“We were seventeen, Soph. We had no idea whether we would stay together. Your father hated me, and you were heading to uni. You would have left me, eventually. The club was always there for me, long before I became a prospect.”
She swallowed, and I knew she understood the truth in those words, however angry at me she was.
“I’m still in love with you, Grey,” I whispered, watching for a reaction in those eyes. “I never stopped loving you.”
Her teeth raked at her lip, and then she stopped like she’d shown me weakness.
“How? You’ve had other women.”
“Just like you’ve had other men, Soph. But I never fell in love with any of them.” I moved my thumb over her cheek, feeling her skin, silky smooth under the rough pad of callouses, oil and hard work. “When I saw you for the first time again in that hospital, that all came flooding back like a fucking tsunami.”
There was a flicker of movement at her lips, the start of a smile or a grimace; I couldn’t tell. Deep in her eyes, I could see a storm brewing. Emotions welling up. Everything that she was controlling right now coming together into one big bomb, and if it detonated, I didn’t know which way it would go.
Dropping my hand, I stepped back. Just a half stride. Just enough that I could see her better. That she could see me better. I shrugged out of my cut, peeling my arms out of the leather jacket underneath.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
“This is what I am now,” I answered, pulling the hoodie off over my head.
Sophie’s eyes widened. No amount of discipline and exposure stopped the shock spreading over her face. Her mouth opened and then closed again, her eyes darting over my body, unable to stay in one place longer than a couple of seconds.
“So many tattoos.” Her voice was husk now. “Do they…”
“Yeah. My whole body. There’s barely a patch of skin I haven’t tattooed.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to. Needed to,” I added, more quietly.
“Why did you need to, Ry?”
She’d picked up on my choice of words, the way she always did.
“To feel again. I spent…spend…so much of my life not feeling anything. Pain. Loneliness. Sadness,” I said the words more quietly, hoping she wouldn’t notice, but her eyes hardened just a fraction, and I knew it hadn’t passed her. “The tattoos. The piercings. They remind me to feel.”
“You’ve got a lot of piercings,” she agreed, her eyes moving back to my chest, to where two steel bars pierced my nipples.
“There’s more,” I smiled slightly, watching the realisation cross her face as her eyes lowered to the waistband of my jeans.
“Oh,” she breathed.
“I’ve changed,” I continued, watching her gaze make a second and third pass over the map of tattoos on my skin. “My body has changed. But my feelings for you, Soph. They’ve never changed. They’re as real now as they were then.”
I moved back towards her, and she reacted the way I thought she would, taking a step back till her back hit the kitchencounter and she couldn’t go any further. And I didn’t stop. Not until my skin was millimetres away from hers and I could feel the warmth of her breath against my lips.
There was nowhere for her to go, even if she’d wanted to when I leant forward and took her mouth with mine. I kissed her carefully at first, feeling the satin-smooth skin of her lips, plucking gently, my tongue darting out just to touch the edge of her mouth. A taste. A promise. And then she exhaled against me. Acceptance. The slightest of openings as her mouth relaxed, and I pushed my tongue inside, hers meeting mine, stroking over my flesh.
Chapter Nineteen
The kiss was careful at first, like he was giving me the opportunity to tell him to stop. To tell him I didn’t want it. His tongue felt around my mouth, dipping and licking and tasting but not violating, just testing. When I relaxed a little, I felt the tip between my lips, just edging forwards, waiting for the ‘no’. Waiting for me to push him back. But I didn’t want that. I wanted him. Even if he was completely covered in tattoos. Even if he didn’t look how I remembered him.
When I opened my lips, he didn’t wait any longer, filling my mouth with his tongue, swirling and stroking as his lips pulled at mine. His fingers teased at my hair, yanking at my bobble, tiny pinpricks of pain against my scalp, and then my hair fell loose around me. He paused, his mouth still against mine, but his lips thinning out into a smile.
Fingers brushed my scalp, moving through my hair, gentle pressure as his lips and tongue still worked, his body jammed against mine. My back pressed into the kitchen bench behind me. Yet still my hands fell limp at my sides, because I didn’t know how to touch his skin and all those tattoos.
A hand tightened in my hair, and we both heard the tiny noise I made. Half surprise, half…something else. Loss of control now threatened at the edges. Ryan’s hand pulled tighter, his mouth pausing on mine as he waited for another reaction, and as the exhale slipped out between us, he pulled harder. Fuck. His lips felt over my jawbone, a scratch of teeth as he moved across it, my pinned body shuddering. They moved lower, his beard scratching over the skin on my neck. Another shudder, and his fist tightened harder in my hair as his lips paused against me.
The tip of his nose pressed against me, hot breath brushing my skin as he breathed, waiting. Stopping.
