Tyler & Stella (Tattoo Thief) (18 page)

I let his hands work, soft and insistent, touching and exploring. When he turns me away from him I feel lost without his gaze, but I close my eyes and imagine he’s still fixed on me, his hands working the tension from my shoulder blades and lower back. His hands cup my ass and the back of my thighs.

My body is on high alert, humming with energy as I give myself over to him completely. I let him touch and wander, and when he pulls me close to him beneath the spray, I feel him hard against my belly.

Where is this going?

In every other relationship, I could tell you exactly what was next—sex, obviously. Simply insert Tab A into Slot B and move with it for a while. Release. Repeat.

But this feels completely different. It’s calm and caring and tender. It’s gentle and exploratory. It doesn’t have a clear destination, and for once, I’m OK with that. I’m willing to follow where Tyler leads.

Tyler sluices the water over my hair and down my back, gentle strokes that melt me deeper into him. I feel almost weightless in this space with the sound of the shower drowning everything else out, the low lighting in the bathroom letting my eyelids droop, the scent of Tyler’s body wash filling the air around us.

I pull his body more tightly against mine, reveling in the connection that is deeply physical but not overtly sexual. Although I am naked, my breasts are pressed against his chest and he can’t see most of my body. I can’t see his, beyond his shoulders and arms that hold me.

But I can feel every inch of him, and I want to explore it. Desperately.

Tyler finally turns off the water. He cracks open the steamy shower stall and pulls two fluffy towels off hooks, bringing them back inside the damp warmth of the enclosure. He opens a towel and wraps me in it like a burrito, one hand toweling my hair to keep the drips at bay.

Finally, he lets go of me and begins toweling himself off and I look—really look. I’m stunned by the beauty of his body. Long and lean like a swimmer, with a light dusting of hair on his legs. Tyler rubs the towel over his hair and then catches me staring.

I give him a small, appreciative smile.

I pull my towel off and tip my head upside down to scrub most of the water out of my hair, then wrap the towel around my body under my arms, tucking the end of it between my breasts.

“Better?” he asks.

“Much.”

Tyler nods. “Mission accomplished.” He takes my hand and leads me out of the bathroom and up the steps to his bed loft. My clean T-shirt and panties are still in the bathroom, and I’m not sure whether to go back downstairs or wait to see where he leads us next.

Tyler turns down the thin sheet on my side of the bed.
My what?
One night and I’ve already established a
side
in my brain. Even though the loft is cooler, it’s still too hot without air conditioning. He turns on the fan and I’m still standing, my towel wrapped around my naked body.

“Would you—do you want to be here? With me?” Tyler’s forehead is creased with worry and he looks self-conscious. I take a few steps toward him, twining my arms around his neck and feeling my towel untuck itself and fall to the floor.

“Yes. If you want me.”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Tyler breathes deeply, as if he’s inhaling my scent. “Stay here. Please.” He dips his head for a tentative kiss and I answer with passion, feeling Tyler’s towel drop and the air from the fan rush across our naked, still-damp bodies.

Tyler scoops me up and deposits me on the bed, climbing in next to me. His mouth moves on mine and my tongue traces the ridge of his lower lip, my teeth grazing his tongue as he becomes more insistent.

We lie together, lips and hands moving on each other, but without venturing too close to our intimate places. Instead of my hands, I let my body explore him, skin to skin, as I feel him hard against me. By some unspoken agreement, I don’t let my hands wander.

Finally, Tyler breaks our kiss and stills. I’m tangled in his arms and the sheet, my leg between his, nearly every part of my body touching some part of his. “Stella.” His eyes reflect sweetness and sadness.

“I’m here.”

“I’m glad. You’re killing my resolve, you know that?”

I smile, a naughty gleam in my eye. “All part of my devious plan.”

“It is?” For a moment, Tyler takes my comment at face value and his eyes pinch with worry. “You don’t have a plan. Do you?”

I shake my head. “You’re everything I
never
planned. You’re not the bad boy I thought. You’ve been nothing but generous and kind to me. And you’ve wanted nothing in return.”

My head is still cloudy from the last of the alcohol in my system but I want him to know how much I appreciate this care.

