“Yeah she goes every morning and it’s not like she was complaining in fact she complimented the view.”

He snorted. “Nash doesn’t mind having you here he likes that you actually cook and that we don’t have to get delivery or bring stuff home every single night. Plus you smell good and always pick up the random stuff we leave laying around. If having you here got on his nerves he would say something to me and more than likely to you as well. He has no problem letting Rome know when he has over stayed his welcome.”

I leaned back against the counter and twisted the cap off a bottle of water. “So Cora was telling me all about your ink bunnies or tattoo trollops as she calls them. I had no idea just how far your appeal reached. Girls got work that they aren’t going to love in ten years just to spend time with you. That’s pretty crazy.”

“Cora has a big mouth and exaggerates but getting tattooed is pretty intimate no matter who the client is. When they leave they’re leaving with something you put on their skin forever. They trust you to capture their vision and execute it perfectly so sometimes that means you have to invest in them as a person to some degree. Some girl’s especially younger ones get really wrapped up in the process and turn it into more than it is. I have my fair share of clients that have little crushes on me, that come back for work not because I’m awesome but because they want to spend time in the setting but it’s my job so I keep it professional. I’m not going to lie I’ve hooked up with a client or two but never after work or never while I was in the process of doing a piece. Sex and work don’t belong in the same place.”

I sucked back some of the water and mulled that over for a minute. “Does it bother you that I don’t look like the typical girls you find attractive?”

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

I hopped up on the counter and let my legs dangle. I tapped the tip of my nails on the tiled surface and cocked my head to the side while I studied him closely. “I don’t have tattoos or piercings. I don’t have sex hair or wear clothes that are impossible to breathe in, I’m just you know, a normal girl and I’ve seen enough, been around enough of your morning after’s to know that I’m not what you typically gravitate towards and I just wonder if when you look at me you wonder if I could look better if I looked different. Looked more like you and your crew.”

He put the beer down on the dining room table and locked eyes with me while he stalked towards me. Before that would have made me nervous and panicky but now it made me get all warm and breathless. He didn’t stop until he was pressed right up against me, between my legs with our hips aligned in a perfect position to make me forget my own name.

“When I look at you I don’t see anything but you and Shaw, you are perfect. I don’t care what color your hair is, if you’re pale or tan, if you have makeup on or just woke up all I care about is that when I look at you, you always look back and see me. You’re beautiful inside and out and if you wanted to tattoo all that pretty white skin from head to toe I would be honored to put it there for you but if not I’ll take you all smooth and milky white any chance I get.”

It was heart wrenchingly romantic. It was the most thoughtful thing anyone has ever said to me and I was about to go all weepy female on him and blubber out how wonderful everything he said was and how much he meant to me, well either that or I was going to yank his clothes off and have at him right there in the kitchen. I was waffling between the two reactions when the doorbell rang and shattered the mood. He pushed away from me and went to collect dinner. I took a minute to get my composure back. The boy was potent all right and I planned to enjoy every single minute that it was directed at me.

Chapter 13

Rule

There were a few moments over the last week that had been so perfect, so poignant that they literally froze me with fear and made me want to run the other way as fast and as far as I could get. Sitting on the couch in my living room eating pizza and knocking back a few cold ones while I watched Sports Center and she messed around on her computer doing school work was one of them. Watching her just be had me suddenly feeling like I was suffocating in the rightness of it all and I had to escape to a burning hot shower before I did something stupid like ask her to marry me or tell her to take a hike. She just fit, she filled every hole I had in my life and the idea of her not being there, of it going away terrified me like nothing I had ever felt before. I didn’t want to rely on her, didn’t want to build a mountain out of what might just be an early in the relationship infatuation but there was something there that made me think if this all went away because of something I did or because she suddenly woke up and realized how much better she could do that I would never be the same.

The last few weeks had been amazing. I liked having her in my house and in my life and I enjoyed making a place for myself in hers. My friends all adored her and I think had tiny little crushes on her because she was just so oblivious to her appeal that it was endearing and hard not to fall for. I could tell when we left the shop that Cora was a fan and that meant a lot because she was kind of like a big sister and I trusted her instincts when it came to people. It was why she was such a good shop manager. Shaw was already part of my family and after I had given her the rundown of what went down on my visit home she had wasted no time in firing of a scathing email to mother letting her know that in no uncertain terms was she going to stand for that behavior and vehemently asking her to seek help. She had my back and not for the first time I wondered how long she had been fighting for me and I hadn’t noticed. It always made me feel like shit.

