Drowning in My Skin

“Toad?” He woke to a pretty face snuggling into his shoulder and he groaned lightly, wanting to have the will to thrust her away and refuse what had happened, but he slid his arms around that lithe body and held her to him.

“How you feeling, pet?” He asked, stroking her back in a comfortingly absent fashion. She smelled nice. He didn’t have a lot of experience waking up with women. The few whores he’d found willing to bed him never hung out all night, most of them tried to steal his wallet and that never ended well. It was probably a good part of the reason why he was so cynical toward women. That, and the fact that he’d never had a real girlfriend. He’d had a few dates, all visibly mutated women who weren’t particularly picky. Still too picky to get stuck with Mort who had a habitually bad personality and nothing interesting to talk about except the people he’d killed. That line of conversation had turned out to be a mood killer like nothing else.

“More sober than I’d like to be,” She answered with a groan, lifting her chin up to look at him. Eye makeup was smudged, he noted with some amusement. But as much as he would have delighted yesterday in pointing out her failings, today he just found it cute. Cute? He inwardly groaned. This wasn’t going to end well; he had to maintain some kind of control here. He had to stop smelling her hair and looking at those luscious lips and get out of this bed. A quick pat on her tush, (and oh it was so firm he just wanted to bite it) and he started to shift beneath her.

“C’mon Boom, we got work to do today,” Unable to keep the apologetic tone out of his voice. She moved to let him up, rolling on her back, the Bugs Bunny shirt that had seemed so innocent last night was bunched up around her ribs showing off her flat stomach. Before he knew what he was doing, he’d reached over to caress it.

Big brown eyes stared up at him, flecked with gold, he noted. Rimmed with dark lashes and last night’s mascara. He decided that she might be more beautiful without the makeup. And for the first time in his life, he realized he might have a preference. That he might have a particular taste in women that expanded past ‘easy’.

Calloused green fingers found her hips and pulled her closer, his eyes locked on hers. She didn’t shy at his touch or twist away, she didn’t even flinch. She just swallowed, staring up at him and he found himself leaning over her to press his lips to her pulse and run his hands around her back to touch that smooth flesh.

She let out a little sigh and arched up into him, her hand cradling the back of his head as he kissed down that slender expanse of neck. He had to stop this. He’d gone too far last night and he had better control than that. But she was so yielding in his grasp, she was so willing and so sweet, it was torture to pull away.

“Why’d you stop?” She asked, her hands on his arms, he realized for the first time. Holding him to her. He cocked his head to take her in, to try and understand.

“Tabitha,” He’d tried so hard not to use her real name, to keep that distance between them, “Tabby, we can’t do this.”

“Why not?” She asked breathily, grip on him tightening.

“You think it’s gonna get you ahead? You think you’ll get out of work by-…”

“No. I know you better than that.”

Sitting back to look at her, he mused over this new information. She knew him? She really thought she knew him? He wasn’t even sure he could claim that. His hand rested on her knee, the other tangling in her hair.

“We really can’t do this, love,” And he was up from the bed, cursing himself for wishing his hands were still on her.

He heard her swear lightly and swore himself, going to his room and slamming the door shut. Despite what she said, he knew she had to be playing an angle. She was trying to get him to cover for her with the drugs, or trying to get him to go easy on the workouts, or…something. Maybe she was just a nynpho. He could no longer deny that he wanted her. She reminded him of someone he couldn’t quite place, but he longed to be near her. It had only been a day. How could he have let himself fall so far?

Taking a long shower, he scrubbed his hair vigorously and jacked off to relieve a little bit of the tension. If he didn’t keep himself in check he could lose it. Standing on a precipice about to fall, and those brown eyes would be dragging him down.

He gave her another half hour before he was pounding on her door and barking at her to meet him in the training room. Same as he always had. Stretching out and pacing maybe a little more than he had in days past. Maybe he should see about being with a whore tonight. Someone who’d distract him. A brunette maybe, with soulless eyes and tits small enough to catch in one hand.

There was no help for it, he’d just have to get through this. He glanced up at the sound of her fidgeting near the doorway. Her hair pulled back into short messy pigtails, wearing a white and green sports bra and matching workout capris. The toe of her sneaker was ground against the floor as she watched him anxiously.

“C’mon Boom,” He murmured gently, “Nothin’s changed.”

