“I thought there was something special between us. But you were only protecting me.”
“You think the only reason you’re here is so I can protect you?”
She nodded, her lip pushed out in a deeper pout.
He cupped her face in his hands and then waited for her gaze to find his. “You’re here because I need to be near you. You’re here because I couldn’t leave the diner last night without you. You’re here because I need you in my life to feel normal.”
I need you.
He sounded like a toddler with separation issues, but the words had flowed out of him on a wave of swear-on-a-holy-book truth.
“You need me?” Her gaze searched his face with all the thoroughness of a polygraph machine.
“I do.” He couldn’t have lied to her—about this. He’d already committed the sin of lie-by-omission too many times with her.
She reached up to him, placing her cool hand against the tattoo on his cheek. Reality shifted. Time got lazy and loitered along. He lost himself in her eyes—in the silver flecks swirling against the midnight-blue irises, like stars forming the mythical constellations aligning to tell their story—hers and his. A story of something eternal that had no name but was vast beyond time and place and reason.
A swell of silky heat effervesced through his veins.
Her hand slid from his tattoo into his hair. The vision, the trance, whatever it was, vanished and all he felt was the gentle tug of her hand on the back of his head, pulling him to her mouth.
The sweet pressure of their lips touching was a beautiful death—the ending of one thing, so another even more magnificent kiss could be birthed by their tongues thrusting wildly against each other.
The taste of her exploded in his mouth, permeated the air around them, surrounding him with the essential essence of her. Desire zinged along his nerve endings, converged, and swelled in his groin.
She wrenched his T-shirt from his jeans and slipped her hands inside, smoothing them up his chest, down his sides. His heart drop-kicked to his groin, back to his chest, down to his groin. He wanted more, more, more.
He tore his mouth from hers and ripped the shirt over his head. Anticipation heated his skin. Only her touch would soothe him.
But her attention wasn’t focused on him; it was zeroed in on his chest. The tattoo. He stood still, let her stare her fill. The artwork was complicated, not the kind a thing a person could take in on a glance.
He’d always referred to the piece as the Dark Seduction of Night.
From his left hip, an immense, gnarled tree ranged up and out over his chest, curling around his sides and toward his neck. Branches twisted and deformed. Trunk tumorous and knotted. Behind the bare limbs, a bloated harvest moon hung low in the sky. It was an eerily alluring picture, made more so by what was hidden in the design.
The trunk wasn’t tumorous, knotted wood. It was knees and elbows and shoulders. Bodies. Two of them. Male. Female. Entwined in an eternal embrace so impassioned that he almost felt embarrassed every time he looked at them in the mirror. And they were on his body.
“Who are they?” she asked.
“Us.” He didn’t know why he said that, but the truth of it resonated deeply within. Taking the words back would’ve been blasphemous.
She sat up, moved to the edge of the bed, and touched the tattooed outline of the male figure. Up the male’s calves, over his buttocks, his shoulders to his head. She caressed the male’s cheek as if he were in the image of a loved one. Damn, if he didn’t almost feel her stroking the skin of his actual cheek.
Goose bumps covered his skin. He was never cold. Never. But now he felt feverish and freezing at the same time. Skin chilled. Insides sweltered. Dick burning with a need for her cooling touch. As if she’d read his mind, she released the button of his jeans and wrangled down the zipper. His erection scraped against the metal—a perverse pleasure.
He stepped back, kicked off his boots, shucked his jeans. In nothing but the raw, he stood in front of her, not moving. He wanted this to be about more than just f@#*ing. He wanted this to be about her. About showing her the depth and breadth of his feelings, so she would know she would never have to be alone again. “You’re in charge.”
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Thanks for being a stop along the tour!
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