and secretly, I was hoping for a replay. Or maybe a do-over was a better way to go.
But honestly, I hadn’t been thinking about sex when I invited him over.
Well, not entirely, anyway.
It wasn’t easy to look at Jake and not think about sex. The guy was freaking gorgeous. And he had incredible eyes. And lips. And … his ass.
“Come on,” I told him, hopping down from the stool and taking his hand.
My stomach did another flip when I led him past Gil’s bedroom and into my room. I quickly closed the door and locked it—not thinking about it as I did. I was merely hoping like hell that Gil could keep it down for a while and whoever was in there wasn’t going to mistake my bedroom for the bathroom.
“So…” Jake said, peering around. “This is your bedroom.”
“It is.” How was it that he could make me feel like a teenager? Like this was the first time I’d had a boy in my room.
Well, technically, he was the first boy—er … man—to come into my bedroom. This one, anyway. Gil and Gavin didn’t count. They weren’t boys. Not like that.
“This feels like you,” he said, his eyes sliding over to mine, a small smile forming on his mouth. “You know what I mean.”
I nodded.
I watched Jake as he looked around. There wasn’t much to see, honestly. I had a wrought iron, queen-sized bed—which hadn’t been made since I’d moved in here. The scarred wood dresser against the far wall had belonged to my dad, one of the few things I’d kept after he died, other than the cabin, the motorcycles, and the sentimental items. The small nightstand beside the bed had been one I’d had since I was a kid. Other than that, there wasn’t much to my bedroom. I didn’t have a television, no stereo. Just an alarm clock, a phone charger, a stack of tattoo magazines still in a box, and a closet piled full of clothes. It was a simple room, really.
But that wasn’t what I wanted to show him, anyway.
The art … what decorated the walls… That was what I was proud of.
“Wow, Pres,” Jake said absently, his eyes fixed on the picture hanging above the dresser. It was one I’d drawn of Gavin. “That looks so real.”
“He wants to buy it from me,” I told Jake.
“I don’t blame him. It’s fantastic.”
It was a picture of Gavin working down on Sixth Street. One where I’d captured the essence of his true creativity when he’d been hard at work, his heart and soul going into the paintings he made. I was incredibly proud of that drawing.
“And this one? It’s similar to the one at the gallery,” Jake noted, pointing to another picture, this one hanging over the bed.
“Yep. Another of my dad,” I told him, a twinge tightening my chest as I looked at it. It was one I’d drawn of my father fixing one of the many motorcycles he’d restored. He was hunched over the bike, a wrench in his hand, intently focused on the part he was working on.
“And these?” Jake pointed to a collage of pictures on the wall beside the bathroom door.
“For a while, I had this thing about flowers, though if you tell anyone that, I’ll deny it.” It wasn’t my proudest moment, but I liked them, so I’d kept them.
Jake nodded toward my hand. “Is that where the inspiration for that came from?”
I glanced down at the rose tattooed on the back of my hand. I nodded. “Yep.”
“And the other one?” he probed.
I lifted my hand and observed the candy skull. “My dad bought me a candy skull for Christmas one year.” I absently smoothed my finger over the design. “It looked just like this one. I figured if I tattooed it on my body, I’d be able to look at it and remember that moment always.”
“I like them both. But you definitely don’t seem like the flower type.”
“What type do I seem like?”
His eyebrow lifted, and a sexy smirk formed, but he looked away, still perusing the pictures on the wall.
“You’re really good, Presley, you know that?” he asked, still not looking at me.
“I was,” I told him.
Jake turned to face me, closing the distance between us, those mesmerizing blue-green eyes searching my face.
“You still are,” he said, his voice low. “Maybe you just need some inspiration.”
“You think?” My eyes dropped to his mouth and I swallowed hard. “And what do you suggest?”