“Ah. The four elements.”
“I have a soft spot for them, even though I’m a scientist.” She wiggled her toes, watching the tendons flex the little symbols in green, purple, red, and blue. “They were for my twenty-first birthday. Skye designed them. She even came along to the tattoo parlor to make sure the guy wielding the needle did it right.”
“Ha. Well, they turned out awesome. So, show you mine?” He twisted around to display his back: halfway up on the left side curved a whale, the size of her hand, decorated in swirls of black, red, and white.
She touched its fins. “Oh, beautiful! I love whales.”
“Who doesn’t? That was the first chainsaw carving I did that sold, so this was a way to commemorate it. Plus whales are…I don’t know, free. They get to swim the world, thousands of miles a year. They’re cool and mysterious. They seem deep.”
She grinned, letting her fingers drop. “Deep. That they are. So is that what you want to do? Travel?”
“I’d love to. That and restore cars—the dream of most mechanics. But both of those take a lot of time and money, and…” He shrugged, his gaze dropping away. “No one’s ever got enough of those, do they.”
They ate a lunch of Grady’s leftovers, sitting at the counter, chatting and laughing. They were both barefoot and not totally dressed, Kit with his shirt half-buttoned and Livy wearing her sweater but leaving her bra off till the last possible minute.
“It was…fun,” she told Skye that evening, and heard the note of wonder in her own voice.
Skye lifted her eyebrows, gaze fixed on Livy across the kitchen table.
“I mean, I know.” Livy spooned up some Scotch broth and blew on it. “He’s had plenty of practice, if the gossip is true. He ought to be able to make it fun. It’s not like it means anything. But still.”
“Fun,” Skye said, as if agreeing fun was worthwhile in itself.
“Yeah.” Livy sipped the spoonful of soup. “This is yummy. Grady’s doing a good job.” She noticed Skye’s gaze slip down to the table. “Is it okay, having him around? You can be honest.”
Skye nodded resolutely. Instead of looking Livy in the eye, she gazed out the dark, fogged kitchen window, toward the forest.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MAYBE NYMPHOMANIA WAS PART OF SKYE’S CONDITION, GRADY THOUGHT THE NEXT DAY, AS HE TRIED TO CONCENTRATE on ripping up romaine over a colander in the sink while Skye held him in a languid hug from behind. Her hands trailed up and down his chest, slid over his hips, and inched dangerously close to his crotch. He could feel her warmth and breathing, could smell her shampoo, could remember so clearly the softness of her breasts and the slickness of her mouth when they’d kissed yesterday…
Her hand slid between his legs and rested there. His lettuce-tearing motions faltered, and he closed his eyes, tortured with want.
“You’re being a very disruptive kitchen helper.” But he made no move to escape her touch.
Skye responded with a firmer caress, and kissed his shoulder blade through his shirt.
Wouldn’t Livy have warned him if she knew Skye was a nymphomaniac? That was the kind of thing you would warn someone about if you were going to leave them alone with the person.
To be fair, though, he was reacting almost like a nymphomaniac himself.
“Didn’t we say yesterday we should slow down?” he tried.
“Yesterday,” she pointed out.
“What, like that was yesterday, this is today?” He was still pulling apart lettuce, but only slowly.
Her hand still petted him. “Mm.” She slanted the sound with a tone that suggested Sort of.
He glanced partway back, only enough to catch her shoulder in his view. “Or you mean, like, we waited a whole day, so that counts for something?”
“Mm.” Closer to agreement this time. Her fingertips circled his groin.
He swallowed and tried to focus on the romaine. “I should at least finish the salad.”
Skye withdrew her hands and stepped away, the motion exuding sulkiness even though he couldn’t see her with his back turned.
He glanced over his shoulder, and examined the frustration burning in her eyes. His gaze traveled down the black hoodie she wore over a tank top. Her nipples made visible peaks through both layers, and he set his back teeth together to keep from groaning. “But maybe, just for a second…”
She stepped forward. He dropped the head of lettuce into the colander and snatched her up with his wet hands. A second later he had her propped against the fridge, their lips and tongues entangled, all four of her limbs wrapped around him. She had on black leggings, so thin you could almost feel skin through them, and she gasped in pleasure.
His mind filled with strange, bizarre wants: not just stripping her down and plunging into her, the way he’d usually fantasize about at this stage of things, but also the woods. Sex with her in that mossy, semi-spooky forest, down in the undergrowth where he’d landed after he kissed her and got tripped by blackberry vines, or high up in the trees, in some kind of treehouse—the ones she drew, maybe—the two of them powerful and reckless like animals…
What the hell?
“God,” he said. “Okay…okay, just…” He slid her down till her feet landed on the floor, and wrenched himself back a step, though it almost physically hurt to break contact with her. He stretched out his fingers in front of him as a barrier. “Remember? How I didn’t want to do anything you’d regret?”
“Regret?” Her face beautifully flushed, she looked down and shook her head. She seemed mournful almost, as if there might be many things she regretted, but not this specifically.
Grady raked one of his damp hands through his hair. “I’m so confused. I’m sorry. But this whole thing, it’s making me want things, think things, that I don’t understand. And too much of the time, I don’t even care that I don’t understand. That scares me. It makes me think I’m going to do something I definitely will regret.”
Skye tightened her lips and nodded, her gaze still cast down. Turning her from sexy nymphomaniac back into sad depressed waif made him feel like a complete asshole.
He stepped forward and took her hands. “Listen. You have no idea how much I want you. Or—well, you probably do. I’m sure you can tell. But let me get the salad done like I’m supposed to, and then maybe we can try to be responsible grown-ups who do this right. Okay?”
“Right.” She tipped her head forward to lean it on his chest. Then she chose another few words of his to echo, in a whisper: “I want you.” But erotic though the sentiment was, she sounded just as conflicted and disturbed as he felt.