She glares at me but I just laugh and lean over till my lips touch her ear. “One final rule, Firebird: You don’t come without permission.”
A soft mewl escapes her closed mouth and her grip on the sheets tightens as I sit up and trail my fingers over her collar bone and down the valley of her breasts.
I wonder how long I can play with her. How many strokes of my fingers until she’s a sobbing mess, her thighs slick with arousal and her mind crazed.
She is pure gold. Wild and free. I’ve dreamed about the sight before me. Lola, spread out on my bed, not a scrap of clothing on her fine body. I never thought I’d get to have her like this, and I want to savor the moment. Draw it out. Tease her.
I move down to the bottom of the bed and start at her ankles. Her toes curl when I trail a finger over the sole of her foot.
“Nuh uh.” I shake my head. “No moving, Lola.”
Her speckled eyes, molten with heat, find mine. “It tickles.”
I suppress a smile and draw my finger up to and over the delicate silver chain hanging loosely around her ankle. I remember the first time she wore it. She came out of the sea, in some skimpy bikini, surfboard tucked under her arm and the silver anklet glittering against the sun. She looked like a fucking mermaid that day and I went to bed feeling like a perv of thehighest order for fantasizing about my best friend’s seventeen-year-old sister.
Longest summer of my life.
I keep going, running my knuckles up the inside of her thigh. I’m millimeters from her soft cunt when more black ink catches my eye. I stop and a tortured sigh escapes Lola’s lips.
“Roman…” she moans.
I tsk. “Shh, you’re being good remember?”
She bites her lip and I smudge my thumb over the small tattoo nestled just next to her bikini line. It’s an outline of a mountain range, a tiny full moon hovering over the thin, jagged lines. It hits me again then, how much of her life I’ve missed. How, when all I’ve ever wanted is to make a home here in Pine Rock, Lola wanted to get as far away from this town as possible.
Away from me.
“Tell me about this one,” I say, fueled by a sudden, desperate need to know every place she went, every little thing she did.
“Oh, I can talk now?”
I pinch her hip. “Brat.”
“I got it before I climbed Mount Fuji.”
“Not after?”
She shrugs against the sheets. “I could hardly give up halfway if it was forever inked onto my skin.”
I shake my head on a laugh. Trust Lola to get a tattoo so she can’t back out of a challenge most people wouldn’t ever consider. “You’re incredible. You know that, right?”
Her teeth dig into her lower lip, making them flush a deep pink. “You’re one of the few who seem to think so.”
I give up on mapping her body and move so I’m holding myself up above her, my face level with hers. “I do think that. And I’m going to keep telling you until you start to believe it.”
My gaze scans over her naked form. “You got any more tattoos firebird?”
“A few.”
“Show me.”
Her eyes glint. “That would involve moving and I’m not allowed to do that.”
I smirk at the sass she manages to achieve even when she’s following my rules. “You have my permission.”
She raises up onto her elbows and rolls onto her side. She gathers her hair in her hand and lifts it off her neck and raises her other arm above her head.
It takes me a second to realize what I’m looking at but when I do, awe sweeps over me.
