely cannot handle right now, it’s a Tommy who recognizes that he makes mistakes and apologizes for them. That’s too big a turn on. She might as well just drop her pants now and climb him like a tree.
“I didn’t… Shit!” He sighs. He looks down at his feet. “This isn’t how I wanted this to go.”
“I’m not a replacement,” Sersha tells him.
His eyes jerk back to her face, clouded with confusion. “I would never… No, Sersha, that’s not—”
“You want her not me.”
“That’s not true,” Tommy says.
He takes a step forward.
Sersha takes a step back.
Tommy doesn’t try to close the distance again, but he does hold both of his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I swear, Sersha, this isn’t about Danielle.”
“You want her back.”
“I want closure,” he replies. “But I don’t… I’d be happy if I never saw her again. I don’t want her, Sersha, I swear. I want you.”
“You kissed her.”
Tommy looks confused. Whatever he was expecting, he wasn’t expecting that. But he doesn’t ask how she knew about it. He just looks at her imploringly.
“She kissed me,” he says.
Sersha can hear the sincerity in his voice, but she’d also heard the pain right before he’d let Danielle kiss him.
But then he pushed her away, some treacherous part of her mind offered. In a voice which sounds a lot like her mam. And also a lot like Mikayla. Tommy had pushed Danielle away and allowed Sersha to take him back to the tent. Ever since Danielle had come back, he’d seemed reluctant to even be in the same room as her.
“Then—” Sersha has to stop herself, to collect herself, to try and figure out what’s happening inside of her head. Tommy gives her a hangdog look, but he doesn’t say anything. He just waits while she starts to pace, trying to push aside the heat still pooling in her groin so that she can think straight.
He’s not over her, her brain tells her as she paces. He’s not over her, and he’s kissing you so what does that mean?
Sersha hears Tommy sigh.
“Look, Sersha, I’ll sleep on the bed if that’s what you want. I just… don’t hate me, okay? I’m—”
Fuck it, Sersha thinks.
She takes two long steps and crosses the distance between them, grabbing him around the neck and turning his head. His surprised, wide eyes are the last things she sees before she’s kissing him, hard, giving as good as she got a few moments ago.
Tommy doesn’t hesitate. He grabs her by the hips and pulls her flush against him. She’s intimately pressed against the bulge in his pants.
Whatever this means, whatever she is to him, whatever Danielle still is to him, Sersha isn’t about to let this moment pass her. There’ll be time to sort out what their relationship is when Tommy isn’t looking at her like she’s the only dry land in a sea of water. When his lips aren’t red and sweet and begging to be kissed.
Tommy pulls away and rests his forehead against hers, breathing hard.
“You’re sure?” he asks. “Tell me you’re sure, Sersha. This is an all or nothing situation.”
All or nothing.
She can feel the bulge in his pants, and she desperately wants to get her hands on it. She can’t imagine turning away now. Sersha wraps her arms around his neck, pressing their chests together.
“All or nothing,” she replies, before pulling him into another kiss.
Tommy’s hands reach down to Sersha’s ass within milliseconds, gripping her by the thighs and pulling upward, and once Sersha gets the message in between grappling with his tongue and enjoying the feeling of his hair in her fingers, she lifts up a foot to caress his calf. Tommy growls and pulls harder on her thighs until Sersha jumps up and wraps her legs around his hips. He purrs into her mouth and grinds against her. Sersha feels his hands dip under her ass to hold her up.
“Sweet Jesus,” she whispers against his lips.
His fingers dig into her through the sweatpants she’d borrowed from him. He holds her up. It’s unbelievably hot, that he seems to hold her so easily against his torso like she’s his bass and he’s planning to play her all night. He carries her over to the bed and Sersha yelps as she feels the bottom drop from her stomach when he drops her onto the mattress.
Sersha’s head falls back onto the blankets and she takes a moment to catch her breath. Her body is singing. Her words have left her, she’s nothing more than pure feeling right now. Her nerves are on high alert and she can feel hot blood pooling in her breasts and groin, anticipating where she’s hoping the night will go.
Tommy stands over her, his pupils dilated and his arms at his sides. He stares down at her like he’s trying to decide where to start.
Sersha suddenly remembers sitting in a booth squeezed between Tommy and Slate.
When he gets his hands on a girl, he goes from zero to sixty like a rocket.
It seems that Sersha’s about to see Tommy go into beast mode.
He licks his lips and she groans, watching his eyes run over her body and imagining his hands doing the same thing. Sersha wants to leap up and grapple with him but something about his expression keeps her pinned down. She lays on his bed and lets his eyes trace her skin.
