Rule (29 page)

“Do you want to order something for
delivery or go somewhere?”  He rubbed his hands together roughly and then pushed
them under the fall of my hair to clasp the back of my neck.  They felt like
blocks of ice so I shivered even harder until he pulled me to his chest and
tucked my head under his chin.

“Delivery so I don’t have to move
my car.”

“Cool what are you in the mood for
I’ll call on the way home?”

“Anything really I’m just hungry.”

“Pizza?”

“Sure but no green peppers or
mushrooms on my half.”

I hooked an arm through his and
gingerly tried to keep up with his long strides as we made our way to the
Victorian.  My phone vibrated in my pocket and I frowned as I saw it was once
again my father.  I was sure whatever story my mother had spun about my last
visit had him all riled up but I just didn’t have the patience to get a lecture
from a guy who’s new wife was only a few years older than me on morality and
suitable romantic partners.  I sent the call to voicemail and let go of Rule to
sidestep a particularly dangerous and icy patch on the side walk. 

He scowled at me and snatched my
hand back up.  He tugged me around so that I was pressed up against his front
while he walked forward and guided me backwards.  “I wouldn’t let you fall.”

I reached up to put my hands on his
shoulders and gazed up into eyes that were just as frosty as the snow coating
the ground all around us.  “No?”

“No.  You don’t trust me?”

“Most of the time I do.”

“Why not all the time?”  We stopped
at the front of the Victorian and I moved my hands from his shoulders to the
back of his neck which made his hood fall off.

“Because I’ve never trusted anyone
all the time.  It’s the people I care about the most that always seem to do the
most damage.”

“I’m not going to be one of those
people Shaw.”  If only he knew how bad it had hurt my heart each time I had to
see him with one of his conquests he wouldn’t be saying that.  I forced a small
smile and brushed my fingers over the soft black hair starting to grow on his
head.

“I hope not.”

He just shook his head and hauled
me inside because it was way too cold to keep messing around outside.  He
shrugged out of his coat and hoodie while motioning for me to hand my stuff
over.  “Nash has a date tonight so he won’t be home until later if at all.”  He
disappeared down the hall to drop his armful in his room and came back on the
phone with the pizza place.  I took down a couple plates and handed him a beer
while looking in a futile attempt to see if the boys had anything in the fridge
to make a salad with.  I needed to get some normal food in this place if I was
going to keep spending time here or I was going to end up the size of a baby
hippo.

“I think he’s probably done with
having me around in the man-zone.  I know Ayden mentioned that she almost got
an eyeful while you were over this morning.  They’re undoubtedly sick of us.”

He laughed and took a chug out of
the beer bottle.  “I didn’t mean to surprise Ayden this morning but I thought
she was gone.  I didn’t know she just went running.”

“Yeah she goes every morning and
it’s not like she was complaining in fact she complimented the view.”

He snorted.  “Nash doesn’t mind
having you here he likes that you actually cook and that we don’t have to get
delivery or bring stuff home every single night.  Plus you smell good and
always pick up the random stuff we leave laying around.  If having you here got
on his nerves he would say something to me and more than likely to you as
well.  He has no problem letting Rome know when he has over stayed his
welcome.”

I leaned back against the counter
and twisted the cap off a bottle of water.  “So Cora was telling me all about
your ink bunnies or tattoo trollops as she calls them.  I had no idea just how
far your appeal reached.  Girls got work that they aren’t going to love in ten
years just to spend time with you.  That’s pretty crazy.”

“Cora has a big mouth and
exaggerates but getting tattooed is pretty intimate no matter who the client
is.  When they leave they’re leaving with something you put on their skin
forever.  They trust you to capture their vision and execute it perfectly so
sometimes that means you have to invest in them as a person to some degree. 
Some girl’s especially younger ones get really wrapped up in the process and
turn it into more than it is.  I have my fair share of clients that have little
crushes on me, that come back for work not because I’m awesome but because they
want to spend time in the setting but it’s my job so I keep it professional. 
I’m not going to lie I’ve hooked up with a client or two but never after work
or never while I was in the process of doing a piece.  Sex and work don’t
belong in the same place.”

I sucked back some of the water and
mulled that over for a minute.  “Does it bother you that I don’t look like the
typical girls you find attractive?”

“What in the hell are you talking
about?”

I hopped up on the counter and let
my legs dangle.  I tapped the tip of my nails on the tiled surface and cocked
my head to the side while I studied him closely.  “I don’t have tattoos or
piercings.  I don’t have sex hair or wear clothes that are impossible to
breathe in, I’m just you know, a normal girl and I’ve seen enough, been around
enough of your morning after’s to know that I’m not what you typically
gravitate towards and I just wonder if when you look at me you wonder if I
could look better if I looked different.  Looked more like you and your crew.”

He put the beer down on the dining
room table and locked eyes with me while he stalked towards me.  Before that
would have made me nervous and panicky but now it made me get all warm and
breathless.  He didn’t stop until he was pressed right up against me, between
my legs with our hips aligned in a perfect position to make me forget my own
name.

“When I look at you I don’t see
anything but you and Shaw, you are perfect.  I don’t care what color your hair
is, if you’re pale or tan, if you have makeup on or just woke up all I care
about is that when I look at you, you always look back and see me.  You’re
beautiful inside and out and if you wanted to tattoo all that pretty white skin
from head to toe I would be honored to put it there for you but if not I’ll
take you all smooth and milky white any chance I get.”

It was heart wrenchingly romantic. 
It was the most thoughtful thing anyone has ever said to me and I was about to
go all weepy female on him and blubber out how wonderful everything he said was
and how much he meant to me, well either that or I was going to yank his
clothes off and have at him right there in the kitchen.  I was waffling between
the two reactions when the doorbell rang and shattered the mood.  He pushed
away from me and went to collect dinner.  I took a minute to get my composure
back.  The boy was potent all right and I planned to enjoy every single minute
that it was directed at me.

