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Rain pelted the building, the sound loud enough to be heard over the buzzing of the tattoo needles as Scott held the vibrating machine in his hand.
It was almost like déjà vu, except the rain was louder this time—an actual storm.
“It’s really coming down out there,” Cecily remarked from where she lay, face-down on the padded table in front of him with her head cradled in her arms.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” he replied. Then he sat back. “I need you to roll over so I can get to the edges on the front. Do you need help?”
“Nah, I got it.”
He stood from his chair and went to the credenza behind him, taking the opportunity to refill a couple of inks and alcohol his needles. “Let me know when you’re ready.”
The sound of movement continued, then stillness.
“Ready.”
A flash of teenage fantasy ran across his mind. What would he do if she was lying there, chest bare? He stuffed the thought away and was equal parts relieved and disappointed to find her breasts covered with a towel.
She smiled when he took his seat. “What are you thinking about?”
“Getting this tattoo finished,” he said quickly. “It’s gonna be awesome.” The beginning of the sentence might have been fabrication, but the second half had been pure truth. They made a rad tattoo-design duo.
“Ah.” A breath of a pause. “Yeah, I mean, I loved it already. Can’t wait to see it done. You do kick ass work.”
“Easy to do good work on a—”
A rolling boom echoed through the walls.
Cecily let out a startled squeak as the building rattled around them. Scott turned an ear toward the window at the front of the shop, listening to the thunder slowly fade to a growl.
Damn, he loved that sound.
But when he looked back to Cecily, his smile fell.
Her face was turned away from him, the tendons in her neck pulled tight; her arm was over her eyes, her fingers balled into a fist.
Scott snapped one of his gloves off as the long growl dissipated to a faint rumble; he placed his bare hand on her bare shoulder. “You okay? It was just some thunder.”
He watched her ribs flex as she drew a breath. Then she laughed a breathy laugh and turned her face toward him, raising her arm so it was over her head like it had been before. “Yeah, I’m good. I just hate thunder. No big deal.”
Something about her eyes made him pause, but it wasn’t his place to pry and he didn’t want to make her feel uncomfortable, so he dropped it.
“Okay. You good to keep going?”
“Yeah, totally.” She turned her face to the ceiling and settled in, repositioning her arm so it was tucked behind her head.
Scott rounded the end of the table, pulling his stool and the sliding tray he kept beside him along for the ride. He took his seat again, but when he went to lift the edge of the towel with the plan of discretely folding it so only what he needed to see was exposed, he realized he was no longer wearing a glove on his right hand.
A few seconds and a quick roll to the credenza and back later, he was on to take-two—with both gloves this time.
Not that the gloves made it any easier not to drool as he tucked the edge of the towel out of his field of work.
Damn Cecily’s skin was smooth.
Why had he agreed when she had suggested letting the edge of this tattoo curl onto her hip bone? He cursed himself while other parts of him rejoiced.
This was impossible.
No, he reminded himself. Not impossible. He was a professional.
Yeah, a professional with a hard-on.
Cecily was his client.
A client you aren’t charging for your work, and who you’d mount right here, right now if she gave you the green light.
He could do this.
He took the tattoo gun in his hand, wound the cord around his wrist without thinking about it, and powered the thing up while he gazed at Cecily’s skin.
At the artwork on her skin.
Damn it.
He found where he wanted to start, then dipped his needles and went to work.
Once he was actually working, it was easier to think more about the piece of art than the piece-of-art-canvas to which he was applying it. He could concentrate on the shading and colors, the fade and blending of hues, the transition from soft to crisp lines—and not concentrate on the way her skin looked in the light as she breathed, or the smell of her body wash.
One of the things he loved about tattooing was the challenge of getting into the zone while staying cognizant and empathetic to his client’s comfort and needs. When he painted, he could go so far into himself that hours would pass before he realized it. He’d skip meals without knowing it. But when he tattooed, that wasn’t possible; there was a real person lying there. And every stroke of his brush brought pain, even while it left beauty behind. That balancing act of zoning in on the work, while staying aware was like walking a knife’s edge. It came more easily now than it had when he’d first started tattooing however many years ago, but it was still a challenge, and he had a feeling it always would be in some way or another.
Scott began blending a bend in the water-like form, coalescing a splash of blue with a froth of white so one began to reflect the other.
He hoped Cecily would let him take pictures of this piece for his portfolio and website when it was finished.
Still shading, he opened his mouth to ask her just that—but a new clap of thunder cut him off.
Cecily jumped.
Scott jerked the needles away from her skin just in time.
A wash of adrenaline ran over him and a second roll of thunder rattled the building around them. Best case scenario, if he’d been mid-stroke when she jumped he might have messed up an edge, or made some other errant stroke. Worst case, he could have jabbed the shit out of her.
He drew a slow breath as the thunder faded. Then he looked to Cecily.
Her arm was over her eyes again, that hand of hers balled into a fist.