The quiet moments were settling and made me feel like I was building a foundation to something great and the passionate moments, the moments where she looked at me like I was a present she had always wanted to unwrap were enough to make me think I had found the one person that would never bore me in bed. The thing about being the only guy she had ever been with was that I got to teach her everything and Shaw had always been an A+ student. Whether it was fast or slow, gentle or rough, a quickie that blew my mind or an all-night session that had her running late for class the next morning there was no doubt that we were sexually compatible. She was starting to figure out her own preferences, like the fact she liked it a little rougher and more dirty than I would have figured her to but she also somehow managed to find humor in the act when it was awkward or not going the way one of us intended and I couldn’t remember ever having as much fun in bed in my life. I didn’t know it was possible but she even made sex better and the thought of any of it or all of it going away just made me want to fall into a hole and never climb out.

I was trying to shake off the fear after all it was just a nice night at home and Nash was gone so I should be doing my best to make her scream my name over and over again at the top of her lungs but the doubt lingered and I stayed in the shower until the water ran frigid and cold forcing me out. I ran a fuzzy towel over my head and face and secured another one loosely around my waist. I left my clothes in a heap on the floor and wandered into my room figuring she would still be out in the living room doing her homework and I would have a couple more minutes to get my shit together only the TV was off and she was sitting in the middle of my big bed sipping on the beer I had abandoned when I bolted earlier. As if that wasn’t enough she was only wearing my T-shirt that had the tattoo parlors logo on it. It looked better on her than it ever had on me and she was watching me with very serious eyes the color of new grass.

“What’s going on?”

I cleared my throat and tried to play it off. “Nothing. Why?” Only this was Shaw and she knew my bullshit better than almost anyone. She scooted to the edge of the bed and set the beer down on the night stand.

“Because you were in there forever and you already took a shower this morning. Something spooked you and you ran I want to know what it was.”

I considered lying to her, considered telling her that she was just imagining things but in the end knew that I just needed to come clean and hope that she didn’t freak out because I was so emotionally screwed up.

“All this,” I waved a hand between the two of us. “It’s so easy, so basic and thoughtless that sometimes it freaks me out. I’m not used to normal and ordinary so it makes me nervous. My life was always about trying to grab onto fleeting moments of pleasure, of feeling good and now I have that all the time with you and I get lost in my head wondering what I’m going to do to screw it up or how I’m going to keep it together if you decide to take it away. Sometimes I get sucked into my visions of what could happen and I have a really difficult time staying in the present. Watching TV with you, just being with you sooths something inside me that I didn’t even know needed soothing but it also makes something in there cower in fear. I’m sorry.”

She just watched me and I prepared myself for her to get up off the bed and walk out the door. If she did I was pretty sure towel or not I would chase her into the cold and beg until she came back. Instead she unfolded from the bed and came up to me on bare feet. My shirt covered all the good stuff but just barely. She stopped so that we weren’t touching but we were close enough to share breath.

“It scares me too Rule. I’m not used to ordinary either and I never thought I would have that with you, never thought I would have anything with you at all so it’s okay to get a little lost in your head as long as you come back and we can talk about it. I’m not going to ask you to give anything you aren’t comfortable with. People have done that to me my entire life and I’m sick of it.”

I exhaled a hard breath and unclenched the fists I hadn’t been aware I had curled up at my sides.

“What if I ask you to give me everything Shaw, what if I want it all? Won’t that make me just like all the rest of them?”

She made a noise in her throat and then broke into a smile that nearly killed me on the spot she was just so lovely and pure. “No because you don’t have to ask for anything, all of it is already yours. You’re the only one I’ve ever wanted to give it to.” This girl was going to be the end of me. She put a hand on each of my sides, one splayed over the angel one splayed over the reaper and I thought my heart was going to pound out of my chest.

“You have to promise not to bail on me when I get lost, Shaw. You have to promise to just wait it out until I can find my way back. I need to know you’re at the end of the tunnel when everything goes black.”

“I know how to wait for you Rule and I don’t mind doing it as long as you promise not to shut me out. I can’t do this with you, be so wrapped up in you and what’s happening between us if you’re going to close the door on me when it gets to be too much. My heart can’t take that.”

“I know.” But I wasn’t sure that was a promise I could keep. My default was to return to what I knew and that was distance and space so that I could protect myself. “I can do my best Shaw but I told you all along I’m not real sure how to do this whole relationship thing and I’m scared shitless I’m going to do something to screw it up.”

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