by LJ Evans
Justice’s smile disappeared at Liz’s playful comment, and Locke’s face returned to the glower from earlier. The men in your family did not like the idea of us tangled in my sheets. “What’s this?” Justice said, his arms rising up to cross his chest in a stance not unlike my own.
You were up out of the bed in a flash. “God, Justice, don’t act like I’m some saint.”
“You might as well be,” Justice said.
“How can you even say that?”
You had your hand on your hip, scowling, and I couldn’t help but grin at you, all fiery again. I was relieved that it wasn’t directed at me for once. But then, it made me think about what I’d do if I was on the other end of it, and how I could certainly take your breath away, and that wasn’t a good thing because it made me tighten in areas that were not appropriate for the maternity ward with your brother in front of me.
“You’ve been living like one,” Justice said, running a hand through his hair.
“Please. Don’t. Go there.” And that wiped my smile away because there was so much self-loathing in your voice that it ripped yet another hole in my soul.
“You’ve lived like a nun for four years and now after one date with,” and Justice waved his hand at me lounging in the door. “This…”
“Yes?” I offered moving in a quick step towards where you stood, and I couldn’t help but place my hands on your shoulders. Possessive? Staking my claim? I can see that’s what I was doing. But, I’m learning. I will not ever be good at people doubting us. I can’t say I blame Justice. I wouldn’t like me with you either if I wasn’t me. That’s pretty fucked up, but true.
“Asshole?” Locke offered up to Justice, continuing his own glare.
You shrugged my hands off your shoulder, stepped away from me, and shook a finger at the two men by the bed.
“Both of you stay out of this. I’m old enough to make my own choices.”
“And mistakes,” Liv offered up with a smile that said she was really enjoying this. I knew for sure that I liked her. Both Liv and Claire seemed good for you. They are good for you even though I want to hate them both for telling you to go. I can’t hate them because they know how to take care of you.
You just shook your head at your sister-in-law. “You’re all impossible.”
You turned on your heel, grabbed my hand, and tugged me towards the door. “I’ll see you all later. Get some rest!”
“Good luck trying to do the same,” Liv said laughing behind us.
You turned, let go of my hand, and rushed back to Justice. You hugged him tightly. “Love you from the top of my aorta to the bottom of my posterior vena cava.”
“Right back at you, S&M,” Justice said squeezing you.
You grabbed my hand again as we left, and you held it all the way to the parking garage. I don’t think it was until we were at the car that you realized how tightly you held on. You looked down at our hands entwined and went to let go, but I gripped it harder, bringing your palm up to my mouth and kissing the silky flesh. It wasn’t meant to be sexual. It was meant to make you feel at ease.
“I’m sorry for all that. You must think…”
“That they care about you?”
“That I’m a freak.”
I pulled you to me and kissed your forehead. “No. You’re amazing. They’re amazing.”
You rested your head on my chest.
“How can you think that? You’ve known me like. What? Forty-eight hours at most.”
“It didn’t take one.”
I meant it, but you just shook your head against my chest in disbelief. I reached up and undid the messy bun, letting your curls swirl around your shoulders where I could wrap my hand in them forcing you to look up at me. I captured your gorgeous lips in my own. I couldn’t help it. You were so strong and beautiful and yet so full of self-hatred and I didn’t know how or why but I did know that I wanted to prove to you just how stunning and sexy you were.
You returned my kiss with as much fervor as you had the very first time our lips met. And with just as much passion as you had in my studio.
It took everything I had not to pull you down into the seat of the Porsche and make love to you in the hospital parking lot. I dragged myself away from your sweetness. “You must be exhausted. And hungry. It’s been a long day.”
You smiled up at me with a look that said you were neither tired nor hungry. Not for food anyway, and I couldn’t help but devour you again.
You were the one to pull back that time with a shaky smile. “I could use a good burger.”
“Burger?”
“Yep. Burger.”
“Okay, but we go to the place I know. The meat is grass fed, with no antibiotics or hormones.”
You looked up at me with surprise. “You’re a food snob?”
“No. I’m just careful about what I put into my body.”
I opened the car door for you and you got in. I could tell you were tired. Your eyes looked slightly bruised and almost haunted even though you were still smiling.
I decided right then that we’d get the burgers to go and end up back at my place where I could ensure you got a good night’s sleep. I swear that was my intention. But you. You are just irresistible.
Lay Your Hands on Me
PJ After Letter Four
“You’re mine and I’m yours for the taking. Right now the rules we’ve made are meant for breaking.”
-Bon Jovi & Sambora
PJ PUTS DOWN THE letter. So many feelings flood through her from those first intense twenty-four hours together. Seth had been possessive and protective almost immediately. At the time, she had loved the feeling of being wanted and desired. She’d never had someone be drawn to her that relentlessly from the first kiss. She’d never had someone ready to go to blows with her brother for calling her S&M.
