Day 5 - Now

It's one thing to be wanted, but to be desired? That's an end of the spectrum that I wasn't quite sure I had been uncomfortable with until right this moment.

Tommy Oliver was a mystery in my life. The big fat question mark that I yet had an answer for… not that I really wanted one.

I knew coming to Jason's birthday dinner would involve running into him again, but who knew that I would be watched, preyed, devoured so intimately by Tommy as I sat across from him at the table.

Things between us shifted after our last conversation. Maybe I shouldn't have said what I said last night, but I needed to get it out in the open. I had to tell him how I really felt about what happened between us. Then he had to open up his mouth and say everything that I didn't want to hear. Now I was more confused than I had been earlier.

He had turned me inside out.

I left him on the street last night and came straight to my room and cried. I cried harder than I ever had before, possibly even more than when he had first dumped me. It was like the wound that had healed was ripped back open and I knew that it would never be the same again.

His reason for leaving me was the dumbest thing I had ever heard. And it hurt knowing more that it was nothing that I had done. All of this time I had been looking at myself in the mirror differently. But it was him. It was all him. He could have saved us the heartache all of this time if he had just communicated with me. Instead, he took the cowardly way out. I thought he was supposed to be brave. Isn't that what all the marines are known for?

He couldn't look at me in the eye and tell me that it was over?

After I was done crying, I was enraged. I think I went through all the stages of grief in a matter of minutes.

Then I thought back to what he said earlier. He thought of me? How dare he. His memory of me should have died as he allowed my heart to shatter. I thought I was getting to know him again. I thought that our friendship was something that could be salvaged, but I was wrong. We are strangers. We can't be anything but that.

Every unexcused look my way, every gaze that lingers too long between us, every single time he eyes me up and down and thinks that I don't notice is another tally mark in the prison I've built around me. Except I'm not any closer to release, in fact, I'm living in a life sentence that is there to remind me that giving my heart to Tommy Oliver is not safe.

"Kim?" Jason smirks my way, his glass of whiskey hovering over his lips.

I instantly break out of my trance, "Huh?"

His grin deepens, "I asked if you liked the food."

My face falls to my full plate. We've been at dinner for over twenty minutes and I've yet to try a single thing. All of my attention had been on the man in front of me, or rather pretending to not notice him at all… The tall man that was still the most gorgeous specimen I have ever had the pleasure of encountering.

Jason had invited us to his parent's restaurant, Calliope. It was a beautiful restaurant just north of the hotel. The food looked great. It deserved every single one of its Michelin stars just by the smell, but I had yet to really taste it. All my thoughts were lingering on Tommy or rather trying hard to not notice him.

"It's delicious," I lied, although I was sure he knew that. My food was untouched.

I heard him murmur something about me being a liar and the smile curved further up his lips.

"And you, Tommy?" Jason turned to his best friend on his left, "How do you like it?"

"Delicious," Tommy returned quickly, his eyes never once wavering from me.

"When did you say Giselle was going to be here?" Jason asked Tommy. Those were somehow the magic words that were needed to break his gaze from mine.

Giselle. The girlfriend.

Tommy's mouth opened a few times, almost as if he had completely forgotten he had been in a committed relationship.

"In two days," Tommy cleared his throat. "She's visiting her family in Spain."

"Are you finally ready to pop the question, man?" Zack laughed, "It's been like two years already. If she's put up with your dumb ass for that long then I'm sure she's the one for you."

Why did the room suddenly feel ten degrees hotter?

Tommy's smile never did quite reach his eyes and when he provided no further explanation for Zack's comment, the guys moved to another conversation altogether.

I'm not quite sure why that comment bothered me. It wasn't like Tommy and I were anything but perfect strangers. We weren't lovers. We weren't friends. Hell, we weren't even acquaintances. We were classified as something that never truly was and never could be.

The phone on my lap vibrated, bringing with it a startling reminder.

