Work of Art

by Monica Alexander

  I dropped my head back and his lips landed on my exposed neck, kissing the stars of my tattoo.

  “Ryan,” I breathed out.

  “Shit, I love hearing you say my name,” he said between kisses, leaving barely an inch of my skin untouched.

  “I can say it louder if we go upstairs,” I offered, feeling very exposed in his parking garage where anyone could walk by, but there wasn’t anyone nearby at the moment, so I moved my hand between us and sought out the hardness I felt pressing against my thigh.

  Ryan groaned against my neck as I started massaging him gently.

  “I want to do really inappropriate things to you,” he breathed against my collarbone where he was peppering it with soft kisses.

  “What’s stopping you?” I breathed out.

  “If we go upstairs, I’ll have to stop kissing you, and I don’t want to do that.”

  “But if we go upstairs, you can take my clothes off.”

  “Damn,” he groaned and pulled back from me in one movement. “Okay, fine, I’m enticed. Let’s go.”

  He grabbed my hand and yanked me toward the elevator, as I ran after him laughing in excited anticipation.

  We weren’t alone in the elevator heading up to the penthouse in Ryan’s building, so he stood behind me, his hardness pressing into my back as he kissed my neck and whispered in my ear. Then as soon as the older woman who’d been riding with us got off on the twelfth floor and the doors closed, Ryan slid his hand across my stomach, teasing it lower as the elevator rose higher.

  “You don’t have any secret piercings I need to know about, do you?” he asked, his lips at my ear.

  “No, I don’t have any piercings down there,” I responded, knowing exactly what he was referring to.

  “Good to know,” he whispered, as his lips closed around my earlobe and he sucked.

  I let out a contented sigh, and he groaned. “I’m not going to last more than two minutes. It’s seriously been too long.”

  “As long as you can go multiple rounds, I’m good,” I told him.

  “Jesus, you are not the same girl I used to sleep with in high school.”

  “You’re right, I’m not. I have a toy chest now.”

  “Tell me you’re not kidding,” he groaned, as his tongue swept below my earlobe, and his hand traveled over my hip. “That’s just plain mean if you’re joking.”

  “I’m not joking. I’ll be happy to explore them all with you,” I said, as I relaxed into him.

  “I’m not just in this for the sex,” he said then, stilling his fingers that had been skimming along the outside of my thigh.

  I turned around to look at him, just as the elevator dinged and the doors opened to his hallway.

  “I know you’re not, but I prefer to make sex fun, so I’m hoping you’ll be up for that.”

  I knew it was risky to ask, but if he wanted to be with me, he should know that I was a little more adventurous in bed than I’d been when I was a teenager.

  He lifted his hand to my chin, turned me around and captured my lips with his. “I will try anything you want me to, but I’ll warn you, it’s been a while since I’ve been with anyone who was into mixing things up.”

  I stepped back from him. “Well, that’s unfortunate for you.”

  “Don’t I know it,” he said, trailing after me as I left the elevator.

  Chapter Thirty

  Ryan

  As soon as the door to my condo closed behind us, Harper jumped up and wrapped her legs around my waist. She was kissing me as I walked us toward the bedroom, and I still couldn’t believe this was happening.

  She was everything I’d ever wanted, wrapped in a hot, sexy ball, and the best part was, she loved me. She loved me, and she wanted to be with me. And I was floating on a freaking cloud. I could not wait to start living my life with her, but first, I planned to ravage her for a few hours. Then I would take her on a proper date.

  When we reached my bedroom, she hopped down and reached back to unzip her short dress, and I watched it fall to the floor, mesmerized by what she was doing to me. I crossed the room to her in two strides, picked her up and tossed her back on the bed before kicking off my shoes and descending on top of her. If she wanted adventure, I’d give it to her.