The mess they are in is partly her fault. She knows that now with space and therapy. She’d let Seth direct the path of their relationship from the start. When he couldn’t let her out of his sight, it had felt intoxicating instead of unhealthy. And after the incident at the bar and the awful texts, it had accumulated into one big pile of insanity. So it isn’t a surprise that it made her nervous later. That she’d made the choice to run instead of staying.
But that first night, after seeing Liv at the hospital, she’d just gone with it all. She’d walked away from four years of abstinence and solitude and gone full speed into a relationship with Seth that had absorbed her whole world.
* * *
They got the burgers to go at a hole in the wall restaurant that was strictly farm to market and then Seth drove back to his place. It wasn’t that she hadn’t expected that. Her car was there, for god’s sake, but her stomach still flipped over as they drove into his garage. He grabbed the passenger door even as she tried to open it herself.
He took her hand making her skin tingle as it had every time he’d touched her and led her into his living room. They ate the burgers on his couch with the sound of the waves coming in through the open windows letting her know that the ocean was still there in the darkness. Welcoming her. She felt more relaxed at his house than she had anywhere in a very long time. It felt like she’d first entered it a week ago instead of just that afternoon.
“I feel bad about your ajiaco. Is it ruined?”
“Nah, I called Becca at the hospital. She came and cleaned up for us.”
The “us” hit her in the chest. She put down the sweet potato fry that was in her hand and looked at him. He had his feet up on the coffee table, one hand behind her on the couch. She was sitting cross legged with just a couple inches between them.
“What?” he asked, and his hand that was behind her reached over to twirl through her curls in a way that made her feel beautiful and adored.
She shook her head unable to say what she was feeling. That the “us” sounded so right. She thought she was losing it. Maybe she was just overly tired. How else could she be thinking about an “us” after one brief day o
f sex and emotion? Real life wasn’t this way. Real life was either sex and a one-night stand or dating someone for weeks before committing to anything else. Before committing to emotions. Before committing to an “us”. But emotions still filled her. Hope that she had long ago pushed aside and forced dormant came awake. Hope that there might be someone who could want her for more than the body she showed the world.
His hand reached the base of her neck and rubbed it gently and her body responded with wave upon wave of sensory overload.
“I. I really should go.” She knew she should. She knew she should run away now before this ended, as it was likely to end, with one or both of them bruised and battered.
“No. I really don’t think you should.” He carefully removed the trays of food from in front of her. He pulled at her legs slightly so that she toppled into him while the hand at the back of her neck pulled her face towards his. He tasted like salt and barbecue sauce and memories in the making.
His fingers traversed her body as if he was caressing something he cherished, and it made her breath catch. “How do you do that to me?” She managed to whisper.
He smiled wickedly in response and then picked her up and carried her to the bedroom again. She realized then that it was so that they were away from the open windows. The bedroom was the only room in the house that had any blinds or privacy.
When they got there, they both shed their clothes, and he eased over to her, pulling her up against him. He picked her up, and she wrapped her legs around his waist like it was something she’d been doing for years. For her whole life. Like this was the only thing she’d ever known.
“You’re so fucking strong.”
She smiled against his lips. “Ninja warrior at your service.”
He growled and kissed her like he hadn’t kissed anyone in a century, as if he was starving for affection. And they lost themselves again in the need and desire and the ache that seemed to grow from the depths of both of them until there was nothing but passion and hands and skin.
After, they lay there breathless, entwined. She felt so relaxed, so comfortable that it was frightening. He tucked her up against him, and she ran a hand along the tattoo that was on his arm. It was a panther. It was perfectly him. The hunting he must do and the helplessness of his prey… of her. But on the shoulder of the same arm was another tattoo. A colorful, delicate bird inside a cage so bright that it looked like there was actual gold embedded into his skin.
“This is a beautiful tattoo,” she said quietly. Not knowing how painful that tattoo would become for her later.
“I used to think it was the closest I would ever come to feeling love,” he said softly, and she looked from the tattoo to his eyes, and what she saw there made her nervous. Like the potential to love her was already a glimmer in his future.
She’d wanted to be loved in her past life but not one of the boys she’d run through had ever loved her back. And after, she’d put the idea of love on hold. There was the possibility of a “maybe someday” that resided somewhere in the recesses of her mind, but she hadn’t taken it out to examine it in ages. She hadn’t expected to find the possibility of that “maybe” in a junk artist from the Bronx.
“She broke your heart?” PJ said to bring her mind back away from that quiet corner of her brain. His eyes flickered with some unnamed emotion that was quickly hidden in the cool depths.
“Yes. But to be fair, she never promised me hers. I knew hers was already taken.”
“Well. That’s just shitty.”
He shrugged as if he hadn’t deserved more from this girl that had hurt him, and it ripped at PJ in a way she hadn’t expected. Everything about Seth and her emotions since first meeting him was over the top. Like she’d never had emotions before, and now they were pummeling her with the intensity of a winter storm.
