Page 36 of Take Me Tender

His friends? His gang? She could feel his heartbeat reverberating through her hand. “You take pinup pretty seriously, I guess.”

“Yeah.” He tried to catch her hand in his, but she moved it then, drawing her fingertip away from that tattoo, over the brown nub of his nipple, down to his bands of abdominal muscles, toward the wet waistband of his pants. As she watched her hand travel lower, desire rose inside of her like the volume of those powwow drums.

She hooked her finger over the edge of his khakis, and drew him closer to her. “I…I don’t know what to say.”

At the Pearson house the other day, she’d seen her reflection in his eyes. Now she was on his body, inked onto his skin, and she could only think how much she wanted to be in his skin. Her own flesh shivered.

In the moment, she reminded herself. In the moment, yet in his skin. From the heavy-lidded, suddenly sexy look on his face, she thought he’d go along with the plan.

On their way to her bedroom upstairs, she remembered the condoms. She snagged them from the lower shelf, nudging aside that bottle of prescription pills and thanking heaven for the three-times-a-week housekeeper who thought of every eventuality for the potential guests who might visit.

In her second-floor room, the long windows caught every ray of sunlight, making it warm despite the humming air conditioner. Shanna flipped on the lazy overhead fan and then dropped her towel to the white carpet. Jorge moved toward her as if he was fighting molasses to reach her side.

Or maybe that was just his technique, because he kept it up like that, everything slow, every touch measured, every minute drawn out to its full sixty seconds. At some point they made it to her white sheets and she admired the strength of his body and its tanned contrast to hers.

The fan ruffled his hair as he leaned over and touched her with hands that were calloused and lean but that could whisper over her skin as if her flesh was as fragile as those transparent bougainvillea blossoms next door. She remembered him holding that sharp-clawed kitten and wondered why it had worked so hard to get away.

She wanted him to touch her, hold her, forever.

No! Not forever, but for now. This moment. This loooong moment in the heated room that smelled now of his soap and of her body’s sexual perfume.

This moment became the next moment and the next and the next and the next. The condom was unwrapped, Jorge was still unhurried, and then…and then…moment upon moment upon moment until Shanna and her quiet, edgy, exciting lover came undone.

Afterward, she rested her head on his shoulder and traced that tattoo of herself. Her fingernails were short and natural, for the first time in years, thanks to her work next door.

“What were you thinking when you had this done?” she wondered aloud.

His hand slid over her hair. “I was young. At that time I wasn’t big on thinking. As you can tell by the trouble those tattoos symbolize.”

“Is that why you keep them? To remind you of the trouble you left behind?”

He laughed, and rubbed his chin against the top of her head. Her hair caught in his already-rough beard. “I keep them because I’m afraid of the pain I’ll be in when getting them off.”

Shanna frowned, trying to determine how she felt about Jorge ridding himself of her image—or of him being inked with it forever.

Forever! No, that didn’t sound like in-the-moment language. Not at all.

Jorge’s hand swept over her hair again. “I lied,” he said softly.

She turned her head, propping her chin on his warm, hard chest to look at his face. “About what?”

“I remember exactly what I was thinking when I had the artist tattoo you over my heart. That’s the woman, I told myself, who will be my wife and carry my babies.” He smiled, as if indulging the young man who he once had been. “Dumb, eh?”

She was dumbfounded. And dumb as well. Mute. Because she couldn’t think of a single thing to say in return, not when her mind was only filled with images of things she suddenly wanted more than anything she could remember in a long time. Images she couldn’t put out of her head. Shanna as a man’s wife. Shanna, the mother of a man’s babies.

Jorge’s wife. Her stomach growing big with the child that would be their future.

That would be a kind of forever.

Sixteen

A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.

—INGRID BERGMAN, ACTRESS

When Nikki heard the back door of Jay’s house slide open it was too late to jump from his couch and hide the signs of what she’d been doing. So she stayed where she was, her butt on the cushions, her gaze on her knitting needles, her ear cocked toward the television and the show playing there.

