Heather Rainier (24 page)

“I’m afraid to find out.”

“Don’t be,” he murmured as he tilted her over onto her back, settling his warm, comforting weight over her, nestling between her thighs. She held tightly to him, wrapping her legs around him.

An inordinate feeling of anxiety swept over her at the thought of his former jet-setting lover showing up.

“What if she…”

“She’ll say whatever she has to say and then she can walk right back out the door. There’s nothing she can tell me that would make me want to take her back, sweet Jayne.”

“She hurt you.” Jayne’s heart swelled with the words. She’d never cheat on Seth. Never. She held tightly to him and let her body speak the words she couldn’t say. The anxiety morphed into a need so powerful she throbbed from head to toe with it.

“And she never will again. I want you,” he murmured, chuckling as she purred and rubbed her pussy against him. His answering thrust parted her opening, and he slid into her with a comforting wave of heat. Each of his gentle strokes filled her heart as desire skyrocketed. Jayne slid her hands down his muscled back, enjoying the way his muscles rippled and flexed under her fingertips.

She ground against him, glorying in the way his cock stretched her cunt until it tingled and throbbed. Shifting forward slightly, Seth thrust in deep, short strokes, rubbing her clit with each movement until her legs locked around him and the pulsing inside her grew into a conflagration that incinerated her from the inside out.

“Seth!”

She gripped his ass cheeks as he thrust with each wave of her orgasm until he froze and panted ecstatically and a jubilant, satisfied-sounding groan erupted from his throat. “Holy fuck!” She clung to him with all her strength, and her heart lurched as he did the same, his arms strong and hard all around her, protective.

A loud pounding echoed through the wall, and they both went motionless as Lucy hollered from the other side, “It’s three o’fucking clock in the morning! It was also fucking awesome at one o’fucking clock in the morning. Give it a fucking rest already!”

Jayne thought she might spontaneously combust, her cheeks got so hot. Seth grinned and didn’t seem very repentant as he raised his head from her shoulder and called out, “Sorry!”

Jayne could hear Lucy grumbling through the wall.

“I’m gonna die. I’ll never be able to look your sister in the eye ever again.”

“Nah. She won’t say anything to you. She’ll torture me with delight, but she likes you. She hated Tamar.”

It wasn’t her most mature moment, but Jayne was delighted by that news. If Seth felt for her even a small portion of what she was feeling for him, she could handle whatever came of this out-of-the-blue contact from his ex.

“Was this the reason why you turned me down when I wanted you to take my virginity?” His nod confirmed her suspicion. “I can appreciate why you felt that way a little more now. But the memory I have to look back on is a precious one, I promise. No regrets.”

“The thought of a woman being taken advantage of, whether she’s willing initially or not, doesn’t sit well with me. The woman they used for that video will look back on that night for the rest of her life with pain. She’s not the only reason I feel that way. Lucy was hurt by a guy from her days in high school, humiliated in a way that was hard to come back from. It was hard to know she was hurting and there was little I could do to make it better, beyond paying a visit to the asshole. Your circumstances were different but I still didn’t want you hurt.” Jayne frowned to think of Lucy suffering in any way at the hands of some jerk.

“There’s something I’ve wanted to tell you several times, but the timing didn’t feel right for various reasons. I don’t want to miss another opportunity.” Deep emotions were woven into the husky quality of his baritone voice.

“What’s that?” Her heart sped up at the seriousness of his tone.

The trail of kisses he laid down the column of her throat nearly made her purr as he drew out the moment then whispered, “I love you.”

Tears gathered in her eyes as a burning sensation engulfed her heart. “I love you too. But you need to know…”

“Know what, sweet Jayne?” The feel of his warm lips and breath on the skin over her collarbones threatened to distract her as she tried to gather her thoughts.

“That I’m not the best risk you could take for loving someone.” She hated to say it but he needed the reminder, even though she wanted his love more than she wanted air.

“I don’t care. I love you. My heart knows what it wants.”