He sighed. It was only then he realized his heart was pounding—and not from being turned on, for a change. He pulled off one of his gloves, then the other. “Let’s call it a night.”
Cecily nodded and uncovered her face. “Yeah, that seems good. Can you hand me my shirt?”
Her easy acquiescence was proof that he’d been right to end the session. She was normally all in to keep it up as long as he’d let her. The fact she’d agreed to stop without argument meant she was either more freaked by the thunder than he’d first thought—or, more likely, she wasn’t so keen on being impaled by tattooing needles.
He turned and nabbed her shirt from the chair along the far wall. When he turned back, he caught the image of Cecily sitting up on the table, holding the towel to her breasts—right before they were plunged into darkness.
Of course, he found himself thinking. Why wouldn’t the power go out?
Aloud, he chuckled. “Looks like we chose the right time to be done.”
“Apparently.” At least she sounded amused.
They’d headed to the shop as soon as Callum got home from seeing Miriam, neither Scott nor Cecily wanting to stick around for the epic heart-to-heart that had certainly been about to ensue between Zander and Callum. So it wasn’t late—barely dinner time, in fact—but the screens he kept in front of the windows in his station blocked the majority of the late afternoon light, plus the storm meant there wasn’t much in the way of sunshine out there to begin with. End result, it was middle-of-the-night dark around them right now.
“Don’t move,” he said. “There’s an emergency light in the back hall. I’ll move the extra screen—that should give us enough light to see by so we don’t kill ourselves getting out of here.”
‘Cause he sure as shit wasn’t moving one of the window-screens—Cecily was sitting there topless!
He crossed his bay on memory and found the shoji screen exactly where he knew it would be. Sliding it aside, sure enough, the emergency light down the back hallway cast a dim, grey shine that was just enough to see by. Scott turned back in time to see Cecily pushing her arms into her t-shirt.
“Hold up,” he said. “I still gotta wash, ointment and wrap you.”
“Oh, right.” She stopped and sat, her legs hanging over the side of the table, the t-shirt doing the job the towel had been doing before.
He rounded the end of the table, grabbed the necessary supplies, and came back around to her front, pulling his rolling stool along with him. He gave her a smile as he sat himself down and began pulling on a fresh pair of nitrile gloves.
“Maybe we’ll get to the final sitting once we’re up in Seattle, huh?”
He heard her give a quiet breath of a laugh as he positioned the towel to catch the liquid he was about to pour down her side to clean the areas he’d just worked on. He tried not to notice the way she stiffened when he patted the area dry—he tried to be gentle but there was no way to make rubbing terrycloth over raw skin painless. Then he squeezed ointment onto his gloved fingers and went to work applying the gel to her skin, just as he’d done after each session; just as he’d done last night on the sofa.
Damn, the darkness made this even more difficult—and not because he could barely see what he was doing.
He could suddenly feel his pulse in his veins, hear it in his ears. He drew a slow, deep, hopefully silent breath.
“Scott?”
That breath hung in his chest.
He looked up to see Cecily peering down at him. Her lips parted, and he felt her ribs bend under his fingers, still held against her side. The barely-there light across her face, her neck—it was beautiful. A study of shadow and contour he wanted to touch.
I should do it, he thought, the idea loud in his head. All he’d have to do was push himself up, mere inches would bring his mouth to hers.
She shook her head and cast her eyes away with a soft, humorless laugh. “Never mind.”
But what if he was reading her wrong? Doubt warred with his desire. What if he kissed her and that’s not what she wanted? Or worse, what if she felt obligated to kiss him back for all the time he’d spent on her tattoo? It could ruin everything.
Time restarted when he realized his fingers had been sitting still against her skin for more seconds than was comfortable.
He couldn’t kiss her now. He had been caught up in the romance of a thunderstorm and the feeling of her skin beneath his fingers when he needed to be thinking logically and considering the right way forward.
Yeah. That sounded right.
He finished the ointment, and had her wrapped and dressed in record time.
⫷⫸⫷⫸⫷⫸
In the hours since Cecily and Scott had come home, the rain had slowed and the skies had lightened just in time for the sun to set. Cecily had been relieved to see that Callum and Zander seemed okay. They hadn’t talked much all evening, but they weren’t giving each other the silent treatment either. Zander had gone to bed early, saying something about wanting to get up with the sun. She seemed really exhausted, or maybe sad. But when people talked to her, she smiled. And when Cecily had quietly asked her if everything was okay, she’d laughed it off.
There wasn’t much prying Cecily could do in close quarters with Callum and Scott, and in the face of Zander’s thickly applied, outward assurances that everything was fine.
Callum had watched TV with her and Scott for a time after Zander had gone to bed, and Cecily had thought about nudging him for details and his own take on everything’s-okay, but when she’d gone to do it, Scott’s expression caught her eye. She’d looked to him and, like he’d known exactly what she was about to do, he shook his head subtly, as if to say leave-it-alone. So she’d dropped it. Scott knew Callum better than anyone, after all—if he recommended not going there, who was she to challenge that?
