Inked on Paper (6 page)

Cha
pter Eight

Presley

Was it me, or did this guy look
really
familiar?

I was pretty sure I recognized the attractive man who had settled at the table beside me, but I had no idea from where. Being that I lived and worked in the area, it was possible I’d seen him at the grocery store, or perhaps he’d been a customer at the tattoo shop, which would’ve been the most logical place to have seen him.

Then again, he didn’t look much like the tattoo type. He was too clean cut for that, in a very male model kind of way.

Damn it. Yes, I was stereotyping—something I’d been trying to work on for some time now. I’d learned long ago not to do that. In my line of work, I’d realized that people of all walks got tattoos. College kids, kindergarten teachers, fathers of three, Girl Scout leaders… They all got ink. These days, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a nun stroll into my shop.

But this guy… I don’t think I’d seen him at the shop.

Maybe it was the bad boy thing he was rocking that seemed familiar. Scruffy jaw, tousled black hair, faded jeans, black hoodie covering what looked to be a rather impressive upper body—he could’ve easily been one of the many I’d seen over the years traipsing around downtown Austin, attempting to make a name for themselves in the music world.

Along with all that, even with the scruffy, rough edge I saw, there was something
beautiful
about him. I honestly had no idea what it was about him specifically, though.

Still, I had no idea where I might’ve seen him. Since this was only the third time I’d come in to this particular coffee shop, I doubted I’d seen him here, but again, it was possible.

While I’d been scribbling
x
’s and
o
’s between the lines, I’d noticed him looking at my hands and thought for a minute that he was going to ask about my tattoos—something a lot of people did—but when I subtly let him see that I’d caught him, he’d snapped his attention back to his journal, looking as though he was waiting for the words to write themselves.

He held his pen at the ready—in his left hand, because that was one of those oddities that I typically noticed—but he wasn’t writing anything. After he’d scrawled a couple of words, which I couldn’t read from where I sat, he spent the rest of the time staring at it.

I wondered what he was working on.

Was he a teacher prepping his lesson plan? Nah. He didn’t give off the teacher vibe.

An executive planning to write his resignation? Hmm. Maybe.

A son looking to write a letter to his dad? That was possible.

A scorned ex-boyfriend planning to write a death threat to the woman who’d broken his heart? Feasible. But I doubted it. He had more of a player vibe going on.

My mind went all kinds of crazy thinking of what he intended to write. And I felt a pang of sympathy when he continued to scowl at the paper, apparently at a loss as to what he needed to pen on it.

I knew how he felt. For the past twenty minutes, I’d been playing tic-tac-toe. With myself. Because, of course, that wasn’t weird.

Granted, as I’d told my mysterious table-neighbor, it really was good for my ego because I won every time, but it wasn’t much of a challenge. Still, it was the only thing I could seem to do other than doodle random crap all over a blank page.

What I’d been hoping for when I walked into the coffee shop this morning was to have some sort of divine intervention and get my muse back—which, at this point, had been missing for more months than I was willing to admit. Instead, I got a bunch of straight lines and some circles. It’d been a long damn time since I’d drawn anything worth a shit.

So much for inspiration.

The front door to the coffee shop opened, and the brisk January breeze whipped inside, fluttering my papers and sending the napkin I’d brought with me to the floor. As I reached down to get it, I knocked heads with the handsome pen-wielding man.

“Ow, shit.” With a wince, I pulled back quickly, hand on my head.

“Fuck. Sorry,” he said, rubbing his head as he held the napkin out for me.

I massaged the sore spot while I watched him.

“Are you okay?” he asked, a wealth of concern in those few words. “I swear I’m not generally this abusive to strangers.”

I couldn’t help but smile at that. Well, that and the deep cadence of his voice. It was sexy. Rough. Like he’d just rolled out of bed.

“I’m sure it won’t leave a bruise for too long.”

“What is it?” He nodded toward the napkin he was still holding.

I looked down at the frayed piece of paper, frowning. “Nothing.”

And really, it wasn’t. It was only the last thing I’d drawn that I actually liked. It was a puzzle of sorts, I guess. An elephant broken into pieces, something I was considering for my next tattoo. When I’d first started it, I’d been focusing on depth and shading more than anything. Unfortunately, I was only carrying it around to remind myself that I’d lost whatever mojo I’d had before.

When he leaned closer, I retrieved the napkin, trying not to notice how freaking good he smelled as I made direct eye contact with the man, allowing myself to notice the intriguing color for the first time. They weren’t blue and they weren’t green, sort of an interesting combination of the two. Teal. A rare color that had me staring for a heartbeat too long.

Jerking my attention back to my paper, I placed another
x
, then another
o
, pretending I hadn’t been watching him, all while I fought the urge to look at him again.