She reached up and kissed him. Because he seemed like he needed it. Like he needed to be reassured that he deserved to be touched and loved. Because that feeling, that need to be reassured, was echoed inside her. And he returned her kiss with something that felt like reverence. It made her stomach turn because she knew she was far from the saint Justice tried to make her out to be, but for this one night she didn’t care.
He tucked her up against him, and they fell asleep meshed together like the water and the sand.
* * *
When PJ awoke the next morning, the sun was filtering in through the plantation blinds. She felt warm and cozy. Like she used to feel when her parents were alive, and she got to sleep in after a really great day. She felt safe. She felt happy. Neither of these emotions were a common experience for her in recent years. It was like she was always trading one for the other. Either safe or happy but not both.
She rolled over to find Seth’s side of the bed empty. She wasn’t sure how long he’d been gone. She grabbed his t-shirt and her underwear on the way to the bathroom. She used the facilities and then stared at herself in the mirror. Little existed of the make-up from yesterday, and yet she still looked happy. She hadn’t seen that look in the mirror in forever. She twined her messy curls up into a bun and then shrugged at the mystery girl before making her way out into the living area.
“Seth?” she called.
She stopped at the windows. The beauty of the beach and the ocean waves halting her, making her wonder what it would it be like to wake up to that view every day. To be able to go squish her toes in the warm sand and listen to the gulls cry out above her on a daily basis.
Her phone pinged. She wasn’t leaving it anywhere after the debacle yesterday.
NO CALLER ID: I miss you. Your eyes, Patterson, your eyes are burned in my head like a brand.
It was a number she couldn’t block again. It was over-the-top. Almost like the intensity of her and Seth, but with a creepy side because she didn’t know who it was. Didn’t the person know that was creepy? She’d have to figure out how to block them permanently.
She heard noises from Seth’s studio and made her way to the open door. Seth was bent over the chair he’d made and it appeared as if he was breaking it apart.
She ran at him, grabbing his arm, “Stop. Don’t. It’s beautiful. Don’t wreck it.” Her mournful cry filled the small room.
He froze, but looked down at her hand on his arm and then up to her face with surprise in his eyes. “I’m not breaking it. Just working out the kinks.”
“Oh!” She stepped back flustered, dropping his arm.
He put the chair leg down and turned towards her, his arms crossed over his chest as he took her in. She was suddenly embarrassed that she hadn’t put on more clothes. It was as if she was expecting to… well… do more… The flush of her cheeks swarmed her down into her neck. She hated it.
“I like this look on you,” he said, his voice deep.
She inhaled sharply as his look devoured her, and she returned it with her own look, taking him in. No shirt. His muscled torso and flat stomach tight above the flannel pajama bottoms that hung from his contoured hips. He was so gorgeous that it was like looking at his art when looking at him. She swallowed hard.
“Why would I destroy what I built?” He asked, arms still crossed.
“It just…,” she left off with a shrug.
“I’ve only destroyed one piece in my life. And I regretted it as soon as I did it. I was frustrated and angry and I took it out on the one thing I could safely take it out on. And in the process, I lost the person I cared about most.”
It was probably the most he had said to her at one time ever.
“The girl who broke your heart?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry,” PJ said.
“I’m not. It means I’m here with you,” he said in a low, deep voice with those piercing blue eyes flashing at her.
She put a hand self-consciously to her messy bun and realized her mistake when his t-shirt road up showing her panties and her own flat belly button.
He had his hands on either side of her naked waist in one swift move. He k
issed her ferociously, and she couldn’t help but match it before the realization that her smelly breath must be appalling settled in, and she pushed him away.
“Stop. I’m all gross. I haven’t been able to shower or brush my teeth.”
“You still smell like candy to me,” he tried to kiss her again, but she moved away.
“Really. I just wanted to see where you wandered off to. I need to go back to the apartment. Shower. Change.”
“I have a shower.”
“But you don’t have my toothbrush.”
“I have an extra toothbrush.”
“I’m serious, Seth.”
“So am I.”
He grabbed her hand, kissing the palm, and then dragged her from the studio. He led her, fingers joined, down the hall, past his bedroom to another bathroom. There he dug under the sink and came up with a brand-new toothbrush still in its wrapper.
“Becca stocks the guest room,” he explained.
“Because you have so many women staying the night?”
“I don’t ever have company here.”
“Then why does she stock it?”
“She’s hopeful,” he said with a shrug. He was holding the toothbrush away from her even as she reached for it.
“Seth!”
“I’ll give it to you on one condition.”
“Am I going to like this condition?”
And the look he gave her made her stomach turn to jelly and her sore loins ache.
“Seth!”
His lips twitched as if he was still unaccustomed to smiling, “Just stay for breakfast.”
“I can’t believe you aren’t shoving me out the door. Isn’t that what guys like you usually do? Kiss them, pat them on their bottom, and send them on their way?”
She reached for the toothbrush, but he grabbed her wrist and pulled her up close to him. She could feel his hard body through his flannel bottoms and her thin t-shirt.
“I’m not that guy. You don’t know anything about me. Not yet.” It was a promise that was scary and thrilling at the same time.