The Heart Principle (The Kiss Quotient #3)(21)
“Did you take care of them a lot?” I ask.
“My dad left when we were really small, and my mom told me it was my job to be man of the house,” he says in a matter-of-fact manner as he idly spins his wineglass. “But”—he glances at me, his eyes dancing and a mischievous smile hinting at the corners of his mouth—“I was no angel. I got into a lot of trouble.”
“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” I say, and I can’t keep the amusement from my voice. “What kind of trouble was it?”
“The regular stuff, skipping class, practical jokes on the principal. The agriculture teacher was a racist, and we thought it would be a good idea to salt the fields. Looking back, I regret it. There was the fighting, too. There was always fighting. I almost got expelled for punching this kid in the face after he tripped my brother in the cafeteria. His dad was going to press charges but dropped it when my mom made me apologize.” He shrugs, and down on the table, I see him fist his right hand, making the letters inked onto his knuckles stand out in sharp relief. “I don’t regret punching him.”
Acting on a desire I’ve been fighting since we sat down, I settle my hand over his and bump my fingertips along his knuckles. His skin is warm, slightly rough. “What do these letters mean? MVKM?” He smiles slightly, though his gaze is intense—I can only take it in split-second doses. I look away, only to return, and then look away again.
“Are you sure you want to know? They don’t represent my fallen enemies or anything,” he says.
“Do they correspond with people?” I ask.
“Yeah. My family, minus my dad. M is for Mom, V is my sister, K for my brother, Khai, and the last M is for Michael, my cousin and best friend.” He opens his hand and turns it so he can interlace his fingers with mine, a movement that makes my heart knock around my chest like a Ping-Pong ball. “I wanted them on my right hand because they’re important to me.”
“I like that,” I say, and I feel a sharp stab of envy for these people whom I’ve never met. No one has ever wanted to carry a reminder of me on their skin.
His smile widens in response. His gaze drops to my mouth, intensifies, and I stop breathing. Moving slowly, like he’s giving me time to back away, he leans toward me and cups my jaw with his free hand. His thumb brushes over my bottom lip, and the breath seeps from my lungs as I touch the tip of my tongue to his skin and scrape him with my teeth.
I’m worrying that was too weird, I’ve never done something like that before, when he closes the distance between us and crushes our lips together. His tongue strokes into my mouth, taking, claiming, like he wants to consume me whole, and weakness shoots through my body. I love the way he kisses me.
He pulls back, his lungs heaving, his lips red, one hand bracing the table. I guess I almost knocked it over. “We should take this somewhere else,” he says in a low rasp, urging me to my feet.
“Couch is right there. Bedroom around the corner,” I say, and my voice doesn’t sound like me. It’s husky, breathy, completely unfamiliar.
“Couch is closer.” He guides us a few steps in that direction but stops to kiss me again, like he can’t help himself, licking my bottom lip before sucking it into his mouth.
To keep from melting to the floor, I wrap my arms around his neck and press my body to his. He’s deliciously solid, thick and strong where I’m not.
His arms close around me, and I feel his hands smooth up and down my back, before gripping my hips and pulling me close, onto my tiptoes. I gasp into his kiss as his hardness settles into the cradle of my thighs. Inside, I clench with a pure wanting. I’ve had sex hundreds of times, more probably, but I’ve never ached for it like this. I can’t quite grasp why everything is different now.
My back meets the cushions of the couch, and Quan settles against me, kissing my mouth, my jaw. “You still with me?” he asks against my neck, and shivers race down my spine.
I can’t talk, so I run my hands down his chest until I find the hem of his shirt and pull it up. His eyes meet mine for a burning second before he pulls his shirt over his head and tosses it to the ground.
Thought fails me as I touch shaking fingers to the lean muscles of his abdomen, push my palms up to his wide chest. He’s scalding hot, but smooth, starkly masculine. I can feel his heart beating, his lungs rising and falling. The sight of my unmarked skin against the dense designs inked onto him mesmerizes me. There are crashing black waves with intricate detail like in a Japanese watercolor painting, a water dragon, wide-sailed ships. I trace my fingertips along the calligraphy that continues from his neck down one side of his chest, ending beneath his ribs. I want to know the story written in his skin, but I suspect it’s too personal to be shared with me.
Hidden in the waves by his right hip, my fingers find … a small octopus, and I draw in a sharp breath and gaze at him in wonder. “You have …”
He grins. “That’s the tattoo you want to talk about? Out of all of them?”
“Is it the one from the documentary?”
“Nah,” he says, smiling wider before he kisses my neck. “I got that one a long time ago. I like the ocean and sea creatures and things.”
“Are octo—” His lips part, and the wet heat of his mouth sears my skin. I forget what I was talking about. All I know is the feel of his lips, his tongue, his teeth. I arch closer to him, unable to control the sounds coming from my throat.