Between the mussed, jet-black hair that was a little long, those mesmerizing eyes, dark eyebrows, and the weeks’ worth (at least) of beard stubble lining his jaw—a little more than what was fashionable these days—the guy had my pulse ratcheting up a notch.

It did not go unnoticed that this was the first time I’d had any sort of physical attraction to a guy in … too damn long. Needless to say, the mystery man had definitely caught my attention.

Oh, did I mention his lips? He had full lips, the kind a woman wanted to feel leaving a blazing trail of heat all over her body.

Christ.
I really needed to get it together.

He looked familiar, but for the life of me I had no idea where I might’ve seen him.

Before I could spend too much time thinking about that, my cell phone rang. Glancing down at the screen, I saw that it was Gavin.

“Hey,” I greeted, keeping my voice down as I pressed the phone to my ear.

Gavin yawned loudly into the phone. “Where’re you at? I thought for sure you’d be sleeping.”

“Ran out to get coffee.” I didn’t bother to tell him that I couldn’t sleep and that I’d been awake for hours, and at this point, my day was almost over. He had probably realized that by now, since this wasn’t the first time in the last couple of weeks that I’d disappeared—and
not
to the shop—before he ever saw the light of day.

“You gonna bring me a cup?”

I could hear the sound of the shower in the background and I wondered if he still had company or if he really had sent them home like Gil said. “You can get your own coffee.”

Gavin chuckled softly.

“Oh,” I added, “make sure you pick your clothes up off the bathroom floor. And do
not
let me find your underwear in the hallway again.”

Gavin laughed, evidently amused by that. “I’ll think about it. You comin’ home soon?”

“Yeah.” Not because I wanted to but because sitting in the coffee shop hadn’t helped one bit and the last thing I needed was more caffeine. “Ten minutes or so.”

“Cool. See you then.”

I disconnected the call and tucked my phone into the pocket of my hoodie while I stared down at the page now full of tic-tac-toe boards. With a sigh, I closed the sketchbook and got to my feet.

Curiosity had me glancing down at the man’s notebook to see if he’d written anything more. I smiled when I was close enough to identify the two words he’d jotted on the page earlier:
Chapter One
.

A writer. Definitely not what I would’ve guessed.

“That’s a start,” I told him, grinning when he looked up at me. “If you’re at a loss, you could always go with
once upon a time
.”

He flashed me a brilliant smile, and the lopsided grin transformed him from ruggedly handsome to smoking hot.

“I’ll take that into consideration.”

Before my vivid imagination could undress him where he sat, I shook off the thought and smiled. “Have a good day.”

The man nodded, his eyes intently focused on me briefly before I turned and walked toward the door, tossing my paper cup into the trash receptacle on my way out.

With my sketch pad beneath my arm, I thrust my hands into my pockets in an effort to keep warm. I should’ve dug out my heavy jacket that morning, but I hadn’t had the energy nor the desire to hunt through the unpacked boxes I’d stuffed into my closet to find it.

Now, I wished I had.

Chapter Nine

Jake

Saturday night

This might not have been my best idea yet, but here I was, and I hadn’t yet come up with a way to get out of it. Then again, I hadn’t really tried all that hard.

Forget the fact that it had been my not-so-brilliant idea in the first place. However, as I downed my wine in one gulp, listening to the incessant chatter coming out of this woman’s mouth, I was beginning to rethink the idea. Especially as she continued to talk.

“I’m serious,” she giggled, grinning back at me as though I was the most interesting person in the world. “I read
Forbidden
on, like, the day it came out, and… Oh. My. God. I had to change the batteries in my vibrator twice.”

Maybe she should use better batteries
, I thought, although I knew that wasn’t the point.

Or maybe it was.

Helena was a nice girl, even if the only thing she talked about was me. In fact, she was so enthralled by me, I knew very little about her, other than she was in her late twenties and lived in Austin. I’d met her at a bar downtown one night a few weeks back and we’d hit it off. And by hit it off, I meant we’d come back to my condo and fucked like rabbits on my couch. I won’t lie and say that I’d been all that interested in talking that night. Tonight, not much different.

Although I hadn’t seen her since then, Helena had given me her number, and for some reason, I’d thought it was a good idea to reach out. Call me a dog, but I had called her up with the intention of fucking her again, then sending her on her way. Only, at some point after she’d agreed to come over, dinner had been mentioned—not by me—and the next thing I knew, she was picking up food—and wine, of course, because wine didn’t suck (it definitely sucked)—and bringing it over.

So, technically, the booty call had been upgraded to a date.

And now… Now that I’d pretended to be a gentleman by sharing a meal with her and choking down the wine, I just wanted to strip her naked, fuck her blind, and move on with my life. My dick was still interested in her, but I feared the more she talked, the less that would be true.

