He didn’t understand her request, but he changed the motion. Her eyes narrowed in pleasure.
“Do you like that more?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She didn’t answer for a moment. “It’s something someone taught me. If I’m feeling overwhelmed or like my emotions are too big, I think of putting my feelings into a box. It helps calm me down.”
How funny. She had to put her feelings in a box, while he’d only recently allowed his out.
He shifted to lay on his side, and continued the motion, finding it soothing to him as well. He moved to theN, boxing that. “Where did you get this tattoo?”
“Chicago,” she murmured.
Boston.
D.C.
Los Angeles.
New York.
Chicago.
His mind whirred to life, fitting the cities into a pattern, alongside what he knew about those tattoos and when they’d appeared on her body.
What were the odds she would get a single tattoo in every city he’d met her in?
He ran his finger up to the vine that unfurled on her upper back, almost kissing a splatter of ink from the compass. The harsh lines of the vine were a sharp contrast to the dreamy blurriness of the compass. He drew a square there, around a prickly flower. “What does this mean?”
Her shoulders moved. “I told you. I thought it was pretty.”
He nodded and slid his hand down her arm to her wrist. A box there. “And this?”
“It’s an ellipsis.”
“What does it mean?”
She rolled over on to her back and stared up at him. “Punctuation.”
He bent and pressed a kiss on the side of her breast, where the heart lay. “What about this?”
“It’s from a poem I liked.”
“What poem?”
“What’s with all the questions?” She moved, subtly edging away. She shoved the sheets and comforter down and crawled under them, wrapping the bedding around herself.
“I’m curious.”
Boston.
D.C.
Los Angeles.
New York.
