by C. L. Stone
My heart pounded so loudly I could hear it in my ears. Tommy sat up on his elbows. He blinked at me a couple of times, like he wasn’t sure where he was, before he grabbed me, pulling me against his side. “You okay?” He kissed my forehead. “You’re breathing really fast. What’s wrong?” Each word he said became clearer, like he woke up as he spoke. By the end, he was truly wide-awake Tommy.
“I’m sorry.” I tried to pull away. It was better to leave me alone when I had a panic, much easier to simply let me be until it passed. “I’ll deal with this and come back.”
“You’ll deal with it right here.” He held me tighter, his hand on my hip, his face a mix of seriousness and what I now thought of as Tommy-gaining-control.
“Bad dream.” I kissed his chest. “Go back to sleep. Happens sometimes. Usually I just kind of ball up and wait for it to pass. I’m taking my anxiety meds, and this isn’t new. It started when they dropped me off with the Sisters.”
Tommy eased up some of his hold, but instead of letting me go he gently rolled over and positioned me until my head was on his chest, his body under mine. “Tell me about the dream.”
“I was at the Sisterhood. You guys were talking to the head Sister. She told you I wasn’t worth it, and you all agreed to put me out the airlock with the junk.”
He groaned. “That’s awful. I would never put you out the airlock. I’d put myself out the airlock first.”
“I know.” Although I didn’t want to think about putting him out the airlock either. “That’s why it’s a dream.”
“Come here.”
I was already on top of him, so I wasn’t exactly sure what he wanted. I adjusted until I could see him. He moved his hand until it came around to massage the back of my head. Gently—ever so much so—he brought our lips together. Tommy didn’t kiss me; he made love to my mouth.
Over and over, with hardly a breath between, we fused our mouths together. The slight scratch of his whiskers rubbed my skin, adding to my sensory overload. His tongue gently pressed into my mouth until he found my own. He moaned before he wrapped his other arm around me and rolled us both until he was on top of me.
He pulled back just an inch and spoke against my lips. “I know you aren’t ready for sex. No sex until you’re with your husband. We’re not that in your heart yet. Soon, I hope. I’m going to make you feel good, just the same. Unless you tell me to stop.”
I couldn’t imagine doing so right then. He slipped his hands under my shirt, and soon it was off, thrown to the side. He took his own off quickly, and we were soon skin-to-skin.
His eyes caressed my breasts. “The most beautiful breasts I’ve ever seen. When I got a quick glimpse in front of the profiteers, I got hard. Not the time for it. Now I get to play.”
It appeared Tommy’s definition of the word play involved lavishing my breasts with attention from his hot mouth. I gasped when he sucked on my left nipple. Had anything ever felt like this? I knew what would happen if we pressed forward, and I said yes to completion. The whole thing would be over in three minutes.
“Tommy.” My hand stroked his hair. It was soft and thick; I relished the sensation. “I love this. I really do. But I know what happens next. Three minutes and then I’m lying here achy and cold. I don’t think I want to end the night like this.”
He raised his eyes to look at me. “Come again?”
“Are you really going to make me repeat myself?” I didn’t have a problem standing my ground with him anymore.
He held up three fingers. “That many minutes?”
“Give or take ten seconds.”
Tommy snorted and then covered his face with his hand. “Honey, I’m not going to be done with this breast in three minutes. And then someday, when I’m buried inside of you and your warm core stretches to fit my cock, it won’t take three minutes. It might take hours. You had sex with the wrong person. Hell, you’re practically a virgin. We are going to take this another way. Okay.” He kissed between my breasts. “I’m going to assume you don’t know anything. I’ll simply say this: You will never be left cold and achy. Warm, sated, half-awake, and ready to sleep until I wake you to go again? Yes.”
Could he be right? Was it possible my own experience was so completely flawed I didn’t understand what it was supposed to be like? “And tonight?”
“Tonight I am going to love you until you come around my fingers, and then I am going to put you back to bed.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Around your fingers?”
