Tall, Tatted and Tempting(20)

I tilt my head and press my lips harder against hers. She’s soft and warm in my arms, and she’s pressed against me from head to toe. Kit starts to tug my shirt from my jeans and I raise my elbows to help her. Her hands touch my waist, and I freeze. I hoist her in my arms, wrapping her legs around my waist, holding her up with my hands palming her ass. I press her against the wall and she laughs against my lips. I can feel the sound of it through her throat, like a gentle hum.

Her hands skim up my chest between us, but I’m still making love to her mouth. Her tongue slides against mine and I press inside the cavern of her mouth. This is the first time my body will enter hers, and I want to take it slow. I want to enjoy every second of it, but she’s not having that. She’s hot in my arms, and wiggling to get closer to me. Her hands stop as she skims up my chest, and she withdraws her lips from mine. I take a moment to try to catch my breath, because I feel like I just ran a five mile sprint. I even have the stitch in my side to prove it. She lifts my shirt up, and touches my piercings with her fingertips.

My breath leaves me. She’s curious and I love that she’s taking the time to look at me. She’s intent upon her task and she explores my nipples, looking down, her bottom lip drawn between her teeth. I pull it free with my thumb, just like I have so many times before. Only this time, I lean forward and draw it into my mouth, nipping it gently. She rolls my piercings between her fingertips, and she’s going make me disgrace myself if she doesn’t stop. I pull back and bury my head in her shoulder, breathing harder than I ever have. This woman has completely undone me.

A hard wrap on the bathroom stall startles me, because I can feel the heavy shake of the metal partition. Kit looks up and says, “Just a moment.”

I’m breathing so f*cking hard that I can’t catch my breath. But I put her down when she unwraps her legs from around me. She opens the stall door and steps out, wiping her still-wet face. The guy who banged on the door startles when he sees how wrecked she is. She was crying really hard there for a minute. I close the door and let her talk to him, because I need a minute to compose myself. I reach into my pants and adjust my junk. I have to cover it up with my shirt, because my dick is reaching up past the button on my jeans. Shit.

She felt so f*cking good in my arms. I lean back against the wall and try to take some calming breaths. But there’s not much that can calm me at this point. The only thing that would make this better is if she came back in here and we finished what we started.

I open the door and look out. The man is gone, and she’s standing at the sink washing her face. She looks up at me, a soft smile on her lips as she sees me in the mirror. I walk up behind her and put my arms around her, resting my chin on her shoulder. “I’m sorry I made you cry,” I say.

She shakes her head and talks to me in the mirror. “No one has ever done anything like that for me before,” she says. Her eyes fill up with tears again, and I’m sorry that I came out of the stall. I’ll go back in there if she’ll stop crying. But I’m not leaving her. I can see that now. I’m not leaving her, no matter what.

“The lock?” I ask. She’s leaning back against me, and she wraps her arms over mine.

She nods. She wipes her eyes with a paper towel, swiping the black makeup from under her eyes. Her face is splotchy, but she’s never looked more beautiful. For that one split second, she isn’t hiding anything from me.

“The minute I saw the tattoo, I knew it needed to be changed. I’m sorry if I defiled your art.” She could take exception to my change. But I have a feeling she doesn’t.

“It’s perfect,” she says. She lifts my arm from around her waist, and looks down at it. “It’s perfect,” she repeats, sniffling. “I don’t know how to tell you what I’m feeling.”

I’m the one with the hearing impairment and she can’t tell me something? I laugh and lift her hair from her neck, and press my lips there. “You don’t have to say anything,” I tell her.

She turns around and cups my face in her palm, her hand stroking across my five o’clock shadow.

I take her hands in mine and lift them to my lips, kissing them one by one. Then I look into her eyes and open my mouth to ask her the one question I need to know the answer to. “What’s your name?” I ask.

She freezes. It’s like there’s suddenly a wall between us and I haven’t even let her go. “No,” she says.

I feel like she’s kicked me in the gut. I let her go and take a step back. “Why not?” I ask.

“I just can’t,” she says.

I nod and let myself out of the bathroom. My legs are shaking. The waitress shoots me a glance as I walk back to the table. I sit down. Kit’s still in the bathroom and I can’t help but wonder if she’s ever going to come out. Her guitar is still under the table. So, she has to come back, right?





Emily



I lean heavily on my palms, putting all my weight on the bathroom countertop. My pulse is pounding so loudly that I can hear it in my ears, and drawing in a deep breath is burning my lungs like someone has set a fire inside them. Perhaps that’s what he did. Or maybe he’d just shaken the pieces of me loose and now my body had to work to put me back together.

Either way, I feel like someone has torn me into two pieces. There’s the one piece of me that wants to give Logan everything he wants. It’s the piece that so very desperately wants to bare my soul to him, to tell him all of my problems. He would take them inside himself and then breathe them back out, and all my problems would vanish like in The Green Mile. I know he would. But my problems are too big for him. They’d eat him alive. And I can’t let that happen. Because there’s the other piece of me that knows I need to run like hell. I need to leave him before I hurt him.