by Eden Bradley
She wanted him to tattoo her again, a large piece this time. She knew he would do it, as soon as she found a design she wanted. God, to feel the needle on her skin again…
She shifted in her chair, crossed her legs against the ache that started there. She sighed, sipped her tea and opened her laptop. She needed to get some work done today, so she would be free to be with Tristan tonight. He’d definitely edged into her writing time, but Sophie found she was more disciplined about it now, using her daytime hours more efficiently.
She opened her document, tried to focus on the words on the screen, forcing her mind away from thoughts of Tristan. She knew she would see him tonight. She saw him every night. Still, she could hardly wait.
A knock at her door made her jump, wondering if it could be him coming back already. She got up and opened the door.
“Hey there.” Crystal stood in the hall, her dark hair twisted up into a series of small, spiky ponytails all over her head.
“Hi. Come on in.”
Crystal moved past her, went into the kitchen and put the kettle on the stove, pulled a mug and the box of tea from the cupboard. “So Sophie, things must be getting pretty serious with you and Tristan. I’ve hardly seen you in weeks.”
Sophie smiled. She couldn’t help it. “Yeah, well, we see each other a lot.”
Crystal flopped into the other chair at the small kitchen table. “No kidding.” She reached over and grabbed the half-eaten toast left on Sophie’s plate and took a bite. “So. You gonna tell me about it?”
“What do you want to know?”
Crystal grinned at her. “Everything. Well, except that I am your downstairs neighbor, so I already know you two fuck at all hours of the day and night.”
“There is no such thing as privacy with you, is there?”
“Nope.”
Sophie sighed and took a bite of toast. It was cold. She dropped it back onto her plate.
“So?” Crystal prompted.
“What?”
“You seem pretty casual for a girl in love.”
“I am not…”
Was she?
It hadn’t even occurred to her to label what she was feeling. All she knew was that she loved being with him, could hardly stand to be apart from him.
“I don’t know, Crystal. He makes me feel…different than I ever have before. With him I don’t feel like what I’m doing is wrong, not in the way I usually do. Like this is good, us being together. That I’m good. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“That Catholic-girl shit.”
“Yes, I suppose. It’s more complicated than that. But love?”
“Why are you so resistant to the idea, Sophie?”
“For different reasons than you are,” she said quietly.
Crystal laughed. “Alright, I know. But you…you have this amazing guy. And you’re totally glazed. Why not just admit it?”
Why not? She wasn’t sure. She knew it had something to do with all that twisted shame she was still trying to work out of her system. But she’d never felt better than she did being with Tristan. It was right. He was right.
“God, Crystal…”
The teapot sang and Crystal got up, made her tea, brought it back to the table and sat down. “It’s okay that you love him,” she said.
Sophie nodded, her throat tight. She felt like crying suddenly. Crystal reached out and put a hand on her arm.
“It really is okay, Sophie. In fact, it’s pretty awesome.”
It was awesome. Awesome and terrifying and beautiful. She loved him. She did.
Relief washed over her, warm and soothing. And as entirely unexpected as falling in love with Tristan Batiste.
Her heart gave a hard thump in her chest. What would happen now? She didn’t know. She wanted to tell him. She would tell him, the next time she saw him. Tonight, she would tell Tristan she had fallen in love with him.
CHAPTER
Eight
Tristan leaned over the appointment book, looking at his schedule. Only one more client and he’d be done for the day. Maybe another hour, then he’d be with her again.
Sophie.
He’d been distracted today, thinking of her. Not even the sex, necessarily, which was always on his mind, present in his body. Just her.
Maybe he’d take her out to dinner tonight. There was a real hole-in-the-wall Cajun place he’d been meaning to show her. Food hot enough to burn your head off, but he loved it. The home-brewed beer there was some of the best to be had anywhere. And they had live music—real, old-fashioned Cajun music. Funky stuff, but he loved that too. Then he’d take her home and…
Fuck it. He had to see her.
