Bad for You

by J. Daniels

  His brows ticked up. “You talkin’ about fuckin’ or somethin’ else?”

  I shivered. Lord, his candor was hot as hell. It made my bones turn to jelly.

  “Honestly? I’m talking about fucking and the things that typically lead up to fucking we have yet to dabble in.”

  “Dabble in?”

  “Practice. Familiarize ourselves with…”

  A slow, sexy smile took shape across his mouth. I shivered again.

  “Okay, please sit down before I jump you and bypass the vital thing that needs to happen. I’ll be pissed if I don’t do this now.”

  “I don’t know…I’m kinda wantin’ to stall a little.”

  My lips parted. Oh, my God, was he…

  “Are you flirting with me?”

  “I’m fuckin’ trying to.”

  My heart fluttered.

  Holy shit.

  I dropped my head back and groaned. “Sean, please come over here and sit down!” I begged, squirming where I stood. “You’re killing me.”

  He really was. Sean flirting was now my kryptonite, right behind Sean shirtless, Sean smiling, Sean doing anything in my general vicinity.

  He was grinning still when I lowered my head and looked at him, and he kept that grin walking to the bed and taking a seat.

  “I had no idea you had such mad flirting skills,” I said, motioning for him to scoot back so he was leaning against the headboard. I straddled his lap.

  “Mm.” He caught my hips and held me there. “They ain’t that good if you had to ask if I was doin’ it.”

  “I was just surprised. You haven’t flirted with me yet,” I told him.

  “No?”

  My brow furrowed, and I leaned back. “Have you?”

  Sean’s mouth decided to blow my mind with this part smirk, part mischievous grin thing I had yet to experience.

  It was pure magic, let me tell you.

  “Stop it. I need focus,” I scolded, feeling his body quake beneath me with a soundless chuckle. Then I shifted back a little to allow me some space to write. Looking at his chest, I uncapped the marker.

  “What are you doin’?” he asked.

  I didn’t speak yet.

  I leaned in and carefully pressed the blunt tip to his skin where there wasn’t any ink, and wrote my first word in a slant up his right pec.

  Beautiful.

  “I have to apologize for something,” I said as I continued writing words on Sean’s skin. I dragged the tip up the side of his neck and in scripted print wrote Deserving. “I lied to you the other night when I slept over. I wasn’t crying because I’d been throwing up. I wasn’t even throwing up at all.”

  “What?”

  I met his eyes and nodded, then I wrote the word Important curling over his left shoulder. “I was looking at your tattoos while you slept because I hadn’t really gotten a chance to study them yet, and I saw those words, Sean. This one,” I stopped writing, and with my other hand I rubbed my thumb over the word Nothing.

  His grip on my body changed. It became severe. It nearly hurt.

  “And this one,” I touched the word Loser, then our gazes met.

  There was fear in his eyes. And they were suddenly wet with tears. My heart sank.

  I sat the marker down and cupped his face. “Sean, why? Why do you have those words on you? Did she put them there?”

  He tried looking down and away, he tried to hide his tears from me, but I wouldn’t let him.

  “Sweetie, it’s okay,” I said. I could feel my own eyes watering now. “You can tell me anything. It won’t change how I feel. I promise.” I kept my one hand on his cheek and touched his chest with the other. “You are not these words, Sean. You aren’t, and not just to me. You matter to so many.”

  “What are you writing on me?” he whispered. His eyes jumped between mine in panic.

  “I’m writing what’s true.”

  His chest shuddered, and he subtly shook his head.

  I let go of him to pick up the marker again, and when I did, Sean wiped his forearm across his eyes and cursed.

  I wanted to find that woman and slowly kill her. I’d drag it out for days. She would have an entirely new definition of pain when I was finished.

  Just as I was lowering the marker to his skin again, Sean caught my wrist and stopped me.

  We looked at each other. He was breathing raggedly out of his mouth, and his eyes were red.

  I almost tugged my arm back to toss the marker. I almost began to sob—I shouldn’t have done this. Sean crying was the saddest thing I’d ever seen and probably would ever see, and I was to blame for it. His grief was unbearable.

