Tattoo Kiss x, page 31
“I want to know what you like. I want to drive you as crazy as you drive me.” I exhale, confessing what’s on my mind and heart to him in the heat of the moment.
“Fuck.” Jack grabs the back of my neck and tightens his fingers around it. “Eddie, I don’t expect…Holy fuck.”
Joy sparks in my heart from the look he gives me as he’s overtaken by the feelings and sensations I’m stirring in him. A look of pure adoration and contentment rests on his brow as he struggles to maintain composure enough to talk through it.
“Everything ye do is perfect, Eddie. I can’t…everything ye’re doing is…Christ.”
I redouble my efforts and slide my head to rest on his shoulder, pressing my forehead against his cheek as I watch the rise and fall of his chest. His breathing quickens even more and gets more ragged.
I can’t stand it anymore, physically I can’t hold back. Hooking a leg over his, I grind my center on his thigh and am rewarded by a gasp as his arm desperately tries to hold me to him. Encouraging me in sound and action, Jack is only too eager to grip my ass and help me ride him over the edge and into temptation and lust with a fire that burns off all of our transgressions. With each thrust of my own hips, I pull back to look into his beautiful face.
I want to watch him, and I don’t want to miss a thing. I memorize each breath, each strangled cry, each flex of his taut abdomen as I feel him getting harder and thicker toward the head of his cock in my hands, feeling how slick he is under me as I work him harder and harder to his release.
“Jesus…fuck, baby!”
Jack cries out suddenly, clutching wildly to still my arm as he bucks up hard and fast against my hand, moving his hips hard against my grasp. The motion sends me over the edge and for a moment, there is nothing in my vision but the white stars that cluster and the pulsating release overtaking me as I ride him hard and fast. When it wanes, I gasp in huge breaths of the hot air between us as I cling to him, my hand still at work.
“I need ye, Eddie,” he begs, his voice faltering as he reaches his climax.
I kiss him slow and steady, feeling the sound of his cry echo into my mouth as he loses himself in a frenzy of movement, thrusting up violently against my hand and holding on to the back of my head and pulling on the hair at my neck until I let out a small cry that mixes with his own.
Hearing him come fills me with joy and so much tender emotion that I feel like I’m going to pass out from it. Dizzy and high off the sound of him echoing in my room, my mind. I know I will never forget it. Or him. How could I?
Jack exhales deeply and shudders. I can feel the pulsating spurts of warmth cover my fingers and bite his lower lip into my mouth as he rides out the sensation. He’s still holding on to me with the vice-like grip of the near-dead.
A few seconds later, Jack rests his sweaty forehead on mine and breathes in deeply. Opening his eyes, he kisses me tenderly and smiles as the residual shivers run through him. I smile proudly into his lips and my teeth hit his in clumsy movements as he lays back huffing out sighs with a giant smile on his face.
“That good?” I laugh softly, hoping his ears are ringing.
Jack doesn’t open his eyes but lifts a hand weakly and gives me a thumbs-up before he chuckles in a sigh of oblivion.
A few minutes later, we get up to go to the bathroom and wash. Jack is so hot, he wets his head in my sink to cool down and stands for a minute with his head in his hands in my white towel on the rack, just waiting to come back to earth. It’s possibly the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.
I smile and head back to my bed, a woman very much pleased. High on his mountain peak of pure joy. A joy I helped him reach.
I did that.
Me.
Leticia Ruiz found her sexuality upon the highest shelf, dusted it off and is exploring that tome like a motherfucker.
Did I mention how fucking proud I am of myself?
I settle quietly under the covers, Jack walks back slowly and I look at him coyly. A smile plays on my lips as I watch him watch me. He looks at me like all women want to be looked at and my heart flips over in somersaults as open regard and admiration shine from his bright eyes.
“You’re not leaving, are you?”
Jack looks at me like I have two heads.
“Fuck’s wrong with ye, woman?”
Taking off his hoodie, he lays it on the end of the bed and my eyes take in every inch of him, as he’s wearing nothing underneath it. In just his sweatpants, he slips in next to me and pulls me close to his chest, raising my chin to plant a soft kiss on the bridge of my nose.
“So much,” I reply.
A small laugh escapes my lips as my sweet prince falls quickly into a dozing state. My head is resting on the hard center of his massive shoulder and my hand is lightly brushing his soft chest hair between my fingers. We plunge back into a sleep that only the truly content can enjoy.
Jack
When I woke up this morning, I forgot where I was.
Strange bed, strange walls, and aye…a stranger beside me.
Fuckin’ hell, I did it again! Got drunk and woke up next to another no-face, no-name, no-idea-how-I-got-here situation. Hasn’t happened in a long time but still, old habits and all…
Full of instant regret, the heavy weight of shame rests on my chest like a bucket of wet cement.
Details start making their way to my brain as I adjust to being awake after sleeping like the dead.
The room is more mature than I’m used to and too clean to be anyone else’s but hers. It’s almost neurotic in its tidiness, like everything else about her.
Wait.
I must be still asleep because none of this makes sense.
It’s not a stranger’s body beside mine, but my Eddie. Her wonderfully tan skin is stark against the covers. Dark, thick hair pushed over her head and black lashes closed, so long they almost touch the high points of her cheeks.
