Page 55 of If Not for My Baby
And this kiss—
This kiss is nothing like our first.
This is a slow descent into euphoria. This is his tongue sliding mercilessly against mine until I groan into his mouth. This is his hands spanning my middle, wrapped around my rib cage until his thumbs nearly meet above my navel. This is my fingers tangling in his hair and caressing his savagely sharp jaw and memorizing every inch of his face and lips and body for the day I miss him so much it hurts to breathe.
It’s more than I can bear. I move to push myself off him—to regroup and wind down—and he catches my hand in his grasp, sliding his thumb hungrily across my palm and through my spread fingers until my exhale is a pleading hum.
He’s coaxing my mouth open with his hand around my jaw, sweeping his tongue over my lower lip and then down my chin and my neck. And beneath my flimsy little borrowed boxers, Tom is painfully hard. I can feel his brutal length flexing and thickening against his zipper. I wonder, as he captures my lips again, if he realizes he’s dragging me back and forth across his erection. It feels almost unconscious, the way he’s pulling me over him by my hips. But each hard brush while my knees are splayed on either side of his lap sends a pulse of indescribable pleasure through me. I’mwet. I’mpanting.
This old car is already too small for him, and with me ontop we’re practically contortionists. He can hardly bring his hands to my throat without ramming his elbow through the window. And it’s only a minute later when I press myself closer thatmybruised elbow hits the seat behind him and I yelp in pain.
“Did I hurt you?” He’s breathless, his mouth swollen from how thoroughly I’ve devoured him.
I shake my head before pressing my lips to his again. I’m going to kiss Tom Halloran until we are dehydrated. Until we need IVs for loss of fluids. He runs his hands up the outside of my thighs as we kiss, until they slide under the too-big boxers and find my panties. When his fingertips touch the bows on either side of my thong I melt into a puddle in his hands. But he roams nowhere beyond the skin of my hips.
My nipples are so tight, so pointed, I’m sure he can feel them through not only my T-shirt but his own. I bring my mouth down to his neck and suck the sea salt and clean aftershave of his skin. He smells phenomenal—more male than all other men combined. I huff him like an addict and run my hands down his biceps and up his neck, licking my way up to his jaw…
“Clementine.” He shudders. “Slow down.”
When I pull away he looks as though he might pass out. He shifts underneath me, maybe in an attempt to hide his throbbing erection, but it only serves to push that length right into the heat between my legs. I whimper while we are making full eye contact.
His nails dig into my hips and thighs. “Jesusfuck.”
I nod in breathless agreement, teeth sinking into my lower lip.
“What happened to patience?” he nearly growls. I’ve heard that sound before, when he sings. It makes me helplessly feral then, too.
“Screw patience,” I plead. “Kiss me again.”
He does so, but he’s holding back. Just a gentle press of his lips to mine.
“In New York,” he says against my mouth. “On our night off, let me take you out.”
I don’t know what broken thing inside of me recoils at those words. Why I want nothing else but to kiss Tom for days on end and to pick his remarkable brain and to listen to him sing like a lark and strum like a god with a lyre and to laugh together and to inhale his after-rain scent but cannot fathom going on adate.
I go on dates often back in Cherry Grove. I let my mom and Everly set me up with almost anyone. But something about those words from his lips makes my mouth dry and my chest tight. It’s too much and too serious and too soon. It’s a one-way ticket to grief, I just know it.
Tom looks disturbed by whatever he’s seen flash across my face. He sweeps my surely catastrophic hair from my face and tucks it behind my ear. “Easy, girl,” he coos, as if I’m a horse rearing up on hind legs. “Forget I asked.”
But I can’t forget any part of him. He’s already indelible ink scribbled across the fabric of me. “Yes,” I manage. “I’d love that.”
Nineteen
Though I could feel ascarletAghosting across my bruised lips and mussed hair, nobody in the band batted much of an eye as Tom and I sprinted into the greenroom minutes before the show. Tom offered a quick apology to the group—no fanfare, no ego—and was met with a mellow chorus ofit happensbefore we went onstage and delivered for Portland as we have everywhere else. Only Grayson made a nasty comment while we mic’d up about the bruise on my elbow and if Tom’s a violent drunk. I could have slapped him.
As expected, Jen is another story. After the show she has us clear the room so she and Tom can have a “private conversation.” I can just tell from the creases in her usually smooth forehead he’s in for it. Taking a verbal lashing from Jen Gabler to save my self-destructive, inebriated ass. Now, that’s courtship.
“I am so, so,sosorry, Clementine,” Indy laments as we trudge through tall grass outside the venue. Before I can take another step she pulls me into a long, swaying hug. “I wasgetting screamed at by Jen over some Instagram nightmare and I had to run back to the other bus to get my hard drive and then when we started to leave the driver said everyone was accounted for and Molly was on your bus so I didn’t know you weren’t with her, and—”
“Indy—” I detangle myself from the embrace. “It’s totally fine. I don’t blame you guys at all.”
“Thank God.” She narrows her eyes at me. “But if you did, I would deserve it.”
A smirk tugs at my cheeks. “But I don’t.”
The air is heavy with the salt of the seaside and lit by a generous harvest moon. Molly doesn’t say anything beside us, but I can tell from the unfamiliar way she chews her lip that something is eating at her. We’re a few feet from the bus, the dregs of concertgoers still screaming for Halloran outside the security barricades, when she stops short.
“I’m sorry, too.”
