“I dunno about happy place, but it’s where I come when I need to find some clarity and some peace.”
Her fingers traced the tattoo on my thigh, as if she could feel the ink. After a moment, her hand just rested on my thigh, and I did my best to ignore that sensation, the thrill of it, the ache of it, the desire raging inside me to feel her hand slide upward, upward, closer to my aching erection.
“Clarity and peace about what?” Her voice was quiet, a whisper—suitably, to me; I am not a religious person, but I do have a spiritual sense of connection to nature, and this particular place has always felt sacred to me.
“Just…life. When things hurt, or are confusing.”
“So why are you here now, Ink? What’s confusing or painful for you?” Her eyes stayed on me, even though I was gazing up at the stars.
I sighed. “You. This. Me. Us.”
“Why?”
“Because…” I groaned. Flopped to my back. “You ask hard-ass questions, Cass.”
“I just…” She lay beside me, close, rolled to face me, eyes bright in the moonlit night. “You obviously want me, want this. But you keep pulling away from it, when I thought I was being pretty clear that I want it as much as you do.”
I nodded. “It’s not a matter of mixed signals from you. It’s all me.”
“Exactly. And that’s what I want to understand.”
“Why?”
A pause. “Because…” another hesitation. “Because I really like you. I don’t know what that means, or what it is, or what it could be. I don’t know what to do with it. I just know I want you.” A choked sigh. “And I want to know you want me. I want—”
I turned to look at her. Saw moisture in her eyes. Pain in her features.
“I want to feel wanted. I want to be desired.”
“Fuck, Cass. Ain’t that obvious?”
She shook her head. “Seeing it in your eyes, that’s one thing. Seeing it…” She rested a hand on my thigh, her meaning clear. “That’s obvious. But seeing it isn’t the same as feeling it.”
“Fuck,” I groaned. “Fine.” I reached out an arm, and she lifted, scooted closer to me, tucking herself into the cradle of my arm, resting her head on my bicep. “Ain’t a pretty story.”
“Are they ever?”
I snorted, shrugged. “Nah, guess not.”
She gazed at me. God, those eyes. So soft, so warm. Inviting me to trust her. “No judgment, Ink. No pity. Just…compassion and understanding, okay?”
I let out another long sigh. “Okay.”
Cassie
He was…cuddly. Seemed like a silly, cutesy word for such a huge, strong, masculine man. But it was the only word that really fit. He had just enough padding over his muscles to be cushiony under my cheek, yet it was obvious as he wrapped a massively thick arm over my waist that the layer of fat was minimal and that he was enormously strong. A perfect combination, if you asked me. I wouldn’t have thought so even a few weeks ago, but now it seemed like the most obvious thing in the world.
Cuddling with Rick never lasted long—for him because I realized now that he really didn’t care about me all that much, and for me because he just wasn’t comfortable to lay on, being all lean, compact, hard muscle and bone.
Lying here with my head on Ink’s chest, and his bicep behind my neck, his hand on my waist just above my hip, I felt utterly safe, totally comfortable. I could fall asleep here like this. I wouldn’t even need a blanket, because he just absolutely radiated heat.
Then, his voice began rumbling, a low murmur that rattled my bones with the deep, bass power of it; if a mountain had a voice, it would be his. “Elise Achebe. Moved here from New York. She was a swimsuit model, fashion photographer, tattoo blogger, and Suicide Girl.” He paused, a long, cavernous silence. “Absolutely gorgeous. She came here to get away from everything, from the whole New York scene. She’d always had this cult following in the modeling and fashion industry, but then she created her own website and put up Suicide Girl-type photos of herself, and people just sort of lost their shit. Got judgmental and nasty. She lost some sponsors, got some hate mail and death threats, stalkers, just lots of ugly shit.”
“By Suicide Girl, you mean…?” I had an idea, but wanted to clarify.
