Chapter Four
Trey
This girl.
She makes me feel things.
Sure, I want to tug her against me, feel her body pressing into mine, and yeah, I want to do a million more things to her. She’s making me crazy with want. But there’s something else too. I like everything about this night with her, like it’s a sliver of time, a dream moment where the dream is warm and hazy, and you don’t want to wake up from it. It’s just sort of unfolding like the unplanned detour on a vacation that turns out to be the best part of the trip.
The train chugs out of Penn Station and the lights are dim. It’s nearing midnight, and the car’s mostly empty, just a guy in a rumpled business suit who’s already halfway to sleep is a few seats away. Harley looks out the window at the night passing by as we roll on out of New York City. It’s weird, but I can breathe easier when I leave New York. I’ve lived here my whole life, born and raised. But this place is like handcuffs sometimes, and that’s when I want to get out of town.
“This is so random,” she says, turning back to me. She looks happy, like she’s having a good time with me, and damn, if that doesn’t make me want to ask her out again. To hop on the Staten Island Ferry at night, or go midnight bowling or even to wander all over town. I’ve had plenty of women, more than I should have, but we never went out like this.
“Yeah, who would have thought you’d get a tattoo and wind up on a midnight train?”
“Speaking of, why are you a tattoo artist? How does that happen?”
“I like to draw,” I say, wishing the answer were that simple.
She narrows her eyes at me. “I bet there’s more to it than that. To drawing.”
“Why do you say that?” I ask, and I’m kinda liking how she wants to know me, to understand me, how she seems to sense that there’s more to me. Maybe there is.
“Because you seem passionate about it. And I think passion comes from somewhere.”
“I was always pretty good at drawing,” I say, as the train rattles along the tracks, the repetitive clatter oddly soothing. “I was the kid who could do the art projects no problem in school, you know? When they say draw a comic to represent an event in history or something. That was easy and I loved it. But then I started drawing more and more in high school,” I say, then nearly stop because I’m about to paint myself into a corner. I try to skirt around the one topic I don’t talk about. “Then things happened and I wanted my drawing to mean something.”
She holds up a hand and interjects. “What do you mean things happened?”
There’s a sharp pang in my chest and I want to kick myself for having said anything that would even suggest what happened to my family. Too many things happened. Too many bad things. Things I can’t even begin to speak aloud.
I shrug it off. “Oh you know. Just had some rough times. The usual Upper East Side shit. Didn’t get into the right college, and now I’m not following in my parents footsteps as a plastic surgeon,” I say, trying to make light of my comments. It’s all true. I didn’t get into the college they wanted. No Ivy League med school for me. I’m not going to be the next Dr. Westin. Still, I feel like I’m lying because those aren’t the rough times, but it’s not as if I can tell her the truth. Or anyone. I can manage something though – a glimpse. Words more true than I’ve said to anyone else. “But why I became a tattoo artist is that I wanted to do something more with drawing, and I figured tattoos were a good way to do that. I think most people, at least my customers, get them because they mean something to them. So I felt like I was helping people deal with the things that happened to them by doing tattoos. That and they’re totally f*cking cool.”
“They are totally f*cking cool.”
“And look, yours means something, right?”
She nods, but doesn’t say anything more.
“Will you tell me why you got it?”
She shakes her head. “Not now.”
I can respect her silence, her need to keep her reasons to herself. “I think we can take the bandage off.”
I grab a tissue from my backpack, remove the bandage and wipe off the vaseline, then look at her ink. “Damn, I impress myself. That’s a good ribbon, Harley,” I say, and then I trace it with my finger.
Her breath catches the second I make contact, and I am in awe. The simplest touch makes her gasp, and now all I want to do is breathe her in, inhale her, smell her hair, taste her skin. I knew there was something between us, but this reaction is intoxicating. I map her ink with my finger, watching as she tries to still herself, but the look in her eyes is one of heat. I bet it matches mine.
“How did you get that scar?” she asks.
“I took something that didn’t belong to me.”
She raises an eyebrow. “You stole?”
“Something like that. Do you hate it?”
She shakes her head. “I like scars. Can I touch it?”
“Hell yeah.”
Then it’s my turn to hitch in a breath as she touches my face, her fingertip drawing the line from my cheek down to my jawline, the cut that was administered a few weeks ago courtesy of the man I stole from. The reason everything in my life has to change. The line in the sand.
“Do you think it’s ugly?”
She shakes her head, her blond hair moving back and forth, her breath light on my cheek. “I think it’s beautiful,” she says in a whisper, and I want to reach out to her, to put this night on repeat, to never forget how I feel right now. How it’s more than just physical. There’s some kind of connection between us.
“Harley,” I say in a low rasp. “If you tell me you want me to kiss you, I will.”
She nods once and I thread my hands through her hair as she says, “I want you to kiss me, Trey.”
The moment slows and I’m hovering inches from her. I force myself to take a beat, so I can recall this kiss when it’s over. Because I know it’s different than any other I’ve ever had. I want to savor every f*cking second of her deliciousness.
