Her chest heaved, and my pupils dilated. Goddamn.
“Do whatever you want,” I instructed, the game coming to me in an instant. “Slow and steady or hard and fast, work that clit and pump that pussy however you want until you come.”
Her eyes flared, and she licked her lips.
“I’ll fuck your tits until you get there. It’s up to you how long I get.”
She reached out quickly and pumped my dick twice and hard.
I looked over my shoulder as she reached between my legs and undid her pants, shoved them and her panties to her thighs and pushed her finger into her pussy to gather moisture.
When she brought it back out and started working it, I looked back to her.
Her eyes gleamed as she grabbed my ass and pulled me to her tits. “Come on, baby. I’ll go slow.”
I licked a path between her tits and straight down to her pussy, where I lapped at the top to tickle her clit.
She shivered and shoved at my head, breathing heavy with exhaustion.
“I’m gonna make you touch yourself every fucking time.”
She laughed and swatted at me.
“Licking your finger clean after you came on it was the hottest thing I’ve ever fucking done.”
Her smile curved all the way to her sleepy eyes. “Okay,” she admitted. “That was pretty hot.”
Climbing back up her body, I pressed a soft kiss to her lips and then fell to my side beside her, settling into my palm with an elbow in my pillow.
Cassie patted affectionately at my cheek, so I grabbed her wrist, fell to my back, and pulled her over on top of me. Her eyes moved from mine like a river, curving down my jaw to my neck, and then pooling on the tattoo across my chest. “What’s this one for?”
“The tattoo?” I asked, and she nodded, settling her chin on my chest and bringing her gaze back to my eyes.
“Mi Vida Loca,” I recited. “It means ‘my crazy life.’ I got it when I was twenty-seven. When it first hit me that I’d done it. That I’d succeeded in all kinds of things, and I was in complete control of my destiny. I never expected any of this. The success, the drive. I’m pretty sure everyone thought I’d be doing something menial or nothing at all.”
“You were that wild?”
“Yes. But it was more a lack of focus.”
She laughed and looked down at my chest contemplatively, tracing each letter slowly. “Yeah, I can relate to that.”
She skimmed her fingers across my chest and over to the praying Mary on my arm. “What about this one?”
“That one is for Margo. Well, it’s about her, anyway. I got it a couple of years after she passed, from Frankie, right after he opened the shop. I think it was sort of cathartic for both of us to put ink to skin to embody all the things we hoped she’d found in heaven that she’d yet to find on earth.”
“Like what?” she whispered.
I ran a thumb under her eye and twisted her hair between two fingers. “Peace. Contentment. She was still so young and restless. Searching for everything and coming up with nothing.”
Her nod was unhurried, and her eyes studied mine. I was sure she was looking for some kind of sign that I was over it all, but to me, I never even had to think about it anymore.
I’d never be over the way it happened, but all I felt was Cassie. She didn’t leave any room for anything else.
She tapped the word “Trust” on my chest. “Why trust?”
“Because it’s the only thing I really need.”
“The only thing you need to what?”
“To live,” I answered simply. “I don’t need to know what’s going to happen, or how it’s going to happen, or even the why. I just want to know that whoever’s making it happen cares about me enough to give me that freedom.”
“Mmm,” she acknowledged.
She settled like she might fall asleep, so I tapped her on the nose, my heart in my throat. I wanted her to know something that I hadn’t bothered to tell anyone yet. “You missed one.”
She lifted her chin off of my chest, and her eyes opened again as she’d thought it over. She was convinced she’d studied my body enough to know. It hit her like a truck. “Of course!” She rolled off of me enough to free my arm and turned it over to expose the inside. “Evolve” scrolled across in fancy, rolling script.
“Okay,” she said as she traced it. “So what’s this one?”
I took a deep breath and blew it out. “That’s the first tattoo I ever did.”
Her startled gaze jerked to mine. “You did this one?”
I nodded. “Last fall.”
“What? How? I don’t get it,” she rambled.
I shrugged and looked to the comforter. “I’ve been apprenticing with Frankie. They make you do your first real run on yourself. You know, so you don’t permanently fuck somebody else’s skin up.”
“It doesn’t look like a first tattoo,” she said, excited. “It’s amazing.”
“Yeah?”