Savior (18 page)

"You like my scars," he said, pressing up, balancing his weight on his forearms. "You're tracing them," he told me and I realized he was right. My mind had drifted and I hadn't noticed that both of my hands had found different scars and were stroking over them almost lovingly.

"I guess," I said, self-consciously moving my hands away.

"You don't have any."

"Huh?"

"Scars. Not one. Every inch of your skin is fucking perfect. If it wasn't so fucking gorgeous, it would be obnoxious. No one should be completely fucking flawless."

"I'm not," I objected.

"Tell me one flaw."

"My eyes suck," I supplied.

"Best shade of blue I've ever seen."

"Maybe," I allowed, "but they don't work right. Contacts and glasses every day."

"Glasses are cute as fuck. Doesn't count."

"I have a birth mark..." I started, then stopped when I realized what I was about to say.

"Just inside the crease where your thigh meets your pussy," he supplied with a smirk.

"God, you're observant."

"It's shaped like a fucking heart. Doesn't count."

I thought for a second, then let out a short laugh, waving a hand out a little. "Then what can I say... I'm flawless," I said with a smile.

"Damn straight," he agreed, leaning down and pressing a hard, but quick kiss to my lips. "As much as I'd like to stay inside you all night, I gotta get up and deal with this condom. Unwrap me," he demanded and my legs and arms fell begrudgingly. He slid out of me and I let out a small, objecting noise that made him chuckle quietly. "Don't worry, I'm getting all up in there again as soon as I can," he promised as he disappeared into the bathroom and closed the door.

Alone, unseen, a huge, satisfied smile spread across my face. My hand slapped over my mouth to cover it, knowing it was a bad idea to let myself feel that way. True, the sex was freaking phenomenal. And, yes, he said he wanted a repeat. But we were on shaky ground and I needed to tamp down the 'I feel happy when I'm around him' thing before it got out of hand.

I heard the water run and quickly relaxed my face and shifted up on the bed, crawling under the covers. Paine came out and climbed under, moving over me slightly and I was sure he was going to kiss me. But at the last second, his head moved quickly downward and he bit into one of my still-hardened nipples, making me squeal in surprise and pain and amusement all at once.

He settled onto his side, facing me so I moved onto my side as well, hands in prayer position under my cheek. "You're very unpredictable."

"Gotta keep you on your toes. Can't have you getting sick of me."

"If anyone gets sick of sex like that, they're not human."

"Oh, babygirl, that was nothing," he said with a smile.

"All talk," I said, suppressing a small yawn. What can I say? It was a long day that included work, the gym, a nice dinner, and a solid fucking. I was beat.

He smiled sweetly, his eyes softening. "I'll prove it to you once you've gotten some sleep. Deal?"

"Deal," I agreed, wanting to snuggle in toward him, but unsure of the protocol. Usually snuggling followed lovemaking, not screwing like animals.

But then the uncertainty was taken from me as he slid one arm under my pillow and the other around my waist, pulling me into his body. My head rested on his arm, my face pressed slightly against his chest as he tucked my head under his chin. One of his thighs moved slightly over mine, making it slide between his.

And just like that, cuddled against his chest, I drifted off to sleep.

--

I woke up tucked in again and took a long minute to smile up at my ceiling, snuggling up in the warmth and enjoying the soreness in my thighs from the activities of the night before. Figuring he was downstairs making coffee or whipping up another food-coma inducing breakfast, I climbed out of bed. As soon as my feet were off the side, I saw them.

I kept a small square memo pad on my nightstand, always worried I was going to remember a chore I needed to do or an idea for a work project when I was in bed at night. I wanted something close just in case. Two pages had been ripped off and used, laid out on the surface. I reached for them with a smile. They were sketches. It was easy to forget that Paine was a tattoo artist. I'd never actually seen him at work and it wasn't something he talked about much. But he was. And to be a tattoo artist, you first had to be an artist.

One was a drawing of animated sushi: a block of rice with blushing cheeks, a sushi roll with a smirk, and chopsticks kissing. The other was a simple picture of a barbell. I took that to mean that he got up and went to the gym as was his usual early morning activity.