Not to mention, if she kept rattling on about my books, I was going to pull out another bottle of wine and double fist it until I felt better. Or better yet, I’d pull out the Ketel One and go to town on it.

“That was great, Jakey,” Helena said, wiping her mouth as she eyed me. “I love Italian food. Remember that scene in your book…? Oh, crap. I can’t remember which one … but it was when Paul teased Theresa…”

Oh, I remembered, but I was still hung up on the fact that she had taken to calling me Jakey. I hated that she called me that, but sometimes, when it came to a guaranteed sexual encounter, as long as you could maintain an erection for longer than a minute … well, you just fucking learned to deal.

I refilled my wineglass, draining the bottle.

“Come on,” I urged, pushing back my chair and getting to my feet. “Let’s go in the living room.”

Helena smiled up at me, then grabbed her glass and got to her feet. “Have I told you how much I love this place? It’s so elegant, so tastefully done. And that lamp is cool.”

That was something she should’ve been telling my decorator because truth was, I wasn’t all that fond of the décor. In fact, I fucking hated it. Since I’d moved into the place nearly a year ago, I’d been contemplating changing it up, only I’d always found a reason to put that off, just like I put off everything these days.

Namely writing.

Hence, the reason Helena was here.

Personally, I considered it research. Since I was known for some of my over-the-top sex scenes, it never hurt to get a little wild and crazy with the freaky ones. And yes, Helena definitely qualified as freaky. If I remembered correctly, she was rather limber. Or double-jointed. Or both.

My mind instantly conjured up an image of the woman I’d met at the coffee shop that morning. The one with the coral hair and smoky gray eyes. I suddenly wondered if she was freaky. Between the tattoos and the piercings, it was easy enough to assume.

But that wasn’t all that I had wondered about her since the moment I had practically plowed her over and earned almost zero response.

Sure, I’d imagined her naked, riding my dick and pleading for me to fuck her harder while I twined my fingers in her coral locks, but for the first time in … possibly ever … I wanted to know more about her. What made her laugh, what made her cry, what made her go wild. No pun intended.

None of which I was ever going to find out because I’d been so tongue-tied I’d let her walk right out of that coffee shop without thinking to ask for her number.

My loss. Definitely.

A finger snapped in front of my face and I glanced over at Helena. At some point before my mind had wandered, we’d made it to my couch and now she was staring at me.

After setting my wineglass on the table, I did the same with hers, as well, then sank back into the cushions, hands at my sides as I turned my head and looked at her.

Helena was hot. Auburn hair, chocolate-brown eyes, full, pouty lips. Yep. Hot.

The same way strippers were hot.

She had a smoking body with her big tits, narrow waist, and rounded ass. It dawned on me that I didn’t know what she did for a living. Maybe she
was
a stripper.

“What’re you thinkin’ about?” Helena asked, her hand sliding up my jean-clad thigh, her long, fake nails scraping lightly.

Whether or not you have a drawer full of sequined thongs.
“Nothing.”

“Well, I can give you something to think about.”

Quirking a brow, I waited for her to continue. As I watched, Helena stuck her fingers into a small pocket on her skirt.

“I brought something.” She giggled. “I call them now and later.”

The candy? Surely not…

“This one’s cherry. My favorite,” she said with a grin, holding up the small, square packet.

Ah, condom.

That
I could get into.

Helena wasted no time reaching for the button on my jeans, and within seconds, with my help, we’d managed to push them down my legs while she stroked my cock to full attention, then suited me up with the cherry-flavored condom. When she yanked my jeans from my ankles and tossed them to the side, I knew this night was about to look up.

And when she knelt between my legs, her fingers curling around my dick, I sucked in a breath.

“Close your eyes,” she whispered. “Let me make you feel better.”

Who was I to argue? I dropped my head back, closed my eyes, and let the forceful suction of her mouth distract me for a little while. I knew how this would go. Helena would blow me, make me come, then work me back up with her hand before impaling herself on my cock.

Not a bad way to spend a night, but I had to admit, I was waiting for the day when I met the girl who realized it wasn’t all about me. Actually, for me, the best part of sex was the foreplay. And not necessarily in bed, either. It was everything that led up to that moment. The first date, the second, maybe even the third. Then, when we reached that pivotal point of no return, when we could no longer keep our hands off one another, it was all about making her come apart, stripping her slowly while she watched everything I did to her, then making her come with my mouth and my fingers, long before we made it to intercourse.

Truth was, I was getting tired of the hookups and the meaningless sex. I wanted something more, something… I sucked in a breath when Helena scraped me a little too roughly with her teeth. Based on her moan, she must have mistaken that for pleasure.

And me … well, I simply kept my eyes closed, pushed all the thoughts from my head, and let her go to town.