Cole: I'm about to go into a meeting. If this deal goes through then you and I will have so much more to celebrate. Call you when I'm done. Love you.

Oh yeah… I have a boyfriend. Fuck.

My fingers hovered over the keyboard, my mind fighting a war as to whether I should reply to my boyfriend of the last year or not. When I felt the heat from Tommy's gaze return, I dropped my phone into my purse, giving me a realization that I wasn't quite sure I was prepared for.

I somehow made it through the rest of the dinner without anyone else noticing that my mind was elsewhere.

Tommy didn't pay much attention to me after the guys had brought up his gorgeous girlfriend… well, I didn't know if she was for certain, but I've never met anyone named Giselle that wasn't drop-dead gorgeous. Tommy had his pick at the litter, he was handsome, successful, hardworking, respectable, what girl wouldn't swoon for him? I'm sure Giselle is as perfect as all of his other girlfriends that Trini has mentioned to me in the past. And to top it off, she's apparently a swimsuit model… yeah, legs for days. I can already tell and I haven't even seen a picture.

The ocean view that seems to hit the edges of the earth from my hotel room window is hidden in the darkness. My friends are around me celebrating, creating lives and memories and I'm… stuck. I'm alone but I'm not alone. I'm just going through the motions of life that I feel that I'm supposed to do. Something is missing, something is just not right but I'm not sure what. Five days ago I thought I had everything figured out, but now, I'm not so sure. Did seeing Tommy really affect me that much?

What is it about him that I can't seem to shake?

Talking to Cole didn't help. He called me after his meeting, talking all about how great the deal to merge to competing companies went. He was a great businessman, a great boyfriend, my parents loved him, and he actively planned to have a future with me, but I couldn't help but feel like something was off. Maybe not with him, but with me. If he could tell by our conversation earlier then he didn't mention it. I want to love him like he loves me.

The knock on my bedroom door startled me. The clock on the nightstand told me that it was a little after ten at night. Nothing good ever comes after dark.

I wasn't sure who I was expecting to be on the other side of the door. A part hoped that it would be Trini or Aisha, but a larger part knew that it could only be one person.

I opened the door to find Tommy sweating and heaving, like he'd just run a whole marathon in the time since we had dinner. I gulped, unsure of what the stirring in my belly was telling me.

"Hey…," My head tilted against the door, my brows raised in a question. "What brings you up here?"

The adam's apple on his throat bobbed up and down. His voice was laced with darkness, "You know why."

I did.

"I do?" I asked the question I already had the answer to.

I can't stop thinking about you either.

I haven't been able to stop since his drunken conversation on the yacht. There's something there… still. After all of this time. After we both fought to keep it away.

There was a silence between us that seemed to linger to infinity. We were both lost in the world. I didn't know him at all but somehow I knew everything I needed to know.

When he took a step forward, my hand shot out to his chest. I meant it to keep him from walking inside my room, but feeling the firmness of his muscles under the palm of my hand had my legs quivering more than they should. My eyes trailed down to my hand and then back up to meet his heated gaze, his lips parted in anticipation. I did the only thing that I could think of… I swallowed.

In my next breath, Tommy's lips were covering mine and the world was fading away. I think I may have sighed, finally releasing the frustration I have felt since the moment I saw him a couple of days earlier. His lips were as soft as I remembered, only they moved so sensually that I was nearly swooning. He and I were no longer he and I. We were just two people that have been fighting this attraction for too many years.

Cole came to mind, but the fight between what I wanted and what a good girlfriend should do was one I was prepared to win.

A good girlfriend should have told Tommy to leave. A good girlfriend should have closed the door on the face of my ex-boyfriend. A good girlfriend should have pushed him away and not pulled him in, but as far as I'm concerned, when it comes to Tommy, being good is the last thing on my mind.

"Stop," I panted, but made little effort to do such thing. It felt far too good to do that, but my words came out before I had the chance to protest, "Stop."

