Tyler (17 page)

“College.” She makes a face. “Though I should forget about studies and get a job. I don’t need more debts.”

“More? Why?” I blink, kicking my slow brain into higher gear. “Wait a minute. You have debts?”

She sighs and sits back on her heels. She’s dressed in her lacy underwear, and where I’m naked under the covers my body is starting to wake up and take an interest in the way her breasts look so soft, trapped in the black lace. Like two doves I itch to free from their cages.

Oh fuck, getting poetic.
Bad sign…

I throw back the covers and in the process expose my hardening dick. Again I feel her gaze move over it, searing hot. Unable to resist, I reach down and give my erection a good, hard squeeze that makes me grunt in pleasure.

Erin’s eyes are wide, the coffee brown nearly swallowed in black. “I should…uh, should go,” she stammers but makes no move to leave the bed. Instead, she touches with her fingertip the tip of my dick, and I almost lose it then and there.

“Morning wood?” she inquires sweetly.

I snort. “I’d have to be dead not to react, seeing you like this.” I touch her arm and she leans in for a kiss. It’s sweet and spicy and when her tongue tangles with mine I forget where I am. Groaning in her mouth, I lift my hand to cup the back of her head, pressing her closer.

When she pulls back, her lips are red and her eyes bright. Somehow in all this, her hand has landed on top of mine where it’s curled around my weeping dick.

“I want to see you come.”

“Like this?”

“Just like this.”

“Fuck.” I didn’t mean to give her the whole show, but she’s breathing hard now. Her nipples are hard, and when she licks her lips, I’m a goner. “Fuck, Erin, I’m gonna…”

My dick spasms, and I jerk as cum splashes on my chest. It feels so good, and she leans in, recapturing my mouth, swallowing my moans as the orgasm rolls through me.

Her hands move to the back of my neck, and her fingers bury themselves in my hair. She breaks the kiss, letting me draw a shaky breath, and smiles.

“Your morning wood is sodden,” she says with mock severity.

Wha…? Oh.
She’s plastered on me, and my cum is gluing us together. I bare my teeth. “Morning wood will return from the dead.”

She grins. “Zombie morning wood?”

“Very definitely a zombie morning wood.”

She giggles, and it’s like crystal chimes—not too high-pitched, not fake. Pure. It’s a perfect moment, her in my arms, the light spilling from the windows painting her face with joy.

But then she says, “I missed you all these years.”

Bang.
The past is again smack between us like a wall, and all my humor dries up when my memories return.

“You said you didn’t want to see my face again,” I say. “Told me to get lost. That I’m an asshole, and that I don’t deserve you. And you were right.”

Hell. Look at that. Look at all the bitterness you carry inside you. No wonder you’re a fucking bastard to everyone.

“No.” She shakes her head vehemently. “I was wrong.”

I close my eyes. “No, you weren’t. I let you down too many times; didn’t show up when you expected me. Fucked up.”

She feathers her fingers over my mouth, and that makes me look back at her. Her eyes are so sad. “Listen to me. I was wrong and I’m sorry. I never meant those things I said.”

Silence stretches. Her heart beats fast against me where my arm is curled around her ribs.

“You didn’t mean them?” I finally ask.

“I didn’t.”

“Then why did you say them?”

Her lower lip trembles. I hate that I make her sad, but this has bugged me all these years—why the moment I needed her most she sent me packing without an explanation, calling me names and cursing me.

“Hormonal issues,” she says. “It was sorted out later, but you were gone by then.”

Hope flares in my chest, so hot it hurts. Girl issues always go way over my head, and I don’t pretend to understand, but… “I would have come back for you,” I mutter. “I wanted to. But I thought you didn’t want me back. I thought I was doing you a favor by staying away.”

“I wanted you back the moment you left.”

My lungs expand, and I feel as if I can breathe in the sky. I stare at her, trying to rebuild my world, to fit the pieces differently than I had all those years ago.

She tucks that juicy lower lip between her white teeth, and desire returns in a mad flood. I want to kiss her until we both run out of air.

A beeping breaks through my sex-obsessed thoughts.

“Your cell phone.” Erin reaches for it on the shelves by the bed—no idea how it got there.