“Henry,” he called out.
His manager appeared from behind the curtain leading to the back room. “Yeah?”
“Take my last client today, will you?”
“Sure. Everything okay?”
“Yeah. I just have to get out of here.”
Tristan grabbed his keys and his helmet from behind the counter, paused, then stalked back to his workstation and put his tattoo gun, the small, airtight containers of ink, the sterile wipes and some gloves into a small metal travel case. He walked back out and swung through the door. He’d take his bike; he couldn’t wait long enough for the ten-minute walk over there. His heart was pounding in his chest.
In minutes he was there, running up the old creaking stairs. She opened the door the moment he knocked, her green-and-gold eyes wide with surprise.
“Tristan, hi.”
That beautiful smile lit her face. Only a moment, and then he was on her, crushing her mouth beneath his. He stripped her bare while he kissed her, just swallowed her sweet mouth, pushing her into the apartment as he went. Then they were in the kitchen, somehow, and he lifted her onto the counter, shoving a plate onto the floor with a crash. He pulled back.
“I have to tattoo you, Sophie, alright?”
Her eyes were glowing, on fire. “Yes. Anything. Whatever you want to do.”
He spread her thighs wide. “Wait here.”
He got his kit out of his jacket, snapped open the case, filled the gun, pulled the gloves on. Sophie sat on the edge of her kitchen counter, naked, her nipples hard and dark, her lovely thighs spread, the pink lips of her pussy plump and open.
Fucking beautiful.
He yanked one of the small iron chairs over and set it between her legs, sat down. He touched her left thigh, and she spread farther for him without protest. When he pressed two fingers at that spot just below the crease of her inner thigh, only inches from her damp slit, she shivered.
“Right here. Okay?”
“Yes. Yes…”
He leaned in and touched the needle to her flesh, and she moaned softly. His cock was rock-hard. He could smell her arousal, could sense the damp heat of her.
Focus.
He began to draw the outline, a small dragonfly. It seemed to represent Sophie to him. Delicate, beautiful. It made him think of her eyes. Dragonfly eyes. He was done with the outline almost too quickly. He glanced up at her. Her gaze was on him. Her lips were parted, red and lush. She was panting. He couldn’t help himself. He pushed two fingers into her, watched her bite her lip, her eyes narrow, heard her gasping breath. His cock twitched.
“I’m going to tattoo you, Sophie. Then I’m going to fuck you right here on the counter.”
“Yes, please, Tristan.”
He smiled, pulled his fingers from her, went back to work. He used green and a little gold, dragonfly colors, and highlighted with some white, listening to her panting breath, feeling her shiver in pleasure. He knew what tattooing did to her. What it did to him. His cock was going to fucking explode if he wasn’t inside her soon. But this was too good.
He paused, used his left hand to press her clit, while he finished coloring the tattoo with his right. Just a few moments, but she was groaning, trembling all over.
The second the tattoo was finished he stood, set his tattoo gun down on the seat of th
e chair and pushed it aside. Then he was back between her thighs.
He unzipped, pulled his swollen cock from his jeans and stabbed into her.
“God, Tristan…”
She began to whimper as he drove into her, pleasure coursing through his veins as her legs wrapped around his waist. He ran his hands over her body, that pale, cool flesh. He couldn’t get enough of her. When his fingers skimmed the raised skin of her back, the cherry blossoms he’d tattooed there, a shock of lust and a deep satisfaction went through him.
“Fuck, Sophie,” he muttered. “Need to go deeper.”
“Yes, please…”
He was hurting her again. Had to be, he was fucking her so damn hard. But he couldn’t stop. Couldn’t get enough. Never enough. He had to have her, all of her, inside and out.
That idea filtered through the back of his mind, the small part that wasn’t in full-blown animal mode. That thought he’d had before.
Mine.
What the hell?
No, he’d think later. Now he just had to fuck the girl.