“Well, it’s a specific thing. A movement, a community. They do pinup-type photography of themselves in varying degrees of explicitness, but it’s all girls with tattoos and piercings and unusual hair color, stuff like that. She was a photographer for an agency that specialized in that type of thing, mainly for tattoo magazines and things like that. She was really out there, really bold and just liked to put it all out, wasn’t ashamed of anything.” He hesitated, glanced at me. “So, quick aside. How real you want this story?”
“The realest.”
“Sure?”
“Yes, Ink, I’m sure. Don’t hold anything back.”
A sigh. “All right.” A moment of silence as he picked up his train of thought. “She came to me for a tattoo. She’d heard of me, of my growing rep for traditional threading and stick-and-poke style tats, and she wanted one.” He tapped his chest. “She wanted it, um. Here. On her chest. Super intricate design centered around each of her nipples and areolae. Several sessions, obviously private, and it required a lot of…uh, handling, I guess, of her boobs. I’m a professional tattoo artist, so I’ve done stuff in sensitive places before, but nothing even remotely that personal, before or since. Because even with a gun, it’s different. Threadwork is…slower. More painful. Just…different, in a lot of ways.”
“And one thing led to another?” I guessed.
He rumbled a wordless affirmative. “Not right away. She stuck around Ketchikan for a while, and we’d hang out now and then. She’d come by for a new piece, always threading, and it just became a thing.” A long pause. “Emotionally, it became a thing, at least. She wanted more, and so did I. Meaning, the physical aspect. But after what had happened with Elizabeth Grace, I was sort of gun-shy when it came to women. Went out on a few daters, but nothing really…stuck. So, I was twenty, well established as a tattoo artist already and getting a rep for traditional work. And I was a virgin.” He swallowed hard after the last word. Breathed into the silence, gathering what seemed to me like the courage to keep talking. “Told her as much, and she was just…I dunno. Weirded out, I guess. But a little excited, too, oddly. I mean, she was a little older, like four years or so. More experienced, obviously. Been on her own since she was seventeen, super independent, liberated and all that. Sexually, I mean. Like she just…I dunno. Not important to my part of the story.”
“My sister Lexie is like that. Does what she wants, and if you try to slut-shame her for being bold about what she wants and how much she wants it, she’ll tear you apart. So I get it. I’m not like that, or not nearly as much.”
He nodded. “But a little bit?” he asked, glancing down at me.
I shrugged. “I’m pretty upfront about it, and I’m not concerned with what people think. The only person whose opinion ever matters to me is that of the person who I’m with, and even then, I’m not going to apologize for who I am or what I do with my body.”
“Good. How it should be.”
I peered at him. “You think so for real, or are you just saying that?”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “I never just say anything, Cass. I say it, I mean it.”
“Okay.” I met his eyes. “So if I told you that even though Rick was my only truly serious relationship, but I’ve had quite a bit of casual sex…”
He held my gaze, his eyes unwavering and honest. “What you do with your body is your business. Even if we were in a relationship, that would remain true. And what you did before you met me is part of you, part of your journey to being who you are. I like who you are. I ain’t scared of, or threatened by, or jealous of what you’ve done before we met.”
I melted, just a little bit more. “You really mean that?”
“Course,” he rumbled. “Just plain old bein’ a
good person, is all. Ain’t nobody gonna say boo to me if I was to have had a hundred or a thousand girlfriends or hookups or whatever. But when a girl does the same, somehow it’s slutty. If it’s slutty for a girl, it’s slutty for a guy, plain and simple. And for either one—their body, their choice.”
“You going to ask me the number?” I asked.
He shook his head. “You wanna tell me, I wanna know. It ain’t important.”
“So you’re not a jealous person, then?”
He lifted his shoulder. “Not about the past, no. Not really into sharing or open relationships, though.”
“Me either.” I let the silence flow a minute, two. He seemed inclined to stay quiet, so I prompted him. “So. Elise?”
He growled. “We dated for three months before anything happened. Then, she started things. Started slow. Got me used to doing things to her, her to me.” A heavy pause. “It was amazing. She was real nice, real gentle. Real patient.”
