Kicked: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (43 page)

“Getting her first ink today,” Flor said and then, for whatever reason, decided to add, “and the motherfucker wielding the needle is gonna be me.” He winked at Max, moving past him and leaving me there in an awkward moment of hesitation. Max was still smiling, still looking beautiful in an outfit eerily similar to Flor's – tight T-shirt, jeans, boots. I opened my mouth to say something, horribly aware that Flor would hear it, too. Our breakup had been amicable, but that didn't mean things weren't awkward. Guess that's what I got for dating a guy I'd known almost as long as I'd known Flor. Maybe childhood friend stuff never really worked out in the end?

Max seemed to sense my hesitation, but before he could say anything to break the tension, one of the other artists called him over and I made my break. I followed Flor down a short hallway with doors on either side. I knew these rooms were reserved for people who wanted privacy and didn't want to be tattooed in the chairs that sat behind the front counter, in plain sight of all Florian's groupies.

I shook my head to clear the negativity away. I didn't need that today. Today had to be special, momentous.

“You ready for your first time?” Flor purred, knowing damn well the double entendre he was laying on me. I stuck my tongue out at him when he glanced over his shoulder and grinned, turning around and pressing his back to one of the blue doors. Or at least, I thought it was blue. In all reality, it was so covered in stickers that I wasn't exactly sure what color was underneath. “Seriously,” Flor said, his hand resting on the knob as I paused in front of him, once again far too aware of the narrow hallway and his nearness for my own comfort. “Are you really ready for this? I don't want you doing this just because you want to make me happy.”

“Please, Flor,” I said, reaching out for the knob and thinking he'd move his hand out of the way. “When have I ever done anything just for you?” I kept my voice playful, hoping he wouldn't call me on my bluff. When we were really little, I used to do anything and everything in my power to get Flor to pay attention to me; this was not one of those times.

My hand curled around his, fingers entwining together for the briefest of moments before he turned the knob and pulled away from my touch. If that brief bit of contact made my blood heat and turned my knees to jelly, I wondered what it was doing for him. From the looks of it, the answer was simply
nothing.
I guessed he'd touched enough girls in his day that it didn't really matter anymore.

“Take a seat on the table while I work this sketch out, okay?” I nodded and waited for Flor to flick on the lights, bathing the small sterile room in color. His paintings lined the walls, colorful renditions of women in armor, dressed as vampires, hiding behind hooded cloaks. He was amazingly talented for his age, reminiscent of painters like Luis Royo and Victoria Francés. I took in the art with a smile, sitting down on the edge of the black cushioned chair and leaning back, letting my hair fan out around me while I glanced up at the ceiling and the swirl of stars painted across its blue and purple depths. If the exam chair and the stainless steel countertop to my left reminded me of a doctor's office, the rest of the room was awash in color.

“This won't take long,” he promised, fishing a laptop out of a locked drawer and laying it on the table. “I've been working on something for awhile that I think you'll like.” He paused for a moment and I was certain he was going to add something, but instead he just sat down and started drawing. I let my eyes drift closed against the bright lights above me and tried to breathe. It wasn't the actual act of getting a tattoo that was freaking me out. Obviously, I was no stranger to the art. It was something else that was bothering me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Of course, it probably had something to do with my stepbrother. Whenever I had a feeling I couldn't quite shake, butterflies in my stomach, or a perpetual shiver that clung to my spine, it always had to do with him.
He's such an asshole.

I kept my eyes closed for a while, the smell of antiseptic burning my nostrils as I waited for Florian to work his magic. A few minutes later, he told me he was sending something to the printer and left. When he came back, he had a digital painting in his hand.

“I want you to take a look at this and let me know what you think,” he said, drawing my eyes open and focusing my attention on the art held out for my inspection. When I sat up and reached out to take it, a strange look passed over Flor's face, almost like he was unsure. I blinked and it was gone, replaced with that cocky self-assuredness that I was always so used to seeing.

