I loved going on roller coasters. The moment I lived for was when the car slowly clicked its way up to the very top of the highest point, and then there were those breathless moments when it raced to the bottom and your stomach dropped into your feet and you couldn’t catch your breath.
This was just like that, only worse.
“I love you, Katie.”
Katie
I’d forgotten how to speak. How to take words and put them together in my mind in an order that would make sense and convey what I was feeling. Maybe because I didn’t know what I was feeling.
“I know this is the wrong thing to say, at the wrong time. It’s all wrong.”
Something Lottie said came back to me. Something about how maybe Stryker and I were so wrong for each other that it was right.
“I just…I had to tell you. I had to say it out loud.”
Words, words would be good right about now. Some words. Any words.
“Are you fucking serious?” Not the best choice of words, but it was a start.
“Yeah. I know, I know. It’s…crazy.” He started pacing again, as if he had to keep moving. “You know what’s even crazier? I knew that first time I saw you. In that pink dress. I just…I knew. I was watching you during the entire party. You didn’t see me, but I was. I couldn’t take my eyes off of you. I kept trying to find your flaws, to convince myself you weren’t attractive, which backfired because I only wanted you more.”
“My flaws?”
“I told myself that your eyes were too big, and you were too short, and…well, that was as far as I got.”
“Oh.”
My stomach still felt like it was going to fall out my body, through the floor and into the room below us.
“But, Katie, there’s something you should know.” Other than the fact that he loves me? What more could there be?
“I haven’t said it back,” I said, interrupting whatever thing he’d been about to tell me.
“I know. I didn’t expect you to. I didn’t expect to say it, but I can’t take it back now.”
“Do you want me to say it?”
“I want you to say whatever you feel. I always want you to tell me the truth.”
What was the truth?
“I can’t breathe right now. And I can’t feel my fingers or toes. Is that weird? I also feel like I swallowed my heart and it’s beating in my throat.”
“I’m familiar with the feeling,” he said, finally standing still. “I kind of feel like I’m going to die.”
“Yeah, me too.”
There were several feet of space between us. The truth was that I wanted that space to go away. I wanted to push it aside and not let it come between us. I wanted to beat the shit out of any space that would dare come between us. Was that love?
I made my legs take one step. It was like trying to walk through waist-high water. I took another. He didn’t move, waiting for me to come to him.
“I feel like I want us to be friends, but not just friends. I feel like I want us to be best friends. I feel like I want you to be the person I tell everything to. I feel like I could see you every second of every day and it wouldn’t be enough. I feel like you are the sexiest, kindest, most wonderful person I’ve ever met and that I will never be good enough to deserve you, but I’d like to try anyway. I feel like if you weren’t there when Dad died that I would have died too. I would have gotten sucked down, like Mom. And loving you is one of the only things keeping me afloat right now.”
The words were easy, once I started saying them. They came as if I’d memorized them and recited them hundreds of times, like a favorite song that I would always know the lyrics to.
I stopped with that one last foot of space between us.
“The truth is that I love you too.”
His green eyes consumed me, pulling me closer.
“Are you sure?” he said, as if he didn’t believe me.
“Yes, you idiot, I’m sure.” I tried to smack him in the chest, but he caught my wrist before I made contact and brought my hand to his mouth, kissing my palm.
“Just checking before I did this.” He yanked me toward his mouth and our lips crashed together. Like the first time, only so much more. “You ever loved a guy with a lip ring?”
“Nope, this is a first,” I said as his hands went into my hair, pulling the clip out and letting it tumble over my shoulders.
“Good.”
Instead of consuming my mouth again, he held my face still while he trailed kisses across my forehead, and then down the left side of my face, and around my chin and back up the right side. Tracing my face with kisses. Then he went down my nose and across my eyelids and finally, to my mouth. I held still, my hands on his back. It was torture, being that still and letting him do it. Exquisite, burning torture.
Before he could kiss me again, I took my hands and put them in his hair, holding his face still. My turn.