Mine wants you too.
She was afraid to say the words for fear of making them prophetic. “The cancer could come back—is likely to—in the coming years. My prognosis is—”

“A guess, at best.”

“Yes, but an educated guess.” She hated playing devil’s advocate. She prayed and implored God for a long respite from more years spent in stasis, fearing her life might end. She wanted Seth, wanted his love, and wanted to live.

* * * *

Lucy walked in the studio door with two coffees from Divine Drip and a white paper sack. Cutting off a yawn, Seth thanked her and groaned with delight as he opened the sack and was greeted by the mouthwatering aroma of fresh kolaches. Divine Drip had developed quite a following for their baked goods. Lucy moaned as she bit into one of the savory pastries.

“Oh, man. This right here is reason enough to move to Divine. But I’ve gotta get my own place.” With her mouth stuffed with kolache it’d sounded more like, “Ah gah get moan pace.”

Seth chuckled as he took a huge bite, anticipating the arrival of an important client. “You’re just bummed that you’re not having sex that freaking good right now. Come with us to The Dancing Pony again and I bet I’ll be beating the men off with a stick again.”

Lucy grew quiet and slumped on the stool behind the reception counter. Her demeanor changed right before his eyes. Her lip curled as she finished chewing, and she dropped the rest of the kolache back into the white paper bag with what seemed like regret.

“What’s that look? What?” It seemed he’d hit a nerve. “I thought you were having a good time dancing with that guy—what was his name?”

“Vance. Yeah, nice guy. But he’s a total player.” She rolled her eyes. “He’s entitled, as handsome as he is, but not what I want. Not at all.”

“Why do you say that?” Seth wondered if he needed to pay Vance a visit. “Did he pull something?”

Lucy was several years younger than him, and he’d always felt very protective of her, and being the baby in the family, she’d come to him with her problems. Whatever Lucy’s issue was, it was also a nice distraction from wondering what Tamar wanted to talk to him about.

“When we were dancing, I happened to slide a finger into his back pocket.”

“Okay?”

“I could feel a stack of Trojans. Not one, but several. He just wants to get laid and I’m done playing. I want…”

“What?”

“I want what you have with Jayne. I want a man who gazes at me with such love in his eyes that I…melt.”

Nodding, he said, “You deserve someone like that. What about those two guys you were talking to at the bar? I noticed them watching you and that they seemed to draw your attention.”

“Yeah…appearances can be deceiving, brother. That was a disaster.”

“What happened?”

“I walked over to say hello and ask if either of them wanted to dance and…”

Seth hadn’t known Beck O’Malley and Patrick Owen that long, but recalled that Patrick was a single dad and Beck had recently been dumped by his girlfriend, but they were both good guys. “And what? Do I need to kick someone’s ass?”

Lucy curled her lip again and shook her head as she flipped through a magazine. “After we chatted for a minute, I asked them if one of them would like to dance with me. The tall one—Beck, I think—said, ‘I think you’re more woman than I can handle, sweetheart.’” Her cheeks grew rosy, and she took a deep gulp of her coffee, burning her mouth in the process. “Way to make a girl feel good about herself,” she added, grabbing the soft flesh of her hip and then poking her middle. All the women in his family had hourglass figures, Lucy included, but she was healthy and in better shape than she was obviously giving herself credit for. Another thought occurred to him.

“You know, that statement can be taken a couple of different ways.”

“He looked me up and down when he said it, Seth. I think I understood his meaning. Do me a favor and drop it, and please don’t say anything to him. Some men really don’t care for pudgy women.”

His next client pulled up to the curb, and a man got out of the older SUV and helped the woman out of the vehicle and onto the sidewalk.

“You’re not pudgy, Luce. I think you misunderstood him. But there are other fish in the sea.”

Resolutely, she shrugged. “I know. Looks like your next client is here. I’ll be right back. I’m gonna walk down the block and get a newspaper and start searching for rentals. I have a noisy roommate and need my own place.”

