Tattoos & Teacups (18 page)

But Chris was probably the snuggliest person I’d ever met.

He probably appeased me by ordering a pizza that was loaded with vegetables rather than meat and cheese. I was trying to educate him on the value of wine over beer, and he accepted the compromise of a nice bottle of red since I’d let him choose the content of our meal.

We ate sitting on the floor leaning back against the sofa, the pizza box on the coffee table between us. There was an old James Bond movie showing on the TV, which seemed like the perfect thing to not really watch while I spent as much time surreptitiously watching the man my world was slowly starting to revolve around.

After my two slices to Chris’s six, we curled up on the sofa. It never failed to surprise and secretly thrill me how neatly this man seemed to fit to the contours of my body. He wasn’t shorter than me by much, a couple of inches at the most, and his body was more slender because he went to the gym and kept fit and I didn’t. We were almost equals, yet he was the one who liked to be held.

Around two thirds of the way through the film, we gave up on discussing our favorite Bond and put an equal amount of enthusiasm and energy into kissing the living daylights out of each other. I liked the way he never submitted quietly to me. If I wanted him on his back, I had to put him there. If I wanted his hands to slow down, I had to pin them to the armrest. If I wanted him to stop bloody squirming, I had to press my hips into his—although that didn’t work as well as I’d hoped it would.

When I rocked my hardness against his, he grabbed my arm, a natural move but one that made me hiss in pain.

“Shit, shit, sorry,” he said as he pulled back. “Sorry. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I told him. “Honestly, baby. I’m okay.”

He smiled at me with a slow, easy smile that liquefied my spine. “Good,” he whispered.

Climbing off the sofa, I extended a hand to him and helped to pull him to his feet. Flea immediately relocated himself to the warm spot we’d just vacated, and I rolled my eyes at him while I locked up the front door, then hesitated.

“You’re staying tonight, right?” I asked.

Chris nodded. I held his hand as we wandered back through to my bedroom.

He didn’t stay every night of the week but often enough that I felt almost confident that he’d want to sleep next to me. Mostly because him staying the night meant we’d have sex, and Chris liked sex. A lot. But also because I got the feeling he was starting to actually like sleeping in my arms.

“We should take a shower,” he said. “Clean off the ink before we go to bed. I’ll put some lotion on for you as well.”

“Do you want to share?” I asked as my fingers started unbuttoning his shirt, revealing his new ink.

The slight tilt of his head was one that I recognized. It meant
Kiss me, now
. He was such a little slut.

“You’re such a little slut,” I whispered.

“Mm. Your little slut.”

My eyes were transfixed by his, a connection between us that didn’t want to be broken. It had taken such a short amount of time for him to become so much more than just my boyfriend. He leaned in and pressed a soft, soft kiss against my lips and reached for my hand, bringing it up so my fingertips pressed against his body, over his heart.

I was sure I was hurting him as he pushed my hand further into the red skin with black lines. I pulled away harshly, from both his kiss and his touch.

“Hey,” I said softly. “That has to hurt.”

His eyes flickered down to where my fingers had left little round marks, and back up to my face. He shrugged. I stripped the last of my clothes, careful not to snag my new tattoo, and, with his hands in mine, walked backward to my bathroom.

It was imperative that the water wasn’t too hot, but when it was just right, I dragged him in under the gently falling spray. Even so, I winced when the water washed over my newly sensitive skin.

Chris let the water pool in his hands and used soft touches to clean my arm of the dried blood and ink that Payne hadn’t caught in her cleanup earlier in the afternoon. Following his example, I splayed my fingers over his chest.

“It’s really perfect for you, you know,” I said, looking at the finer details in the thin black lines.

“You think so?”

“Yes,” I said, smiling. “Because it has passion and fire and freedom and energy.”

“And love. Don’t forget the love.”

“You’re incredible,” I said.

Chris leaned back into my touch as I pushed shampoo through his hair, roughly, as he liked it. As I expected, my actions caused his cock to stir and grow against my thigh, lengthening and filling until he was hard. Despite his reaction, we were both too tired to do much more than lazy kissing as we finished showering and dried off.

I let Chris slick the cool lotion over my tattoo, irrationally pleased at how much it helped ease the residual sting. After he’d done the same to his own tattoo, we both dressed in T-shirts to protect the ink and climbed into bed.

Weeks of sleeping naked next to each other made the layers of cotton between us more of a barrier than I was used to. Still, I curled up around him and carefully laid my arm across his stomach.

“I can’t believe I got a tattoo today,” I said against his shoulder.

Chris laughed. “Me either. It’s hot, Rob. You’re badass.”

“I’m far from that.”

“Rob?”

“Yeah?”

“All of this… being with you… sometimes I think it all comes down to those three scary little words,” he said softly.

“Dad, I’m pregnant?”

He laughed and dropped his head back against my shoulder. “I love you.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d said it. Or the last. But I felt it, right down to my bones, I felt it.

“I love you too.”

Chapter 11

W
EDNESDAY
was my day of back-to-back lectures in the morning, thankfully all in the same room because with barely half an hour between each one, moving from one side of the campus to another would be practically impossible.

After my last class had filed out, I allowed myself just a moment of putting my head in my hands and groaning before starting to load up my bag with all my papers.

“Professor McKinnon?”

“I’m sorry, my office hours are printed on my door,” I said with a touch of irritation. “I don’t have time….”

Since my interrupter hadn’t re-interrupted me, I looked up.

Chris was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest. He was wearing a dark blue cashmere sweater and jeans, his leather jacket layered over the top and a striped scarf I recognized from my own closet around his neck.