I went for his eyebrow ring first, and then I used my lips to draw his face, stopping at last with his lips, kissing the ring that had grown warm with the touch of our skin. To his credit, he stayed still, only trembling a bit. His hands did start working their way up my shirt, which made it hard to concentrate on what my lips were supposed to be doing.
“I’m not going to fuck you, sweetheart.”
“I know. I don’t want you to. I just want this. You and me with no space between us.”
“No space.”
He slid his tongue into my mouth and we tasted each other as our hands got to work removing our shirts. I went to take my glasses off, but he stopped me.
“Leave them on. They’re sexy.”
I smiled as we backed our way to my bed. I expected him to toss all the pillows off, but he picked me up and lay me back on them. My sports bra was absolutely hideous, but he didn’t seem to care, and it was gone soon enough, thanks to his nimble fingers. Unlike all the times before when we’d been naked and together, this time I wanted him to kiss me, to know me, and I wanted to know him.
My hands gripped his arms and I kissed the ink on his tattoos, kissed his nipples and his hard stomach that quivered under my touch. Good. I wasn’t the only one that nearly lost their mind. Stryker was slow, which was agonizing. He left no inch of my skin untouched by his lips and fingers and I still had my shorts on.
I was a quivering mess already and he’d barely made it down my neck. His lips painted my body with kisses, just kisses, but those were enough. I was burning for him and with him and under him.
And then he took one of my nipples into his mouth and I moaned. He was making this all about me, and that wasn’t exactly fair, but I wasn’t really in a position to stop him. All I could do was hold on and wait my turn.
Then he went down my stomach and pulled my shorts down, just a little and kissed the line of my underwear band and then backed off and went for my lips again before doing the same thing, tugging them down just a little more.
“For fuck’s sake,” I said as he moved his way back up to my lips.
“Patience, sweetheart. I’m going to make this last.”
Fuck patience.
I went for his belt before he could stop me, getting it undone and slipping my fingers under the elastic of his boxers. Ha. Two could play that game.
I watched his face with satisfaction as his eyes closed and he bit the corner of his lip like he did when he drew.
“Nope,” he said, grabbing my hands and putting them over my head. I was about to protest, but he held my hands with one of his and pulled my shorts off with the other. I didn’t put up much of a fight as they went down my hips, my knees and to my feet. I kicked them off.
“Behave,” he said, kissing me again, biting my bottom lip and sliding his fingers around my underwear and caressing me. I moaned again as he worked his fingers and his lips. Touching, pulling back, and then touching again.
It was driving me insane, and I was completely helpless. I tried to push myself closer to his mouth, to his hand. I wanted him closer, but he kept pulling back a little.
“Patience,” he said as he pushed one finger inside me, removing it so slow I wanted to grab his hand and take charge. He did it again, and then added another finger, driving me to the edge and back again.
“Not yet,” he said, nipping my lip again. Like I had some sort of control over what was happening to me. He plunged his fingers into me again, this time harder. Words had deserted me. All I had left was incoherence.
He pulled his fingers away, as if he knew how close I was.
“Stryker!” I was hot and throbbing and frustrated.
“Patience.” He finally removed my underwear and his mouth took the place his fingers had vacated. He spread my hips wide to get better access as he started the slow build again. My brain nearly exploded when he moved his mouth back and forth, his lip ring rubbing against me.
It was the roller coaster all over again, but he wouldn’t let me go over the edge. He pulled back just in time. My body shook with the need for release, and I was afraid it was going to kill me when he finally took my hands and let me help him remove his pants and boxers.
“Finally,” I said as he grabbed a condom from the drawer in my desk. I was wet and ready and I grabbed his dick, but he pushed my hands away.
“Plenty of time for that.” I almost screamed at him, but it turned into a moan when he put his fingers inside me again.
This time he took me to the edge and let me fall and I broke around his fingers.
“That’s it, sweetheart. Come for me,” he said as his lips ravaged me further.
