Page 73 of Tease
Jared pauses and kisses my forehead. “Every night, I’ve dreamed of waking up to you again.”
His emerald green eyes pierce into my soul, and I know he means every word.
I toss my leg over his hips so that I’m straddling him, and I look down at his handsome face. My fingertips lightly touch the fresh stubble that’s present, while my bare, smooth pussy rests over his hard cock. I slowly glide it back and forth over him. “You have me now.” I grab his hand and rest it over my heart.
Jared’s hand reaches for the gift he gave me all those years ago. He brings it to his lips. “I love that it was always resting near your heart, waiting for me to come back into your life.” Jared kisses the pendant and tenderly places it back against my skin.
Fuck, I really want to ride this man right now. But my pussy is still sore from last night, so to give myself a few extra minutes of rest, I point to his chest. “Why’d you only tattoo your front half and not your back?”
One hand goes behind his head and the other rests on my hip. “I wanted to be able to look in the mirror at them, every day, as a reminder.”
“What do they remind you?”
“That there’s good and evil in this world.”
I look closer at his tattoos. His right pec has an archangel in plated armor, wings reaching out in full span, sword raised high, radiating sunlight and strength. Clouds part behind him with beams of light cutting across muscle. His left pec has a demon crouched in defiance, wings jagged and torn, claws reaching forward. Smoke, ash, and lightning ripple across the background, the ink jagged and violent. In between the two tattoos, their weapons almost cross at the center, over Jared’s sternum, the angel’s blade and the demon’s claw frozen just short of impact. The tattoos continue down each arm, and my eyes go to his hand resting on my hip.
Jared brings both hands close to my face. “This one, on my right hand, is a compass rose; it signifies guidance and strength.” I kiss the top of his right hand.
“Then this one, on the back of my left hand, is a snarling skull with hollow eyes. It’s supposed to resemble a demon’s spirit staring outward through my skin.”
The detail in this artwork is phenomenal. “How long did all of this take to get done?” My finger waves over his chest and arms.
Jared puffs out air. “Mmm, probably… somewhere around… fifty hours, give or take.”
I shake my head at him. “Yikes. I couldn’t imagine sitting in a chair, handling that kind of pain, for that long.”
“Eh, you get used to it. And it was multiple sessions, not all at once, silly.” He tickles my side.
I grab his left hand, and kiss the inside of his wrist while staring at him, my lips still touching his skin, feeling his pulse underneath.
“Fuck, how I’ve missed you, Kailey.”
He frees his hand from my grip, but more ink catches my eye. “Hey, what’s that one?”
Jared’s teeth sink into his bottom lip, while his other thumb rubs over the small tattoo.
I reach for his wrist but he keeps it out of reach. “Well, come on. Don’t be shy now, Cap Guy.”
“It’s my pulse.”
“Okay…” I grab my pendant and glide it up and down on the chain.
He raises his eyebrows at me. “Why do you do that?”
“Uhm, I don’t know. I guess it kind of grounds me. Soothes me. Makes me remember a time in my life when I was truly happy and loved.”
“This,” he shows me the inside of his left wrist, the same place he double tapped before his fight last night, “grounds me.”
As I look down at the tattoo, my eyes well with tears. It’s a small, beautiful, radiant sunflower, wrapped in barbed wire, and it’s bleeding.
“I wanted to do a set of your lips there,” Jared blushes, “but I didn’t want fake ones on me; I wanted the real deal.” His finger swipes my bottom lip, freeing it from my teeth. “So yeah, I tap that tattoo randomly, but especially before fights. Because the rhythm of it grounds me. I used to put all the anger I had from losing you into fighting, and now it’s led me back to you.”
“Why’s the sunflower like that? Like mine, but with a darker theme?”
“Left side, evil side, and what happened with us stemmed from something evil. That night, everything changed: you were tortured by the memories of your sister, and I was tortured by the memories of you, and the fear of never having you again.”
He flips us over so that I’m on my back and he’s on top of me. Jared licks the lone tear that has broken free down my cheek. “Dimples, don’t cry.”
