Series: Cobalt Empire Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 220
Estimated words: 215301 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 861(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 215301 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 861(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
I stare at my reddened, angered eyes in the mirror. “Talking to them sometimes feels like screaming into a void. It’s wild that you can be loved so much that when you fuck up, it feels like you’re fucking up several other people—even if it’s my life to fuck up and not theirs.”
“Have you told them that?” Tom wonders.
“I wouldn’t even know how to begin to. I think it would be a circular conversation and just return to the usual. We love you. We care about you. That’s all this is.” I wipe at my burning eyes, then I rest my back against the sink. “They just want what’s best for me, I know that.”
Tom rips open a face wipe packet. “They don’t think I’m what’s best for you? Or just The Carraways?”
“Both,” I answer honestly.
He considers handing me the wipe, but I don’t loosen my grip on the sink. Then I tilt my jaw to him.
Tom rubs at the stain on my face with a measured slowness. It skips my pulse.
Quietly, I tell him, “I bet your parents would say the same about me. I’m not what’s best for you. The drummer with an arrest. Who your mom thinks is taking you to crack dens—”
“A joke. She knows it’s a joke,” Tom says, digging a little deeper at the stain. He cups the other side of my face for a better hold. My lips try to lift, even as he adds, “But yeah, I don’t think the arrest helps.”
I want to tell him about it.
I really do, but I just can’t manage the words right now. My chest feels heavy, and his presence is the only thing that lightens this descending weight. I’m worried if I describe the event, he’ll just…end things on the spot with me. Maybe he’d feel like I’m a ticking time bomb. Worse even, maybe he’d be afraid of me.
“You might need something stronger,” Tom says, ditching the face wipe. He sifts through the basket.
I rake my fingers through my hair, watching his breathing shorten. He acts like I’m already up against him, but inches still separate us.
My body strains with a real need and an even greater want. I haven’t been able to stop replaying our kiss from two weeks ago. It was my favorite first kiss I’ve ever had with any guy, and maybe it’s because of all the lead-up and my feelings for him twisted around it.
The eruption I felt just seeing Tom unravel under me—I want that again and again and again. Like a song on eternal repeat. Yesterday’s hookup doesn’t even feel like enough. I wonder if I’ll ever feel sated or if I’m just hungering for more. For all of him.
Fuck it. I’m not thinking as I rotate toward him. As I come behind him. As I plant my hands on the sink and cage Tom against the black marble. His knees knock into the wood cabinets beneath the counter.
He releases a choked moan, a sound I need to hear again. “You won’t,” he says, a glint in his eye, daring me.
“I won’t what? Fuck you against the sink?” I slide my hand between us, my knuckles against his ass while I unbutton and unzip myself. “Didn’t we just write a song about the two of us not making sensible decisions? About how we don’t think before we react?”
“‘Level Headed,’” he names the song. “What we aren’t.”
“What I’m not when it comes to you.” I stare at him through the mirror. “You’ve severely underestimated the number of times I’ve imagined being inside you.”
“I bet it’s crested a million,” Tom begins to smirk. “I bet I’m the only thing that makes you hard anymore—” He cuts himself off, his mouth breaking wider open with a strangled, groaning, “Fuck,” because I’m unbuttoning him, unzipping him, sliding my palm against his erection in a nanosecond.
My cock responds with yes and more and fuck him. My mouth goes to his ear. “You really think I won’t? Or is it that you don’t want me to?” I have to be sure. “Red light?”
“No, no,” he forces out, catching more air in his lungs. “We’ve been excelling at a yellow light. We wrote three songs in three days, dude. I don’t want to slow down.”
“For the band?”
“Yeah, yeah.” He’s moaning under his breath while I rock my hips against him. “For the band. This is good for the band.”
I don’t care what he needs to tell himself for this to feel okay. I just need him to feel like this isn’t going to ruin The Carraways. I’ve already flown so far past that place myself.
“Still a yellow light?” I ask him.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just yellow.”
Okay. Our eyes meet in the mirror for a stronger beat. I can feel Tom growing underneath my hand. His nose flares. Silence strengthens the tension in the room. The air is taut. All I want to do is break it.