“From now on, when people ask what you did to go to the Sisterhood, you are going to tell them you stole something. A necklace you wanted. On a dare. Because I’m not sure what happened when you were seventeen, but it doesn’t constitute sex as far as I’m concerned. Trust me. Trust me to love you.”
All thoughts of my nightmare fled. “I do.”
He didn’t respond. Instead, he went back to kissing my breast. I closed my eyes. Jolts of pleasure rocked through my body. “So responsive. Your body speaks to me, and I do what you want. Even if you don’t know what you’re asking for. It’s my pleasure to give it to you.”
“Tommy.” I stroked his cheek. “I want to give you pleasure, too.”
“You do.”
Now he was just being obstinate. There were things I remembered. Rocky had put my hand straight on his erection and showed me how to pump up and down to get him harder. “I know how to touch you. I want to.”
Tommy twisted his mouth. “That’s what you want? Right this second? To touch me?”
“Yes.” I didn’t want it to be all about me. I wanted to share the experience. If he was going to give me pleasure, I was going to do the same for him.
He lay back, pulling his pants off followed by his underwear. He was hard and pointed skyward. I didn’t remember much about what Tommy now called my non-sexual encounter, but I knew Rocky had never looked like that.
“Touch me if you want to because in a few seconds I am going to touch you big time.”
I stroked my hand up and down his length, and he let out a loud moan. “That’s right baby. You have the touch.”
His words made me tingle. His cock was long, thick, and all mine to massage. I gripped him harder, and he moaned even louder, particularly when I touched the top. Over and over I let my hand travel the length of him until he grabbed my wrist.
“No more. You’re going to make me spill.”
He pulled me up against him, my back to his stomach. I could feel his erection pressing into my behind. “Is that painful for you?”
“Some pain is good.” He kissed my neck, and I shivered. “The best kind of pain.”
He stripped me of the rest of my clothes, feverishly invested in his task. Tommy bit down on my shoulder while his hands stroked over my core. “So soft. Everything about you is soft. I am in love with your curves.”
He pressed his pointer finger inside of me, finding my clit and rubbing gently. I jumped from the jolt of pleasure filling me. Tommy held me tighter against him. “Shh. Let yourself feel it. Don’t be tense. Just enjoy. This is me loving you, baby.”
I think it was the last thing he said that finally calmed my nerves. He loved me. Yes, I felt that way, too. He’d given me such a hard time, but it had only made me want him more. Things didn’t have to come easy for them to be worth it.
He massaged my bundle of nerves in a circle, slowly first and then moving faster. I let out a small moan, and he made a similar sound in his own throat, as if my pleasure egged on his own. The more he stroked, the hotter I became until he put two fingers in the same spot and continued to drive me crazy.
Soon I panted, unable to catch my breath and not wanting to. All of a sudden my whole body exploded. I’d never had an orgasm before, and I couldn’t have pictured how truly amazing it was. I saw colors followed by stars. I couldn’t think; I could only feel. There was nothing but Tommy, nothing except the way he made me feel.
His hips jerked against my backside, and I felt a warm liquid behind me. He
whispered my name. My pleasure had brought on his own.
I closed my eyes.
Vaguely, I became aware of Tommy taking care of me. He wiped me down with a warm rag, cleaning me up before he climbed in behind me. His arms were strong, and when he pulled me up against him, I was heavy in his arms. I would have moved if I could have.
He kissed my cheek. “No bad dreams, and if they show up, you put me in them to fight off the bad guys. I’m good at it. I was born to fight.”
I closed my eyes and didn’t dream at all.
A knock on the door made Tommy groan and brought me back to the land of the living. Or at least the land of the sort of awake.
Tommy patted my body and yelled at the door. “I get a couple of hours more at least. If we were on a planet, the sun wouldn’t be up yet.”
“I need you to look at some readings. I wouldn’t bother you if it weren’t important.” Something was different about Clay’s voice.
I found my voice and made it work. “He sounds stressed.”
“That he does, and he never gets worked up over nothing. Even the time he couldn’t stop thinking about this girl who lived with the Sisters and saved his life turned out to be important.”