“Good. Glad your first experience was nice.”
He hummed. “Well. The lead up was nice. Just touching each other, I guess. Sexual, not sex. She spent a lot of time really teaching me to understand her, what she liked. How to know if she liked it. How to make her feel good. Told me that by taking the time to really help me understand her, and thus most women, and how to make her feel good, she was doing a service to whoever else I may end up with in the future.”
My stomach flipped. “So. You’re…uhh. Good at, like, foreplay?”
He rolled a shoulder. “Dunno what you want to call it. Not really sure I want to go into graphic detail for your sake or mine, but she told me, and swore on her ancestors and her tattoos and her camera—all the things she held most sacred—that I was better than anyone she’d ever been with at making her…you know. Feel good. Get there, you know. Quick, or slow.”
I swallowed, face heating, core tightening. “Wow. And you said she was pretty experienced?”
He nodded again. “Yeah. She knew what she was doing.”
I licked my lips, pressed my thighs together. Swallowed hard. “Very interesting.”
“What?” He must’ve caught the tightness in my voice, even in the whisper.
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“Don’t nothin’ me, Cass.”
I stared up at him. “Fine, then. You want to know what I’m thinking?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“I’m thinking that I’m really, really…interested…to experience for myself what you’re…capable of.” I pressed against him, so my breasts were crushed against his chest.
He gazed down at me. Eyes were deep and wild and inscrutable, and I felt him breathing hard, deep. “Best listen to the rest before you decide that.”
“Did you rape her?”
He flinched as if struck. “What? Fuck no!”
“Did you beat her up?”
“No, Cassie, I did not.” His voice was angry and tight.
“Did you intentionally physically, mentally, or emotionally abuse her or hurt her?”
“No.” A pause. “She got hurt, but it was an accident.” His voice was so tight it sounded close to snapping.
“Hurt how?” I shook my head. “Wait a minute, though. My point in asking is that is the only reason I’d be hesitant about anything with you…if you’d intentionally, out of malice or cruelty, hurt her.”
“I didn’t.”
I snuggled closer. “Then no matter what happened, I’m not afraid of you. Or your past.”
He sighed, deeply, painfully. “Like I said, you’d best hear me out.”
“Okay, continue.”
“We, uh. We messed around like that, what she called teaching me, for a while. Few weeks, a month or two maybe. I think finally her patience with waiting for actual sex wore out, and she decided it was time. But she told me she wanted to take a backseat from then on, in terms of who was in charge, was how she put it. In charge. Meaning, she didn’t want to be…the aggressor, I guess. Starting things. She wanted me to do that.”
I nodded. “I get that.”
“Okay. Well. She said she wanted us to move to the next step. But when I was ready. And that when I was ready, I should lead the way.” He sighed, swallowed hard. “I was nervous, I guess. I waited, thought about it. Made sure I was ready. I mean, I hadn’t been, like, waiting for a specific reason, you know? Like, I wasn’t saving myself for marriage. I just was…scared of getting hurt again. Rejected. Elise had made it pretty obvious she wasn’t going to reject me, so I felt comfortable going for it.”
A long, long pause.
“Obviously, we’d done plenty together, up to that point. So she knew…me. What I was like. What I looked like.” He sounded…embarrassed, or something like it. “I ain’t a small guy, not in any way. Okay? And she was well aware of this. Seemed to be pretty appreciative of it, if you know what I mean.”
I bit my lip, laughed silently. “Yes, Ink, I can imagine.” I threaded my fingers into his beard. “Nothing about you is small, so I can…well…imagine, that you’re just as…big…in other ways.” I buried my face in his chest. “I have to admit, I’ve thought about that.”
He stared at me. “You have?”
I let my palm rest on his chest, and then drift to his stomach. “I’ve thought about it quite a bit, lately especially.” Swallowed my own nerves. “Thought about when I’m alone, and…worked up.”
He let out a slow, controlled breath. “Dammit, Cass.”
“What?” I asked, endeavoring to sound innocent, even as I laughed under my breath.