  I let my mouth fall on her neck and kissed and sucked and licked every inch of her skin I could find, but first I settled on her star tattoo, because ever since I’d seen it, I’d wanted to follow the trail. The stars ended right under her collarbone, but each star was touched by my lips before I moved on, just like I’d done a few minutes earlier, knowing it would become one of my favorite places to kiss her. When I pulled away for a second, she leaned up and reached back to undo her strapless bra, letting her perfect breasts fall free. I brought my mouth down on one, sucking it in and biting it tenderly.

  “Oh, Ryan,” she cried out, as her head fell back, and I visibly reacted at the sound of her voice wrapped around my name in ecstasy.

  I started to kiss my way down her stomach, my lips pressing against her and my tongue tasting her skin that was inked in several places near her ribcage. I paused and looked down at her tattoos.

  “You are so fucking sexy,” I growled against her, my lips brushing her soft skin, as I kissed each spot where she was inked all the way down until I couldn’t go any further.

  When I got to the top of her panties, she stopped me. I looked up at her in question.

  “Take off your clothes,” she commanded, her eyes hooded. “I want to see you.”

  I stood slowly and faced her where she lay sprawled on the bed in front of me, looking more beautiful than she ever had in her life. She watched me intensely as I unbuttoned my collared shirt slowly, teasingly. I finally let it fall to the floor and moved my hands to the button of my shorts as her tongue darted out and ran across her upper lip. As if to entice me further, she reached for her barely there panties, and slow slid them off, tossing them at my feet.

  Then she crawled up toward my pillows, so I followed and lay down next to her so we were face-to-face. She leaned forward and kissed me for a few seconds before pulling back to appraise me.

  “I haven’t been this happy in so long,” she said sweetly, and I couldn’t help the grin that spread across my face. She’d so seamlessly switched from sexy to endearing, and I loved that she could do that in one breath.

  “Really?”

  She shrugged nonchalantly. “It must mean you’re my soul mate.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said, unable to hide the laughter in my voice.

  She laughed with me, so I wrapped my arms around her and heaved her on top of me.

  “Yeah. It’s cheesy, I know,” she said, looking down at me with such an adorable look on her face, her eyes shining. “But it’s how I feel. So deal with it.”

  “Hey, I’m cool with it,” I said casually, as if I didn’t want to jump up and pump my fist in the air. This girl had me wrapped so far around her finger it wasn’t even funny.

  Then, as if the mood in the room shifted again, she sat up so she was straddling me. Her long hair flowed over her shoulders as she gazed down at me with a small smile on her face.

  I reached out to push her hair back and run my fingertips over her star tattoo. “You are even more beautiful than I ever expected.”

  “Do you like my ink?” she asked, seeming bashful all of a sudden.

  I nodded. “I love it. You’re like beautiful work of art. I actually feel sort of like I can’t compete.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, as she ran her hands up the planes of my chest. “You have the most amazing body.”

  “Yeah, but you like artwork, and I don’t have any. Maybe I should let you decorate me. I’ll be your blank canvas.”

  She grinned and then said, “Nah. I’ve never been a fan of guys with tons of tattoos. I know it’s super-hypocritical, especially considering what I do for a living, but I’ve always liked preppy guys with one or two tats max. And I’d never ask you to get one if it wasn’t what
you wanted.”

  I let my gaze wander all over her body, taking in the artwork decorating her stomach and ribs, and then a solo tattoo on her hip caught my eye. I reached out to touch it, following the trail of the rosary that wove in and out of the dates and around the letter ‘T’ before trailing down her thigh.

  “What’s this?” I asked, already knowing what it was.

  “My favorite tattoo,” she said. “I didn’t tell you about it when you asked, because I figured it might be too much, but I got it after Tyler died.”

  I reached my hand out and splayed it flat against her stomach, imagining what it would have looked like toward the end of her pregnancy, swollen and round.

  “What?” she asked, as she looked down at my hand.

  “Nothing. I was just thinking about what you would have looked like pregnant. It’s hard to imagine with how flat your stomach is.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You would not have wanted to see that. I was huge. And you should have seen my stomach right after. Not pretty.”

