Chapter Eighteen
She tried so hard to hide the shock in those grey eyes.
I watched them widen, just for a split second, and then steady.
She was well practised. I assumed she’d seen some shit in A 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 kitchen counter 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.