Page 62 of If Not for My Baby
“What changed?”
“All the pressure, I think. Expectation’s sucked a lot of joy out of performing.”
The other leather chair feels too far from him to sit in, and I don’t want to hover over him any longer, so I sink down to my knees before his jitterbug legs. “How can I help?”
I’m wearing a black tank top tonight and my lucky jeans with the rip under the butt cheek. They’re black, too, and I think back to how much he liked the color on me that morning on Joe’s show.
Tom’s anxious eyes anchor on my face. Though I had zero intention of anything suggestive, the position compromises me. Tom isn’t immune to it, either, as I watch a muscle in his jaw jump. “You’ve already helped plenty,” he says, voice deepening.
I want to be closer to him. Scooting forward on my knees, I press myself between his spread legs. I’ve never thought myself exceptionally small, but from the floor, sandwiched between his humongous knees, I am a Tiny Girl™.
My hand rubs his calf soothingly. “Really?”
He blinks. “Give yourself some credit. I mean—just look at you.”
My sides grow sensitive where his legs make contact. His eyes focus on my lips, and I wet them for him. The noise he makes is like his lungs have been punctured. Then he looks at my hand, still on his calf, and swallows hard.
I’m aware of how little time we have, but I’ve lost my wrestling match with self-control. I stroke my hand over his knee and up the length of his thigh. His entire beautiful leg iscorded with muscle beneath these well-worn slacks. His eyes have closed, and his hands are wound in tight fists at his sides.
My hand moves higher up his leg and my core pulses maddeningly. I reach the swell of his cock over his pants. He’s hard like granite. When I brush my fingers over him, he twitches, and then groans. His eyes shoot open and simmer, black and hot and sharp. He leans forward to cradle my face. “Come here.”
Goose bumps rise along my arms. His thumb sweeps over my cheek. But I’ve got other ideas…
I push him backward and give him a stern glare that saysstay put.He’s so big, sprawled like a king in the leather armchair. Legs stretching on either side of me, eyes shuddering, throat working as he watches me touch him. Something about kneeling before him, teasing him like this, is sending my body into overdrive.
His erection bulges furiously against his zipper as my thumb sweeps over the ridged head. I wonder how long it would take for him to come just from this. He tips his head back, lips parting, hips bucking eagerly, and I wager not that long.
I squeeze him a bit harder. I’m breathless when his fingers brush over my bottom lip, dragging it down. He’s so long, he doesn’t even have to sit up to reach me. My tongue darts out, tasting the sweetness of his skin, and he releases a tight, reluctant groan.
This room is too warm. My tank top is clinging to my nipples and underarms and making me sweat. Tom’s hand is against my face now, mussing my hair—and I need so, somuch more. I need to lap like a dog at his collarbone. To feel his tongue against the curve of my breast. To watch the length I’m working with my hand push into me while he whimpers my name. Honestly, I might need to be sedated.
I’m dripping between my legs—he could slide right in. I can’t resist telling him as much.
“I’m so wet,” I tell him, voice shaking. “So wet for you, Tom.”
His fingers tighten in my hair. “Yeah?”
I nod pathetically. Insatiable.
“Show me,” he instructs. His voice has never been this deep.
I release my hand from his length and in a haze, unzip my—
“Showtime!” a voice calls outside the door.
I shoot into the air like a firework and Tom does the same, smacking his head on the low lamp above us. “Shite.”
It swings haphazardly and I stifle a laugh. But the humor dissolves on my tongue as soon as I take him in, towering over me once more, rubbing the back of his head. His other hand finds the inside of my arm. My eyeline is closer to the fearsome tent in his pants than his face, but he dips his head to press his warm lips against my forehead. “That’s not how I—”
A knock sounds at the door. “Onstage, Tom.” It’s Jen.
“I know,” I tell him, barely a rasp. “Don’t worry about it.” Adrenaline is beginning to pour through my veins. I can hear twenty thousand voices chanting the name of the man whose mouth is hovering above my own. “Break a leg.”
Twenty-One
Tom does this thing sometimeswhere he holds his electric guitar horizontally by the base of its neck. He points the headstock, like an extension of his finger, at the crowd to emphasize the words as he sings them, one long finger pressed along the fretboard. It’s uncanny—this weighty, thirty-inch instrument like a toy car in his grasp. The ease with which he palms it, manhandles the thing to drive home his lyrics…tonight, I want to be that guitar.
Molly and I find a sweet harmony that drives the final progression home—but my mind is elsewhere. It has been the entire show. When Tom screws his eyes shut and wrenches his mouth open in a silent scream before belting those last, woeful lines? When he sucks in a ragged breath away from the mic between the chorus and the verse? When his teeth dig into his lower lip, eyes down on the guitar’s strings as if he’s about to rip the thing in half before a final note of tidal intensity blares from his throat?
