“Right. Well back then, kids acted like I was an ogre or something. Like I’d eat ’em if they looked at me wrong. I already had tattoos then, you know. Not as many obviously, but I’d been marking myself my whole life, and I was working with Thomas by then and had some pieces I’d done on myself, and that he’d done on me. So there was that, too. Elizabeth Grace didn’t seem to mind.”
“You say her whole name all the time?”
I nodded. “Yep. That’s how she introduced herself. Elizabeth Grace. Anyway.” I fought the memories. “One time she invited me over. I wore a shirt to cover my ink. Tried to seem…smaller. Used my best manners. But her parents…”
“Didn’t accept you.”
I shook my head. “Nope. And she went along with it. She was only fifteen, so I got it then and I get it now. But she stopped talking to me entirely. Switched her classes so we didn’t have any together. Somehow—don’t know if it was her or someone else—but a rumor got started that I’d tried to force her.” I swallowed hard. “My team knew I wouldn’t do that, but the rest of the school believed it, and treated me like I was…I don’t know. Like I was evil. Like I’d done it. The whole community believed it. Parents included. People whispered about me.” I forced myself to release my fists. “We never even held hands. I was too chicken to try. Too scared that my giant fuckin’ hands would like accidentally crush hers or something. I was a fuckin’ virgin being accused of trying to force a girl to be with me. People whispered about it, the R-word. Can’t even say it. Said I did that to her, and I’d never even had the courage to hold her damn hand.”
“Jesus.” Her eyes were so soft, so understanding, so filled with pain for me. “Anyone who took six seconds to get to know you would know you could never do anything like that.”
“Yeah, well, I was six-five, two hundred and fifty pounds in tenth grade, with tattoos and facial hair. People were scared of me.” I kept her eyes. Held them, tried to be open, to let her see how much hurt there was in that story. “Your turn.”
“My dad is complicated. He lived with us, and he was around. He wasn’t a drinker. Didn’t hit us. None of that. From the outside, we would have seemed like an idyllic family. Mom, dad, five girls, nice house, plenty of everything. And in a lot of ways, it was. When we were young, Dad was great. Loved us. Took us out for things. Spent time with us. But as we got older, he just…changed. I still don’t know why. I’m not sure even Mom does, but I know it affected her, too. It affected all of us. So it’s hard for me to pinpoint what it was that left the psychological and emotional scars on me, but they’re there and they’re real. He stopped paying attention to us. To me. Was at work all the time. Didn’t really talk to us when he was home. Seemed like…like he’d given up on life. When I needed my dad the most was when he just sort of vanished from our lives, even though he was physically around. So I just…I don’t know. It put me into dance. Made me seek the approval and validation I craved in the audience. The judges. The coaches. The peers. If I could be the best dancer, they would love me. Getting into Julliard was me seeking that validation. Getting into the European dance troupe was validation. Making lead dancer was validation. Evening dating Rick was validation in a way because he was…he represented…” she paused, eyes dropping. “I don’t know. He was upper crust. Sophisticated. Aristocracy, basically, and I think on his dad’s side his family does actually go way back to real French aristocracy sort of lineage. I thought it would make me the person people wanted.”
I wanted to comfort her, to take away the pain. “You’ve put some thought into this, haven’t you?”
She nodded, laughing quietly, sliding a hand through her hair. “Yeah, I guess so. When you’re stuck in a hospital and then in PT, there’s not much to really think about or do, so I tried to figure out some things about myself.” She blinked up at me. “Your turn,” she whispered.
“This game is gettin’ awful deep, Cass.”
“Yeah, I guess it is.”
“What’re you after?” I asked. “What is it you really want to know about me?”
She shrugged, but her eyes told me the shrug was more of a delay than an I don’t know. She straightened, gazing up at me. “Are you attracted to me?”
I laughed. “What kinda question is that?” I reached up one hand, brushed the tip of just my middle finger across her temple, ever so gently, tucked her hair behind the delicate shell of her ear. “You know I am.”
She touched a tattoo just above my hipbone—a small piece showing a crow digging a worm out of the soil—and traced it, up my side. “No, I mean…I know you think I’m attractive. But…are you attracted to me, physically?”
I took a tendril of hair between my fingertips, wrapped it around my index finger. “Yeah.”
“Meaning, more than just thinking I’m pretty. You want to…do things. With me.”
I nodded. “Thought I’d made that clear.”
She shook her head. “See, I’m a little confused by you.”
My eyes followed the exposed line of her clavicle, to her breastbone, across to her other shoulder. Her skin was delicate and soft and warm. “Confused by what?”
“You’re sending me mixed signals. Right now, you’re almost touching me. I feel like you’ve almost kissed me. Like you want you. But you never do. And I’m just confused. Wondering…why you keep pulling back. Shutting down when things get heated physically.”
“Cassie, I…” I sighed. “It’s hard to explain.”
She ran both hands up my chest. “Try? Please?”
I closed my eyes, feeling her hands on my skin and wanting so badly to feel that touch everywhere. Running south, exploring more of me. My fingertips, three of them, dared across her breastbone again, and this time I tested her by letting my fingers slip just a little further down, closer to her cleavage; I opened my eyes, watched her face and expression as I gloried in the satin of her skin as I dragged my fingertips over the swell of her breasts, one and then the other.
“When I say it’s hard to explain, I don’t mean complicated. I mean it’s…hard as fuck to talk about.”
“Would it help if I told you I’m attracted to you? That if you kissed me, I’d kiss you back?”
I met her eyes. “Cass…” I turned away. Had to. I raked my hand over my scalp, tore my hair free of the ponytail and shook it out—prepared to retie it, but Cassie’s hands stopped me.
“I like it down,” she said, moving around to stand in front of me once more. “Talk to me, Ink. You can trust me.”
Fuck.
My brain was exploding. My body was on fire.
I was about to kiss her stupid. Pick her up and set her on the counter and kiss every inch of her body and not stop until I’d marked her. The primal, wild, demanding, testosterone-fueled sexuality I’d kept bottled up for so damned long was boiling up and about to spill out into an uncontrollable wildfire.
And that scared the shit out of me.
I couldn’t hide that fear in my eyes; couldn’t hide the fear of that need any more than I could hide the need itself raging through me—need for everything this woman had me hard as a rock, rigid inside my shorts, aching and burning and pulsing with need.