I couldn’t help but comply as it went on and on, tearing me apart and putting me together and tearing me apart again. Just when I thought it was over, he threw one of my legs over his shoulder, paused for a moment and plunged into me.
“You and me,” he said, pulling out slow and plunging back in.
“No space,” I moaned, digging my fingers into his back. He went deep, deeper than he ever had. After every thrust, he waited for a second. No space.
He picked up the pace and I felt myself building again. I pushed myself up to meet him and he met me with force.
I came again, just as strong as before.
“I love you,” he said as the world was shattering.
“I love you,” I said as I felt him come a few moments later. Our lips met one last time.
You and me.
No space.
Chapter Twenty-four
Stryker
It was what I had wanted that very first time I’d met her. Watching her face as I drove her to the edge of pleasure and pulled her back was something so beautiful I didn’t think I could ever do it justice with my pen.
Afterward, I lay with her, our sweat mingling and our bodies as close as they could be without being physically connected. She was busy reading my tattoos.
“You figured out what you want yet?” Her skin was still ink free.
“Not yet.”
“Well, how about we practice?”
“What do you mean?” I unwrapped my arms from around her and sat up, grabbing a marker from the box on her desk. I’d been planning this ever since I got her naked.
“How about we try out a few. What was something you considered?” I held up the marker and she smiled.
“A butterfly on my shoulder.” She pointed.
“Turn over.” She rolled onto her back and turned her head so she could watch me. I dragged the marker across her skin, making the outline of a butterfly, as if it was resting on her shoulder. I grabbed a few other colors so I could make it more vibrant. She giggled a little at the touch of the marker. I finished the butterfly and then drew a flower below it, as if the butterfly had stopped on it to rest.
“What next?” I said.
“Um, how about a starfish?”
“Where?”
She turned over. “My hip.” She pointed to her left hip and gave me a little smile. I let my eyes trace her body. I’d seen it many times before, but I had a whole new appreciation of it now.
It was so tempting to drop the marker and make her moan like she had earlier. Leaving the cap on the marker, I and slowly drew it over her body, from her collarbone and down her breasts to her bellybutton, where I made a circle and then lower.
“Starfish,” she said in a harsh voice, her eyes closed and her hands fisted in her blanket.
“Of course, how could I forget?” I uncapped the marker and started to draw, watching her skin pimple with goosebumps. I drew one starfish and then a clam and then some more shells, starting a seascape on her hip that stretched close to her bellybutton.
“What’s next, my sweet canvas?”
“Use your imagination.” She seemed to be out of ideas.
“So I can draw whatever I want?”
She grabbed my wrist before I could start drawing again. “Within reason.”
I grinned at her and gave her a kiss, which was meant to be quick, but turned heated before she nipped my lip near my lip ring.
“You’ve got a lot of skin to cover.”
***
I covered her shoulders and arms and stomach and back and ass and legs and feet with drawings. Flowers and swirls and stars and quotes that reminded me of her and song lyrics and little things that made me think of her. There was no continuity, except that they all reminded me of her.
I drew hearts on the bottom of her feet and sat back to admire her. She looked over her shoulder, trying to see her back.
“Come on,” I said, reaching for her. I picked her up and carried her to the full-length mirror that hung in her closet. I set her down and turned her so she could see.
“Wow,” she breathed. “You are freakishly talented.”
“An artist is nothing without good materials to work with, and a muse.”
She looked away from her beautiful body to meet my eyes. “Oh, so I’m your muse now?”
I touched a poppy I’d drawn on her shoulder in bold red marker.
“Every artist needs one.”
“You seemed to do pretty well without me before.”
“That was because I didn’t know what I was missing.”
“Hm,” she said, touching my more-permanent ink. “So I guess we’re not friends anymore, huh?”
“I beg to differ.” I kissed the poppy and picked her up, making her squeal as I tossed her back in bed. “I think you are my very best of best friends.”