He rammed into her, felt the first tremors of her orgasm as her tight pussy gripped his cock. “Oh, oh…”
Her cries drove him over the edge, hurtling him into darkness as his orgasm slammed into him, pleasure driving deep into his body, his mind. He was stunned, blank. All he knew was her body warm against him, around him, as she whispered, “God, Tristan. I love you.”
His breath froze in his lungs.
“No, Sophie.”
He pulled back to look at her face. Her eyes were enormous. Her breath was coming in short, sharp pants.
“Tristan—”
“No. Don’t say it.”
“But why…?”
She looked dazed. Shocked. Hell, so was he. He pulled out of her, shoved his still-hard cock back into his pants and zipped up as she slid her feet to the floor, leaning against the counter. He didn’t want to believe she’d said that to him. He felt as though he’d just been condemned.
Fuck.
He could not handle this. He could not love her. He couldn’t love anyone. He’d fucked up. Again. He’d let it go on too damn long. Selfish bastard.
Again.
“Tristan.” She was pulling on his arm now, trying to get him to look at her.
Don’t do it.
“I have to go, Sophie.”
“What? Why? Please just talk to me.”
He took a step back.
“Tristan, don’t do this,” she pleaded.
He couldn’t look at her. She was naked, beautiful, in pain.
“I have to go.”
He turned and headed for the door, nearly ran down the stairs he’d so eagerly run up only a little while earlier, and out into the sultry New Orleans heat.
A week had gone by. Sophie remembered that other week of waiting for Tristan. He’d come to her eventually. She’d been surviving on the hope that he would do it again.
She’d called him, a dozen times or more. He’d never called her back. She felt like a fool for not having given up. But no matter that she understood, logically, that she should move on with her life and leave him behind, she just couldn’t do it. Their connection was too strong.
She thought it had been anyway.
She pulled the old woven blanket tighter around herself, curled farther into the sofa cushions. Outside was another gray Louisiana day, warm and damp with an impending storm. How many days like this had she and Tristan spent together, at Café du Monde? In her bed? She’d loved the gloomy weather then, safe and warm with him beside her. It had felt womblike to her. But now the weather only depressed her. It seemed to be a manifestation of how she felt on the inside, gray and…dead somehow. Lifeless without him.
Crystal had been up to see her every day, tried to tempt her to go out, to leave the apartment. She’d finally brought her a small bag of groceries yesterday. But Sophie didn’t feel like eating. She was too torn up inside, too pathetically desperate to talk to him.
Tristan.
God, she was a mess. The man had left, there was no arguing that. And he didn’t want to talk to her, or he would have called. But she could not give up on him. Would not give up. Why should she have to, just because he had?
Anger burning through her, she threw the blanket off. Fuck it. She refused to be a victim. She wasn’t going to let him walk away without explanation. If nothing else, he would have to face her, would have to come up with some excuse. She had faced down her demons to be with him. She still had work to do, she knew that. But he was going to have to either do the same or tell her why the hell he couldn’t.
The rain was coming down in a light drizzle as she pushed through the door of Beneath the Skin. It was warm and dry inside. She could swear she smelled the ink. Always pure sex to her. Just being there made her breasts ache, her sex swell with need. How screwed up was that? But now it only made her lonely.
Henry was behind the desk, leaning over the appointment book, as he had been the first time she’d walked into the shop.
“Henry, I need to talk to Tristan.”
The man looked up. “He’s not here. Hasn’t been all week.”
“What do you mean? Has something happened to him?”
“I don’t know and he’s not talking. He sleeps here. I saw him leave this morning. But he hasn’t taken any clients. I’ve been holding down the fort and, I dunno…waiting.”
Sophie nodded, said quietly, “I’ve been waiting, too.” Tears stung behind her eyes. “Thanks anyway, Henry. I guess…if you see him, just tell him I stopped by, okay?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Back on the sidewalk, the rain came down a little harder. She didn’t know where to go, what to do. She felt empty, hopeless. She didn’t want to go home, couldn’t face sitting alone in her apartment anymore. She didn’t even care that she’d forgotten an umbrella. It didn’t matter.