“Git,” I muttered under my breath, shaking my head as I finished putting my things away and swung my bag over my shoulder. “What are you doing here?”

“I missed you,” he said simply. “So I thought I’d come and find you and let you buy me lunch.”

“I meant, what are you doing here,” I said, taking his hand as I reached him and pulling his body to mine. “The campus is huge. How did you find me?”

“Bribed a girl at the office,” he said, raising his eyebrow as he wrapped his arms around my neck. “You’re a popular man, Professor McKinnon.”

“And you’re a persuasive one, Mr. Ford.”

“Are you going to kiss me now?” he asked, his blue eyes wide and blinking.

“I might,” I said softly and leaned in to brush my mouth across his.

The campus was fairly busy as we made our way toward the cafeteria, and Chris stayed close to me although refrained from holding my hand. I couldn’t quite decide if I was relieved or disappointed by that.

We both chose hot soup to take away in little covered cartons and a sandwich to share. And coffee and chips and cake because I was dining with Chris, after all, and he could eat an incredible amount and never seemed to put on any weight.

“Do you want to stay here or go back to my office?” I asked him. “It’s not far from here.”

“I want to see your office,” he said.

“It’s not that impressive,” I warned him as we walked back.

“I know, but you won’t let me poke around in your office in your apartment, which has provoked my natural curiosity.”

“Natural curiosity my arse,” I said with a snort. “You want to look at porn on my computer.”

“That too,” he conceded.

Unlocking my office, I took a moment to be grateful that the usual piles of paperwork that covered my space had diminished in recent weeks. It was a nice feeling, smug, almost, to be on top of my game.

“Nice,” Chris said with a low whistle as he turned a full circle in my office. “Posh.”

I rolled my eyes and shut the door behind us.

“I usually go for ‘sophisticated’ or ‘charming’,” I corrected him.

“It’s that too. Can I have the big chair?” He meant my office chair, the one that spun around in circles. “I’ve always wanted to have a go on one of these.”

“Knock yourself out,” I said and set the paper bags of food out on my desk. “Don’t make yourself sick, though.”

“I won’t. Daddy.”

“Don’t start,” I warned him, but his sunny smile made my chastisement fizzle out to nothing.

I opened all the containers of food and took the chair traditionally offered to guests and students. It felt odd, sitting in the wrong seat.

“Tell me about your ex,” he said with a delicious sort of glee as he pulled a pot of soup toward himself.

In a fit of what could only be described as post-coital lack of memory function, the previous weekend we’d confessed to each other the number of lovers we’d both had. Chris called it his “magic number.” It was significantly higher than my own, but I’d prepared myself for that possibility.

“Oh, don’t,” I groaned and dropped my face to my hands. This only made him laugh around his spoonful of soup and reach for his half of the sandwich.

“Go on.”

“You would have hated him,” I said. “He was just so—and this is coming from me, mind you—he was just so dull.”

“I don’t think you’re dull,” Chris said.

“I do. Brett was very conservative and an upstanding citizen. He was a teacher too—we met at a conference one year.”

“And?”

“And after six months of serious, intellectual, culturally enlightening dates, we decided to cohabit. Which lasted for about two years. Shit.” The memory of the man just made me angry now, for some unfathomable reason. “We hardly ever had sex.”

“Hold up,” Chris interrupted. “That’s one of the top perks of being gay. All the dirty, horny man sex.”

“I know,” I said. And I did know. “It just never happened between us. We’d give each other hand jobs or blow jobs sometimes, but I suppose he bottomed once every couple of months.”

“And he never topped you?”

“No,” I said. “Never. I didn’t want that, so I told him I was saving myself for my wedding night.” Chris snorted in appreciation of that. “You have to understand, Brett was the sort of man who aspired to being part of the only gay couple in the suburban neighborhood. He wanted to be the token minority, where he and his—and I quote—life partner would be invited to dinner parties with the Joneses and exchange tips on how to make the perfect soufflé.”

“You’re right,” Chris said, deadpan. “I hate him.”

I laughed. “Good.”

“So why did you break up?”

“I never loved him,” I said with a small shrug. “He was convenient, a warm body to sleep next to, I suppose. We both made good incomes and had a nice life together. There was just no spark. Barely any intimacy. And I didn’t want more children and he did.”

“Ah,” Chris said knowingly.

“Ah?” I repeated.

“I know you think you don’t have a good relationship with Chloe, but she clearly means the world to you.”

“She’s my daughter,” I said, feeling slightly awkward. “Do you want kids?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “To be honest I haven’t given the idea a whole lot of thought. I like children. My brother has a couple, and they’re great. But to have kids means you give up on the whole young and free lifestyle, and I like that. I like my independence, and I’m so totally not ready for that yet.”

“How do you feel about Chloe?” I said. It was a question that had been burning in the back of my mind for weeks now, but I’d yet to pluck up the courage to ask.

“She’s cool,” he said in the most offhand, nonchalant voice I’d ever heard. And I worked with college students.

“She’s my teenage daughter,” I told him, exasperated. “She’s anything but cool.”

He smiled. “I think Chloe is more like you than either of you realize. She’s clearly a smart kid but sassy with it, and I know you don’t think you’re a great dad, but she clearly worships you.”

“I didn’t ask that,” I mumbled.

“Like hell you didn’t. If I’m going to be a total bastard, and I might as well since we’re on the topic, I think you could make more of an effort with her. You’re closer to her age than most of her friend’s parents, and I know you don’t like to think of yourself as a father figure, but you’re actually quite young and cool. For a dad. Plus, you have a super-hot boyfriend, and what with the number of actually cool people who are out and proud at the moment, I think the gay angle is one you should work.”