I'm embarrassed to admit how long I sat there and looked down at those sketches with a goofy grin on my face. Snapping out of it, I took them over to my jewelry box, slipping them in and storing them for safekeeping. I was always that kind of girl; I saved things. I had the movie stub from my first date when I was a teen and the label off the first bottle of liquor I ever tasted in a scrapbook. I had seashells from every beach I had ever visited in a vase in my dining room. I liked having little reminders of things that once made me smile around me.

And, well, Paine's artwork made me smile. Huge.

I showered as I thought of him sitting off the side of the bed in the very early morning light, scribbling those pictures for me before he left. It was infinitely better than waking up to a note.

I decided then to only date men who grew up with single mothers, little sisters, and could draw from that point on.

I had half-expected him to show back up before I left for work and had to suppress a surge of disappointment when he didn't. I left early and stopped to get coffee, buying an extra one for him and cursing myself for doing so. As I drove across town (my path to work making me pass his shop), I tried to convince myself to
not
stop, to
not
be
that
girl. Needy, borderline desperate to be around the guy she was crushing on.

But I found myself pulling up behind his Challenger when I noticed the shop was open for the morning already. The shades were half-closed on the windows to block the brutally bright morning sun and, as such, I hadn't spotted the small group of people inside until I pulled the door and it was too late.

"Oh," I said, taken aback when three sets of eyes fell on me. One set was Paine's light green ones. Another were very dark green ones on the face of a man with an old school kind of handsome mixed with a post-punk look: tattoos all up his arms and across his neck, gauges in his ears, plain white v-neck tee, tight black jeans, and black and white checkered creepers. To say the charming smile he was giving me was enough to melt any red-blooded woman's panties was an understatement. The final set of eyes were blue and belonged to a man Paine's size build-wise with blond hair in an undercut, pulled into a small bun at the crown of his head. He also had a blond beard and a knowing little smirk on his face. "Um, sorry to interrupt," I said, my words almost tripping over one another I was so flustered. I turned to Paine, thrusting my arm with his coffee out a little awkwardly. "I just wanted to say thanks for dinner. I, ah, need to get to work."

He took the coffee from my hand, brows drawn together slightly as I yanked my arm back and turned to move back toward the door. Or, at least, I tried to make my way back toward the door. I failed because suddenly my wrist was snagged in Paine's giant palm and I was turned and pulled back the distance I had just created. "Fuck was that?" Paine asked when my gaze found his.

"I'm sorry... what?" I asked, painfully aware that the other guys in the shop were staring at us. And while I couldn't see, I was pretty sure they were still smiling.

"'Thanks for dinner, I need to get to work'?"

"And coffee," I reminded him, trying to lighten the mood.

But then what little space was between us was gone and Paine's face ducked down toward my neck, his breath in my ear where he said just loudly enough for me to hear, "Babygirl, I was inside you less than twelve hours ago. Can't even give me a good morning kiss?"

"You have company," I reminded him.

"Oh, honey, sugar, darling," one of the other guys said, making me jerk back to place him. It was the green-eyed, post-punk one. "Please tell me someone as gorgeous as you isn't wasting your time with this ugly fuck," he said, jerking his head toward Paine.

Paine rolled his eyes. "Elsie, this is Shooter," he said, indicating the green-eyed one.

He reached for the hand I offered, but turned it knuckles-up and leaned down to kiss it. To say I let out a girlish giggle would be a giant understatement.

"And Breaker," Paine went on, ignoring both Shooter's hand-kiss and my subsequent reaction.

I held out my hand to Breaker who took it as offered, shaking it hard before letting it drop.

"Hey doll," he greeted me.

"What?" Paine asked as I pressed my lips together to try to keep a smile in.

"Paine... Shooter... Breaker..." I explained, shaking my head.

"Johnnie and Bryan if that helps," Paine explained, waving at Shooter when he said "Johnnie" and Breaker when he said "Bryan".

"And by Johnnie," Shooter explained, "he means Johnnie Walker Allen."

"Like the scotch?"