"We can't," He shook his head against my neck, sucking on the tender spot he so intimately knows about.

I pushed myself off of him gently, immediately longing for his touch again. "Why not?"

Tommy's eyes closed, a soft sigh escaping him as he was trying to settle himself, "because if we stop and think about this… we're going to regret it in the morning"

"And we won't regret this?" I asked, incredulously.

How could he think that I'd be okay with this? That I would become the person that could so easily cheat on my boyfriend with someone that tore me apart. Tommy was the one that ruined me and it took Cole to put me back together.

"No," he whispered, stroking my cheek with his thumb. "because I know that we would choose this moment again and again. You and me… this feels right."

"Tommy—"

"Don't think about anything else but this…" His lips brushed against my cheek, "how long it's been since we've been together like this," down my neck, "how good it's going to feel to have this again," my shoulder, "how badly you want this as much as I do."

He didn't need to convince me for me to know he was right. I would choose this again every time. I could have lived a thousand lives and still would have chosen the path that led me to this very moment. As wrong as this might be for everyone else, it's the right thing for me.

My eyes closed, lip caught between my teeth as I tried to find the reason within myself to believe that what I was doing was okay. It wasn't. I knew that with every square inch of my body, but I didn't care… and that made me question everything I thought I knew about myself.

Could I be the person to cheat on my boyfriend? Was I capable of inflicting so much hurt to the person that loved me and I claimed to wholeheartedly love? I knew the answer to that and it was killing me.

Forgive me, I begged as I turned just in time to catch Tommy's lips with mine. Our lips met in a feverish frenzy, teeth clinking, tongues touching… it was electrifying, it was messy, it was everything I had been missing.

The cool, Grecian breeze bit at my skin as Tommy's hands delicately pulled down the straps of my top. It was the perfect contrast to the burn of his touch, creating goosebumps that rippled throughout my body.

His touch felt like the very first time, but he did it with so much confidence that I was quickly reminded that it wasn't. We've been here before… many times. With each other, with others, but never like this… never when he and I belonged to someone else… never forbidden.

"I can never get my fill of you," he whispered, walking me back until the bed hit the back of my knees. He released me, letting me fall backward into the oversized bed that seemed like just the right size for the two of us.

I'm not sure how he did it, but he whipped his shirt off in one quick tug and threw it clear across the room. All it did was allow the moonlight to come and kiss the highest peak of every muscle… and there were many, he was practically glowing.

I reached for his radiating light, wanting to be consumed by it than be in the shadows. His body was smooth and hard, and like nothing I had ever felt before.

Cole was in great shape but nothing like Tommy, there wasn't a soft spot on him. I propped myself on my elbows, appraising the new body of the man I had once been so deeply in love with. It was foreign to me now, new territory for me to explore, and I wanted nothing more than to do that.

What I didn't miss, however, was the discolored scar on his left bicep. It wasn't very big, but it was prominent, ragged, and I wondered how I had never noticed it before. I swallowed before gently stroking my thumb over it. He didn't say a word and erased any question's I might have had with a kiss.

"Did you know that I haven't been able to stop thinking about you since your first day here?" He rasped into my neck, his fingers pulling my loose top lower down my body. "And then when I saw you in that little bikini on the yacht, wearing my color… you're all I keep dreaming about." He continued, his head trailing kisses down my newly exposed skin. "You're all I crave."

I gasped, my head lifting long enough to see him disappear beneath the white sheets of my bed.

And then I felt him… felt his fingers hook onto my shorts and pull them down, felt his lips brush against my thighs as he spread them, felt his tongue at the center of my soul.

I was inebriated by the very drug that was Tommy Oliver.

My back arched off the bed for a moment, bowing with every sweep of his tongue.

I was loud… there was no denying that. I heard myself, yet it didn't sound like me. I was content on believing that it wasn't and before another sound could escape me, I clasped a hand over my mouth.