Crossing the room toward the workout mats she nodded, but seemed so much less energetic than usual. That spite and self-involvement seemed to be missing from her body language. She followed his instructions to the letter without complaint, and she didn’t meet his eye, faltering when things got too hard, but without protest.

He leapt out to catch her, arms around her back. She was breathing hard and pale, a thin sheen of sweat over her body from the strenuous workout.

“Th’fuck are you on Tabby?” He demanded tiredly. He was so fucking sick of this.

“I’m not,” She told him, clear brown eyes meeting his, “I’m not on anything.”

It was then that he understood, and it hit like a ton of bricks that something he’d said to her had caused this change. And then his mouth was on hers for the first time and nothing had ever been so sweet. Her taste, her soft tongue against his, his lips bruising at the pleasurable contact. And she kissed back with everything she had, hands running up his shirt, moaning in his mouth as he lowered her onto the mat. His hands scrambled frantically over her, breaking their contact long enough to get it off over her head.

Then he got to kiss down her neck and over her collarbone and down to a plump breast. He loved breasts. He tried not to over think the implications, but his preoccupation with them, Mystique liked to say, probably came from never having breastfed. She told him on more than one occasion when she’d caught him with a dirty magazine as a teenager, that inside he was just a little baby who wanted his Mother. Mystique liked to kill the mood.

But these were only fleeting thoughts as he settled over a rosy ripple and his kisses turned to hungry sucking, as his other hand kneaded the overlooked breast. She arched her back, pressing up into him, her hands on his back and his hair. Gold eyes flicked up to take in her expression from where he suckled and it was priceless. She was watching him, face flushed with desire. Marilyn, he thought to himself, She looks like Marilyn Monroe.

Toad moved his hands up to her hips where he started to tug her capris down slowly, tongue laving slow circles around her nipple, before moving to see to the neglected one. He shifted to the side, resting on one arm to pull her knees up and peel the rest of her clothes all the way off, tossing them to the side, before leaning in to kiss beneath her earlobe.

“D’you want this?” He asked her softly. He cupped her cheek and turned her face to look at him.

She was silent for a moment, just studying him. “Yeah. Yeah, I want you,” She promised softly, pulling him in to her neck, his body over her. Pushing his shirt up over his head to display taut muscles and too much scarring. He was breathing hard in her ear when her fingers reached to work his fly, his hands braced on either side of her.

“I want to feel you inside me,” She continued, making him jump a little in desperation to fulfill that wish.

“Why?” He asked her, greedily. Not enough to just be wanted. God, he wished he could just shut up.

“You were nice to me,” She whispered, voice threatening to break.

He was just out of his pants when she said that and paused to cradle her to him, stilling her hands on his skin. “You needed me.”

Soft kisses and warm tears. His hands on her face, pulling her into his lap so that her legs bent at the knees and her toes dangled to brush the floor.

“I’m sorry, I know I’m not what you wanted,” Her breath hitching with each word.

“Hey, shh, how’d you know what I wanted?” He reached up to smooth away the tears.

“I’m a fuck up. I know that. I do too many drugs and I fuck too many guys…I just…I hate so much,” Her voice cracked with emotion.

“What’d you hate, baby?” He asked softly, displaying a level of intimacy and concern he’d never known he possessed.

“I hate me,” She whispered desperately, “I hate humans…I hate my father and everything he did to make me this way. To make me wrong.”

“I don’t hate you Tabby,” He murmured, kissing her shoulder, “I don’t think you’re wrong.”

She pressed her face into his shoulder, clinging to him, “I want to stop. I want to be better. I came here to change things, but I haven’t changed at all.”

She wasn’t a whore at all. She was a princess. She was lonely and tired and desperate for affection. She was damaged. But she wasn’t a whore. He just held her. Their clothes strewn around the training room, naked on the middle of a mat, but the sex forgotten.

“Tabitha?” He started slowly, playing with a lock of her hair that had come loose, “It’s a hard life, this. I can’t tell you that we’re not all fucked in the head, because I know we have to be. But you’re not alone, baby. You’ve got me. I’m no prize, but if…if you want me to, I’ll take care of you.”

Her head jerked up quickly to look him in the eye, “You mean that?”

“Wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t, love.”

Her head rested against him easily, snuggling in to his body heat. They spent a long time like that, just enjoying the other’s presence, easy companionable silence until she turned her head up to look in his eyes and leaned up to kiss him again.