Chapter Thirteen
Reid
Hazel was icing me out. I hadn’t heard from her in two days. I knew she was probably working, but it hurt that she was ignoring me , yet still actively seeking out Seven. Which was the truly fucked-up part. I was jealous of myself. He’d talked to her in the last two days. I hadn’t.
I wasn’t even sure what had happened the other day. She’d been so nervous but playful once we left the bar, and then something had come over me when that audiobook had started playing out a dirty fantasy in my ear. My hands just automatically followed the movements of my counterpart, and I couldn’t have stopped if I tried. It was like my body was on autopilot, and any worry about crossing boundaries went out the window when I stripped her down to that fucking pink lingerie.
But I came to when she was driving me crazy by thumbing my nipple piercing, all glowy and looking freshly fucked after she’d come against my thumb with very little input from me. Don’t get me wrong, I knew how to please women, that was why my reputation was what it was. But it usually involved a little more work than a strategically placed thumb for her to wiggle against.
After, when she’d told me she didn't belong to anyone, it’d been like a punch to the gut. This entire situation wasn’t fair to her. And the deeper I got into playing Seven and fighting my genuine attraction to her as myself, the more I knew that it’d crush her once there wasn’t a screen between us any longer.
But I was finding it hard to stop when another text from her finally came on my real phone number.
Hazel: You done hiding from me yet? I need help.
Reid: Wasn’t hiding. Just swamped with clients this week.
Hazel: You haven’t been over here after hours in two days. Your regulars were asking where you were.
Fuck. The last thing I needed was her dealing with other women asking about me at the bar. She’d probably had to deal with it more than just the past few days when I thought about it. And it made me feel like a total dick for how I’d behaved until now.
Reid: Just tell me where you want me and I’m yours.
Hazel: Is your place tomorrow morning okay?
Reid: I’ll leave the back door unlocked, let yourself in when you get here.
Shutting off my phone, I tossed it on my nightstand, deciding to take a night off from pretending and trying to get some sleep before I had to face her in the morning.
This was getting way more complicated than I ever expected it to be.
Hazel had been different ever since she let herself into the shop. Not that she was distant, per se. She was just detached. Friendly, but not overly so. And I had no fucking clue how to behave around her. So, of course, I’d been a jackass.
“Why are you here if you don’t have a new pose to work on?” I asked, glancing at her out of the corner of my eye.
“Because you said you’d help me with shading if I needed it. ”
Taking a deep breath, I tried to turn my inner asshole down a notch and pulled the tablet out of her hand. The image on the screen was wildly different from the last piece I’d looked at on it, but no less impressive.
A detailed grayscale illustration of the inside of the distillery was practically jumping off the screen, my bike at the center of the piece, but the sprawling mountain landscape out the window was what she’d asked for my help on.
I hadn’t even realized one of us had taken this picture. It had to have been an accidental press of the shutter button when she was getting dressed. Right before I’d taken the memory card out of the camera because I was a sick bastard and wanted control of the pictures we’d been taking. I knew if Hazel took the memory card, she’d erase it before she gave it back, and I didn’t want to risk her erasing our time together. Not when my days with her like this were probably numbered.
After I’d pocketed the card, I’d escaped to the bathroom to take care of things that had arisen during our encounter on the bike. I knew I’d never be able to ride with how turned on I was, so I’d shamefully beat off in the bathroom stall at my cousin’s distillery while I bit my fist to keep from groaning loud enough that she’d hear me on the other side of the wall.
To be honest, once I’d finally come back to my place, I’d saved the photos from the memory card into a folder on my remote drive and emailed her the link without looking at them. I’d never stay away from her if I saw how she looked in those pictures.
It was bad enough I carried the memories of how it’d felt to touch her like that. And don’t even get me started on the sexy as fuck lingerie she’d almost been wearing. The entire time, I kept thinking about how easy it’d be to snap the thin satin material holding the thong together and pull down my pants far enough to be inside of her. But I couldn’t let myself lose control. Not yet. And especially not like that with her.
So, for now, I’d focus on helping. “To get the texture on the mountains, you need to focus on layering the shading, not trying to get it in one pass. The dimension comes from varying the length and angle of the strokes. It takes a while, but it really makes the image jump out at you.”
It was true when working on shading with a needle, too. Mountains were tricky to render realistically, but I’d drawn enough of them on people’s skin over the years I’d perfected the technique. Seemed kind of cliché to get a mountain tattooed on your body when you were surrounded by them, but tourists loved to capture the beauty of Colorado while they were here.
Hazel took the pen back, mimicking my movements, the peaks of the snow-capped mountains slowly coming to life as she worked.
“Perfect,” I murmured, keeping watch over her shoulder. It was mesmerizing observing her draw. I’d never noticed how expressive her face was when she was concentrating. Every moment I spent with her, she became harder and harder to resist. And I was almost afraid that once my restraint had hit its limit, I’d do something to fuck this up entirely.
I’d never wanted a woman to reciprocate my feelings until now. It’d always seemed inconvenient to involve feelings when I hadn’t been looking for more than temporary companionship, but the embers of the flame that was growing for Hazel inside my heart weren’t showing any signs of going out. And if she decided I wasn’t worth returning those feelings, I was afraid they’d consume me.