“Let it ring,” I say. If the Pope was calling me, I wouldn’t give a flying fuck right now. All I want is to kiss her again, lay her down and enter her once more. “Erin…”

I reach for her.

Only problem is, she’s now shifting, throwing her legs off my narrow bed and gathering her clothes from the floor. “It’s a message for you,” she says.

“What?”

She says nothing as she pulls on her jeans and sweater with snappy, furious movements.

Have I done something wrong? She knows my story now. She knows why I left, and I know why she told me to fuck off four years ago. Shouldn’t everything be fine again?

“I’m late.” She pulls on her boots. “See you around.”

I shake my head that’s still full of cobwebs. Okay, I admit I’m confused. “Erin?”

“Have to go to class, then see Tessa, and then I have to teach. If you decide you want to tell me everything, Tyler, you know my number.”

My jaw is hanging slack. I can’t formulate any response that isn’t made up of swearwords. I mean, what the fuck? It’s like I’m back to four years ago, her accusations ringing in my ears and I just can’t understand what I’ve done to deserve them.

I snap out of my blank state when she grabs her purse and heads toward the door. “Hey, wait. What the hell happened?”

“I don’t know.” She gives a little angry shrug and opens the door. “Why don’t you ask your girlfriend?”

My eyes narrow as she slams the door behind her cute ass. I grab my cell, and sure enough Marlene’s name is flashing on the screen.

Oh, what the fuck!
She sent a pic of herself naked, practically shoving her tits into the camera. And they look terrible. They look inflated and fake as hell. Not like Erin’s. Soft, fitting perfectly in my hands.

Shit.
Erin saw this.
Dammit.

I want Erin back. Back at my side, day and night. In my bed, in my arms, at my table, on my couch—not just to mess around but to talk and laugh.

And as I fall back onto the mattress, I realize I’ve never wanted anything else so badly in my life.

Erin

My day is a blur. I stomp from class to class, angry with Tyler and whoever this Marlene is. His girlfriend. Who else?
Don’t be an idiot, Erin.
He was gone for four years. He’s gorgeous. Of course he has someone.

And you let yourself be seduced by him all over again—by his beauty, his pain, his inescapable sexuality. Jumped in with both feet, and now you have to drag yourself back out.

Mierda.
This is a huge mistake. I wanted answers, and I got them. His story breaks my heart, but how do I know he’s staying this time? What if the traumas he carries inside won’t leave him in peace? I saw glimpses of the boy he used to be, but what if it was an illusion? Something that won’t last.

I can’t take provisional anymore, not with Jax in the picture. Not with my heart so broken already.

Yet, he has my name tattooed on his arm. Permanent ink. Doesn’t that mean anything?

My head hurts from this mess. Maybe he does care for me. Or maybe he had that ink done long ago. But he has a girl waiting for him, probably back in Chicago, so what does it matter?

Stop waiting for him. It’s been four freaking years.

My cell rings as I switch classrooms, and when I glance at it, I see Tyler’s number. Clenching my teeth, I shove the phone back into my bag and go to my next class.

I’m not as mad at him as I am at myself. For falling so easily. For feeling so deeply where he’s concerned. For not coming clean with him about Jax while accusing him of hiding things.

But I’m not hiding a boyfriend.

What if you’re wrong?
a tiny voice whispers in the back of my mind.
What if she’s not his girlfriend?

And who is she, his cousin?
Yeah, right.
The photo of her huge fake tits is branded in my retinas.
Ugh.

God, I hate this feeling. This faint sound of dreams crashing down.

Someone steps into my path as I exit my literature class, during which I only took one note and that was
‘happy endings don’t exist.’
How sad is that?

“Erin. Been looking for you,” Dakota says and waves. Her nails are painted black. “Did you talk to Zane?”

Stunned, I blink and try to remember what I was supposed to talk to Zane about.
Oh, right.
“I did.”

“And? What did he say?” Her hair is a wild dark mess with pink highlights.

“He said no.”

The corners of her mouth turn down. “That’s all?”

I frown. That’s a weird reaction. Not,
‘Did he say why?’
or
‘Oh, no, I’m going to jump off a cliff right now.’

Interesting.

“What did you expect?” I ask.

