Page 120 of If Not for My Baby
“I’d love that. Are you kidding?”
“Not at all. When’s your flight?”
“I haven’t booked anything yet. Kind of had to see how an impromptu Euro trip went first.”
“Well?” His grin is mischief.
Rain trickles down the wide windowpanes across from the bed. I pull my jeans and my T-shirt off like they’ve betrayedme—I’m not wearing any clothes for the next week of my life. “Just about perfect.”
“Sweet Clem.” His hand drifts across my side and I shiver again.
I follow him into the bathroom, which is tiled in a dark green as vivid as his eyes. Tom lights two candles that smell like lavender and flicks off the overhead light, drowning us in a dreamy, tranquil haze. The steam curling from the claw-foot tub alone has taken the edge off the cold seeping to my bones. The drum of rain on the roof is cozy now, atmospheric and insulating.
Before I can do it myself, Tom circles behind me to unhook my bra, allowing his beautiful hands to graze across my back and the blades of my shoulders. His fingers move over me like I’m one of his instruments. He’s memorizing my curves and dips. Drifting down my spine, unhurried. I can’t think straight when his mouth finds the shell of my ear. His fingers spill over my hips until my underwear is peeled from me. I’m nearly quaking with need but know better than to say so. I’ve learned now how Tom likes to take his time—and I’ve got nowhere to be.
After some rustling behind me, the heat of his heavy length presses against my bottom. He’s stripped bare and is wholly hard.
“Oh, God,” I mutter, core throbbing.
He steps into the bath gracefully, as he does everything, and sinks down with a pleasurable wince that makes me think of having him inside me. Steam curls around his generous muscles when he motions for me to join him.
“You signed your contract,” I say faintly as hot water soothes every frigid inch of my body.
“I did.”
“Because of me?” I can’t bring myself to say,Because you were heartbroken. I never want him to feel a raindrop of pain again. Certainly not any I cause.
“Yes,” he says, steam curling around his jaw and shoulders. It makes my heart heavy and I sink lower into the tub.
His mouth twitches. “Not just because I missed you enough to bathe in all the tears I’d wept. I’d never been so inspired, Clem.” He takes my foot in his hand, just like that night in Rhett Barber’s guest room. “You changed the mind of me. The soul, too. I’d been sleepwalking through my life. Wishing each set would be over before it began. I’d given up on my work ever feeling as fulfilling as it had when I was young. Before I’d shared it with the world.”
I think of Tom feeling as cynical toward his own music as I did once about falling in love. It twists a knife into my sternum.
“But then you came along. The least romantic woman I’d ever met—”
“Oh, great,” I snort.
“And,somehow the most passionate about this beautiful thing I’d once loved the same way.”
“That’s pretty poetic,” I tell him.
“You’ve no idea. I started writing songs for you the first night we met. I couldn’t stop myself. Usually road songs are about missing your baby back home. Mine were dreams of staying on tour forever. Wishing to wind over those jaw-shaking potholes so long as you’d let me listen to you sing each night.”
His eyes study a candle behind my head. His mouth quirks, far away in some memory. “When I’d so futilely sought out a pen in Raleigh, I’d actually been writing about fruit. The kind that grows on trees that never shed their leaves. Winter arrives, snow and storms, or maybe a dry, stagnant heat.” He shakes his head. “The leaves remain green. The citrus that blossoms as sweet as it is steadfast.”
Emotion rises in my throat. Clementines. Clementines grow on evergreen trees. “Tom.”
“My gorgeous Clementine. The sweetest fruit.”
“How do you thank someone for writing an album about you?” I let my toes drop from his hand and brush over his length. Though his eyes roll back in his head a bit he catches the arch of my foot to halt me.
Tom smirks. His voice is edged with something raw and rough when he says, “Not like that.”
“How come?” I pout.
“Because it’s you that I’m to thank. It’s been far too long since I’ve written anything out of sheer adoration. Out of awe or joy…I’m looking forward to this record, if you can believe.”
I beam at him. He deserves that. He deserves it all.