  But then I felt my arm moving closer to his body as he slowly pulled, and when the marked touched his skin, he trembled.

  “I don’t have to,” I whispered. “I’ll stop.”

  “No,” he rasped. He dropped his head back and squeezed his eyes shut. His hands were no longer on my body. They were curled into fists on the bed. “Fuck, just do it…hurry,” he begged. “Hurry before I can’t.”

  My breath caught.

  Not days. Years—I’d make sure she suffered forever.

  I blinked tears from my eyes and carefully wrote Worthy on his rib. I moved to his bicep and penned his value there, the other side of his neck, on his hand where Space was inked. I wrote the word Loved over top of it in heavy outline so it covered.

  I had to be slow because Sean trembled, and I worried my hand would slip and the words would be too messy to read, and I couldn’t have that. Even though I wanted to rush and finish so he’d relax and let me hold him, I couldn’t.

  I took my time, and it killed me.

  “Okay,” I rushed out when I’d covered everything and painted his skin with words good enough to touch it. I capped the marker and tossed it on the bed.

  Sean opened his eyes. His chest shook as he breathed.

  “Do you want to see it?” I asked softly.

  He didn’t say a word. He didn’t move. I wondered if he even could.

  “You don’t have to get up. I can show you,” I told him, swinging my leg over and sliding off the bed. I darted into the living room and pulled a compact out of my purse, then I rushed back to the bedroom and climbed on top of him again. “Here. See?” I opened the compact.

  Sean lowered his eyes to the mirror when I angled it at his body.

  When he read the word Beautiful, his gaze shot to mine.

  I smiled. “You are. Not just on the outside, Sean. You have the most beautiful heart. Despite everything.” I moved the mirror lower, over the word Worthy.

  Sean’s hands flew to my hips and squeezed.

  “It’s okay,” I soothed, because I interpreted his embrace as that reactional battle he was ready to put up at any moment. Sean was gearing to contest me. I just knew he was.

  But then he sat forward and dropped his head to my chest. His body sagged.

  “She didn’t write them,” he mumbled.

  I stroked my fingers through his hair. “Who did then?”

  “Me.”

  I tensed. “What?”

  Oh, my God, no. No. No. No.

  “I’d write them all the time when I lived with her. I got good at it. Standing in front of a mirror, I could see what I was doing. It was easy.”

  “And you got them tattooed on you?”

  He nodded. “When I was sixteen. Found a guy who didn’t give a fuck about me bein’ underage. He liked cash. I had some.” His shoulder jerked. “Words have been there ever since.”

  I hadn’t even considered the possibility of Sean doing this to himself, but it made sense. That woman broke him. She poisoned his mind. She might not have been the person who put those words all over Sean’s skin, but she’d been holding the pen.

  “Do you think they still belong there?” I asked.

  Sean paused, then peered up at me when I leaned back to see him. “Don’t know,” he answered.

  My heart stopped and startled to a pace again.

/>   “Before…yeah, I did,” he continued. “Met Val. Started thinking different. She was good to me. Good for me. I didn’t deserve her.”

  “Yes you did,” I cut in.

  Sean’s eyes lowered to a spot on my neck. “I was in the dark all the time, then she followed me in and got me out. I had her light. Had it tenfold when I was given my girls. I still fucked up, but I had them so it didn’t matter. I slowly got a lot of those words covered but not all ’cause I couldn’t. I’d still hear that bitch telling me I was nothin’. I heard it all the time. Then I fucked up all that good I had and lost it. Went back to knowin’ I ain’t ever gonna deserve another decent thing again, ’til you were in my ear and filling my head with shit.” He looked up at me. “I still hear her telling me I’m nothin’, but I hear you, and you’re fuckin’ loud. I don’t know what I deserve anymore. I got my girls. I keep catchin’ breaks. I don’t fuckin’ get it. I just know I don’t wanna be nothin’.” Tears filled his eyes again. “I’m so fuckin’ sick of bein’ nothin’, Shayla.”