She shrugs and shifts the strap of her bag on her shoulder. “An explanation?”

My memory turns back to the day when I passed Zane her request. “He said I should ask you what sort of tattoo you want, and I’d know why he refuses to ink it on you.” I cock my head at her. “So, what did you have in mind?”

She huffs and glances around as if expecting someone to be watching her. Well, at least two guys are checking her out. She’s a pretty girl, her crazy hair framing a cute little face, and with her combat boots and cargo pants, she’s an interesting combination, I guess.

But maybe it doesn’t do it for Zane. Who knows.

“I asked him for a dragon tattoo.” She tugs on a silver hoop with a crescent moon hanging from her earlobe.

A dragon. Zane told me about the tats he inked on his friends. The brotherhood. “Why would you want that?”

“That’s what he keeps asking me.”

“And what’s your answer?”

She laughs softly. “That I won’t tell him unless he inks one on me first.”

Christ.
I was sort of happy for this distraction from my dark thoughts, but now I’m irked. “Is this some sort of game? I don’t have time for it.”

“Not a game,” she mutters. Something shifts in her dark blue eyes, like a storm brewing. “This is important to me.”

“The tattoo, or Zane?”

She gives me a crooked smile. “Both. You see, Zane’s a survivor.”

I nod. I’m aware of that, but… “How do you know so much about him?”

She gives a one-shoulder shrug. “Been asking about him.”

The girl likes him. A surge of best-friend protectiveness washes over me. I’m not sure this crazy girl is what Zane needs in his life.

Then again, what do I know? I can’t even take care of my own love life.

“Why are you so insistent about getting a dragon tat?”

“Because.” She bites her lip. “It’s survivor’s ink, and I deserve it.”

With that, she turns around and walks away. I look at her go.
Well, hell.
Am I supposed to report this back to Zane? She didn’t ask me to.

I sigh and turn toward my car. I have a lesson to teach and dinner to make, to study and keep Tyler out of my mind.

If only it were that simple.

***

Come the night, I toss and turn in my bed. Hours pass without sleep, until I give up and turn the light back on.

It’s two in the morning. Tomorrow I’ll be like the walking dead. I pick up the novel I’m reading and try to focus on that, but the story is thin, and I quickly lose interest.

Letting the book drop back to the floor, I roll on my back and stare at the ceiling. I’ve filled it with glow-in-the-dark stars, like my bedroom back at my parents’ home where Jax now sleeps. I like looking at them. I feel warm and safe when I do, almost feeling Tyler’s arms around me, almost hearing his voice in my ear. His laughter.

This isn’t helping at all. No matter how I try to forget him, he’s all around me. Always was. And even when I try to erase his image from my mind, my body remembers how he touched me and filled me last night, and need rolls through me. The tips of my breasts tighten, and a throb starts between my legs, pulsing in time to my heart.

As I close my eyes, I touch my lips and remember how he kissed me, how he held me as if he wanted to meld with me forever. All I want to do is hop into my car and head over to his place, bang on his door and demand to be let back inside his apartment and his heart.

But I’m strong. I won’t do it. What little pride I have left will have to be enough to patch my wounds and move on.

A message lights up the screen of my phone on the bedside table. I pick it up. Tyler’s name blinks, and I want to hurl the phone against the wall.

I open it, instead, and sit up.

It reads,
‘You awake?’

I close my eyes. I shouldn’t reply.

Not two seconds pass before my phone beeps again.
‘Marlene isn’t my girlfriend.’

Oh God.
How can I believe him? I sigh and caress the screen of my phone.

The cell beeps a third time.
‘Can we talk?’

I chew on my lip, fully awake and trembling with nervous energy. I’m not ready. I fear I’ll take any excuse he throws at me just to be back in his arms.

The screen lights up again.
‘Erin?’

I get up and pace the length of my room.
‘Why would I want to talk?’
I type, my fingers shaking.

The seconds trickle by without a response. I close my eyes and grit my teeth. Then I glance at the window, and head back to my bed. I curl up on my side, the cell on the pillow next to my head.

It lights up suddenly, and I grab it. The text from Tyler reads,
‘Because I know what I really want.’

‘
And what’s that?’
I have to retype every word twice to get it right, my hands shake so badly.