“Not true. I’ve always wanted something,” Tyler says, and pulls me tighter against his chest. “From the moment I met you, Stella, I wanted you.”

He hesitates and I feel a “but” coming.

“But?” I ask finally.

“I want the whole package, not just the parts of you you’re willing to share with other men.”

I flinch, feeling the word
easy
rear its ugly head for the second time tonight.
“Everything
is a tall order, Tyler.”

“It’s all or nothing, Stella. Anyone can get lucky if they’re looking hot and feeling frisky. That’s easy. But life’s about being brave. And I’m not willing to let you be some half-assed fling. I want the whole package.”

I tremble, feeling the weight of what Tyler’s asking. “What’s this, then?” I ask, indicating our naked bodies entwined.

Tyler’s lip curls in a smile. “Persuasion.”

“Tease.” I hit him playfully on the arm, pretending that I’m going to roll away from him, but his arms clench tighter around me.

“When I’m teasing, you’ll know it,” Tyler growls, and his hand drops to my breast, stroking my nipple with his knuckle.

My breathing shallows and his eyes roam my body.

“You are so beautiful.”

“You’re not playing fair.”

Tyler snorts. “I’m not much of a rules-follower, Stella. So what do you want? All or nothing?”

“If I choose all, will it be like it was tonight? Will I have to beat the groupies off with a stick?”

“I can’t promise they’ll go away, but I promise you that no one will question who I’m with. Including you.”

“And if I choose nothing, does it mean we can’t be friends?” I shudder, feeling the possibility of that loss, but unsure I could give him what he’s asking. All means
all
of my secrets. My shame. The ugly parts I’ve packed away or fled.

Could he even see past them to continue to care about me?

Tyler frowns. “Stella, I’m not trying to rush you. I told you I need to take this slow, and I still do. There are too many things unresolved for me to just open the dam right now. I’m afraid it would scare you away.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of, too,” I admit in a small voice. “I keep thinking, how close will you get to me before you find something you don’t like, something that makes you want to run the other way?”

“It’s bad?” Tyler asks me seriously.

I nod, silently begging him not to ask what.

“Mine, too.” Tyler says.

“Oh.”

Tyler kisses my forehead. “Sleep on it, Stella. When you’re ready, we’ll take it from here.”

TWENTY-ONE

I wake to an empty bed, the smell of coffee, and a painfully pounding head. The lows from last night come back hard, and I want to curl up in a ball and sleep them into foggy memory.

“It’ll get better, I promise.” I roll toward Tyler’s soft voice and peel open my eyes. He carries a tall glass of water and a steaming mug of coffee.

Tyler’s dressed in boxers and a T-shirt and he sits on the edge of the bed near my hip. I moan. A hangover is bad enough, let alone flashbacks to what happened last night.

“Start with the water,” Tyler coaxes, and drops two aspirin into my hand. I swallow and drink, my lower half covered by the sheet but my breasts bare. Something about his gaze doesn’t make me feel like I need to cover them up.

“Your phone rang a little while ago and I recognized the number so I picked it up. Kristina wants you and Beryl at her place in two hours.”

I flop back on the pillow dramatically. “I feel like my brain is being crushed,” I say, holding my temples. “I hate tequila.”

“Hate to tell you this, but vodka’s not your friend, either,” Tyler says.

I nod and sip from a creamy, sweet mug of coffee. It’s perfect. Did Tyler memorize how I like my coffee when we ate pastries together?

“Stella, I’m serious.” Tyler’s urgent tone refocuses me. “I’m more than a little worried about how much you drink. You polished off a fifth of vodka in just a few days, not to mention how many tequila shots you did last night.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I think you’re on the edge. I don’t know if drinking’s a problem for you, but at the pace you’re going, it’s a problem for me.”

It’s way, way too early to be having this conversation, to hear the accusation in Tyler’s gentle concern. “So you want…”

“I want you to stop. For a while. Give it a break and get focused again. Figure out how you feel without it.”

I swallow. I’m so used to having a few drinks here and there, to get pumped up or to unwind, to level out my emotions or to take me on a high. Alcohol does all of that. It’s part of my routine.

“I don’t have a problem.”

Tyler’s eyes harden. “You do. Because I have a problem with it. I’m crazy about you and I hate how it made you last night.”