She scooted around the counter with a giggle, avoiding his aim when he threw the balled-up kolache wrapper at her. She held the door for the couple, who were in their forties.

Seth came around the counter and shook Hugh Collins’s hand. Bernice stood beside him, pale and uncertain. Her eyes darted around, like a nervous bird, searching for a place to land, until she made eye contact with him. Her pale-blue eyes were a little bloodshot, as though she’d been crying, and she bit her lip uncertainly. Seth noted the reassuring arm that Hugh settled around her shoulders.

“Bernice, Hugh, it’s good to see you again. Bernice, how are you feeling today? Would you like a bottle of water or a soda?”

“No, thank you, Seth.” Her voice quavered, but she cleared her throat and seemed to steel herself. The action was vaguely reminiscent of a certain lovely woman who’d decided to “go for it.” “It was hard to come here today. I won’t lie. But I’m ready.” She stepped forward as though her motion would move her past the hurdle she faced.

Bernice Collins was a cancer patient, newly recovered from breast reconstruction surgery after a double mastectomy. The reason for her appointment with Seth was to have nipples tattooed on, because she no longer had any.

Seth backed up and beckoned them around the reception counter, not giving a hint that he’d seen the glowing love in Hugh’s eyes as he gazed at his wife. She smiled tremulously at her husband as she followed Seth back to his private workspace and placed her purse on the counter. He provided a chair for Hugh, which he turned and sat in, bracing his forearms on the back, his eyes on Bernice the whole time.

While operating out of Jim’s studio, Desired Ink, in Morehead, he’d had a couple of clients who were breast cancer survivors who’d heard that nipples could be tattooed on reconstructed breasts, giving them a more normal appearance. They were deprived of the sensations in their nipple area by cancer, but that didn’t mean they had to look in the mirror and remember the loss. Those ladies had been part of a breast cancer survivor’s network. Since then, he’d done similar tattoos for a number of women, offering his services at a discount for those who were wiped out financially by medical bills.

Bernice had told Seth in her previous consultation that Hugh hadn’t only taken time off from work to be with her in Houston for the surgery, but that he’d also taken her to her chemotherapy and radiation therapy appointments and been there for her in every way she needed. Seth imagined things were tight at home. He was doing Bernice’s tattoos at a deep discount. Her first question had been how much it would cost, and that had made up Seth’s mind on the issue.

She’d said it had been therapeutic to talk to Seth about it, and he’d been told that before in helping other cancer patients to regain a feeling of wholeness after breast removal surgery. The other reason for the consultation had been to give her a chance to get comfortable with him since he’d be holding her breasts while tattooing them. Bernice was the epitome of modesty, so doing this would be a stretch for her. He knew she was still sick and receiving treatment and wanted for this to be a positive step toward healing.

“The receptionist will be back in just a minute or two, and I don’t have any other clients lined up until after lunch, so we won’t be interrupted.” As he spoke, he moved a folding screen to the end of the partitioning wall. He’d offered to use the extra workroom which had a door that could be closed for added privacy, but Bernice had said she’d feel too claustrophobic in it and preferred just the privacy screen. No one could see into his main workroom from the waiting area, but the screen added extra privacy from anyone venturing behind the reception counter.

As if on cue, the front doorbell rang. “I’m back, Seth!”

He sat down on the rolling stool and faced Bernice as she sat on the padded table with her husband nearby. Handing her the remote to the CD player, he said, “I put in the CDs you liked when you were here for your consultation and you control the volume and which song plays. I know you said that the nerves weren’t finished regenerating but if you need to take a break, just tell me.”

She’d picked hard rock, which had been a surprise, because she didn’t seem the type, but the heavy drumbeats and guitars might help distract her from the vibration of the tattoo machine.

Bernice released a deep breath as she took the remote from him. Seth gave her a slight smile. “First step is the placement and centering. I’ll give you a minute to remove clothing from the waist up. After we have the placement, we can drape you so you’ll be more comfortable.”