To that, he smiled. "Yeah, darlin', like the scotch. I had a dick of an old man too."

Unsure how to respond to that, I gave him a small smile before turning back to Paine. "I really do need to get..."

"You got another twenty minutes before you even needed to leave your place," he cut me off.

"Well I, ah, left my coffee in my car," I tried. I wasn't sure why I wanted to get out of there so badly, but I did. There was something about being around a man you were sort-of seeing when his friends were around that made a woman feel a lot like she was at some kind of audition. And well, with names like Shooter and Breaker and the aura of badassery that was coming off of the men, I was pretty sure lame ole' me wasn't going to impress them.

"Coffee in the kitchen. You know where that blueberry shit is," he said, waving a hand toward his open apartment door.

"She knows where the blueberry shit is?" I heard Breaker's amused voice ask as I scurried quickly, but not quickly enough to look like I was running away, into Paine's apartment.

I had just gotten the blueberry bottle out of the cabinet when a voice behind me said casually, "Alright, peaches, spill," Shooter's voice called.

I jumped, spinning with the blueberry bottle held up like I might strike out with it. "Sorry," I apologized when his brows drew together at the action. "I've had some, ah, close calls lately. I'm on edge."

"Paine filled us in," he explained with such a casual shrug that I was left to wonder if what was going on for me and was extremely strange was just usual and commonplace to them.

"What did you want me to spill about?" I asked, turning to finish fixing my coffee before I focused my attention back on him.

"How you're still here."

"I'm sorry?"

"Pretty girl, I'm sure it hasn't exactly escaped your notice the kind of man Paine is. Meaning the non-monogamous kind. You're a smart woman. You can spot a guy like him a mile away."

"You mean a guy like you?" I countered.

"Formerly," he said. "Found my girl. Been settled for a year now. But we aren't talking about me. I want to know how you got Paine taking you out to eat and making a big deal about you trying to rush out of here."

"Honestly, I don't know. I'm not that special. I mean, compared to you guys, I'm painfully normal. I don't know what is, ah, making Paine act differently."

"If you think you're not special, you're seriously fucked in the head, sweetheart."

"I didn't mean it like that. It's just... I don't know. I don't get it eit..."

"Oh perfect!" a female voice called from the store and I felt myself start.

"Don't go for the blueberry bottle," Shoot grinned. "I can protect you from Paine's mother."

"Paine's mother?" I asked, true horror evident in my tone.

"This is gonna be fun," Shooter said, rubbing his hands together as he moved to stand in the doorway. "Hey Mama Gina," he called to the woman I couldn't see.

"Shoot! Wow. One stop today. I wanted to invite you and Amelia and Breaker and Alex and Paine and, well, whatever flavor of the week he's got, to dinner Sunday night."

Alright.

I was mortified.

Mortified.

I wanted one of those sinkholes to open up right underneath Paine's shop and swallow me up into it.

Whatever flavor of the week he's got.

Flavor of the week.

I was a flavor of the week?

Was that possible?

It seemed like it seeing as there had obviously been women he had brought to his mother's house in the past. So if he brought them to meet his mom, it really wasn't a big deal that he took me to dinner and drew me cute little pictures that made me smile like a lovesick teenager.

God.

I was so freaking gullible.

There was the loudest silence following her statement that I had ever heard before. I could tell all three men were shocked silent, given that they knew I was present and what I must have been thinking at that comment.

"Ma," Paine's voice finally broke in, "hold up a minute," he said and I could hear his footsteps moving toward the apartment. My head was shaking no even before he crossed in. I'm a little ashamed to admit this, but I actually backed myself into a corner. "Come on," he said, holding a hand out toward me.

"No." Nope. No
freaking
way.

He closed the gap between us, his hips pressing into mine which pressed my ass into the counter hard. "I've never brought someone home to meet my mother. She was being a smartass. That's how she is. Now stop giving me a look like I kicked your puppy while declaring to the world at large that you've got the sweetest fucking pussy I've ever tasted."

"Shut up!" I squealed, horrified, looking past him to the spot where Shooter was standing. But he was gone.