  I smiled up at her. “I’m sure you were gorgeous. Besides, I wouldn’t have cared about that.”

  She returned my smile. “No, you wouldn’t have cared. You always did love me for me, Ryan.”

  “I still too,” I said, moving my hand down to her tattoo again. “I want one. I want a Tyler tattoo.”

  “You do?”

  I nodded. “Yes. I want something that commemorates our son. Will you design something for me?”

  She was eyeing me speculatively, almost as if she didn’t believe me, but I could see a light behind her eyes, and I knew I’d said something she liked. “Where do you want it?”

  “I was thinking about my shoulder blade.”

  She nodded. “Okay, I’ll see what I can come up with.”

  Then I pulled her down so I could kiss her again, holding her tight to my chest, never wanting to let her go. When she pulled back up, she rocked her hips just enough to let me know what she was thinking, and I couldn’t agree more. I’d wanted to bury myself inside her from the moment I saw her again.

  “I got tested three months ago,” she said then, catching me off-guard. “And I’m on the pill.”

  Shit. I had not planned on having sex tonight, so I didn’t have any protection.

  She rocked against my growing erection again. “Are you clean?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I got tested back in January, but I’ve had sex since then.”

  “With Trish?”

  I nodded, hating that we were talking about someone I used to sleep with while we were naked in my bed. I hoped she wasn’t imagining me and Trish together in the same bed, and I suddenly wanted to replace all of the memories I could with Harper.

  “Yeah, with Trish.”

  “Did she get tested too? Was she clean?”

  I nodded. It had been an agreement we’d made when we’d gotten engaged. Trish knew about my history, and she wouldn’t let me do anything without protection until I got tested, so I’d agreed. I hated condoms.

  “Good,” Harper said, as she rose up and wrapped her hand around me before lowering herself back down, taking me as deep as she could. Then she smiled.

  “Are you always this aggressive in bed?” I asked her.

  She nodded. “Pretty much. Can you handle it?”

  “Can you?” I asked, as I wrapped my arms around her and rolled us so I was on top and could look into her eyes. I grinned. “I like to take charge too.”

  “Then have at it,” she challenged me, as she wrapped her legs around my waist and pulled me deeper.

  I groaned. “You’ll be the death of me, seriously,” I said, as I started to move inside her. She felt like coming home.

  She chuckled. “This is nothing. Just wait until we get back to my place. I’ll show you some things.”

  “You’re not into kinky shit like animal costumes and role playing, are you?” I asked, really hoping I was not overstepping my bounds and that she wasn’t going to ask me to dress up like a woman and reverse roles, because I could be kinky, but I had my limits.

  She laughed. “Uh, no. I just like a little variety and some light bondage from time to time, but there’s also something incredibly fulfilling about just being with a man who loves you. If I remember correctly, we had some pretty amazing sex back in high school, and there were no toys involved.”

  She ran her hands up my back, splaying them flat against my shoulder blades.

  “It was pretty amazing,” I agreed. “And quite honestly, I can’t imagine sex with you not being amazing. But we can spice it up if you want.”

  She brought her hips up to meet me in a rhythmic movement. “Maybe sometimes. But then again, there’s nothing like making love to the person who holds your heart.”

  I brought my lips down to kiss her. “Baby, you’ve had my heart since the first day we met.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Harper

  I woke up the next morning with Ryan’s arms wrapped around me, holding me against his chest and breathed a contented sigh. A part of me was afraid that I’d made a hasty decision the day before when I’d told him how I felt and came back to his place with him, and I was glad to know that my feelings hadn’t changed in the light of a new day. I still loved him, and there was nowhere else I wanted to be in that moment, or for the rest of my life.

  Ryan’s lips met my neck a few seconds later. “Good morning,” he mumbled against my skin.

  “Good morning.”

