True (True Believers #1)(30)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“No. But if I said I have condoms, would you want to have sex with me?” I asked, adjusting two pillows behind my head and taking in the sight of him, realizing I’d be an idiot not to. His thighs and calves were muscular with a fine sprinkling of dark hair. There was another tattoo, a fiery red dragon racing down his left calf. When he turned fully toward me, his expression fierce, I tried not to glance at his black boxer briefs.

Tried and failed. What could I say? I’d never seen a penis in person and I was curious. But there was only a bulge visible beneath the cotton.

“Are you saying you have condoms?” he asked, voice tight.

His briefs jumped and I realized that he was growing an erection while he stood there. Oh, God. I stared. I couldn’t help it. “No. That was a hypothetical.”

He made a strangled sound in the back of his throat. “Then why would you ask me that? And maybe next time you could warn me if it’s purely hypothetical.”

I just shrugged. Honestly, I wasn’t sure. Other than maybe in some backward way I was fishing for a compliment. “Why didn’t you buy some at the grocery store?”

“Because I didn’t think sex was on the menu tonight.” He pulled a pair of shorts out of a pile and slid into bed, handing them to me. “Are you pissed because I didn’t plan this better? I didn’t know you were going to spend the night. Hell, I never dreamed you would agree to spend the night. Yesterday you weren’t even answering my texts.” His warm body filled the space next to mine and he lay on his side, watching me with his head propped up by his arm.

“I’m not pissed.” I wasn’t. I was irrationally irritated, and even that was dissipating. What he had said made total sense and I knew it. If he had bought condoms at the store I would have thought that was presumptuous. It was hard for a guy to win sometimes.

“You clearly are pissed.”

“No.” I shook my head. Under the blanket I struggled out of my jeans, tossed them behind my head onto the floor, then pulled on the shorts.

“I wish you’d just rail at me,” Tyler said, reaching out and playing with the ends of my hair. “That I know how to deal with. This . . . I don’t get.”

“I can’t be a drama queen. That’s not me,” I told him.

“That’s not what I mean . . . it’s just I can’t tell what you’re thinking half the time. You’re so quiet.”

I wanted to explain to him that some stories were loud, and some were quiet. His was filled with verbal arguments, slammed doors, heavy metal, and bad mufflers. Mine was one of hushed hospital hallways, the soft breath of a dying mother, whispered words of sympathy, and an achingly empty house where the most noticeable voice, the one of laughter and encouragement and cheerfulness, had been silenced.

But I just told him, “The expression isn’t ‘I talk, therefore I am.’ ”

Not everything needed to be said. Including my unwarranted jealousy of his past.

He laughed and his warm breath blew over my shoulder. “You have a point. If that were the case, Kylie would be a philosopher and we both know that’s not even remotely true.”

That brought a smile to my face. “No, probably not.”

Tyler continued to play with my hair, pulling a strand all the way out and letting it fall over his hands in a waterfall of auburn waves. I hadn’t slept in the same bed with another person any more than I had grocery shopped with anybody, and it gave me an intriguing perspective on him. Lying horizontally, he didn’t feel so much bigger than me, so much more powerful. For the first time ever, we were able to look directly into each other’s eyes without him bending down or me looking up.

We were perfectly aligned.

“I guess we should have turned the light off before we got into bed,” I said.

“Then how would I see how beautiful you are?”

It should have sounded like a line. It was a line. Yet he looked so sincere that I couldn’t help but believe that to him, I was beautiful. I felt beautiful under his gaze. A guy didn’t touch with the gentleness he had if he didn’t appreciate what he was looking at.

His wrist was visible as he lifted my hair up and let it drop over and over, the motion relaxing me, and obviously him. My body was growing warm under the blanket from his heat radiating toward me, and he smelled like cigarettes and toothpaste.

“What is this tattoo?” I asked, tapping his wrist with my index finger. It looked like an infinity symbol, but it was overlaying something else.

“It’s a mistake. Got it when I was fifteen. It’s supposed to be the Batman symbol.”

I pursed my lips, suddenly wanting to laugh. “Oh?”

“I know. Totally stupid. But I was fifteen, what can I say? And it was only ten bucks because some douche bag was learning how to be a tattoo artist. I hear he works at the cell-phone store now.”

“It doesn’t look like the Batman symbol at all.”

“Thank God. His lack of skill actually benefited me.” Leaving my hair alone, he locked his fingers through mine. “I’m guessing you don’t have any ink.”

“No. But not because I don’t find it fascinating. I just haven’t felt passionate enough about anything to put it permanently on my body. I’m not a very passionate person.” My father used to joke that I was adopted from a Vulcan family.

His eyebrows shot up. “Not very passionate? Given what I saw in the car, I don’t believe that.”

Yeah, that was me blushing. “That’s different.”

“Let’s see.”

Tyler kissed me, and it, too, was different from this angle. I could feel his body everywhere along mine, and because now we were essentially the same height, our kiss was deeper, more invasive, and he gave a low moan in the back of his throat. Our bodies found a rhythm together, rocking and moving in tandem, hands stroking everywhere we could as his tongue plunged urgently into my mouth. This was what I had been imagining. What I’d been waiting for. This was hot and wet and desperate, tangled legs and swollen lips and gasps of pleasure on his twin mattress.

Tyler broke away and set me back away from him. “I have to stop. I want to take your clothes off so badly, damn.”

I was breathing hard and as I wiped my lips, I almost told him to hell with safe sex. But as soon as that thought popped into my head, it was like a bucket of ice water was dumped over my desire. I wasn’t going down that road. Ever. No matter how much my body seemed to think otherwise.