  “You’re not nothing,” I said, pulling him into a hug. His tears wet my chest. “You’re not nothing, Sean. Not even close.”

  “Don’t quit talkin’ to me,” he begged.

  “I won’t. Ever.”

  “I want you fillin’ my head. I want it so fuckin’ bad.”

  God, his pain—it became my own—I felt it. And I knew I’d feel it for as long as he did.

  “You’ll never feel alone again. I promise,” I whispered.

  His whole body shook.

  Sean clung to me while I stroked his back and pressed kisses to his neck and shoulder. I spoke soothing words against his skin and into his ear.

  I’d never been held so tight.

  Eventually, we slid down and lay side by side on his pillow, watching each other.

  Sean’s eyes stayed red, but his tears were gone now. I studied his face while he seemed to study every inch of me. He stared like he couldn’t believe I was real and here, beside him. We touched and we kissed like we’d done after sex. I asked him to tell me more about his girls, and he lit up. We talked for hours. The steaks and chips went forgotten.

  After I showed him the other words I’d written, we dozed off, and I woke with his hands lightly stroking me.

  I expected another repeat of chaos and hard kisses after the flirting, and because we’d come together so savagely before, but his touch was feather soft on my breasts and the flare of my hips. Even when Sean nuzzled his mouth between my legs and I bowed off the bed, he was gentle with his tongue.

  But I couldn’t be tender or quiet. I couldn’t contain the cry that tore out of my throat when I came with my hands in his hair and my heels digging into his back. And when I crawled over his legs and explored him with my mouth and hands with determination to spend hours touching Sean until I knew his body better than he did, I took my time.

  I stretched every second.

  When I tasted cum, Sean gave up his restraint and pumped into my mouth. We both moaned when he coated the back of my throat. I swallowed and lapped at his cock, then I gazed up at him and smiled.

  He looked delirious with pleasure, and nowhere near his fill.

  Our noises filled the house after that.

  Sweating, breathless, we panted beside each other on Sean’s bare mattress. The fabric itched my back. I had no idea where the sheet had gone.

  I became irritated with myself. If anyone deserved proper bedding, it was Sean.

  “Get dressed,” I told him, sitting up and searching the floor for my clothes.

  “Why?”

  “We’re going to Target.” I looked back at him.

  He was pushed up on his elbows, brow furrowed, his cock softening on his thigh. He looked edible as fuck.

  Putting on clothes was a challenge, but I managed.

  Sean held onto that perplexed expression until I made a beeline for the home section at Target with my cart and stocked up on bedding supplies for his and the girls’ bedrooms.

  Later that night, we made love on satin sheets.

  Sean was amazing on a floor and a bare mattress. But on high-quality fabric, he was magical.

  “Fi! Straighten your legs, baby! Why are you standing like a flamingo?”

  I giggled as Val struggled to get Fiona into her tights.

  The girls’ recital was tonight, and they’d shown up at my apartment roughly thirty minutes ago to get ready.

  I’d already fixed Fiona’s hair into a bun with braided sections, making her look like a Disney princess. Now I was working on Caroline, who was so excited she was barely keeping still.

  “When are you putting the pink in my hair?” she asked me for the twentieth time since she sat down.

  “Soon.”

  She threw her arms in the air in celebration, and I noticed the same thread bracelets on her wrist like Sean wore, only Caroline’s were all pink.

  I smiled at her in the mirror.

  “These are too tight, Momma!” Fiona cried.

  “The joys of being a woman, baby. Get used to it.” Val blew out a breath. “There. Okay, one thing down.”

  I moved around to the side of the chair and looked over at Fiona.

  She only had her tights on so far, so she didn’t have anything covering her stomach.

  I noticed a long scar running down the center of her abdomen, about three inches long, but before I could study it any more than a glance, Caroline was bouncing in the salon chair again and whipping her head around.

  “You’re not excited one bit about tonight, are you?” I teased as I gathered up the strands again I’d been braiding that had pulled out of my fingers the second she started quaking about.