“Stay right where you are,” he says.
She does.
Tommy shrugs out of his T-shirt. Sersha has to swallow hard, her throat suddenly dry, when she sees the long, lean torso, unblemished and pale. She’d known that he w
ould be gorgeous, but she’s delighted with what she sees now. The bloom of dark hair on his chest which curls down past his navel, disappearing into the edge of his sweatpants and the hard bulge hidden there.
Tommy’s fingers dip into the top of his pants.
“Take off your clothes,” he says. “I wanna see you.”
Sersha goes to stand, but he pushes her back down by the shoulder.
“Stay right where you are,” he says again, sternly. His smile warm and promising all sorts of wonderful things if she does as she’s told. That and the tone of his voice sends hot promise straight through her spine and down to her center.
Sersha rushes to obey, laying back on the bed and displaying herself to him, pulling her borrowed shirt over her chest and head. This aggressive, domineering Tommy is unexpected, but certainly not unwanted. Quite the opposite, in fact. Sersha feels like all her birthdays have come at once.
She undoes her own bra. She wishes that Tommy would undo it for her, but he’s waiting at the edge of the bed, his eyes never leaving Sersha’s, his breath quickening when her breasts are freed. Sersha watches his bare chest rise and fall, she watches his fingers twitch like he wants to reach out and touch.
She pulls her pants and underwear off, baring herself entirely. Tommy stares at her like she’s a meal. A shot of daring runs through her and she leans back to spread her legs so that he can see it all. The tension is thick in the air. Tommy reaches over to the stereo she hadn’t even noticed, sitting idly on the bedside table.
He switches it on. Electric guitar pours smoothly out of the speakers, followed by a slow roll of drums. The music isn’t loud, there’s just enough noise to drown out any of the more personal sounds which could make their way upstairs. Even if she weren’t Irish, she would recognize the tune.
“They’re used to the noise,” Tommy says, jerking his head toward the ceiling where his mother, brother and baby niece are sleeping. The sounds of The Cranberry’s Zombie fills the room and drowns out the sound of Sersha’s harsh breathing, but she’s keenly aware of Tommy’s voice. She thinks that she could hear him speaking in a hurricane. “You’ll have to avoid screaming, though. Don’t want to wake the baby.”
“You think you’re going to make me scream?” Sersha asks, smirking at the man and hoping against hope that he says ‘yes.’
“I’m not going to make you scream…” Tommy says, leaning over on the bed, landing on the mattress and crawling over on all fours until he’s looking down at her face, “…you are. Touch yourself.”
Sweet holy hell, Sersha thinks.
Her fingers dip down, following his instructions, her eyes never leaving his. His own eyes scrape her skin. She brings a hand up to cup her breast and casually toys with the nipple. His eyes zero in on her hand. Her other hand dips down to between her legs, she circles herself, enjoying the shot of pleasure as Tommy studies her, watching, evaluating, learning. That’s what he’s doing, she thinks dimly as she slowly builds herself up. He’s learning. He’s watching her touch herself so that he’ll know how to do it later. That thought makes her groan and press harder at the very edge of her clitoris.
Tommy watches as Sersha slips in a finger. She lets out a sigh.
“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are like this?” Tommy asks her.
Sersha tries to respond, but she’s too breathless to do anything other than gasp and nod.
“You’re fucking gorgeous.”
“You’re not too bad yourself,” Sersha says, wanting to one-up him, not willing to be as passive and submissive as her body is telling her to be. “I can get off on your face alone.” She pinches her nipple hard and moans at the feeling.
“Mmm, good,” Tommy says. He sounds breathless, but his eyes are dark, almost all pupil, and incredibly focused on what she’s doing. “Add another finger.”
She does. He palms himself through his sweat pants and she wants to reach over and grab him, but she’s enjoying herself too much. She wants to bring herself to climax like this, and then roll over and take him inside of her, to feel him buck and lose control the way he’s making her want to. She’s hot and wet and close.
“This is torture. The best kind,” Tommy says. He palms himself again and rolls down so that he’s speaking into her ear. “Keep going. Firmer. Don’t forget your clit, Sersha.”
Sersha’s never done anything like this. But now that she is, she’s wondering how she lived her whole life without it. The feeling of unbelievable power that she wouldn’t have expected from following orders. Of bringing herself to the brink and knowing that Tommy is so focused on her pleasure that he’s barely even acknowledged himself. She moves her fingers harder, enjoying the wave of blood and heat that’s building into a crescendo as the music and lyrics build up as well.