“What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever tattooed?” she asked, never looking up from the tablet.
Maybe she wasn’t only here to work on her homework. “Hmm. Probably teeth marks.”
“How do you even draw that?” Her nose scrunched while she continued working, and I wondered if maybe I shouldn’t go into the details of that particular tattoo. But I knew her curiosity was piqued, and she’d keep asking if I didn’t tell her.
“You don’t. Skin impression is the best method to get accurate shading. ”
“Like they had to be bitten? Did they bring their significant other or something? Is that even sanitary?”
Fuck, I should have never opened my big mouth and told her that. I should have said something lame, like someone’s weird exotic pet. I’d done a few of those.
“Clear film and being careful not to break the skin works really well, actually.” And a lot of hope that you didn’t accidentally bite the wrong spot.
“You never answered my question. Who bit this person?” she repeated, glancing back at me. Her eyes were almost penetrating, one delicate eyebrow arched as she waited for my answer. But we both knew she’d already figured it out.
“I bit her.”
Her eyes narrowed, and something that looked an awful lot like jealousy hardened her gaze. “Seriously? Isn’t that like crossing some ethical boundaries or something?”
Shrugging and pretending I was unaffected by her stare down, I answered honestly. “It was mutually consensual.”
“Ew. Why would you…”
I lifted an eyebrow. She was a smart girl; she knew exactly why I’d done it.
“You fucked her? Like during…?”
A blush crept from the side of her neck up her cheeks as she stared at my lips and the teeth peeking out beneath them, and my mouth watered at the thought of biting her. I knew she didn’t have much experience, but I wondered if she would like to be bitten.
The thought of marking her soft, fair skin had me shifting under her appraisal. “That came after, but yeah. She might have gotten a little turned on by the entire process.”
Haz’s nose wrinkled, clearly not liking the thought of me with another woman. “You’re disgusting. I can’t believe you did that.”
But the way she kept staring at my mouth didn’t look like disgust. Maybe she was thinking about me biting her, too. “Sounds like someone is jealous. ”
“Gross. It wasn’t on this couch, was it?” she asked, moving to stand.
“No,” I chuckled, pressing a hand against her thigh to keep her seated beside me.
“At least you had the decency to take her home with you, I guess,” she muttered, returning her attention to the tablet in her lap. The once delicately placed marks had become angry, dark streaks, and I placed my hand on the back of hers to keep her from ruining the piece.
“First of all, I never take them to my place. Second, I said we didn’t fuck on this couch, not that we left the building.”
“Ew, ew, ew. Not on the couch in your office? I’ve sat on that.”
“Not exactly,” I laughed, knowing that I should shut this down before too much damage was done, but something about seeing Hazel jealous was a little addictive.
“But it was in your office?”
I nodded in confirmation.
“On your desk?” she asked, glancing down the hallway.
“Not with her,” I replied. But there had only been a few I’d taken in there. Considering my track record, there could have been a lot more. Most ended up pressed against the wall in the hallway after everyone had gone home for the night. Although, I should probably think about replacing the couch in my office.
“You’re a pig.”
I used to be , was what I wanted to tell her, but of course I goaded her instead. “It was all consensual. It’s not like I came onto any of these women.”
“Just into them.”
“Not that either,” I laughed. Accidentally putting my random partners or myself into a precarious situation had me pulling out half the time and coming into the condom outside of them. While I was kind of indifferent about having kids, there was no way I wanted to raise one outside of a committed relationship. Not that I’d ever had one of those.
“I don’t even want to know. ”
“Yet you’re the one asking for details about my sex life.” And I was dumb enough to tell her about them. But it was bound to come up, eventually. She knew I was far from innocent.
“I asked about a tattoo. Not for a blow by blow of your sexcapades,” she laughed, shaking her head as she smiled at me.
“Now that has happened on my couch. And my desk, and on this…”
“Stop!” Her hands covered her eyes, and she shook her head as her giggles filled the air between us. While I knew she didn’t like my history, I also wouldn’t hide it from her. I was who I was, and I couldn’t change my past.
“She had her hands braced on the back of my office door. I didn’t want to disturb the fresh ink on her shoulder.”
“What is with you and standing up during sex?” She uncovered her eyes, staring straight at me with expectation. She probably didn’t want to know the real reason that it was easier to keep things casual if I didn’t spend time with these women in a bed. Most of the time, we weren’t even undressed all the way.
I’d certainly never felt the need to worship a woman like I’d done to Hazel a few days ago. And my fingers itched at the knowledge of what she felt like underneath all those bulky sweatshirts she wore around the bar.
“Don’t knock it until you try it, Haz.”
As she stared at me, clearly thinking about it, I shifted my hips, fighting the urge to pick her up and pin her to the nearest wall to show her exactly how enjoyable it could be. But she deserved so much more. And it wasn’t the right time either. I was supposed to be trying to win her heart—not give her orgasms, but I’d already failed at that part.
She held mine in the palm of her hands. She truly didn’t know how hard I was falling for her the more time we spent together. Both as Seven and during whatever it was we were doing in real life.
And Hudson could never, ever find out how hard I’d fallen for her before I figured out how to win her for good. Because I knew my best friend. He would hold this against both of us if things fell apart, no matter how platonic the arrangement was for her.