I kissed his arm, and he bent over to caress my cheek. “I’ll be back. Don’t wake up yet.”
He grabbed his pants and scurried from the room. That was the first time I noticed the tattoo on his leg. It matched his arm. It was a scorpion. A black one. It looked like as though it travelled down his leg toward his foot, where it reached forward.
I’d seen the symbol before, whenever the news on Mars Station talked about the Sandler Cartel.
I closed my eyes, pushing away the unease the sight caused me. Tommy, Clay, Keith, and Quinn weren’t the bad guys. Everyone had a story—everyone got to be the hero of their own adventure. They weren’t perfect. They’d done some bad things. They thought they needed redemption. Maybe they did. It wasn’t for me to judge, and I wasn’t a confessor who could offer them forgiveness. But we did things on Mars Station too, or at least the leaders did. Earth wasn’t without fault. And those who claimed to be holy wielded a stick.
At the end of the day, we were all human, and they’d been nothing but kind and loving to me. I’d fallen for them all, hard.
Of course it begged the question, when all was said and done, would I be Mrs. McQueen or Mrs. Sandler?
Sleep didn’t come back and neither did Tommy.
****
I padded my way out of the room on bare feet. I was at least mostly dressed. I needed coffee if I was going to find my shoes. Where had they gone? I didn’t know.
Clay and Tommy stood in the control room pointing at something only they could see. Keith stood when I came into the galley and pulled me to him before planting a soft kiss on my mouth. “Morning. Two nights without you, and I am losing my mind.”
I grinned at him. He looked pretty well rested to me. There was no strain under his eyes. “Did you have good dreams?”
He scratched his head. “I’m not sure actually. I never remember my dreams.”
“Coffee?
Keith grinned. “On it.”
He walked over and poured me a cup of the stuff that would keep me awake, I hoped, for the rest of the day. “Where’s your twin?”
“Out cold. He worked all night.”
“You’re sure I didn’t do a bad thing putting this idea in his head?”
“No.” He set the piping hot cup of goodness in front of me. “Baby, he is sleeping without drugs of any kind. He’s a little manic like that, but he got like that whenever he was really working. All the game playing these years, it hasn’t challenged him, not really. Fighting himself? He’s exhausted at the end of the night. I’m thrilled. He might even get back on a normal sleep-wake schedule. I’ve been taking care of Quinn a long time. I mean, we all have. I was the only one who knew what he and Dad were doing. They sent me away from him when I started to voice too much opposition.”
I placed my hand on his arm. “Someday soon you’ll get to make the impossible possible again.”
“You being alive, you being here, it makes me think maybe.”
“What are they doing in there?’
He shook his head. “Clay got a blip. We can’t find it now. Might be space junk. The pirates leave their crap everywhere. But something got Clay’s back up, and he doesn’t panic. Tommy’s taking it seriously.”
I touched his arm. “What do you think?”
“I think my brother doesn’t overreact.”
He trusted Clay. I got it. I sipped my coffee and decided I had to go find my shoes. I didn’t want to walk around as shoeless Paloma for the next weeks until we got to Mars Station. I walked back to Tommy’s room and, after a bit of searching, found them under one of his desks. How they had gotten there I didn’t know, but I’d always had the propensity to lose shoes, so I tried not to overthink it.
An alarm sounded, catching me off guard, and I nearly fell backwards off the bed. Tommy’s voice followed immediately. “Hey Paloma, don’t panic. We’ve got a bounty hunter on our trail. Happens sometimes. Dad is bound and determined to get us back. This isn’t about you, and I don’t want you caught in the middle of it, love. Do me a favor and go get in the pod. Bring something to read. This is going to be a bunch of nothing.”
I took a deep breath and hoped the headache, which immediately came with the alarm, passed. Was I going to have trouble dealing with loud noises for the rest of my life or would this pass with time? There was a bounty hunter. He probably had weapons. I shuddered. I didn’t want to be blown up. I took a deep breath and forced myself to move. I wasn’t going to get in the pod if I sat still and didn’t move.
