eyes isn’t bitterness or hurt. It’s an ache, for sure.
But a good one.
“Not really.” He shakes his head and looks up at me, eyes brilliant and sure. “Not for what happened after. In the hospital, at home. I want to know.” His voice is so soft that I can hardly make out the words, “I need to know.”
I reach out to touch his cheek, cupping it in my palm. “Are you sure?”
I ask, because it’s ugly and I know it’ll stab him in the heart, but he nods and says, “I’m sure.”
I take a deep breath. “Will you tell me about yours, too?” I ask, thumb rasping against the stubble covering his jaw. “Where you’ve been?”
“If you want.”
“I do,” I say, taking the hand he has on my hip. I tug, reluctantly explaining, “Eastside’s softball bleachers weren’t very friendly to my back. Can we just…” I nod toward the bed.
His eyes follow and he nods, standing to follow me to the bed. He perches on the edge, untying his shoes, and leaving them there, lined up perfectly, laces tucked inside. “Do your parents come to check on you?”
I watch his gaze ping nervously to the door. “Once I’m in bed for the night, they generally leave me be. How about you? Where’s your dad?”
He scoots up against the pillows, stretching out next to me. “God knows.” He wedges his arm beneath his head, eyes fixed on my ceiling. “Probably some hot date. How the hell he manages to pull so much trim is beyond me.”
“Trim?”
He looks at me. His mouth is pressed into a thin line, but his eyes are smiling. “You know, tail? Pussy?”
“Oh.” My face heats, but once his smile finally breaks to the surface, I can’t help but bury a laugh into my hands.
He tugs a hand away from my face, dimples shining at me. “You’re so fucking cute, sometimes it kills me.”
I playfully bat his hand away, but something warm and joyous radiates from the center of my being, and he’d have to be blind to not see it. “The feeling is mutual.”
“Good to know,” he says, smirking at me. With his arm up behind his head like that, his shirt has risen up the scantest inch.
I ask, “Can I see it?” and reach tentatively toward his stomach.
He looks down, realizing what I’m requesting. “Can I see yours?”
Mine isn’t exactly hidden, but I lift my knee anyway, putting it on display. It’s pretty much healed, no longer red around the edges. He lifts himself up on an elbow to look, teeth pulling at his lip as he reaches out to graze a rough fingertip around the ink. He makes a couple of those shiver-inducing loops before his fingers start roaming out a little further, grazing up and down in slow circuits.
He whispers a soft, “Fuck,” and then falls back, hand pulling away. “God, that drives me crazy.”
“Yeah?” I ask, even though I know it does.
He looks at me, and then down his body, lifting an eyebrow. “Yeah.”
The outline of his half-hard erection is so visible through his sweatpants that it makes my mouth part in surprise. Reynolds McAllister is in my bed, with a boner. It doesn’t even feel real.
“Your turn,” I say, reaching for his waistband. He watches, but doesn’t stop me, letting me tug it down until the pitchfork is revealed, as if my hand isn’t mere inches from the hardening length of him. His tattoo is healed as well as mine, the ink settled in well amongst all his hard muscle. I brush a thumb over it and his stomach flexes, twitching. I push his shirt up a little, revealing more of his toned stomach. It’s just crazy really, how perfectly he’s cut. I get this crystal-clear vision of myself climbing on top of him, slotting that hardness under his pants right up against my core.
I groan, falling onto my back. “That drives me crazy,” I confess.
Jesus, when did it get so hot in here?
I feel more than hear his chuckle as he turns on his side, watching me. “Good.”
I mirror him, rolling to pillow my hot cheek on my hand. I blow a lock of hair from my face. “Seriously, I’ve never felt so—” I cut off, not knowing how to explain it without delving deeper. But that’s what he wanted, wasn’t it? He’s looking at me curiously, waiting. “When I was on the pills, I didn’t feel stuff like this,” I admit.
Gently, he asks, “Like what?” and tucks that piece of