Unbreakable (City Lights, #2)(90)

I watched Alex out of the corner of my eye as I drove. The look she’d given me, and that smile…It was almost…Seductive.

I brushed the thought aside, and fast, before I had an accident. I tried to concentrate on driving but the air between us was now charged. Like lightning was about to strike. The hair on my arms stood on end.

This damn song doesn’t help.

I’d always liked “Take Me To Church” but now the words were seeping into my skin. I looked at Alex, now curled away from me, eyes closed, listening with a look on her face that stole my breath away. Hozier sang of his and his lover’s gentle sin, and I thought of the bank. Of those precious minutes where Alex had been mine. That was a sin, I thought, but there was nothing gentle about it. And if I had another ten minutes with her, I’d sin again.

Mercifully, the song ended and a commercial—loud and obnoxious—came on. I listened hard to the car dealership ad to help erase the lyrics from my mind and cool my burning blood, both to no avail.

When we pulled into the bungalow’s driveway, Alex turned in her seat before I’d even shut off the truck’s engine. “It’s only ten o’clock,” she said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not tired at all.”

A thousand hidden meanings behind those words burst in my imagination.

“I was thinking we could fire up the hot tub,” she continued. “You fixed it, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. Sirens blared in my mind. “It’s ready to go.”

She smiled that sultry smile again. The kind that made it hard for me to breathe. “Good. Then let’s go.”

#

I started the jets while Alex went to change into a bathing suit. For my own sake, I prayed she bad a one piece. Or maybe a burqa. I watched then, in slack-jawed dismay, as she appeared in a black string bikini, held on at the hips with two tiny little bows. Her breasts were covered only with thin triangles of black material. She carried two towels tucked under her arm and two bottles of beer.

“Got it working?” She handed me a beer, ignoring or missing what must have been a thoroughly moronic expression of base lust on my face. She inspected the water and the steam rising from it. “Perfect. You coming in?”

I muttered something about changing and went to the living room to dig my swim shorts out of the duffel I’d been living out of since I’d moved in. What is she doing? What am I doing?

If I knew what was good for me, I’d call it off, plead exhaustion, or say I wanted to be up early for the test. Instead, because I was a raving masochist, I put my suit on and joined her in the tub.

“Feels nice, doesn’t it?” Alex said as I climbed in.

I nodded, grateful the water covered her up to her collarbone. But even that wasn’t enough. I couldn’t drag my eyes from the graceful curve of her neck, or the lean muscle of her shoulders from God-knew how many yoga sessions. She had dunked her head under the water, and her red hair—dark now in the dimness of the porch light—was slicked back from her face.

I couldn’t stop staring, though I’d noticed, through my fog of lust, how her eyes had taken me in as I’d climbed into the sauna. How they’d lingered on my chest with an unabashed hunger. Or at least I thought that’s what it was. Hoped that it was. When it came to Alex, I had a lot of hope and not much else.

“Your tattoo is really beautiful,” Alex commented, referring to the Santa Muerta art on my left shoulder. “But I don’t think she likes me very much.”

I took a swig of beer. “She doesn’t like anyone.”

Alex smiled faintly. “Can I see the other? On your back?”

“Uh, sure.” I turned my back to her, striving to keep loose, casual as she drew near. And still I flinched when I felt her fingers trace the lines and whorls of ink.

“It’s not conventional,” she remarked. “Very unique.”

I felt her fingertips trace the curve of the tattoo on my right shoulder blade: half of a clock with Roman numerals, like a half-moon, cradling a Greek goddess, a leaping rabbit, and a cloud shaped like an old man’s face, all sketched in black ink and artfully connected so that one image flowed and blended with the next. I felt Alex’s fingers find the only color: a red heart to the bottom right of the clock, blood-splattered and dripping.

“You drew this, didn’t you?” she asked, awed.

“Yeah,” I said. Her fingers were still on my skin. I could feel them, hotter than the water around us. “I wanted something meaningful so I drew my own.”

“It’s meaningful?” Alex mused. “Let me guess.”

I felt her fingers touch each figure in turn.

“Georgia is the goddess, Callie the rabbit, your father the man in the clouds. The clock represents the hours and days and years of your life, and the heart…” She traced the dripping blood. “Pain.”

“Georgia’s not the goddess,” I said quickly. “She thinks it’s her, because the lack of color makes the woman look blonde. But it’s not her.”

“Who is it then?” Alex asked, and I could feel her fingers tracing the goddess’ sword.

“I don’t know yet. My partner. Whoever she is.”

Alex said nothing. Her fingers kept going, down to the white seam where I’d been shot.