Chapter Four
Paula
Tears sting the back of my eyes as I run out the door, my heart pounding in my chest. The cool air hits my face but does nothing to calm the whirlwind of emotions swirling inside of me.
I can’t breathe. I need… I have to get away.
I glance back at the building I just left and feel my heart clench painfully. His shop and home is just as charming as the man himself. It’s a cozy two-story building with a brick exterior that is adorned with colorful murals and graffiti art. In a charming little town like Valor Springs, it stands out like a sore thumb. Unique and different, like the man himself.
The entrance has a vintage neon sign that reads “Nord Tattoo Studio.” Inside, the first floor is his studio space, and his living area, where we spend the majority of our time together, is upstairs. Anyone would think us a couple if they saw us cozied up together on one of our many movie nights. Heck, I almost thought of us as a couple. I convinced myself that there was only one last line to cross and everything would be perfect.
The neon light flickers with his name like a warning sign, and I quicken my pace, my feet pounding against the pavement. Each step away feels harder, but I force myself to keep going.
Darrell was right. Tattoos hurt. God, they hurt so bad.
I somehow make it to my car without dropping to the pavement and sobbing. I fumble with my car keys, my fingers trembling as I struggle to find the right one, but before I can, they slip out of my fingers and fall to ground.
“Shit,” I mumble, staring at the keys as if expecting them to jump right back into my hands. “I can’t deal with this right now!” I drop my forehead against the cool metal of the car. It feels cold and foreign, a stark contrast to the heat I felt moments earlier when the man of my dreams touched me. His hands were like a furnace as he traced them down my body, and his lips burned a trail of heat everywhere they touched.
Moments ago, I was warm. Both body and soul. I thought…. I figured that all it would take was one kiss, and the man would have some kind of epiphany that he’s been in love with me all this time. A part of me expected it to be easy. A kiss and a touch, and everything would fall into place.
I was wrong.
With a heavy sigh, I lean down and grab the keys. I manage to unlock the door and slide into the driver’s seat, slamming it shut behind me, hoping the noise will be loud enough to scatter my thoughts, but they stay. A part of me wants to drop my head on the steering wheel and sob, but I need to get away from here. I’ll cry in the comfort of my room, and later, when I have no more tears to spill, I’ll question what will become of me and Darrell now.
He doesn’t want me. Not the way I want him, and I will have to find a way to work past that so I don’t completely lose my best friend.
He doesn’t want me.
I start the engine, the roar echoing my tumultuous thoughts, and pull away from the curb. It’s only a ten-minute drive from his studio. I’ve always liked how close to my place his is. Close enough that I could come over at odd times of the day and stay the night. Watch a film and sometimes cuddle up to the man while pretending I didn’t want to climb him like a tree. Stay the night and pretend I was aching for him but…
He doesn’t want me. I saw it in his eyes. The regret.
The drive home happens in a daze, and the walk to my apartment is an even bigger mystery, as the next thing I know, I am standing outside my door with no idea how the hell I got here in the first place. I sigh, letting myself into my place, tempted to kick the door closed, but I don’t want to bother my neighbors with the sound, so I slowly push it shut, which offers me no satisfaction whatsoever.
I drag my feet to my room and stare at the bed longingly, wanting to climb in and just forget about the day. Maybe when I wake up tomorrow, this will all have been a nightmare. It’s a good thing tomorrow’s the weekend, or I would have had a hell of time hiding my emotions in front of a bunch of eight-year-olds.
I have two days to drown my sorrows in ice cream and forget about possibly imploding the most important relationship in my life. Forget that in a moment of insanity, I almost had sex with my best friend. I can only hope the shower washes away the feeling his touch that still lingers on my skin.
***
It stays.
I nearly scrap my skin raw, but the sensation stays. I can still feel his touch on my body when I step out of the shower. The memory of his mouth exploring my most intimate places causes my sex to clench needily.
Christ, how the hell am I to forget what happened if the memory of it has this effect on me? With a sigh, I slip into my robe, drying my hair with a towel as I prepare for bed. And that’s when I hear it.
My heart jumps to my throat when the sound of a knock breaks through the silence of the apartment. It’s firm and loud. Perhaps even louder than my thumping heart, and I’m frozen to the floor, afraid to walk to the door and see who it is.