I’ve never noticed the small freckles underneath her eyes before, dusting the bridge of her nose in the colors of youth. I wish I’d known her then. Would she have even fancied me? Probably not. I kent I was hot shite back then. She’d have probably thrown a drink in my face and walked away and I would have deserved it.
I don’t deserve her. Then or now.
Eddie’s tough facade is gone now, replaced by a quiet fragility that is altogether disarming and endearing. She looks younger than her years. Maybe it’s because her life isn’t on her mind when she’s sleeping.
She twitches, and suddenly, I’m flooded with memories of the night before that come into my subconscious like a tidal wave. Her slight body wrapped up in my own, bare leg on mine, pinning me down. The heat of the moments we shared, the tension between us as thick and rich as the exploration of each other. I hadn’t planned for anything to happen and the fact that it did startles me, just like how I let her take control and do what she wanted with me as her willing participant.
An image projects into my consciousness that explodes into my heart in a warm glow of excitement.
My mouth, hanging from hers like the Gardens of Babylon as I return to it, again and again like a man desperate for the high-end luxury of her lips.
Her soft hand wrapping around…
I’m swallowing dry air and breathing hard, chest pounding.
Shite
I hear a caterwaul of a meow from the other room and ken this isn’t a dream. Too many of my dreams have started out here, in the room I’d only imagined till now.
I should feed him before he wakes her.
Everything in her room seems to be white. It stands out to me as the room of someone who wants to erase all color from her life. Grounded in browns and neutrals, Eddie’s room is strangely absent from any of the things a lass might keep around herself for comfort. A few plants, a few pieces of wicker furniture. A desk with only more old looking novels on it and diplomas framed above the wall.
Nothing to say she lives here, no pictures of family or friends. Nothing save the damn wee panda that I noticed her trying to hide from me last night.
As inconsequential as it is, it still pains me to see her feel the need to hide things from me.
Must be special if she keeps it around.
Christ, I ken so little about her.
My Eddie.
When we touched for the first time, I saw the same difference in her that lives in me.
She’s been touched by death.
It leaves a mark that doesn’t go away. A pain that doesn’t leave.
She is haunted and I don’t ken how many ghosts are with her yet.
A small smile curls my lip as I look over at her sleeping form, melted into the stark white duvet next to me. Her dark hair in all its glory, piled high above her, poking out at the top of the coverlet like a wildflower crown in all its untamed beauty.
I lean closer to smell her hair. Sometimes it smells like lavender and mint and I don’t ken if she’s even aware the scent is always on my mind.
I hope she doesn’t wake up now, don’t ken how I’d explain it. I don’t ken how to tell her I can barely function with thoughts of when I’ll see her next. That sometimes I can barely sleep for the horrible cockstand I have when I dream about her, naked and alone and next to me. Looking at me with those amber eyes glowing brightly, telling me without words that she wants me as much as I want her.
The first time I ken she wanted me was when I flung ice at her from my Irish peach sour in the pub and her face lit up like a firework. I’ve wanted her so badly since then I haven’t been able to breathe right around her. It’s a wonder I’ve been able to stay standing at all in her presence without toppling over from lack of air.
Christ, I almost took her up against that tree last night in Joe’s yard. The ferocity of my need for her is shocking me to the core, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
What happened last night…I’ve no words to describe how I feel about it.
Are we fucking? Are we not?
I don’t ken.
But I ken hers is the warmest bed I’ve ever known.
A small breath escapes me as I slip out of her bed to put on my shirt again. My eyes catch on the nightstand next to me and the single object on it, aside from a silver lamp.
My lucky pick.
Gracie’s.
The one she used to annoy the shite out of me when she didn’t want to go to bed, stealing my guitar and running away with it, the wee rascal.
Sometimes I’d listen to my girl, pretending I was busy doing something else. If I stopped, she’d stop. And so we’d go round. She’d hide under the kitchen table with it and think I didn’t ken where she was. She’d play as well as she could, considering her wee fingers.
Sometimes, she’d try to sing.
“Hey Jude” was her favorite. Mainly because she didn’t ken all the words and could get by singing na-na’s for everything.
Had a wonderful voice, could carry a tune, but then again, most wains hadn’t grown up in a recording booth like she had.
And then she got sick.
The strong pale fingers were replaced by translucent, waxy hands with IVs in them.
Might as well have shoved a needle in my own arm for how harsh the drugs were. There were nights after I’d finally gotten her to sleep, I’d beg and cry and scream at God to let me take it from her.
But He’s not in the business of sparing firstborns when He lost His own, I guess.
And so she stopped singing, too weak to play.
I’d play for her instead, to distract from the treatments. And then we’d cry together.
Or she’d cry, and I’d hold her and try not to let her feel my chest shake with the pain.
Something about Eddie reminds me of Grace. Her fire. Under the pain, she has the same fire.
And it keeps me warm.
When I ran out to stop Eddie, to give my pick to her, something in my heart told me she would keep it safe.
She needed it more than I did.
And so I took a risk.
I’m glad I did.