Tommy had a tablet on his side table, and I grabbed it before I rushed from the room. Quinn and Keith were both in with Tommy and Clay now, which meant I was the only one being placed in the pod. I stepped inside, and it closed around me.
I shuddered, drawing my knees to me chest. I didn’t want to be this woman. I didn’t want to be the type of girl who freaked out when things got hard. I never used to be. I made myself small and scrunched against the wall.
Grabbing the tablet, I scanned through Tommy’s book choices. He had the mysteries I used to read. I’d missed the last five, having not been allowed to read while I was with the Sisters. I opened to the first one I hadn’t read and tried to remember what happened at the end of the last book, but I couldn’t concentrate.
Why was this taking so long?
I started to sweat. The pod was cool, like the rest of the ship. My chest felt tight.
Yeah … I was headed for a full on panic.
Loud bells sounded all over, followed by three booms. I grabbed my neck. What the hell was that?
“Hey, sweetheart.” Clay’s voice came over. “Yeah, he’s firing at us. It’s okay. He’s not penetrating our shields, and he won’t. Stay there. All is fine.”
Why had Clay come on the line instead of Tommy? I took a deep breath. Tommy was probably at the helm, beating back the bounty hunter. A loud explosion sounded, and I shrieked before I covered my mouth.
A few moments later, Quinn appeared outside my pod. He waved and grinned at me before he opened up my safety vessel to let me out. He yawned. “What a way to start the day, huh? Tommy likes to play with his toys. Boom. Whack. The bounty hunter ran away with his tail between his legs.” He took my hand. “Hope you weren’t afraid, P.”
“I was. But that seems to be a regular state of existence for me lately. I’m almost getting used to it.”
“Oh no.” He tugged me against him. “We’ll get you somewhere nice and boring someday. You’ll miss the excitement when the most action we get is Keith dumping the garbage on the kitchen floor.”
“Hey,” Keith yelled from the control room. “You are much more likely to go around dumping garbage than I am.”
We walked together into the control room. Tommy swung around in his chair to greet us while Keith and Clay waved. I sat
down in one of the empty seats. “Are we okay?”
Tommy waved his hand. “Stupid jackass won’t do that again. I knocked out his whole cooling system. He’s going to have to dock to fix it. We won’t see him again.”
“Phew.”
Quinn scooted his chair close to mine. He rubbed my back. “Our girl was scared.”
Clay stapled his fingers. “You like to be busy. I think if this were to happen again, it might be better for Paloma to have a role to play, rather than waiting it out sitting in the pod.”
Tommy shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not compromising on the pod. She needs to be safe.”
“Sure.” Clay winked at me. “But maybe we could wait to put her in it until it’s really necessary. She didn’t have to be locked up this whole time. We never hit real danger. Teach her how to work the communication system.”
Tommy sat back. “Okay. We can do that. But I don’t think we can train her until we get to Mars Station. I’m assuming it’s relatively safe there. Want to do it, Paloma?”
I did like the idea of having a job. I couldn’t cook here, and twiddling my thumbs all day on the shuttle didn’t seem like a lot of fun. Also, if they didn’t shove me in a pod and leave me there, I’d much prefer the adventure.
“Yes, please.”
He nodded once. “Sounds good. There’s a place on Mars Station where we can dock and be left alone, right?”
“Yes, a whole bunch of floors of places. Have you never been there?”
Quinn continued to rub my back. “Sandlers aren’t welcome on Mars Station. We were never invited. Tommy was going to meet a potential future bride, and she was going to have to leave the station to go meet him on Mars because he couldn’t dock there.”
The universe must have stopped moving for a second as my brain caught up to what was said. “When was this?”
Tommy’s eyes widened. “Four fucking years ago. I missed her. I had to save Quinn.”
“I was supposed to go to Mars four years ago to meet the man my father wanted me to marry. He wouldn’t tell me who. I didn’t because I got sent to the Sisters for, well you guys know what for.” My heart beat so fast I thought it might come out of my chest.