  “I feel like the luckiest guy on the goddamn planet,” he said, squeezing me tighter. “Can I keep you here in my bed forever?”

  Yes, please.

  I laughed. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You promise, because yesterday sort of felt too good to be true.”

  I turned to face him, brushing his blond hair off of his forehead. “I love you just as much as I did last night, and I have a feeling that’s going to be something I’ll feel for a long time.”

  “I hope you feel that way forever.”

  I leaned forward and kissed him. “I think there’s a very good possibility of that.”

  He pulled me close and tucked me into his chest, his warmth enveloping me and making me feel safe and comforted. I’d never felt like that with a man before, and it was such an amazing feeling.

  “I love you, Harper Connelly,” he said softly.

  I kissed his chest. “I love you too, Ryan. So much.”

  “Do you have anywhere you need to be?” he asked me.

  “Nope, I’m all yours.”

  “Mine,” he said, and it made me smile. I liked that he was claiming me.

  “Yours.”

  “Forever.”

  “Forever,” I repeated.

  “Can I make you breakfast?”

  “Sure, but let’s sleep more first,” I said just wanting to drift back to sleep. It was so cozy in his arms and under his covers that smelled like him.

  “And then can we spend the day together?”

  I smiled. “I’d like that. As long as you’ll let me go home and change first.”

  “I can do that, but can you shower here?”

  “I guess.”

  He hugged me tighter. “Good, because I have a really amazing shower that I’d really like to explore with you.”

  I laughed. “Sounds wonderful.”

  * * *

  An hour later, we finally got out of bed and made our way into the kitchen where Ryan sat me at the table with a glass of orange juice while he busied himself making coffee, pancakes and bacon. I watched him cook, imagining doing it every day for the rest of forever, and it made me so happy. The only thing that could have made it perfect would have been if our son was with us. He’d have been ten, and I could only imagine what he would look like and how much he would adore his father.

  “What are you thinking about?” Ryan asked then, as he set a cup of coffee in front of me and kissed my lips. “For the record, I will never get tired of doing that.”

 
“Me neither, so you’d better not stop.”

  “No way.” He grinned. “You seemed miles away. Where were you?”

  I shook my head. “I was thinking about Tyler. I think about him a lot.”

  He nodded. “Me too.”

  The silence between us was palpable as we were each lost in our own thoughts.

  “I was thinking,” Ryan said, as he went back to the stove to tend to the sizzling bacon. “Could we maybe go visit him?”

  I looked up in surprise. “You want to?”

  He nodded his head a few times but didn’t look at me. “Yes, I’d like to, very much.”

  I stood, walked over to him and wrapped my arms around his bare waist. I pressed my lips to his back and rested my head between his shoulder blades. “We can go today.”

  “Okay,” Ryan said, and I thought he might have been crying, so I let him have his moment and just kept my arms around him. Lord knows I’d had my share of tears over the years.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Ryan

  Harper drove us to the cemetery in North Beach, and all I could think when we pulled in was that my son had been so close by for the past year, and I never even knew it.

  She took my hand as we made our way through the headstones, over the freshly cut grass, her other hand holding a bouquet of flowers. I glanced at some of the names and dates of the headstones we passed, but none of them were as young as Tyler had been, and my hand involuntarily gripped Harper’s hand tighter. She squeezed it back.

  When we were halfway across the cemetery, she stopped just under the shade of a big oak tree, and I looked down to see the headstone that took my breath away. There was his name in block letters and the date he was born, February 11th. Then following it was the date he died, April 26th. He was just over three years old.

  I tried to think back on what I’d been doing on February 11th ten years earlier, and I couldn’t remember. I’d been at Yale. Harper had told me he’d been born in the late afternoon, so I’d probably been in class when my son was taking his first breath. And three years later on April 26th, I’d been getting ready to graduate. I’d finished my entire degree in the time that Harper had birthed our child, raised him, loved him, held his hand when he was sick, and ultimately buried him, and I never fucking knew about any of it.