“I want to be inside you,” Tommy whispers in her ear. Sersha moves faster. “I want you all around me. I want to be smelling you on my skin for days.”
Sersha’s back arches off of the mattress. His name falls from her lips in a long, drawn-out groan. Her eyes flutter closed, and she feels his hand dip into her hair, pulling enough that she gasps and opens her eyes.
“Don’t forget about me,” he says. His sweet face is pulled into a smirk.
“That will never happen,” she replies.
“Keep your eyes on me,” he tells her. “I want my face to be what you see when you’re coming.”
She gasps as she hits her peak, too blissed out to care that her vocal chords are working, that she’s moaning loud, maybe even shouting. Yes, she’s definitely shouting, because Tommy’s smiling down on her and his hand is over her mouth, muffling the sound. Everything goes white for a moment, everything but the blue of his eyes and his floppy brown hair falling into his forehead.
And then she’s coming down. Her hand is still moving between her legs, pressing and pulling and pumping, because he hasn’t told her to stop. He keeps his hand over her mouth as he drinks in the sight of her.
“Perfect,” he says. He releases her mouth and reaches down to pull her hand away, licking her fingers one by one and sending another jolt of pleasure through her at the feeling of his lips and tongue on her skin. “So perfect.” Then he dips down and licks at the space between her thighs and she shouts again, opening her legs wider, slowly rolling her hips to try and get his tongue to press against her clit.
He moves out of the way every time, getting close but not touching it.
“You little shit,” she mutters.
He nips her thigh and she moans. He looks up at her from between her legs and she thinks it’s the best he’s ever looked.
“I’m sorry, is this not satisfactory?” he asks with a grin.
“Either give me head properly or climb up here and get to the real business,” she snaps.
Tommy cocks his head. “If you insist,” he says, climbing up her body and pulling her into a kiss.
She can taste herself on his tongue. She can feel his hard cock pressing into her belly, still trapped in the sweatpants. When she pulls away and looks down, she can see a damp patch on them—either from her or from him, it’s difficult to tell. They’re both filling the room with the sound of breaths and gasps, warring with the noise from the stereo. ‘Zombie’ is long over, and now some other song is playing but Sersha can barely even remember her name much less put a name of whatever is playing now.
Then he pulls away. She wants to scream.
“Fucking hell, Tommy—”
“Condom,” he says. His voice is wrecked, and Sersha feels it burning through her blood as he leans back to reach toward the bedside table.
She grabs his wrist. “I’m on the pill,” she says. “Are you clean?”
“Yes,” he says. He’s looking extremely pleased with where this seems to be going.
“You’re sure?”
“I always use a condom,” he says.
She shakes her head. “Not tonight.”
Sersha could never explain it to someone who asked, but she wants t
o feel him. All of him. With nothing between them. Perhaps it’s the fact of his last relationship still lingering between them, or the knowledge that this first time may be the last time or the press of his chest against hers before which makes her crave more skin-to-skin contact. Whatever it is, it’s driving her to pull at his neck, to bring him back to where he was, and lean up to kiss him again.
They are a mess after that. Limbs and touches. Gasps and moans. Tommy holds her against him, pulling her back up and leaning on his knees so that she’s lifted off the bed, relying on him to hold her up, his tongue plundering her mouth. She feels his hand run up and down her back. Then he lays her back down and plays with her breast, just the way she likes it, and Sersha screeches into his mouth.
“Shh,” he says, drawing away to lick up the shell of her ear. “Keep it down, Sersha, don’t make me gag you.”
“Say my name again.”
“Sersha.”
She tangles her fingers in his hair. She wraps her legs around his hips and tries to angle her groin against his, groaning when she realizes that he’s still in sweatpants. Tommy chuckles into her neck and leans back to pull them down.
Sersha’s hands go to his chest, trailing down, and his eyes flicker down to watch their progress. His cock is thick and heavy-looking. Beautiful.
All or nothing.
She doesn’t try to caress him, or do any of the usual half-hearted nonsense that she often feels compelled to do when a man is leaning over her. She just widens her legs even more, needy and wanting, desperate for him to fill her up. Tommy is gentle and direct as he presses her into the mattress, locks eyes with her, and pushes himself inside of her in one fluid motion.
Sersha lets her head fall back on the bed. It occurs to her—in a distant, surreal way—that they’re laying across it. The pillow and headboard is somewhere to her left. They hadn’t even had time to get on the bed properly.