“I’m not. But there’s something about making a choice without the right facts. I’m making sure you have those.”
“And do I? Do I have all the right facts?”
He didn’t smile, he just took a sip of whisky instead, and looked at me as if I was some exotic creature. “You have all the facts you need.”
It was those words that sobered the alcohol in my blood, making it run chilled. I slid off the stool.
“That makes me wonder what you have hidden.”
“I told you I bite, sweetheart. Never said from where.” He looked amused, as if I was a toy filled with catnip, only he was a tiger.
I was fighting myself right now. That inner war before jumping off a high platform and not knowing if you’d be able to swim when you hit the water.
I didn’t know how deep his waters were, and what sharks swam there.
My grandmother used to tell us that her cat had the ‘devil in her’, a wildness that was incomprehensible without an explanation that pertained to something biblical.
That was my only excuse.
I had no other.
I’d never been the forward one. That was Lala. I’d never been the girl who touched someone without being touched first. I’d never been the woman that had the confidence to take the first taste.
Until now.
It must have been the devil inside me. I reached out to touch, my hand scalded when I touched him, my fingers grazing the side of his neck, my palm resting on his shoulder. I could feel where the skin was soft, that tender part where everything was so vulnerable. The part where a vampire would sink his teeth, or a lover would kiss to incite those shivers that only promised greater ones.
He didn’t move away.
He knew. He knew I was going to do this, to see how touch felt, to see what that current did when we had no air between us. Him knowing gave me the power.
Tommy didn’t touch me. One of his hands stayed gripped around the glass of whisky; the other was resting on his knee. It was just me, all me.
His heat fed through me, the touch electric, transferring every cell in my body to something that resembled molten plasma. I didn’t bother trying to not lean in to push my lips closer to his. There was no point; I wanted to do it, to take that taste.
He let me, staying passive, sitting down hard and keeping his hands away from me. I needed to know how hard that was for him, if he wanted to touch me, to take control of how I felt and how he made me feel. But he didn’t.
It was my lips that found his. My lips that pressed down to taste. My tongue that prised his mouth open.
He tasted of expensive whisky and man, a hedonistic blend when mixed with the heat and the vibe of the island.
Thinking back, I could’ve counted less than three seconds before he demanded control, his tongue invading my mouth, his hands on my waist, trying to stop me from leaving, moving,
Choosing?
Because I couldn’t.
Tommy was the grit and the silk and the air, all stirred into muscle and heat and want. He was the only drug I’d ever tasted, the only thing I wanted to return to for more, despite the cost.
He could tell me any number of white lies and I’d be erasing any trace, to just prove to myself that they didn’t exist. They were never tangible.
That he was my truth. My light. My way.
Only I’d witnessed too much to ever believe that existed. Those white lies weren’t that colour; every word would be tainted, every touch bore an alternate need and that light was from a false source.
Yet still I kissed.
Until the music stopped, and he broke away. His grip loosened; his expression darkened.