My fingers curled around the page and pulled it towards me, an image of a white stag greeting me with dark eyes and an enigmatic expression that somehow, strangely, reminded me of Florian. Its majestic form was silhouetted against a dark sky and a gray-yellow moon obscured by clouds. It was both so like and unlike my stepbrother that I wasn't sure what to say.

“If you don't like it,” he told me, dragging a box of cigarettes out of his pocket and putting one between his lips, “you can tell me. I'm a big boy, I can take it.” He winked at me and sighed, slipping the fingers of his right hand into his pocket and leaning against the wall, centered between two of his paintings.

I blinked up at him.

“Oh, God, Flor. No, no, I love it. It's so … simple but so powerful.” He watched me as I spoke, eyes roving my face, like he was trying to discern if I was really telling the truth or not. For a second there, I actually felt like we might have a moment, but then Flor had to go and do one of his usual shrugs, standing up and moving towards the door.

“Think about it. Make sure it's what you want, what you really, really want.” I swallowed hard and pulled the page closer to my chest. Somehow, I wasn't sure he was talking only about the tattoo. “I'm gonna go have a smoke.”

I watched Flor walk out of the room and then dug my phone from my pocket. As I'd expected, there were already several texts from Addi. Rather than read them all, I simply called her back.

“Hey bitch,” I said, trying to sound casual. I felt anything but. The second he graduated high school, Flor moved out of the house and I barely saw him. Then, a few months back, he started making appearances at family dinners and get-togethers again. I was finally starting to feel like we were becoming friends again. It was just … weird. I couldn't quite get a feel on his emotions and in turn, I couldn't quite get a feel on mine either.

I knew Addison could tell the moment she heard my voice over the phone.

“You better not be doing anything stupid,” she told me and I gawped, leaning forward and curling over the printout protectively.

“I'm not,” I said, knowing I sounded defensive. I held the phone with my right hand and set the paper down in my lap. “I'm just maybe, sort of, kind of getting a tattoo?” It came out as a question. I'd always been a little bit of a wimp when it came to Addison. I swear, I could hear her pursing her lips at me.

“Without me? You slut. I want to see you get inked. Where are you? I'm coming over there.”

“You are not,” I said, glad that she hadn't quite put two and two together yet. The second she discovered that Flor was the one who was going to be tattooing me, she'd freak. “You are going to stay with your Irish soul mate and his parents and convince him to move his butt here and marry you, so I can have the apartment all to myself.”

“Hah! A week into this and you're already getting cold feet? Well, you don't need to worry. As soon as Patrick told his parents he was thinking of moving here, they freaked out and left the restaurant. He's in their hotel room with them now and I'm standing alone in the lobby. So, spill it. Where are you?”

I bit my lower lip hard enough that I winced.

My silence was worth a thousand words. Well, one word anyway.

Florian.

“Goddamn it, Abigail Ingram Sharp. Are you letting him tattoo you? Really?”

“He's talented, Addi.”

“I know he's talented, Abigail, but you want to fuck him. He's your brother. And an asshole. And a player.”

“Stepbrother,” I inserted, knowing she wasn't finished with me yet.

“Foulmouthed. Arrogant. Rude. He scared the shit out of Dorian. Pretty sure he doesn't like me either. Abigail, listen. It's not that I think there's anything morally wrong with your feelings or your attraction to Florian, but what do you think would happen if you
did
sleep together? Awkward family dinners? More hurt feelings? What would your dad do if he ever found out?”

I cringed and a cold chill crept into my blood, stealing some of that rabid heat that Florian always managed to instill in me.

“Florian … he's not exactly a relationship sort of a guy. I mean, even if you
could
figure out someway to work this whole fiasco into a livable sort of situation, he wouldn't go for it. He'd fuck you and leave you, just like he's done to dozens of other girls.”

“Okay, okay, okay.” I held up my hand, even though she wasn't there to see it. I took a deep breath and focused on the painting directly in front of me. There was a girl halfway through her transformation into a swan, only it wasn't a pleasant looking sort of a transformation. Her face was twisted into a grimace of pain and her arms were wrapped tightly around her midsection, fingers digging into her pale flesh. “I get it. Nothing's going to happen between us, Addi.” The snort she responded with told me she didn't believe me, not one bit. “I'm probably going to be here for a few hours. Come see me later; I'll text you the address.”

