Page 31 of Heartache & Playdates
I swallowed over the lump of emotion and lust clogging my throat. “It can only be tonight. That’s all. Just tonight.”
The flare of his nostrils and the tension in his jaw told me that he didn’t like my answer. I knew there was a very good chance he was going to walk out of this room, and I’d never see him again. Still, I needed him to know what this was and what this wasn’t.
The first time we were together, I didn’t tell him I was leaving.
That was wrong. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
“I understand if that’s not what—”
I didn’t get to finish my sentence before his mouth collided with mine.
11
MADDOX
Peyton’s lipspressed to mine, was the only thing in my life that had truly made sense. When I was with her, touching and kissing her, everything in my world was right.
But something was holding me back. I didn’t have to be a genius to know that this was going to end badly. Peyton was involved with a man who she’d been with for ten years. She’d made it clear that this was just one night. I should have turned and walked out the door, but instead, I couldn’t resist kissing her.
She moaned into my mouth as her lips parted in invitation. Without hesitation my tongue slid between her lips and met hers. The second they touched every worry, every concern, every thought in my head evaporated in a lust haze.
Foreplay was something we were always good at. We’d had enough practice. During the six months we didn’t have actual sex I made her come with all her clothes on, with my fingers, with my palm, with my lips, with my tongue, once I’d even made her come just by blowing on her clit. Sometimes I’d get her off two or three times in a night. She was my playground and I loved exploring every inch of her. Her body, her turn-ons were hard-wired into my brain.
As our mouths melded together like molten steel, it didn’t feel like I was kissing someone I hadn’t kissed in two decades. We picked up right where we’d left off.
My hands cupped her chin, tilting her head up giving me better access. Every cell in my body was alive and tingling with awareness. Our kiss started out slow and exploratory. She tasted sweet, exactly how I remembered. I luxuriated in the soft, velvet warmth of her mouth.
As our kiss deepened, her hands fisted in my shirt as she tugged it out of my pants. Breaking our kiss, I quickly unbuttoned and removed the garment. When I did, she stared at me, lifted her hand and began trailing it along the lines of my tattoos.
The last time she’d seen my body it was ink free. I stood still as she took her time tracing the outlines of my work. I wondered if she was going to notice the letters that were hidden in the eagle’s wings across my chest.
“When did you get this?” she asked as her finger grazed over the beak.
“That was my first tattoo. I got it the day that the judge emancipated me.”
She nodded.
“Do you see the letters in the wings?” I stared down at her, watching her eyes search. “It’s like one of those auto-stereograms that you were always good at.”
“Oh the magic eye pictures. I love those!”
“I know.” We’d spent hours at Pier 39 at a booth that had hundreds of them racing to see who would find the image within the image first. She won every time.
She said the trick was just not to think, to relax your eyes. I could never do that. I looked at it like a puzzle to solve. I couldn’t relax my brain or my eyes.
When I decided to get a tattoo, I researched artists that were able to do stereograms in their work. It wasn’t cheap, but it had been important to me.
She squinted and looked closer then backed up.
“Oh.” The corners of her mouth tilted up in a grin as her eyes shot up to mine and then back down again. “I see it’s an M.” Her fingertip ran along the outline of the wing on the right.
“There’s a letter on the other wing.”
She studied the other wing and I saw the moment she made it out. Her lips parted and her lower lids filled with moisture. Her gaze lifted to mine, and she whispered, “It’s a P.”
Her bottom lip trembled. “But…you got that after I left. Why?”
I nodded as I brushed a stray strand of hair off her face and tucked it behind her ear. “Because I’ve always needed you to fly. And I put it on the left wing, so you’d be close to my heart.”