But she couldn’t just stand there, outside his shop, wishing he would come. It was too sad, too awful. He wasn’t coming. He couldn’t love her. Why couldn’t she just accept that?
Tristan…
She stepped into the street, crossing to the other side, walked along the edge of the small park there, past the lush lantana, the twisted branches of the crepe myrtle, the pink blossoms sodden with rain. All around her was the scent of wet pavement, the perfume of flowers, the dark green scent of decay.
Her hair was soaking wet, plastered to her forehead. She pushed it away from her face with an impatient hand. And then the tears came, mixing with the raindrops on her cold cheeks.
The tears turned into long, wracking sobs, and she couldn’t walk any farther. Grief poured through her, paralyzing her. She staggered a few more steps through the downpour, sat down on a wooden bench, not caring that she was soaked through. The grief came like a series of blows to her chest. Old grief, and new. She cried for everything she’d never had, for everything she’d never hoped to dream of, and had somehow found with Tristan. She cried because that was all gone, and now she was left with nothing.
Sophie had no idea how long she sat there, on the bench in the rain. She was too filled with misery to care. She was cold, right down to her bones. But nothing seemed to matter.
“Sophie? Jesus, Sophie.”
She looked up, through her wet hair, through the rain, and there he was, like some sort of wraith in the rain and the mist.
She couldn’t speak. Emotion flooded her mind, her body. She started to shake.
He stepped closer. “Christ, you’re soaked to the skin. What are you doing out here? It’s pouring. I saw you from across the street and—”
“What? You came to say good-bye finally? Don’t bother. I get it, okay?”
Heat worked its way into her system, the heat of anger, a pure fury burning bright.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I was going to say.” He dropped his head, staring at the ground.
“Do you want to tell me where the hell you’ve been?”
He shook his head
. She could see, even through the rain, even through the tears stinging in her eyes, the clenching and unclenching of his jaw muscles.
“I’ve thought about you every day. Every fucking minute of every day. But I had to stay away from you, Sophie. It wasn’t fair of me to stick around, to lead you on.”
“Is that what you were doing? Because you did a damn good job of it. I know we’re both completely fucked up, Tristan. I’ll admit to that. I’m just as fucked up as you are. But why did you have to do it this way? Why did you have to hurt me?” A sob welled in her throat and she fought it back.
“Sophie, I’m sorry. I am so damn sorry. I am screwed up. I’m a fucking mess, if you want to know the truth.”
She stood up, got right in his face. “Yes, I want to know the truth. So tell me, Tristan. Stand here and tell me to my face that you don’t love me!”
He looked at her, his eyes dark, blazing. But he didn’t say a word.
“You can’t do it, can you?” she asked quietly.
“Fuck, Sophie—”
“Just tell me. Tell me you love me, or tell me you don’t. But don’t stand here and say nothing, like that’s some sort of viable alternative, because it’s not.”
His eyes went a shade darker, bore into her. Through gritted teeth he said, “I love you, Sophie.”
“God.” The tears came, hot on her cheeks. “Then why did you leave?”
“Because I don’t know how to love anyone. Because I’m not…not fucking good enough.”
“Don’t give me that crap. We’ve already talked about it. No one is irredeemable, Tristan. Not even you.”
He shook his head. “I’m beginning to understand that. But I’ll hurt you.”
“You already have.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” He ran a hand over the short thatch of dark hair on his head.
She said very quietly, “I still love you, Tristan. Even though you hurt me. You can hurt someone without killing them, you know.”
He looked as though she’d hit him. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m still here, aren’t I? I’m hurt, but I’m alive. And you really need to stop talking as though I’m some sort of angel. As though I’m so much better than you. We are both totally messed up, Tristan. I can deal with it.”
