Page 70 of Business Casual
“What’s it like?” I ask.
She turns back to look at me. “What?”
“Your work. Why did you want to be a tattoo artist? Why not something else?”
“Because…” Her eyes flick up and then back down again. “Probably because I like the permanency of it. The idea that someone, somewhere, is walking around with something I made painted on their skin.” She smiles, bashful. “Our bodies are miracles, aren’t they? It feels like the best sort of gift to be trusted like that. An honor, really.”
“But you won’t give me a scorpion on my ass?”
Her face brightens again, a laugh in her eyes. “No, Charlie. I won’t give you a scorpion on your ass. Or a Looney Tune in the middle of your chest.” She leans back against the arm of the couch and looks at me. Eyes lowered, comfortable in the silence that stretches between us. It’s an honor to have this—this yawning quiet. This warm, settled feeling.
I’m aware of my heartbeat, steady in my chest. Abum bum bumthat I feel in the palms of my hands.
“Think about it.” I take another sip of my beer.
“About your ass?”
“Always about my ass. But also about what tattoo I should get.”
She considers me, seriously this time. “I’ll think about it,” she says.
“Good.”
That half smile again. She looks over my head to the window above my shoulder, then leans back over the arm of the couch to check the time on the microwave. Her shirt lifts, and I get a glimpse of the soft skin of her belly. The gentle curve of her hip. I know that skin. I’ve felt it under my hands, my mouth. I’ve had it pressed tight to mine, her gasping breaths in my ear. Laughter in the dark.
She had been so soft. Every inch of her.
I swallow hard and look away.
“I should get going,” she says.
I nod and stand, stretching out my neck. “I’ll walk you out.”
She snorts and grabs the pizza box, collecting the remnants of our dinner and clearing it from the coffee table. “You could probably spread your arms and touch either end of this house with your fingertips. You don’t need to walk me out.”
“I’d like to,” I insist.
She is right though. The house is tiny. More of a studio loft than anything else. Stella said she built it just in case anyone wanted to rent the place for a weekend on the farm, but as far as I know, I’m the onlyone who has ever stayed here. The first floor is open with a medium-sized evergreen couch dividing the living room from the kitchen, a small wooden table that’s currently stacked with my work stuff. The stairs lead to a small open loft, a king-sized bed and a dresser at the top.
It’s the back of the house that turns it into something special. It’s all windows, just like Layla’s. In the morning it’s nothing but golden rolling hills and neat lines of Christmas trees. The smoke from Layla’s off in the distance and the rumble of Beckett on his tractor. The house seems bigger then. Like it stretches all the way out to the fields and everything beyond.
Now it’s just inky blue night, the stars a blanket above. A reflection of me and Nova in the dark windows.
I could bend down and pick her up. Make it easier for us to close the distance between our mouths and chase that hungry feeling burning in my chest until it’s satisfied. I could lose myself in her, in the way she makes me feel, in the heat that I know is between us.
She still has some pizza sauce clinging stubbornly to the corner of her mouth. I reach for her without thinking, hypnotized by the look of her in the moonlight. My palm cups her jaw and her lips part as my thumb touches her mouth. She sucks in a shaky breath. Desire pounds out a drumbeat at the base of my spine. That warm, soft, glowy feeling in my chest tumbles easily into an inferno.
“Pizza sauce,” I explain, rubbing once. My voice is a low rasp, grit at the edges. My fingertips slip into the hair just behind her ear, and I let my thumb trace the curve of her bottom lip, helpless not to. Her breath shakes beneath my touch, but I don’t look at her eyes. I can’t. I can only look at the petal pink softness of her mouth and my thumb at the corner of it.
What would she do if I slipped my thumb into her mouth? Would she make that whimpering, wanting sound—same as she did the other night? Would she let me drag it from her lips and trail it straightdown over the column of her throat to that pretty red rose between her tits? Would she sigh my name? Would she like it?
Nova’s face tips up, open and willing and—fuck—trusting. She looks like she wants me to kiss her. I want to kiss her. But I’m always seeing the things I want to see, and I can’t trust that I’m what she wants right now.
I get it. I get what she said about trust feeling like a gift. Because right now with her looking at me like this, I want to earn that trust. I want to be worthy of it.
And I’m not going to push her. Not when she’s been so clear about what she wants.
It feels like trudging through mud, but I step away from her. I grab the pizza box out of her hands and hightail it to the kitchen, putting more space between us. She doesn’t say anything, and when I turn around again, she’s tugging her beanie on her head. She gives me a smile and…I must have imagined it. Whatever it is that just happened. Because everything is exactly as it’s always been between us.