It didn't help much, and when I felt his fingers slide so easily inside me, I threw another hand on top of it.

The bed vibrated with his hushed laugh and I looked down to find him poking his head out of the sheet, watching me lose my fucking mind.

"Want me to stop," he asked and I shook my head so vehemently I didn't think I'd ever heard him laugh so effortlessly. "Good. Because I had no intentions of doing that."

I threw my head back when I felt his touch again, the heels of my feet digging into the bed beneath me.

I wanted more, I needed more, and it was all culminating in a series of stars that were exploding behind my closed eyelids. It was release and satisfaction tied up in a little bow of euphoria.

This man. This intense, purposeful, insatiable man that I have loved from afar has consumed me… altered everything I have believed in and I wanted more. I wanted to learn who the real Kimberly Hart was because I had clearly been wrong.

When I could no longer take his torturous game, I pushed his head away and watched with parted lips as he rose on his knees, pulled his zipper down, and took himself in his hand, letting the beautiful flesh slide across his fingers.

God, this was so different than any moment we had ever shared together, and there were many. We had been shy lovers, preferring to act out in pitch darkness, afraid to say or do something that might have overstepped some unspoken boundaries… now… we did and said whatever felt right.

I had forgotten how big he was, how it stood so perfectly straight, pointing right at the target of its affection… me.

Seeing him like this, all of him, had the tips of a million butterflies flapping in my belly and I couldn't ignore them no matter how hard I tried. I did the only thing that felt natural in that moment and that was to join him. I jolted as my fingers touched the most delicate part of my body, bringing me back to life. His eyes followed my hand with lust and hunger.

No words were spoken.

There was no denying the hoarse groan that came out of him. He liked what he saw and I loved putting on a show. The fact that it was me making him crazy had me high on endorphins I didn't know existed. His hand moved faster while I chased to match his speed on myself in circles.

What were these sounds coming out of me? Had I ever heard myself make these noises before? I didn't give a damn how loud I was anymore. I was only concentrating on the way his eyes never left me.

Watching him watching me was the most intimate moment of my life.

Somewhere on the cusp of another release, he reached for me and brushed my hand away, the fire in his eyes ignited. He kissed me then, slower, longer, a small remnant of what we had before.

That was the Tommy Oliver I had remembered, the calm, shy boy from Angel Grove that wanted my first time to be special… but as quickly as that memory came, it faded, because I felt the hardened body of a twenty-nine-year-old man fill me in a way I didn't think had been physically possible. Every ridge and vein on him added to my madness, making me delirious.

How could it be familiar yet foreign at the same time?

"Fuck," he exhaled, his forehead pressed directly on mine. "I never thought I would have you this way again."

I couldn't speak, didn't think I had the ability to, so I responded with a kiss to his lips, encouraging him to take all of me.

"Tell me you're mine," he breathed, his hips flexing in a way that had me clinging to him. "Tell me you've always been mine."

I gasped in return, fighting the fireworks building up inside me again.

I'm yours. I screamed the words in my head until they no longer made sense.

"Tell me," he bit the shell of my ear, the rhythm between us picking up some more.

I think deep down he knew I could never say the words he longed to hear, but that didn't stop him from trying.

"Tell me you've thought about this as much as I have."

I lost all of my breath when he hit a spot only he had been able to reach before, a spot I had long forgotten had even existed. My reaction was his victory and his smile was my reward.

"You are beautiful," he bit his bottom lip, his words setting me on fire. "and I'm so close."

I was too, again. I could feel it building up inside me. It would be too perfect for both of us to come together, too much like a romantic novel— which my life was anything but.

I couldn't let that happen… it would mean too much, but as hard as I tried, I couldn't fight it any longer and I trembled as my release rippled through me.

I felt him pulse inside of me, filling me with everything he had to give.

And I took it.

Author note: More coming soon.