“It’s not like I—wait. You’re crazy about me?” I squeak out that question, dizzied by Tyler’s admission.

He gives a solemn nod. “I am.”

I gulp my coffee to avoid his gaze, my heart racing. It’s too much—too much pressure, the ultimatum about my drinking, the all-or-nothing Tyler offered last night. I feel like I’m backed into a corner.

A bad boy has no claim to me. A bad boy can’t tell me what to do, what to drink, who to see. That’s just the way I wanted it.

But a good boy could suffocate me, lacing affection with rules and expectations. A good boy could break into my carefully walled-off heart.

I shove myself off the bed, feeling too naked, too exposed to Tyler.

“I have to go.”

***

I hop in the taxi with Beryl and we’re off to Kristina’s Brooklyn townhouse. Beryl and I have no idea what to expect, so we hold hands and giggle nervously like we’re back in college waiting on a double-date setup arranged by our dorm coordinators.

“So how are things at Tyler’s place? Other than the broken air conditioner?” Beryl’s really asking what happened after we left last night.

“A/C should be fixed by the time I get home,” I wince at the word
home
but Beryl doesn’t call me out on it, so I cover quickly, “and Tyler’s OK, I think. There’s something going on with him but he won’t say what.”

“What’s going on with you two?”

I stick out my lower lip and blow my hair off my forehead. “I have no freaking clue. He acts like he wants me, he pushes so hard, then he says he wants to take it slow. He wants me to tell him everything—”

“Everything?” Beryl interrupts, and I can tell we’re both thinking about my secret history.

“Yeah. He said ‘all or nothing.’ Like, he doesn’t just want us to be a fling. But I can’t tell him my secrets if he won’t even tell me what’s eating him.”

Beryl’s face falls. “Trust is a two-way street.”

“He doesn’t even know what he’s asking!” I explode. “How deep it goes, how much it still hurts.” I gasp, flattened by the admission that it
does
still hurt. Dixon, my baby Blue, cutting ties with my family and ditching my Broadway dream. It hurts like a fucking knife.

Beryl rubs my shoulder, letting me stew for a minute. “Maybe you don’t know what you’re asking, either,” she murmurs. “You don’t know how scary his secret is, or what it would cost him to tell it. But that’s not the point. The real question is what if you could get past that?”

“Like if our secrets didn’t matter?” I’m still for a few heartbeats, then I whisper the real answer into my hands. “I think I really want to be with him.”

“You think?”

I shake my head. “I know. Like, know it in my gut, know it like hunger or bliss. It’s indisputable.”

“He’s nothing like Blayde,” Beryl observes. “A fling’s not Tyler’s style. Jayce is the player, but Tyler’s a whole lot more … fragile.”

I raise my brows, questioning where she’s going with this.

“I don’t really know anything, just bits and pieces I pick up from Gavin or being around the band. But Tyler was never a girl magnet in college. He could hardly get a date. And when he finally grew into his height and got muscles, that was right around the time the band exploded.”

“He wasn’t used to the attention?”

“Yeah. And some groupies took advantage of that. Guys like Gavin can spot manipulation, but Tyler’s too trusting. He’s easy to hurt.”

“He’s easy to love.” I shock myself and Beryl with this admission.

“That too. Do you love him?” Her eyes are wide and I look at my hands and fidget.

“Yes,” I whisper.

“Does he know it?”

I shake my head. “No way. We’re not—we’re only just figuring each other out. We haven’t been intimate, exactly.” Is this a lie? The toe-curling orgasm and the shower that could have lasted forever were both intensely intimate.

Beryl catches my specific meaning: we haven’t had sex. She’s surprised and tries to lighten the mood. “Is that a new record for you?”

Shame and the word “easy” slither over me and I frown. Because, yeah, it is. And that totally sucks.

“He’s worth the wait, Stella,” Beryl says quietly, aware that she’s hurt my feelings.

The taxi pulls up to a brownstone and Beryl pays for the cab as I slide out. Before we walk up the steps to Kristina’s apartment, Beryl grabs my arm.

“Everything you felt after that director left you, every way that Blayde made you feel bad about yourself, all that’s behind you,” she tells me. “Tyler will be worth the wait.”

***

“Tell me what you think, if it matches your story.”