His eyes drop to the spot, face going slack. I watch as he stuffs his hands into his pockets, piercing green eyes taking it all in.
I wet my lips, explaining, “Because no one ever sees this.” It isn’t like the other times, where his eyes immediately dart away. He takes two steps into the room and freezes there, lips parting. “What do you think?”
“Me?” he asks, eyes flying up to mine before snapping right back down. His voice is husky, rough. “I don’t know.”
His eyelids are heavy now, and my thighs erupt in vicious tingles at the weight of his stare, this awareness of what I’m doing to him. I pull my hem up a little more, ignited by the way his jaw tightens. “You choose.”
His breath escapes in a loud exhale, eyes lurching away. “This is about you, V. You really shouldn’t let me choose.”
Softly, I ask, “Why?”
“Because.” From my periphery, I can see his fists clenching inside his pockets. His voice is quiet, accusing. “You know what I’ll choose.”
I drag my lip through my teeth. “Choose.”
We both know what I’m asking, and it has little to do with the tattoo. I’m completely twisted up inside as I watch him go still, eyes darting from the paper to my thigh, to my eyes, to the table.
He knows exactly what I’m asking. “Hand it over.”
I give him the paper, and although I’m preparing for him to approach my leg with the wet towel he’s preparing, I’m equally as prepared for him to tell me to lift my shirt. So when he turns to me, reluctantly approaching the chair, and rests a hand on my knee, I shudder out an exhale.
“Here?” he asks, pressing the paper to my skin.
It’s all I can do to stop myself from squirming under the light pressure. “Higher.”
He looks at me through his lashes, skittering the paper up an inch. “Here?”
I swallow and reach down, fingers loose around his wrist as I tug it higher. “There.”
His eyes watch this, and the way he’s clenching his teeth makes his features sharper, severe. “You’re sure.”
“Yes.”
He presses the towel to the paper and holds it there, thumb pushing it into my thigh. I lean back on my hands as we wait, watching him watch me. His eyes are all over them, crawling up one thigh and then the other. It’s killing me, the way the air is practically humming around us, charged with something heady and electric. I’m hoping he doesn’t notice how shallow my breath is, how heavy my own eyelids have gotten, but inside, I’m a complete mess of molten hot want. The way he looks, leaning over me, hand clamped around my thigh? I’ve never been so wet in my entire life.
We both exhale when he eases the towel away, peeling the paper back. A droplet of water glides down my leg and he wipes it away with his finger. I take a break from watching him to look down and see it for myself—a perfect little pitchfork pressed onto my inner thigh, six inches above my knee.
I don’t have to wonder how I’ll be able to look at this for the rest of my life. It’ll be a reminder of all the things I’d thought about before, but now it’s a reminder of this thing that passes between Reyn and I when our gazes meet.
I don’t think I’ll have any problem immortalizing the heat in his eyes.
18
Reyn
If this girl doesn’t close her legs right now, I might have to just walk out, or find a bathroom, or close myself up in the car and lose myself in some seriously deep breathing.
She looks like absolute sex, sitting there with her foot kicked up on the table and her skirt hiked so far up that a little sliver of panties is actually visible. In like five seconds, Vandy Hall took my top ten erotic moments and just swept them all into the trash can. I’m sure part of it is that I’ve been ragingly horny since stepping off the bus from Mountain Point, but the big picture is a high-resolution shot of her legs parting, those blue eyes watching me hawk-like.
She knows just what she’s doing.
My eyes zero in on this stray drop of water from the towel, running down her inner thigh, and look. I’m trying really hard to be stone here. Inside, I’m fucking losing it. I rub at the damp sweat springing up on the back of