Scrambling up would only make her appear undignified, agitated, or both, and she was determined to restart her relationship with Jay as something calm and—finally—completely professional now that they’d released the sexual tension that had infused their previous encounters.

With the house empty for the last several hours, she’d made that her new plan. Except now that she was no longer alone, the way he was just standing there, staring, made her nervous. She didn’t look at him, but she didn’t need to, she could feel his gaze. It rolled across her skin, and in response, each of her tiny hairs stood at anxious attention. Her fingers slipped, and she dropped a stitch.

Swallowing a curse, she fished it back onto the needle, then shot him a glance, unable to stand the charged quiet a second longer. “What? What?”

So much for dignity.

“Just doing a quick systems check,” he said, his voice calm. “And I’m operating on the same wavelength as I was at Gabe’s this morning.”

Puzzled, she sent him another glance. “Well, uh, good for you.”

He laughed, though it didn’t sound as if he was much amused. “Anyway, what’s up, cookie? Is that some new method of food preparation I haven’t heard of?”

“Hah-hah.” She adjusted the bag of frozen vegetables draped over the knee she’d propped onto pillows on the coffee table in front of her. “You said you don’t like peas, so I thought you wouldn’t mind if I put the ones I found in your freezer into service in another capacity.”

“I like them better now that they’re giving me an excuse to check out so much of your bare legs.”

She resisted the urge to yank on the hem of the mid-thigh skirt she’d changed into an hour ago. The short length was for practical, not prurient reasons, surely he could see that. It made the cold compress process easier—not to mention how it saved her from having to shuck a pair of pants anywhere near where he lived and breathed. That was part of history now—and better left there.

Jay took a seat on the coffee table beside her foot, facing her. He tweaked her big toe. “I didn’t hurt you last night, did I?”

“What?” Her face burning, her hands stilled on her knitting even as she registered a delicious twinge at the tender space between her thighs. “No. Of course not. My knee is an old injury.”

“Yeah?”

“I taxed it last night rushing away from that beach party, and then this morning after you left I went for a walk on the beach while I was waiting for the bread to rise. I twisted it in the sand.” She was usually more careful, but once she’d kneaded her dough into submission, her head was still teeming with memories that hadn’t yet cleared. “In a few minutes I’ll be good to go and can finish the dinner prep.”

“Don’t rush.” He switched seats, taking a spot next to her on the couch.

Did he notice how she inched away from him? She hoped he’d get the hint.

His shoulder nudged hers. “What kind of injury is it?”

“ACL.” Edging away again, she figured that brief answer would be sufficient. He was a guy, and damage to the anterior cruciate ligament was a common injury among pro football players, she’d learned from her time in the waiting rooms of orthopedists.

“Damn that defensive line,” he said, proving he knew exactly what she was talking about. When an athlete, say like a running back, took a hit that caused him to pivot in a direction different from his planted feet, the trauma could damage one of the ligaments connecting the femur and the tibia. “Tell me you at least made the first ten yards.”

“It was the game-winning touchdown, actually. The crowd’s reaction was insane.”

He chuckled. “Nice to know you went out in a blaze of glory, cookie. I wouldn’t doubt it for a minute.”

Nice to know she could bamboozle him when she wanted. Twelve years ago, it hadn’t been a blaze of glory but a blaze of pain—followed by that life-altering lesson in what could go wrong when you got too needy.

“Not a complete tear, then?” he asked. “Since you haven’t had surgery.”

“Mmm.” He knew more than most, darn it. A complete tear, when the ACL was actually severed, almost always required reconstructive repair. Without it, her doctors said, a person’s activity level should only be limited to walking and “maybe” golf. She hated golf.

But she loved working in restaurants, and cooking full-time for one was more strenuous than eighteen holes on a three-par course. Every orthopedist she’d seen had recommended a surgical procedure that wasn’t just of the two-teeny-holes-and-get-up-in-an-hour variety. What she required was a reconstruction of the knee that meant opening it up and harvesting part of her patella tendon as a replacement for the severed ACL. Then there was the drilling into bone, the grafting, and the stapling it all back together, followed by an overnight-or-two stay and weeks of limited mobility. Months of physical therapy.

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