  “Yes, I am!” she shrieked. “I’m so excited!”

  “Oh, okay. I wasn’t sure. You’re just so calm.”

  “You should’ve seen her earlier,” Val said. “She kept taking my keys and going out to sit in the car.”

  I eyed Caroline in the mirror. She started giggling.

  “Is it time for the pink now?” she shrieked.

  “Almost.” I wrapped the braid around her bun and secured it with a few bobby pins. Then I told Caroline to cover her face so I could set the bun with some hair spray. When I was finished, I capped the bottle and spun her around so when she stopped, she was facing the mirror again. “Ready?” I asked.

  She nodded quickly and covered her mouth with her hands.

  “Me too!” Fiona yelled. “Mommy, hurry up!”

  “I still need to zip you up. Hold still.”

  I shook up the can of pink hair color and gestured at Caroline’s hair. “How about we do some on this side, and a little bit over here, around the bun.”

  “Can’t I get my whole head?” she asked.

  “Caroline,” Val warned.

  The little girl sulked and sank in the chair.

  I bent down and whispered, “Maybe we throw in some glitter too. What do you say?”

  She perked right up hearing that.

  Both girls got dolled up with bubblegum streaks of shimmer in their pretty blonde hair. They couldn’t stop looking at themselves in the mirror when I was finished, and they kept fighting over the chair.

  “Okay, time to go!” Val exclaimed, purse dangling from one elbow and bag of clothes hanging from the other. Her eyes cut to me, and for a moment, she seemed startled. “Oh, my God, I almost forgot. I have an extra ticket tonight. Would you like to go to the recital?”

  “Really?” Wow. That was unexpected. I paused mid-OCD-organization of my hair clip drawer and smiled at her. “Sure. I’d love to go.”

  And only ninety percent of that reason had to do with Sean being there tonight. I also really wanted to watch the girls. They were so excited about their recital. It was infectious.

  “Awesome!” Val dug the ticket out of her purse and handed it to me, then she pulled me into a quick hug and thanked me again for helping her out. “All right, girls, let’s go. Did you thank Shay?”

  “
They did,” I said.

  “Thanks, Shay!” both girls hollered as they chased each other around the salon room in their tutus, squealing and giggling.

  My ears were ringing when I walked them to the door.

  After a quick shower since I’d worked a shift at Whitecaps today, I fixed my hair in loose waves and dressed in leggings and a flannel tunic. I applied a powder foundation and kept the focus on my eyes with a winged liner and the mascara I had that made my lashes look too thick to be real. Then I shot out a quick text, letting Sean know I’d see him tonight at the recital before I left my apartment. His text back to me came as I was backing out.

  Glad you’re going.

  I smiled the entire drive there.

  Val had saved four seats in the auditorium, which didn’t make sense to me until her sister showed up five minutes after I’d arrived.

  Apparently hood rats went to recitals. Go figure.

  “Shay, this is my sister, Bridgett,” Val introduced. “Bridgett, this is Shay. She’s the girl who’s been doing my hair. She works with Sean too.”

  Bridgett claimed the seat next to Val at the end of the row and leaned forward, waving and smiling at me like the giant ho-bag she was.

  It was possible I was still holding a minor grudge about the other night.

  “Hey, girl,” I whispered, waving back and grinning like we were besties.

  I wasn’t just good at being fake nice. I was great at it. Years of experience waiting tables and dealing with rude clients helped me perfect that painted-on smile and pleasant demeanor. It was a talent, really.

  And I had to play it up. I wouldn’t cause a scene at the recital.

  People filed into the auditorium and took their seats, chatting with one another. The room was packed. Val had mentioned something about the entire company dancing tonight, and to be prepared for this to last a couple hours.

  That didn’t bother me. I was just excited to watch the girls. They were the youngest class performing tonight.

  “Where is he?” Val sat forward and whipped her head around to look toward the auditorium doors. “It’s going to start soon.”

  I glanced at the empty seat between us, then I reached down and slipped my phone out of my bag. I checked the time.