“Making it hard to think.”
“Maybe you don’t need to think.”
He closed his eyes, breathing evenly, as if tightly controlling himself—his hand was gripping my waist, fingers dimpling my skin between shirt and pants. “Cass…you don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Thus the story of Elise, I take it.”
He nodded.
“You accidentally hurt her? Like, she wasn’t ready for…um. All of you?”
He shrugged. “I…no. But there’s more to it than that. Up until that point, she’d been encouraging me to just be open and honest with her about everything. What I was feeling, what I wanted, what I liked. To not hold back.”
“Good advice.”
“Thought so myself. Still do, but…what happened was a different story.” He sighed. “No way to tell this without getting a little graphic.”
“Doesn’t bother me, Ink. Just the story.”
“It was a few days after we talked about being ready to go all the way. Big deal for me, obviously not so much for her, but she said it was because she’d never been anyone’s first before.”
“I imagine being someone’s first would be a pretty big deal.”
“She seemed to think so.” A pause, thoughts and memories obvious in his eyes.
“Tell me, Ink.”
“We were at my place—a little loft over the shop—office space now, but it was where I lived then, before I built the tiny home out back. I started things, you know. Kissing and stuff. She knew what it was, and things just sort of progressed pretty normally. Remember, up until then, it’d just been hands and mouths between us. Exploration, experimentation. Kid stuff, to her, but all new to me.” Thoughts, silences. “Worth pointing out, too, that I’ve always been way, way bigger than everyone else. Stronger. Even in football, I held back, except during games, and even in games I’d hold back. Scared of letting myself go, totally. Scared of hurting people.”
I touched his cheek. “You’re a gentle person, Ink. Just who you are.”
“So holding back has been the defining feature of my life. Hold back physically, don’t take up so much space. Don’t be loud—don’t draw any more attention to myself than my size and appearance already do. Getting bullied and made fun of and shunned like I was my whole life like I was will do that you. Teach you to be smaller, quieter. Less.”
My heart cracked for him. “Oh god, Ink. That’s totally wrong. You sho
uld be you, all the way. Be as more as you can be, and fuck whatever anyone else thinks.”
“That ain’t so easy when you’re a kid.”
I sighed. “No, indeed.”
“So. Me, used to holding back. Her, telling me not to. Me, wanting to believe her. Wanting to be able to, just once, let go, even a little bit.”
I felt the shape of what was coming, and it hurt to think of.
“She was into it. I was doin’ everything she’d taught me to make her feel good. It was gettin’…rowdy. Not sure how else to put it. Aggressive. Not mean, not violent. Just…rowdy.”
I grinned against his chest. “I know what you mean.” I felt my cheeks heat. “That’s how I like it best.”
He growled. “Shit, shit, shit.” A long hard tense fraught pause. “God, okay. So.”
“What happened, Ink?”
“I lost control.”
“That’s what she wanted.”
“Yeah.” His voice was low, vibrating on nearly inaudible frequency. “She’d told me to let go, to not hold back. So that’s what I did. I let go. I just…let go. Threw control and caution to the four winds.”
“Good for you.”
“No, it wasn’t.” He sounded…angry. “I was…with her. Holding her. Um…you know, on her hands and knees, facing away from me.”
“Doggy style.”
“Yeah.” Pause. “Just…rough. Not trying to hurt her. She was makin’ sounds like she liked it. Wasn’t telling me to stop, wasn’t…nothing. But then she pulled away, like scrambled away. I thought at first she was going for a different position. So I grabbed her. Picked her up, flipped her to her back. Before, she’d kinda liked it when I tossed her around a little. She had curves on her, so she liked feeling light, I guess.” Another pause filled with harsh breath, halting, pained words falling out. “Took her like that, thinking it was what she wanted. Or, truthfully, not really thinking. Just feeling. Just…taking. She was…crying. Sobbing. Slapped me. Kicked me, hard. Scrambled to her knees, off the bed.”
“Oh god.”
For A Goode Time Call... Page 11