“I’ve wanted to kiss you ever since you walked into my store.”
Then I curve my hand around her neck and brush my lips against hers. Her lips are so soft, and she tastes amazing, all sexy sweet girl, like sugar and pink frosting, and I want to bite into her. Instead, I take it slow, imprint this in my memory since it’ll be the last kiss, last girl, last night like this for a while. I run the tip of my tongue across her lips. She inches closer, telling me with her body that she likes it. I brush my thumb along her jawline as I kiss her more deeply, exploring her full lips, tangling my tongue with hers, all while touching her gorgeous face. She lets out a little whimper, the tiniest sound, and it’s so sexy that I tug her closer, needing more of her lips, more of her taste, more of this greedy kiss with this girl I barely know, but yet want to know so badly.
I want to do other things too. Like slide her under me, pull her on top of me, strip off all her clothes. But somehow I manage to restrain myself, even though my body has been reduced to nothing but a raging red-hot fire for her. I twine my hands into her hair, and she slides even closer. Her breasts are pushing against my chest. It’s almost too much to take. It’s as if I’ve been wound up, tighter, harder, hotter with every second with her.
We kiss like that for ages, or maybe for seconds. I don’t know because I’m losing track of everything but the feel of her, the way she responds, how she loops her hands around my neck, and threads them through my hair. How she can’t seem to get enough of this kissing either. I want to drown in this, to be smothered in this kind of heat and want.
Then the train slows with a jolt, and we knock teeth, breaking the kiss.
“Hi,” she says, and she looks tipsy. Hell, I feel buzzed. And I’d like another, please. I want to get drunk on her. Her mouth is sinful and sweet. Her body is insanely f*cking sexy, and I want to explore her with my tongue, to lap up the taste of her soft, sweet skin.
“Hi.” My hands are still in her hair, and hers are in mine.
“I have to tell you something,” she says, and I tense up instantly. Like she just shot my veins full of cold fluid. No good conversation ever started with those words.
“What?”
She shakes her head and smiles. “It’s not a bad thing, Trey. I want to tell you that I’ve never been kissed like that.”
I relax instantly, liking her answer. Loving her answer. I don’t need to know why she’s never been kissed like this. I just want to give her more of it. “Really?”
She nods. “It was amazing. I want more kissing. I want more.”
That word – more – turns everything hazy and heavy. “What kind of more?” I ask carefully because I’ll give her whatever she wants and then some.
She takes a deep breath as if she’s about to say something that’s hard for her. Then in the barest of whispers, she says, “I’ve never had sex, and I’m not ready for that, but there are other things I haven’t done either. Like, pretty much everything. And I was wondering if you would…”
I cut her off. “Go down on you?” I say and my voice is hoarse, my body swimming in desire for her.
“Yes.”
I bring her close to me, graze my lips from her jaw to her ear. “I would f*cking love to taste you. But what would you think if we got off at the next step and caught a train back into Manhattan? Because I would like to take you back to my apartment and do it properly. Not that a train isn’t awesome.”
She nods eagerly. “Definitely.”
We get off at the next stop. A few minutes later, we catch the last train back into the city. As soon as we grab our seats, we’re at it again, hands all over, lips touching, bodies pressed together. Maybe it’s because the ending is in sight, because it seems so abundantly clear that this is one of those nights that you can’t plan for, but are like magic, and they fall into your life when you most need them. Because right now, this feels like everything in the world, like we are all that’s left of the earth, this kissing, this contact as we speed back to the city where I’m going to do something to her that she will love. I’m going to be her first.
She snuggles up against me, and then it occurs to me that I don’t have to wait til we reach Manhattan. I can give her something else here and now. As she roam her hands over my chest, I inch a hand under her skirt. She gasps, then parts her legs slightly, and that’s all the invitation I need.
“Can I touch you?”
She nods against me. I run my hand between her legs, feeling her panties. Oh god. She is soaked and I love it. I love how wet and turned on she is, and how this underwear might as well be useless. “You are so hot,” I tell her, and then I cup her between the legs. She moans softly in my ear.
The sounds she makes are killing me, because it’s as if no one has ever touched her like this, and evidently, no one has. But she needs to be touched, she needs to be felt, she needs to know pleasure. By the way she’s rocking into my hand, I don’t think it will take long. I pull her underwear to the side, and run my fingers across her. She grabs the back of my head, holding on tight as I glide my thumb against her wetness. Then her teeth are on my neck and she bites me. Not hard, but as if she’s muting herself. I can’t believe she’s never been touched like this, with a body like hers, and a face like that, but there’s something innocent almost about the way she moves, and the little noises she tries to stifle as if she didn’t know her body could do this.
“Harley, you’re so f*cking hot. I love touching you. I f*cking love how turned on you are,” I say, and then she bites down hard on my neck. She shudders and she comes on my hand. She’s leaving teeth marks on my skin, and I hope they last forever. I slow down my movement, letting her ride out the wave.
She exhales sharply and buries her face in my shirt as if she’s hiding.
Soon, she looks up, and she’s all rosy and flushed and I can’t wait to do this to her again.