“Shut it, Chris.” Lisa pushed me in the direction of the office.
I was in for one hell of a tear down. I shouldn’t have gotten in Chris’s face, but he outted me before I was ready and now I had to deal with Lisa’s wrath. I’d wanted to tell her on my own terms and find a way to spin it to avoid her anger.
She ushered me into the office and shut the door. “You’re a jerk for making me feel bad. I knew something was going on the second I saw you this morning.”
“I wasn’t ready to talk about it.”
“Well I hope you’re ready now. What were you thinking?”
“That it would feel good, and I was right,” I said too quietly for her to hear.
“What was that?” She crossed the room to sit on the edge of her desk.
“I was going to tell you.”
“Oh? When? Before or after you started on her tattoo?”
“Before, probably. At least I fixed things with Tenley.”
“By having sex with her?”
“That happened after.” I paced around the office, my anxiety spiking.
“I’m not seeing how that fixes anything. I thought you were going to talk to her.”
“I did. I said what you told me to. Well, not exactly,” I amended, “but I told her about the rule.”
“And then you went ahead and broke it? She’s your client. You’re going to put a huge tattoo on her that will take months to complete,” Lisa said, her annoyance shifting to concern.
I rifled through the unopened mail, arranging the envelopes by size to keep from looking directly at her. “I haven’t started it yet, so she’s not technically my client.”
“Really?” She used the opportunity to barricade me behind the desk so I couldn’t get away. “Because if memory serves me correctly, you put a cupcake tattoo on her a few days ago, which makes her your client.”
“I don’t get what the big deal is.” That was untrue. The issue was pretty damn straightforward. “Tenley found a loophole.”
“A loophole?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t even my idea. I was checking her new ink, and she asked for clarification on the rule. So I explained it again. Tenley pointed out that I hadn’t started the official tattoo, because the little cupcake doesn’t count for shit. She had on these kitty . . . I just couldn’t . . .” I scrubbed my face with my palm, knowing the more excuses I spewed, the deeper my hole got. I met Lisa’s disapproving glare with an imploring one of my own. “She said it was okay to want someone, and I want her. And not just for sex because that’s not what it’s about with Tenley, but I wanted that, too, and so did she, so I stayed the night and we had sex again—”
“You stayed at Tenley’s?” Lisa asked, her surprise genuine.
“Uh-huh. And I was all set for Round Three this morning, but she had a meeting with her advisor and almost ended up being late, so I drove her to school instead.” My chest felt tight, so I rubbed it.
“I don’t even know what to do with that information. Three times? Is she okay?”
“It was only twice, and why wouldn’t she be okay?”
“Hayden, remember who put that piercing in your special place?” She pointed at herself.
Like I could forget that experience.
“I’m far too well aware of what kind of damage you could do with that thing,” she added.
“I’m not that big.” It should have been weird to talk about, but it wasn’t. Probably since she’d stuck a needle through my junk.
She gave me a patronizing look. “Yes. You are. And I don’t get the impression Tenley’s the kind of girl who has a plethora of experience in that area.”
I frowned at the implication. “I was careful with her.” In hindsight, she’d mentioned I was a lot to handle. Maybe I hadn’t been careful enough. I dropped into the chair and waited for Lisa to lose it on me. She didn’t. She either felt sorry for me or thought I was the stupidest person alive, or maybe a bit of both.
“It’s not like any of it matters now anyway. I told her we can’t have sex again until the back piece is finished, so there really isn’t a problem.”
“You told her what?”
When I said it aloud, it didn’t sound quite as logical as it did when I heard it in my head. “I told her—”
She put a hand up to stop me. “Oh, I heard you. I can’t believe you’re serious.”
“Why wouldn’t I be serious?”
She shook her head and took a deep breath. “Look at the rule you’ve created. Remember why you created it in the first place and tell me if you think it still applies where Tenley is concerned.”
“This isn’t anything like the situation with Sienna,” I snapped, irked by the reminder. If Chris hadn’t started fucking Sienna when I’d taken a pause, the damn rule wouldn’t even exist.
“No, it’s not, thank God. This is about more than that, and you know it. You’re going to be spending a lot of time with Tenley alone in the near future, and she’ll be partially unclothed.”
“I’m aware.”
“And she’s going to be vulnerable.”