Maybe it’s my neighbor or…the landlady, Evelyne, a sweet lady who lives downstairs. She stops by sometimes to check in on me. It could be her. I hope it’s her.
I jump when the knock comes again, dropping the towel from my shaky hands. I tighten the robe’s belt around my waist and slowly walk to the front door. I lean in and peek through the peephole, making out the large form of my best friend. The same friend who recently had his tongue buried in my sex and that hot mouth wrapped around my nipples.
I push back from the door, flinching when the knock comes again.
I can’t believe he’s here, though I suppose I should have expected it. I could ignore him. Go back to my room and pretend I’m asleep. Let him leave on his own when he figures I’m not going to answer.
“Please leave,” I beg under my breath, sliding down the wall to a crouch. “Please go away.”
The knock comes again, and a part of me wants to punish him for not wanting me, but it’s not fair. Not to him, it’s not. Darrell has been the closest thing to a perfect friend I’ve ever had. When I moved to Valor Springs two years ago, I knew no one outside of my extended family.
And then I met Darrell.
It’s my own fault for falling in love with him. For ruining a perfect friendship with my stupid need to own every part of the man.
“Paula, it’s me!” comes his muffled voice, followed by another knock. “Paula!”
Ignore him. He broke your heart. Let him knock until his wrist is sore, all night if that’s how long it takes.
God, the thought of punishing the man in such a cruel manner makes my heart wrench painfully, and before I know it, I’m climbing back to my feet to unlock the door. He seems surprised when I open it, but it quickly fades into something else when his eyes drop down. I follow his gaze and realize the robe has parted, exposing my naked breasts to the man.
“Oh!” I cry out, scrambling to fasten the robe around my waist. “I’m sorry, I didn’t notice…” I’m flustered. Does he think I did it on purpose? I can’t look at him right now. “What are you doing here, Darrell?”
He takes a moment to respond, but I don’t dare look up to meet his gaze. “I came to talk.” His voice sounds strangled, and it’s tempting to shut the door in his face and bury myself in my apartment for an eternity.
“We can talk tomorrow,” I say, pushing the door closed, but he grabs it before it can close.
“Tonight, Paula.” His voice is rough when he speaks. “I want to clear this up tonight. Let me explain what happened back there, angel.”
There it is again, his nickname for me in that tone I have longed to hear from his lips for so long. Why would he do this to me now? When the wound he left earlier hasn’t even scarred yet. “I can’t do this tonight,” I say weakly. “Can we talk tomorrow, please?” Or next week or maybe in a year or five. However long it will take for me to forget and get to a point where I can have a conversation with the man without feeling like my heart is about to burst out of my chest.
“Okay,” he says, and I let out a relieved sigh. “But first…”
“Darrell!”
“I have something to show you, and then I’ll go. I promise.”
Resigned, I push away from the entrance to let him in, conscious to keep a little distance between us. He changed from the clothes he had on earlier into gray sweats and a black hoodie, which for some reason has my body heating up with need.
Get a hold of yourself, Paula. He’s only here for a few minutes, and then he’ll leave.
Darrell walks in, and I turn around to shut the door. I force in deep breaths to rein in my desire before turning around to face him, and for the third time in one night, my heart nearly pumps its way out of my chest.
“W-what are you doing?” I cry out as he starts to pull off his hoodie. I close my eyes and cover them with my palms for good measure. “What the heck, Darrell?”
“I want to show you something; open your eyes.”
“No, thank you, I don’t want to see you naked.” I mean I do, but for my own sanity, I know I shouldn’t.
Darrell grabs my hands to pull them from my face, and my gaze snaps to his naked chest. It’s firm and well-defined with delicious muscles that are covered with tattoos. He has so many of them, and I fight the urge to touch them, to trace them with my tongue. Would that make me weird if I did it? Kissed his firm pecs and down that rippled stomach to the V-line that disappears into the waistband of his sweats.
“You are not looking,” he says, humor in his voice, and I force my gaze from well-defined muscles to his eyes.
“What exactly am I supposed to be looking at, Darrell?”
“This,” he says, raising and arm and pointing with the other to a spot over his ribs. My gaze follows his hand, and at first, I have no idea what exactly I am supposed to be looking at…until I see it.
