I paused in buttoning my jeans, glancing across the room to find her watching me. “I have a type?” I asked.
She nodded, buttoning up her shirt. “You like girls who are petite and blond. Blue eyes. Innocent looking.” She blinked her eyes at me and I saw nothing innocent about Maddie’s face. After all, her lips had just been stretched wide around my dick not even fifteen minutes ago.
“Really.” My voice was flat as I tugged my T-shirt over my head.
“Yeah. Rumor around school is some pretty, innocent blond totally broke your heart.”
Maddie slipped out of the room soon after she said that and I sat on the edge of the bed, lost in thought. No pretty, innocent blond had ever broken my heart. My heart was unbreakable. Hell, half the time I figured I didn’t even really have one. Not a normal heart, in any case.
Mine was impenetrable. Lots of girls at school had tried to get me to be their boyfriend but I wasn’t interested. Hooking up? I was all for it. A steady girlfriend who I had to make time for?
Fucking forget it.
Disturbed by Maddie’s observation, I ran a hand through my rumpled hair, wondering if she spoke the truth. They really talked about me like that at school? I swear half the time the girls liked the dangerous aura they believed I had. I was the son of a known serial killer. I couldn’t escape my reputation if I tried.
Lord knows I’d tried. Tried like hell.
The truth dawned on me about ten minutes later as I sat in the guest bedroom of a house owned by people I didn’t even know. Only one girl had ever touched me, broken me, lingered within me like an intense longing. I had no idea what happened to her, where she was. She’d cut me off, though I never forgot her. No matter how much I tried.
Katie Watts. Pretty. Blond. Innocent. Sweet and trusting and needing me so damn bad. She was the one I kept chasing like a drug.
She was the one I could never have.
He picked me up as if I weighed nothing, his big hands sprawled across my butt, my legs automatically going around his hips. I wore no panties and he held me so close, my bare skin pressed against his flat stomach, that I wondered if he could feel me. If he knew I wasn’t wearing underwear. If he thought I was too forward, too . . . much.
Stupid thought. He was a man. He was attracted to me and I could feel his erection, but it didn’t scare me. More like I became excited. My blood pumped hard, my heart pounded, and I throbbed between my legs. His hands rested over the cotton of his shirt I wore but I’m sure he could feel me.
I wanted his hands on my bare skin.
After delivering a lingering kiss that left me breathless, he carried me to his room, deposited me on the edge of the bed, and now stands before me, shedding his shirt, revealing his bare chest to me for the first time. I stare unabashedly, mesmerized by his masculine form. His shoulders, his defined arms, his chest, his pecs, his flat stomach. He’s muscular without being over the top, and my palms tingle I’m so anxious to get my hands on him.
There’s a tattoo on his side, along his rib cage, and I tilt my head, wanting a good look at it. Two short words written in elegant script say only us, with a set of angel’s wings beneath them.
Weird. And oddly familiar. I wonder what it means. I wonder who meant enough to him that he’d tattoo such romantic words on his body for that person. A girl. A girl that may have held his heart at one point in his life. A wave of jealousy flashes through me and I shove it away.
Lucky her.
I’m wearing only his T-shirt, nothing else—well, and the socks—and I rub my thighs together, unsure of the unfamiliar sensations flowing through me. I’m anxious. Edgy. I want his hands on me, yet . . . I don’t. I want his mouth all over my skin but I’m afraid. Will he push me too far? Will he get mad if I don’t let him do certain things? I don’t even know what those certain things are, but I might not be up for them and I don’t want to make him angry.
“You okay?” His deep voice knocks me from my thoughts. He touches my cheek and I lean into his hand, closing my eyes, absorbing his warmth, his kindness. “Katie.”
I open my eyes and look up at him. He took off his glasses when we changed out of our wet clothes earlier. His eyes are incredibly dark, the muscles in his face and neck visibly strained, and I know he’s holding back for my sake.
What would it be like, though, to have all of that restraint unleashed on me? Would I like it? Become lost in it? Or would all that focused intensity frighten me?
It was time I found out.
“You don’t have to hold back because of me,” I whisper, my gaze locked with his. His brow furrows, as if my declaration confuses him, and I continue on. “I want you, Ethan. I want . . . all of you.”
He doesn’t say anything for a few seconds until he finally clears his throat. “I don’t think you know what you’re asking for.”