Her hand squeezed mine tighter. “You’re not homeless.”
For the moment. “Riley politely asked me to leave as soon as I can. He’s worried about his custody of Easton. You know, the whole felony conviction thing.” I was glad I had told Robin about why I’d been in. I didn’t want her to find out from someone else, and I didn’t want secrets between us if we were going to have a shot at a relationship. Granted, I hadn’t told her the full truth, how I had found Iggy raping my mother, but she knew that yes, I was in fact guilty of the crime I’d been in jail for. I had nearly killed him, and I had done it for my mother, whether she appreciated it or not, because no man should be allowed to use his physical power over a woman.
Robin still had a secret, I knew that. Something had happened the night she had blacked out and she knew what it was. She just wasn’t ready to share, and that was okay. I was about 99 percent sure it had something to do with Nathan, because that made the most sense. It wasn’t that hard to imagine she was wasted, his girlfriend was gone, he pushed her mouth down on his dick because everyone is always after what they can get.
I was going to get the truth, and then I was going to make Nathan pay for it.
But that was for later.
Right now, I just wanted to sit back and let Robin work her way inside my heart with her shy smiles and her big, brown eyes.
“Oh,” she said, and she bit her lip. “I guess I can understand that, but it still sucks.”
“I don’t blame Riley or Tyler. They’ve done a lot for me.” More than I had actually expected. But it did feel like with our mothers gone, the bond between us was stronger. “I’ll figure something out.”
“You can stay over with me whenever you need to,” she said.
I smiled. The words were said casually, like she was being polite, but I knew better than that. She wanted me there. I wanted to be there. “Cool. Thanks. But I don’t get off work until eleven and I don’t want to keep you up.”
She stopped walking. “This is my building.” She gestured behind her to a glass monstrosity. “What are your days off work? Do you know yet?”
“Wednesday and Thursday. Weekends are big for tattoo walk-ins.”
Her face lit up. “Those are my days off, too. Well, and Mondays and Tuesdays. I work Friday through Sunday.”
“That works out then.” I glanced up at her classroom building, knowing she had to go, not wanting to let her leave. I had never felt this, the compulsion to be with a girl every second I could, and I didn’t know what to do with it.
“Have a good first day at work,” she told me. “This is going to be a great opportunity for you.”
“Thanks,” I said, surprised. It was just a standard thing to say, I guess, but it wasn’t what I usually heard. What might just be politeness sounded an awful lot like caring to me, and I was hungry to hear that. It might be what prompted me to say, “Tonight I’ll probably be really tired, but can I stay over tomorrow night? What time do you go to bed?”
“I don’t usually go to bed until midnight.” She tucked her hair behind her ears. “Yes, you can stay over.”
It was there again, that intriguing shyness she had, where she met my eyes, then glanced away, as if she were embarrassed by her willingness. I can’t lie. I found it fucking adorable. It also increased my confidence in her feelings for me.
God only knew what she was seeing when she looked at me, but she was willing to give this a shot, and that was all I could ask for.
“Okay, cool. I’ll text you later.” I tucked her hair behind her ear after it sprung free again. She had thick hair. “Now you’d better go.”
“Right. Talk to you later.” She turned and jogged up the steps without looking back at me, her dress swirling around her feet.
At work as I booked tat appointments and watched artists doing ink on customers, I felt pretty goddamn grateful.
Exactly one week earlier I had been sitting in my cell in a jumpsuit praying my release didn’t get messed up or delayed.
Now here I was, working at a cool shop where no one judged me, my cousins at my back, and a new girl who didn’t seem to care where I’d been, just about who I was.
Pretty fucking awesome.
When I showed up at her house on Tuesday night around eleven thirty, Robin let me in with a smile. “Hi.”
She was wearing pj shorts and a tank top that made my mouth water. Her nipples were clearly outlined beneath the cotton, and I wanted to suck each of them into my mouth and listen to her groan softly in my ear. We’d barely even kissed so far, but I had every intention of changing that in the next twenty minutes if she was down with that. I kept thinking about how it felt to lie in bed next to her, hearing her steady breathing, and I wanted to do that naked, her body as close to mine as it could be.
“How was work?” she asked.
“It’s going good. I mean, it would be better if I could ink customers myself, but I can be patient. And maybe I can talk Riley and Tyler into letting me practice on them.”
She was about to jog up the stairs to the third floor, but I pulled her to a stop in the stairwell and drew her into my arms. Her breath caught as I rested my palms on the small of her back, giving her a smile. “Hey.”
“Hey what?” she asked, though she obviously knew what I was after. Her eyes were wide, and her fingers had crept onto my chest.
“How about giving me a kiss? I think that’s a standard greeting.”
“Not for just anyone,” she whispered, but she went on her tiptoes and kissed me, her eyes drifting shut.
She kissed the way I liked, with soft lips and little sound, just the quick increase in breathing as her grip tightened on my chest. The kiss dissolved into a sigh, and she pulled back, her mouth still close to mine. “Is that a good hello?”
“Very good. Now show me how you say that you’re glad to see me.” I nuzzled into her neck, kissing her tender flesh there, my thumbs slipping under her waistband.
Her body shifted closer to mine, and I felt the press of her breasts on my chest, her tight nipples scraping across my T-shirt. Goddamn it, I wanted her so bad. When she kissed me again, pulling my mouth to hers for a deep kiss with a hot tangle of our tongues, I buried my hands in her hair to hold her against me. To keep her with me.
But when I started to grip her ass to rhythmically bump our hips together, she turned her head with a groan. “Phoenix. We should go to my room.”
I took it as a green light, and my dick got harder in anticipation. Before work I had stopped at the drugstore and bought condoms with my under-the-table pay from the day before, and they were in my back pocket. Hopefully she was on the Pill for a double dose of birth control, but I still wanted to use a condom to show her that I cared about her and wanted to keep her safe. I didn’t think I had anything skeezy, but it wasn’t like I really knew that for a fact.
“Sure.” I kissed her softly and took her hand. “Unless you want to watch a movie or something.”
But she said, “No. I’m ready for bed.”
There was a double meaning there, I was sure of it. She was telling me she was ready, if going braless hadn’t already been a clue.
Or maybe I was reading it all wrong.
I was debating that as we went up the stairs, me leading her by the hand and into her tiny room. The answer was obvious when I went to turn the light on and she shook her head.
“Can you leave it off?” she whispered.
“Sure, baby, sure.” Something shifted inside me and I didn’t even want to think about what it was. So instead, I peeled off my shirt and kissed her in the dark, feeling my way across her body for the first time. Exploring her breasts and her ass and the hot V between her legs with my thumb, listening to her soft sighs and sounds of encouragement.