My heart skips a beat as I process what this means. “What is this?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper as I trace the shape with my eyes. Angel wings with a halo in the middle above a series of numbers—the date we met—stamped in bold, dark ink on his skin.
“I’ve had it for almost two years.”
“I…I mean…” My mouth runs dry as I struggle to find the words to respond, but I have nothing.
Grabbing my hand, he brings it to his side. His muscles tense under my fingers when I graze the tattoo. How the hell did I miss this? It’s not like he walks around shirtless, but I’ve seen his bare torso plenty of times over the years. “I wanted you closer to me, and I thought this was the only way it would ever happen.”
Wait. “What?”
“I want you, Paula.” A flare of possessiveness crosses his gaze, and a moan climbs up my throat when he wraps his arm around me and yanks me hard against him. “I have wanted you from the moment I saw you.” His gaze drops to where my breasts are crushed to his chest and my cleavage is exposed by my gaping robe. “You have no fucking idea how many times I’ve jerked myself raw with thoughts of you running through my mind while you were asleep in the next room.”
This makes no sense. He wants me? “B-but, earlier… You regretted what happened. I saw it in your eyes!”
Darrell drops his forehead to mine, a muscle popping in his jaw. “I panicked,” he confesses. “Right there in that room, I had everything I have ever wanted and more. It felt unreal. Out of my control. What you saw in my eyes was not regret, but panic.”
I want to dissect why he would react that way, but my mind keeps spinning on one point. The one thing that changes everything. “You want me?”
“No, Paula,” he chuckles without mirth. “I don’t just want you. I need you. I am in love with you. My feelings are not all pure and innocent. No, I want to bend you over every surface in this place and fill you with my cock. Rut you so hard, you will be feeling me for days. I want to break the face of every man that dares look your way.” He tugs at the belt holding the robe in place, and it slips open, revealing my nudity underneath. “I want to lock you away from the world so no one gets to see you or have you. No one but me gets to bask in the warmth you radiate.” I’m breathing hard when he traces his fingers over my neckline and down to my tits. I whimper when he rubs his thumb over a nipple, causing it to pebble under his teasing fingers. “Didn’t you feel it earlier when I kissed you or when my tongue was lapping at your pussy?”
“I did… I felt it.” I want to feel it again .
“How about now? Do you feel how hard I am for you, angel? How much I need you?” he growls, pushing his erection against my stomach.
“I do,” I breathe, wrapping an arm around his shoulder, feeling his tense muscles relax under my fingers. “I feel it.”
“Then trust me when I say that you are the only woman I have ever felt this way for, Paula,” he rasps, dropping his mouth to the curve of my neck. A storm of heat drops to my stomach when he grazes his teeth over my skin. “You are the only woman I have ever loved. The only one I would kill for. Give my life for.” Wet heat slicks the space between my thighs when he rakes his teeth over my ear.
“I feel the same way,” I whimper, pushing back to look into his eyes. Falling a little deeper for his ocean blues when our gazes lock. “Lord help me, but I feel the same way about you, Darrell. I’ve loved you from the moment I saw you at the fair, and now…I want all of you. I want to belong to you. Only you.”
His eyes light up with lust and something equally feral. Something that makes my breath catch in my throat. Darrell leans in and brushes his mouth gently over mine. It’s soft. A simple touch of lips, but it’s enough to send a tremble racking my body. “I ruined our moment back at the studio,” he says, his mouth so close to mine I can almost taste him. “Let me fix it, baby. I’m going to lick that pussy until I’ve made it up to you.” His hands drop to my back, then lower, and he squeezes my ass. “Get you all wet and needy before I press inside you.”
“Y-yes, I want that too.”
In one swift move, he lifts me in his arms, and I wrap my legs around him, twining my hands on his nape. My mouth seeks his with a desperate need to be kissed as he carries me to my bedroom, and all I can think is… finally .
All those nights dreaming of this moment, and it’s all falling into place. Everything is happening as it was always meant to.
There is a jaded voice at the back of my head that tries to dampen this moment by poking holes of uncertainty into my mind—like the small matter of my father not approving of my friendship with Darrell, and how he will be even less thrilled about our love and the fact that I know next to nothing about this man’s past—but I push the voice back. I kiss Darrell hard and hope that he silences all the negative thoughts.
None of that matters. Nothing matters but this moment with this man.