I force my head through my hoodie and slip out, hushing the devil cat in the kitchen with some wet food from a can. I pat his head thoughtfully as he demolishes the lump of ripe paté that smells like sick.
Taking a piece of paper from her counter, I write a note.
Jesus, has my handwriting always been this bad?
Leaving it for her to find, I gather up my things and go, quietly locking the door behind me.
The pick is on her little table, drawing us closer together than I ever hoped it would.
Maybe somewhere I have an angel making it happen.
God keep her.
I believe in Him even if He doesn’t believe in me anymore.
How else could I explain this?
Letti
In a daze, I reach out and feel something dry and thin under my touch. The adhesive strip of paper sticks to my finger, and I realize it’s a note from my kitchen.
Eddie,
Too early in spring for flowers, but I wanted to leave you one anyway since I didn’t want to wake you. I’m not an artist, as now you ken. Make fun if you will. Whatever floats your goat. I enjoyed “sleeping together.” Let’s do it again, sometime soon?
–Jack
P.S. You snore adorably.
I squint at the piece of paper Jack had scrawled upon and laid on the empty pillow beside me. A crudely drawn daisy? It’s in blue ink.
It’s perfect.
God, his handwriting is awful.
I love it so much.
Two hours into the workday and it’s hard to breathe. As I sit at my kitchen table, my scalp feels tight around my skull. The area behind my ears is aching with the dull throb of existence.
I’ve been yelled at all morning, I get it. It’s not my fault, it’s not me they’re mad at, but the government and I’m just bearing the brunt of it.
Usually, I’m okay with compartmentalizing verbal abuse. I’ve had a lifetime of experience, but some days…some days it’s hard. If I hang up, I lose my job. So I nod and listen and die a little inside each time, knowing if I walk away after a call, I’ll miss another. They’re back-to-back lately.
It’s not uncommon for me to take at least two hundred or more a day. As an introvert, it’s exhausting.
A lump grows in my throat and spreads down to my sternum as I choke on the tears and try to take captive my wild thought life. Alicia has been a big part in me becoming more self-aware when it gets bad and starts spiraling out of control. I can feel it happening again today.
I know it’s up to me to curb each negative thought like it’s a baseball being launched at my head. I can duck and let it pass me or swing my bat of coping skills at it and hope to God it doesn’t hit my head and make a mark there that lasts all day.
Sometimes it’s inevitable, though.
The pain.
Undealt with grief can sit upon your chest like a demon and choke you. I’ve lived so long with the feeling I hardly notice it anymore until I’m hours deep into it and gasping for air.
I pray for the blessed relief of taking off my headset, but when I do, the feelings linger. The yells, the screams, the crying that doesn’t affect me anymore from people on the other end of the line.
No one cares about them. The sooner they understand that, the sooner they’ll be self-sufficient like me. Life is easier when you don’t expect much from most people.
I keep the note from Jack in front of me and, to be honest, it’s the one thing that gets me through the day.
A blue flower. A mindless doodle that symbolizes so much more.
It’s nine o’clock by the time I work up the courage to call Jack.
His voice is enough to bring tears to my eyes instantly. I blow out a puff of air from my lungs in pain, as I can hear the happiness in his tone. He’s excited to hear from me. If he was a dog, his tail would wag so hard until his whole body was shaking. As a man…well, God, I’m a weird one.
“Hello, Clarice,” I say slowly, trying to lower my voice but laughing inwardly at the mental picture I just gave myself.
Jack chuckles. “It’s good to hear from ye. I was just thinking about yer voice.”
“My voice?”
“I’ve wanted to hear it all day.”
I missed you, too.
“Please tell me ye’re eating more than just burned popcorn at yer place or I’ll come over and have to cook for ye…pink apron, too. Naturally. I’ll be a regular Mrs. Doubtfire.”
Are you taking care of yourself?
“I’ve eaten.” I smile sadly.
Not really.
“Are ye excited?”
Keepittogether.
“Um…why?” The question catches me off guard, and I squint my eyes nervously.
“For me to pick ye up tomorrow after work.”
He’s not asking, he’s telling. Jack picks up on the tone of sadness in my voice and knows better than to give me an option.
I smile. My heart hurts, but damn. If hope is the thing with feathers in my soul, it’s currently beating wildly around my chest like a damn bird in a cage. In true Jack-fashion, one sentence from him is enough to flip me upside down in a heap of emotion and anticipation of what comes next when he’s around.
“I can’t wait.”
I can hear him smile on the other end.
“Great!” he exclaims. “Five okay?”
“Five is fine.”
I lie down on my bed and pull the blankets up around me again. I burrow my head into the covers and desperately try to smell him on them.
Wow, Letti. Get a guy with some good cologne and you turn into a fucking bloodhound trying to sniff him on everything. Thirsty much?
There’s a silence on the line, but I don’t feel the need to fill it. Just knowing he’s on the other end is comforting.
“Jack?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you…” God, I feel pathetic asking this. “Can you stay on with me for a while? You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. I just want to hear you.”
“D’ye want me to come over?” He suddenly sounds concerned. His voice picks up an edge, and it cuts into the bleary, mind-numbing depression I’m feeling.
