Page 10 of Tattooed By Her Silver Fox

I don’t know what got into me last night. One minute I’m reminding myself to move slow with Vi, she is delicate, and I don’t want to scare her off. But the second I touch her, all plans to take things slow are crushed under my gigantic need to have her.

Vi isn’t like anything I’ve known. She’s caring and sweet and young, but she’s also feisty and willing, and the way she looks at me like I could keep her safe forever makes me puff out my chest and want to beat it like a caveman.

She drives me crazy.

Before she left for work this morning, I couldn’t resist pulling her back into the bed and taking her one more time. I wanted my smell on her. My claim made all over her body. She hasn’t answered my question yet, but she said she will. In time.

I’m too fucking happy to be couped up in the shop all day. I rush home for a shower and shave, dress in fitted pants and one of my fitted sweaters and head out to the florist a few blocks down from the shop. The owner’s a regular customer, and he pulls the most beautiful red roses I’ve ever laid eyes on from the back refrigerator at no cost. I’d have paid double whatever he asked. Vi only deserves the best.

I send a text to ask when her lunch break is, and she replies it is in an hour, so I park outside the school and wait. I need eyes on her. Even if I can’t touch her the way my body demands in public, I can at least store up enough images of her to make it until she’s done with work for the day.

The office is crowded when I walk in. The secretary spots me right off, and her usual scowl vanishes the second she spots the roses in my hands.

“Mr. Fox. Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for Ms. Catto,” I say and her usual frown of contempt returns. She picks up the phone beside her and pushes a few buttons before I hear her tell Vi that she has a guest in the front office. “Take a seat, Ms. Fox. Ms. Vi will be with you shortly.

I can’t sit, and the longer I stand in the fishbowl of a room surrounded by windows, the more I begin to get this is a mistake. A group of students walks by, and I duck behind a wall, hoping Bash isn’t in the mix. He’s not. I’m about to text Vi and leave when I hear her voice coming down the front hall.

“Mr. Fox,” she calls, her eyes wide. “I didn’t know we had a parent meeting for today.”

I’m a quick study. “Maybe I got the date wrong,” I make sure the secretary can hear me clearly. “Bash wanted to thank you for the extra work with him. He wanted to bring these in for you himself, but we all know what they’d look like by the time they reached you.”

“They’re gorgeous,” she says and takes the roses, burying her nose in their scent. “I’ll put them in the room for all of the students to enjoy.”

I read her fear in her expression. She’s telling me I need to go, but I need a shot of my whiskey girl. “Thanks again, Mr. Fox,” she says and nods for me to leave the office. I tell her goodbye along with the secretary, and I stand just outside the door out of sight until a few seconds later, when Vi walks out.

I grab her arm and pull her to me in the protected alcove. My lips are on hers before I can even think straight. When I pull away, her eyes are closed, and her face quiet. “I asked you to marry me last night, Sweetness. Have you given any more thought to that proposition?”

She smiles and touches her nose to mine. “I haven’t been able to think of much else.”

“Then give me your answer. I’m dying thinking of all the ways you could talk yourself out of saying yes.”

She wiggles in my arms and giggles. “What about all the ways I could be talking myself into a yes?”

I square my shoulders. “You have to talk yourself into saying yes?”

She play slaps my chest and scoffs at me. “I was only joking.”

I pull her in for one more nibble, then she tells me she has to get back to class, and it's the saddest moment of my day watching her walk away.

6

Vi

Ihad to stop by the bathroom and splash cold water on my face before I picked up my class from lunch this afternoon. Fox has no idea what he does to me, and I’m not going to let on either. Knowing him, he’d take advantage, and I’d find him standing outside the school every morning just to send me off to work hot and bothered.

Today is my late day. I told Fox I’d be later meeting him for dinner, and he agreed to pick me up at school instead of meeting at the shop.

I’m in the front office, making the last of my copies for the week when the principal sticks her head out of her office door and asks to speak with me. I’m sure she’s following up on one of my weekly observations until she shuts the door behind me and sits behind her desk instead of at the round table we usually met at.

She also calls me Ms. Catto, which she hasn’t done except in front of students since the day we met. Butterflies flutter in my stomach as she pulls up my file on her computer.

“Ms. Catto. This isn’t a conversation I’d ever expect to have with you. Your record here is impeccable, and your dedication to the school has been appreciated over your three-year employment.”

I force a smile, but the butterflies are flapping their wings over time, and out her office window, I spy Fox’s Wrangler pull into a parking space.

“I’ve enjoyed being here,” I answer.

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