Rule

There were a few moments over the
last week that had been so perfect, so poignant that they literally froze me
with fear and made me want to run the other way as fast and as far as I could
get.  Sitting on the couch in my living room eating pizza and knocking back a
few cold ones while I watched Sports Center and she messed around on her
computer doing school work was one of them.  Watching her just be had me
suddenly feeling like I was suffocating in the rightness of it all and I had to
escape to a burning hot shower before I did something stupid like ask her to
marry me or tell her to take a hike.  She just fit, she filled every hole I had
in my life and the idea of her not being there, of it going away terrified me
like nothing I had ever felt before.  I didn’t want to rely on her, didn’t want
to build a mountain out of what might just be an early in the relationship
infatuation but there was something there that made me think if this all went
away because of something I did or because she suddenly woke up and realized
how much better she could do that I would never be the same.

The last few weeks had been
amazing.  I liked having her in my house and in my life and I enjoyed making a
place for myself in hers.  My friends all adored her and I think had tiny
little crushes on her because she was just so oblivious to her appeal that it
was endearing and hard not to fall for.  I could tell when we left the shop
that Cora was a fan and that meant a lot because she was kind of like a big
sister and I trusted her instincts when it came to people.  It was why she was
such a good shop manager.  Shaw was already part of my family and after I had
given her the rundown of what went down on my visit home she had wasted no time
in firing of a scathing email to mother letting her know that in no uncertain
terms was she going to stand for that behavior and vehemently asking her to
seek help.  She had my back and not for the first time I wondered how long she
had been fighting for me and I hadn’t noticed.  It always made me feel like
shit.

The quiet moments were settling and
made me feel like I was building a foundation to something great and the
passionate moments, the moments where she looked at me like I was a present she
had always wanted to unwrap were enough to make me think I had found the one
person that would never bore me in bed.  The thing about being the only guy she
had ever been with was that I got to teach her everything and Shaw had always
been an A+ student.  Whether it was fast or slow, gentle or rough, a quickie
that blew my mind or an all-night session that had her running late for class
the next morning there was no doubt that we were sexually compatible.  She was
starting to figure out her own preferences, like the fact she liked it a little
rougher and more dirty than I would have figured her to but she also somehow
managed to find humor in the act when it was awkward or not going the way one
of us intended and I couldn’t remember ever having as much fun in bed in my
life.  I didn’t know it was possible but she even made sex better and the
thought of any of it or all of it going away just made me want to fall into a
hole and never climb out.

I was trying to shake off the fear
after all it was just a nice night at home and Nash was gone so I should be
doing my best to make her scream my name over and over again at the top of her
lungs but the doubt lingered and I stayed in the shower until the water ran
frigid and cold forcing me out.  I ran a fuzzy towel over my head and face and
secured another one loosely around my waist.  I left my clothes in a heap on
the floor and wandered into my room figuring she would still be out in the
living room doing her homework and I would have a couple more minutes to get my
shit together only the TV was off and she was sitting in the middle of my big
bed sipping on the beer I had abandoned when I bolted earlier.  As if that
wasn’t enough she was only wearing my T-shirt that had the tattoo parlors logo
on it.  It looked better on her than it ever had on me and she was watching me
with very serious eyes the color of new grass.

“What’s going on?”

I cleared my throat and tried to
play it off.  “Nothing.  Why?”  Only this was Shaw and she knew my bullshit
better than almost anyone.  She scooted to the edge of the bed and set the beer
down on the night stand.

“Because you were in there forever
and you already took a shower this morning.  Something spooked you and you ran
I want to know what it was.”

I considered lying to her,
considered telling her that she was just imagining things but in the end knew
that I just needed to come clean and hope that she didn’t freak out because I
was so emotionally screwed up.

“All this,” I waved a hand between
the two of us.  “It’s so easy, so basic and thoughtless that sometimes it
freaks me out.  I’m not used to normal and ordinary so it makes me nervous.  My
life was always about trying to grab onto fleeting moments of pleasure, of
feeling good and now I have that all the time with you and I get lost in my
head wondering what I’m going to do to screw it up or how I’m going to keep it
together if you decide to take it away.  Sometimes I get sucked into my visions
of what could happen and I have a really difficult time staying in the present. 
Watching TV with you, just being with you sooths something inside me that I
didn’t even know needed soothing but it also makes something in there cower in
fear.  I’m sorry.”

She just watched me and I prepared
myself for her to get up off the bed and walk out the door.  If she did I was
pretty sure towel or not I would chase her into the cold and beg until she came
back.  Instead she unfolded from the bed and came up to me on bare feet.  My
shirt covered all the good stuff but just barely.  She stopped so that we
weren’t touching but we were close enough to share breath.

“It scares me too Rule.  I’m not
used to ordinary either and I never thought I would have that with you, never
thought I would have anything with you at all so it’s okay to get a little lost
in your head as long as you come back and we can talk about it.  I’m not going
to ask you to give anything you aren’t comfortable with.  People have done that
to me my entire life and I’m sick of it.”

I exhaled a hard breath and
unclenched the fists I hadn’t been aware I had curled up at my sides.

“What if I ask you to give me
everything Shaw, what if I want it all?  Won’t that make me just like all the
rest of them?”

She made a noise in her throat and
then broke into a smile that nearly killed me on the spot she was just so
lovely and pure.  “No because you don’t have to ask for anything, all of it is
already yours.  You’re the only one I’ve ever wanted to give it to.”  This girl
was going to be the end of me.  She put a hand on each of my sides, one splayed
over the angel one splayed over the reaper and I thought my heart was going to
pound out of my chest.