Tiffany…

He came back.

I don’t know what I’d expected, but that certainly hadn’t been it. I also hadn’t expected him to shut his mouth and to just pull me against him.

His silence had cost me dearly, and I didn’t realize how much I had begun to like him back in such a short amount of time until he had refused to even look at me, let alone talk to me.

It wasn’t often I felt like a dirty whore, but that had done it for me and I had barely made it into my apartment before the locks had started to blur as I’d twisted them into place. At the last one, the dam had broken completely and I couldn’t stop the tears from leaking out of my face.

I’d slid to the floor against my front door and had sworn to myself that I was done with hooking. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I needed to stick to dancing and forget about the extra money because there wasn’t any amount of money worth the feeling I’d had when Nik had kissed me. That, and I would be damned if I ever wanted to go through the feeling of the look on his face when he’d walked into the back room and seen me with that john.

So I sat on my floor, hugged my knees, and cried it out in my sanctuary, and no sooner had I gotten up to find a damn tissue then here he was, back again, knocking on my door. He had this look on his face when I’d opened it that was better than any ‘I’m sorry’ any guy had ever invented and then he’d pulled me into his arms and I lost it all over again for a completely different reason.

It was all I had ever wanted any man to do. I think it’s what any girl had ever wanted in a man. Someone who could, even without words, sincerely admit when they may have done something wrong – even though he honestly hadn’t. I knew I had, and it made me feel miserable.

“I get it,” he said quietly, shaking me momentarily from my hamster-wheel of spinning thoughts. “I get it, and I’m sorry I reacted that way, but I hope you’ll maybe talk to me.”

“What am I supposed to say?” I asked, pitifully.

“What’s in your heart,” he answered gently. “It’s not for any man to tell you what to say or how to act. Only you get to decide how you think or feel. I think that’s been taken away from you enough, don’t you?”

I pulled back enough to look up at him and he smiled down at me a little sadly, his fingers sweeping my hair out of my face, his thumb gently tracing the curve of scar in my cheek by way of silent emphasis. I closed my eyes and leaned my cheek into the little touch and told the truth.

“I don’t know how to do this anymore.”

“Do what?”

“Be normal. Be one half of an actual functional relationship with a man. It’s all so foreign and I don’t know what to do.”

“Ain’t no rush, but is that your way of saying you like me, too?”

I opened my eyes and fixed him with a look and said, “See, I told you.”

He laughed and it was a good sound. I shivered and he swung the door shut behind him. I automatically went to it and threw every one of the locks.

“Guess I’ll stay a while, yeah?” I turned, but he wasn’t smiling, the look on his face telegraphing loud and clear that he wanted that. That he’d like that very much.

“I was hoping you would,” I said, nervously.

“Come here.” I went to him and he pulled me close again, holding me, swaying gently. A soothing thing. He had a hint of a smile in his voice when he said, “Got some music?”

“Yeah, why?” I asked.

“Dance with me.”

I smiled then, and he let me go just long enough for me to go to my phone and pair it with the little Bluetooth speaker. I turned on something slow. He took my hand and drew me in against the worn leather of his jacket and the newer leather of his vest, which was still pretty worn. We slow-danced in the little space provided in my entryway until my tears finally dried and my heart stopped its racing. As my pulse slowed, so did my rapidly-spiraling thoughts until my mind was a quiet, pleasant, blank.

“Kiss me?” he asked, and I loved that he did. I raised my head from his shoulder and met his mouth with mine. It was the perfect kiss, deep and full of hidden meaning. A treasure I wished I could just run back into the dark with and cherish. It was a slow kiss, full of promise and heat; a heat that shimmered between us with sensual tension, sexual, sure, but so much more than that.

I cradled his face in my hands, the one side raised in lines begging to be traced by my fingertips, his tattoo something more than just ink under his skin. I’d never felt anything like it before. It was as if the lines were carved, etched deeper than that. As if his heritage were more than just displayed but were etched beyond muscle into his very bone, into his soul. I liked that about him. I wanted to know more about it, but I didn’t want him to stop kissing me. I didn’t want his tongue to stop its seductive sweep against my own or his hands to stop kneading my body through my clothes.

“I don’t want to stop,” he breathed against my lips.

“I don’t either,” I confessed and it felt really good that I didn’t.

“Got a French letter then, eh?”

“A what?”

He laughed a little and said, “A condom.”

“Oh, no.”

He made a slightly frustrated growl and breathed along the side of my neck, kissing me at my pulse point in a way that made me shiver.

“It’s not like I bring my work home with me,” I said half sarcastically, half defensively. “You’re the first man I’ve ever let into my apartment.”

He pulled back, dark eyes alight with desire, searching my face. Satisfied with what he saw there, he gave me a reckless grin and said, “I like that, makes a bloke feel special.”

I laughed slightly and he touched light fingertips to the corner of my smile, a sweet one echoing on his own full lips.

“Go get a hot shower, find the warmest whatever you have to sleep in. I want to hold you if that’s alright?”

“I’d like that,” I murmured. “You’re seriously okay with just that, though?”

“’Course I am, I suggested it, eh.”

I pressed my lips, swollen from his kiss together and gave a short nod. I really liked the sound of what he was offering. There was sex and then there was intimacy. I needed the latter like I needed the sun, like I needed air to breathe, and the sincerity in his gaze as he followed my movements around the room even as he made himself at home, hanging his jacket on the back of one of my little two-seater table’s chairs… It was everything I’d longed for.

Maybe I was letting myself be fooled like Delia seemed to think, but the look in his eyes, his easy posture… something told me to follow my heart and my heart was very nearly weeping in relief.