“I think I’d know if you had a tattoo.”
“And I’d think I’d know if I got one, too,” he countered. “Moira and I got them together.”
I rolled over and turned on the lamp he kept on the bedside table, flooding the area in warm light. “I’ve seen your body. You don’t—”
“I do.”
“Turn your lamp on. No, fuck that. I’m turning on the big light, and you’re going to show me this tattoo of yours.” I didn’t give him a chance to argue before I rolled off the bed and turned on the light. When I got back to the bed, Noah hadn’t shifted. The blanket was still covering the lower half of his body, and there was a distinctly amused look on his face. I tapped my fingers on my arm. “I’m waiting.”
“No.”
“Because you don’t have a tattoo.”
“I have a tattoo, Matt.”
“Then show me.”
“Or you could try to find it.” There was an obvious challenge in his green eyes, and while I didn’t believe that I would find this mysterious and nonexistent tattoo, I wanted to take him up on the challenge. “I know where it is, and I bet that you won’t be able to find it.”
The way he said it piqued my interest, and he knew it. I’d always been competitive. My friends had teased me about it, and Noah had refused to play certain board games with me in the past because of it. “One thing first: is it somewhere visible? Like not in your hair or anything?”
“It’s not in my hair,” he assured me. “But I still bet you won’t find it. In fact…” He kicked the blanket off him and settled on top of it. He looked like an Adonis spread naked over his navy bedspread. My mouth watered at the sight. Even if there wasn’t a tattoo, the idea of getting to slowly and leisurely explore his body was a temptation I could not pass up. And maybe, because I’dnot yet had that slow exploration, I had missed a small tattooed heart or a Snoopy or something.
Better to be safe than sorry.
“In fact,” he continued as I climbed into bed with him. “I think we should make a bet.”
“A bet?” Now I really was intrigued. The tattoo was probably small, tucked away somewhere not obvious. If it did exist, but would he really make a bet on a tattoo that didn’t exist? That would be cheating.
He nodded. “I bet that you can’t find the tattoo, and if you do…” He bit down on his bottom lip as his eyes moved over my body. “If you win by finding the tattoo, you get to choose if you top or bottom tonight. If I win, I choose.”
I swallowed hard at the prospect. Since we’d gotten back together, we’d explored with mouths and hands. We’d touched each other all over, sucked one another’s cocks, jacked each other off. We’d discussed our preferences, but we hadn’t crossed that line again yet. As long as we hadn’t, we could still claim we were taking it slow, right? But I’d thought about it. When I held his heavy cock in my hand, I thought about what it would feel like inside me again. When my fingers explored his tight, hot hole, I imagined it wrapped around my cock.
It was a line we hadn’t crossed since we were together the first time. Judging by the ways he’d improved at everything else, I could only imagine the new skills he’d bring to that arena of the bedroom. It didn’t matter to me which way we did it the first time, because I knew we’d go the other way at some point.
“You’ve got yourself a deal.”
I crawled over to him, prying his legs apart so I could kneel between them. I traced my fingers up his torso and watched as goosebumps rose in their wake. When I reached his face, I brushed the back of my index finger over his jaw until I reached his chin. I angled his head to the side and leaned over him. Icould feel the heat from his body, inches from my own, already attempting to distract me from my quest. There was no way I was getting distracted this early in, no matter how tempting his body felt under mine.
It wasn’t a matter of having a preference for if I fucked him or he fucked me. It was a matter of principal and pride, of not wanting to lose once the bet had been made. And okay, the idea of exploring every part of his body was very hot.
I pushed his head to the left and searched the side of his neck. I pushed back his ear. No tattoo. When I deemed that side clear, I licked a stripe down the column of his neck. He shuddered beneath me, and my cock twitched in response. I had a feeling that this would be torturous for both of us, in the very best possible way. I angled his chin up, kissing every spot that I checked. The other side of his neck was free from tattoos as well. When I finished with his face, I brought my lips down to his, teasing him with soft kisses and pulling away every time he tried to slip his tongue past my lips. “Nope,” I chirped. “You’re not going to distract me by kissing me. I have an entire body to search.”
He laughed as I studied his face, a face I’d already memorized. I knew there were no tattoos there, but I took advantage of the opportunity to stare at it anyway. I traced over his sharp cheekbones and thumbed over the beauty mark over his left lip. He tried to capture my thumb, but I moved it before he could suck it in between his lips. “Mhmm,” I hummed. “You’re just going to lay there while I explore every inch of your incredible body until I prove that you do not have a tattoo.”
“Matthew, I swear, I have a tattoo. Why would I make a bet—”
I cut him off with another kiss, plunging my tongue into his mouth. I let the kiss linger, let our tongues explore and taste until his arms wrapped tight around my waist. I broke the kiss and shook my head again. “Arms down on the bed,” I instructed.He listened immediately, his arms landing with a thud. My eyes moved over his left arm. “Lift them over your head.”
He complied at once. I ran my hands up his arms, like I could feel the ink on his skin. My eyes followed my fingers, searching for anything that could be a tattoo. I repeated my search on the other side. Of course there wouldn’t be a tattoo on his arms. I’d have seen it. He was always wearing short sleeves. I turned them over anyway, searching every inch of the arms that held me tightly every night.
Nothing.
I searched his collar bones, kissing and nipping as I examined the expanse of tanned skin. My eyes and lips moved down his torso, stopping to tease his dusky nipples until they were peaked and he was squirming underneath me. “Fuck, Matt,” he moaned as I sucked his nipple into my mouth and flicked it with my tongue. “You’re going to kill me.”
I pulled my mouth away from his nipple and rested my chin on his chest. “I mean, you could give in. Declare me the winner. Show me the tattoo or admit it doesn’t exist. Especially since I haven’t even gotten started yet.” Before he could answer, I bit down on his other nipple. He let out a strangled cry that went straight to my cock. I didn’t want him to give up. I wanted to keep searching, keep drawing these reactions out of him.
His hands moved to my hair, and he started to push me down further. “Keep looking,” he challenged, his voice made deeper with desire. “I think you’ll break before I do.”