I hung up before she could respond and jumped when the door opened.

“You ready?” Flor asked me again, and I nodded, watching as he set a fresh printout on the drafting table to the right of the stainless steel counter. The smell of cigarette smoke hung around him, but managed to do absolutely nothing to obscure his usual scent. Florian was masculine without being vulgar, sharp and spicy and sweet all at the same time.
Damn him.
“You sure you wouldn't be more comfortable with a butterfly or a flower or some shit?” He glanced over at me and I noticed that his shirt was a little rumpled and on his neck, there was a perfect lip print in pastel pink. One of the groupies had gotten to him.

My stomach twisted up in knots and a rush of disappointment surged through me. My brain tried to promise me that there was no way he'd had enough time to go out there and sleep with someone yet my heart was utterly convinced he had. Either way, it shouldn't have mattered to me. He was my brother for fuck's sake.

I shook my head violently, brown curls sliding over my shoulders.

“No, of course not. You should know me better than that, Flor,” I said, even though I wasn't sure that he really did. For having known the guy for thirteen years, it always seemed he knew surprisingly little about me when I, pathetically, seemed to know everything about him. Well, everything he'd
let
me know, that is. I was working under the suspicion that there was a lot under the surface that Flor was hiding. “I don't want a
fucking
butterfly or a flower. I want that design right there. Let's do this.”

His eyebrows raised, but he didn't say a thing, straightening out his shirt and sitting down to flick on the switch for the light box. He put a piece of what looked like tracing paper over the table and proceeded to copy his art onto it. For a while he didn't speak and I started to wonder if I'd somehow done something to piss him off. Flor's tattooed hand moved across the page in a blur of color, his fingers strong and sure, guiding the pencil with an expertise that I could only envy. As far as I knew, I didn't have any passions or special talents. I mean, I was good at school, but what did that really mean if I couldn't decide on a major?

I bit back a sigh and leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees to watch him when suddenly, he paused, the tip of his pencil resting lightly on the page. When Flor turned slowly in his seat to look at me, jeans creaking against the leather of the chair, a shiver went down my spine. As his thoughtful expression morphed into a wicked grin, the shiver became a full body shake that I had to fight to quell.

“Well, what are you waiting for, Abi? Take your pants off.”

The words went straight through me, piercing my heart like an arrow. Between my legs, an insistent throbbing began that I didn't know how to control. Wow.

“All the way off?” I asked, knowing that was a stupid question. Florian laughed at me, hunching back over the table, pencil sliding across the page like it was nothing, like he could do this in his sleep.

“Unless you want to do it with your pants tangled around your ankles.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “Which I'm not opposed to.”

I huffed, knowing he was just teasing me and sat up, pulling off the gray leather boots I'd put on in an attempt to look somewhat stylish. Walking into this shop was like walking into a lion's den, one filled with gorgeous, perfectly put-together lionesses, dressed up like wafer thin models. I knew I'd never match up to them, no matter how hard I tried, but I couldn't seem to keep myself from trying. A pair of boots and some nice jeans weren't fooling anyone though; I had breasts and hips and a stubborn layer of extra padding that nobody wanted to see. I knew I wasn't fat (I wasn't that delusional
yet
), but I also knew I wasn't winning any beauty contests.

I stood up, my bare feet hitting the floor with a slap and then started to unbutton my jeans. I could practically feel Flor's eyes on my back, yet when I turned around, he wasn't looking at me. I swallowed and faced towards the wall, hooking my fingers in the denim and closing my eyes. This shouldn't be so hard and yet … I felt like I was drowning again, smothered in the ashes of an unrequited love. I breathed out and up, sending stray strands of hair fluttering around my face, and then I dropped my jeans. Or I tried to anyway. I'd squeezed myself into my tightest pair of dark wash skinny jeans, so I had to really struggle to push them down my hips and over my calves.

The bikini bottoms I'd slipped into at home felt suddenly inadequate.