Page 8 of Things Good Girls Don't Do

Despite his initial surprise, Chase, never one to disappoint a lady, dropped his mouth to hers and took her lips in a soft, searching kiss.

Damn.

She tasted like peppermint and heat. Using his arm to bring her against him, his other hand slipped to the back of her neck. He liked that she didn’t just let him kiss her, but she kissed back with enthusiasm. Katie’s hands ran over his neck, reminding him of her scalp massage, and he imagined those hands on other parts of his body. The intimate image and the feel of her pressed so closely to him made his cock harden with need.

Her hands traveled over his back, down his sides, and up under his T-shirt. Her nails skimmed his bare skin, sliding around to his stomach and between their bodies. Anyone walking by could look in and see them.

“Maybe I should lock the door,” he said between kisses, “pull the blinds.”

He knew it was a mistake to break the spell the minute he spoke the words. Her eyes popped open and she stared up at him in horror. She tried to move away from him, but he didn’t want her to leave, not yet. “I just didn’t want someone to walk by and see you. This town is like a festering pool of gossip, and I’m not exactly Mr. Popularity.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me ...” she said, fiddling with her cute, lopsided bun, which was starting to come down.

“Hey, no complaints here. You don’t have to apologize for anything,” he said, wondering what exactly she was apologizing for. Asking him to kiss her? Kissing him back?

He would have asked, but he figured it might just tick her off, and right now she looked like she was thinking hard about something. Like whether or not she wanted him to do as he’d suggested and get back to making her soft and willing ...

Her voice was so quiet, he almost didn’t hear her ask, “Does it hurt?”

Kissing? No, wait, not kissing. Oh.

“Getting a tattoo?” She nodded and he laughed. She just kept surprising him. “A little, sometimes a lot, depending where you get it, but then the pain goes away after a bit and it’s just uncomfortable.”

“Hmmm.” She pulled away from him, much to his disappointment, and turned. Katie walked over to the wall of photographs, pictures of women and men showing off his work. He was proud of his art, not just the tattoos, but his graphic novels too. She stopped in front of his framed copy ofDestructo Boy, his first graphic novel, and he said, “I did that one years ago, when I was barely eighteen.”

She turned to him with surprised eyes and asked, “You did? Did you do anymore?”

“Yeah, I do artwork for several series, but this one is all me. I do the illustrations and dialogue.”

“That is so amazing. I’ve never met anyone famous before,” she said, adding, “except for Travis Bowers. He’s a country music singer I went to high school with.”

“I don’t know if I’d call myself famous. I just write comics, not like I do cartoons for Pixar or something.” Her inspection was actually making him nervous. He picked up a binder of tattoo samples and held it out to her. “Here. Why don’t you look and see if there’s something you might like while I close the blinds and lock the door?” She gave him a startled look and he teased, “We wouldn’t want everyone in town to know that Katie Connors was doing something so out of character like get a tattoo, would we?”

She blushed and took the binder from him as he walked over to close up the front of the store and turned over theOPENsign. When he came back toward her, he was dazzled by the smile on her face.

“That’s cute.” She flipped to the next page and made a face, “Ew, who would put that on their body?” She turned the page again, stopped, and ran her finger over a picture with a smile. “This one.”

Coming around to stand behind her, he pressed against her back to see the picture. It was a daisy with a ladybug hovering over it. Very girly, and not his taste, but it wasn’t his body. Leaning over until his mouth barely hovered over her neck, he said, “And where do you want it?”

KATIE HAD NOidea where to put a tattoo. It had been a fantasy, a rebellious fancy when she was eighteen, but now the warm body of the man behind her and his softly asked question was making it all too real.

Trying not to lean back into him, she said, “Somewhere that no one will see unless I want them to.” There, that sounded safe.

“All right, then. Go ahead and unbutton your pants and slide them down to your hips,” he said, moving away from her.

“Excuse me?” she said, turning around to see him transferring the sterile tray he’d held earlier from the counter to a metal table just behind an armless chair.

“I said, unbutton your pants, slide them to about halfway down your hips, and straddle the chair,” he said, slowly and deliberately.

“Why?” she asked, thinking there was no way she was going to pull her pants down in front of him and show him her butt. Especially under bright, fluorescent lights.

“I was just thinking you’d probably like it on your lower back. That way your jeans will cover it most of the time.” His face was blank, but she could hear the humor in his voice and she felt like an idiot.

Reaching for the button on her jeans, she unsnapped them and eased them down a little, pulling her T-shirt down to cover her skin. He pointed to the chair in front of his stool and said, “Go ahead and straddle the chair while I set up.”

She did as he asked and heard him fiddling behind her. Just the fact that she didn’t know what was coming made her ask, “Are you sure this isn’t going to hurt a lot?”

His hands moved beneath her T-shirt and when they touched her skin, she jumped. “What are you doing?”

---