Callum had gone to bed not long after.
“I wasn’t gonna pry if he wasn’t into talking,” Cecily had said, her voice low, after hearing the door to Callum and Zander’s bedroom close tight.
Scott had moved from the chair in the far corner to the sofa—right beside her. “I know that,” he said as he reached across her and nabbed the remote from where Callum had left it. “It’s just... he’s processing. And when he’s processing, it’s better to leave him alone. He has to sort that shit out for himself.”
She wasn’t sure he realized it, but Scott laid his arm along the back of the sofa behind her while he said it.
A couple of hours later, she woke up against him like the night before. He stretched and opened his eyes when she lifted her head. When he looked down at her, he smiled.
“I think that means we should go to bed,” he said.
She’d nodded in agreement, even while she hated the fact that it meant he would go to his room without her.
It wasn’t until she was brushing her teeth in the quiet house that the rain started again.
And it wasn’t until she’d laid out all the blankets onto the sofa and slipped beneath the covers that the first flash of lightning illuminated the window, followed by a clap of thunder that rattled the house.
Cecily’s heart was pounding and her hands were clammy, her skin felt shaky and cold. She closed her eyes and wished for sleep, telling her body to relax, willing her limbs to loosen.
But every time she made any progress—every time her heart rate started to decrease, or she felt herself sink into the pillows in that here-comes-sleep way—another roll of thunder would scatter her progress like the baritone growl of some huge animal, lurking outside the door.
God, this was stupid.
She was twenty-three fucking years old! How could she still be this afraid of a thunderstorm?
She knew the science behind it—she knew why thunder happened, how lightning was created. She’d learned all about it, and she could logic her way through the science of it all she wanted. But the science made zero difference to her heart when that sound echoed in her ears.
For all her education, her smarts, and the years she’d lived, surviving thunderstorms all along the way, she was a ten-year-old child in the midst of one, huddling under a blanket on the verge of tears, wishing like hell she wasn’t alone.
Fuck it.
Cecily pushed herself up off the sofa, snatched her pillow and tucked her arms around it, then quietly padded down the hall.
Hardly anybody knew how much thunder scared her. Trey was one of the few, but he couldn’t connect with her in the house, and she wasn’t about to sleep outside in a storm. But one of the few others was down this hallway. And while he didn’t know about her phobia as intimately as Trey, her fear was enough to push her past the awkwardness of what she was about to do.
⫷⫸⫷⫸⫷⫸
Scott punched his down pillow into submission and crashed his head onto it again. His window was open wide, a new storm was just beginning, and he intended to get some really good fucking sleep.
Except that every time that thunder rolled, or lightning flashed through his mini blinds, all he could see on the backs of his eyelids was Cecily. All he could hear was her startled gasps as he’d tattooed her through the beginnings of that storm this afternoon.
She’d really hated the sound of that thunder. And she was alone out there now.
Maybe he should go check on her.
He sat up, but stopped before swinging his legs over the side of the bed. Was it his place to check up on her? Would that just be more awkward than anything else?
Another roll of thunder shook the house.
Fuck it. Awkward or not, he couldn’t just leave her out there knowing she hated this.
But as he planted his feet on the floor and began searching for a t-shirt and sweats to throw on over his boxers, there was a knock at his bedroom door.
His heart caught in his chest—a little startled, but mostly idiotically hopeful.
But no way. He was not that lucky.
He crossed the room and cracked the door, telling himself it would be Callum on the other side of it.
Cecily stood, her pillow hugged to her chest, in a pair of boxers and a t-shirt. The darkness in the hallway made him remember the way she’d looked at the shop when the power went out—shadows clung to her like water sluicing over skin and made every bend and angle of her more alluring.
“Hey,” she said, her voice hushed. “I don’t mean to be awkward but... could I sleep in here with you?”
Jack. Fucking. Pot.
But half a second later, what caught on Scott’s attention and rang in his chest was the way her eyes looked so scared, even while she tried to make light of it with a crooked smile and quiet laugh.
“Yeah, of course.” He stepped aside and held the door open.
“Thanks.” She crossed into his room, her head lowered and her shoulders bowed. “I brought my own pillow,” she added. “So I don’t have to deplete your nest.”
It took him a second to realize she was referencing a months-old conversation wherein he’d explained that he slept with, like, four pillows on his queen-sized bed—all for him.
He laughed quietly and watched as she went to the far side of his bed.
He shouldn’t presume to sleep in the bed with her. Should he? Was that even smart considering what a tenuous hold he had on self-control lately where she was concerned? Probably not.
He began gathering his many pillows instead of watching her climb up onto his mattress and slip between his sheets. He tossed one of the pillows to the floor—
“What are you doing?”
He looked at her. She was sitting on the bed, her legs already under the covers. Loose strands fell from her ponytail and all he could think was that he wished he was the reason her hair was a mess.
She was in his bed. His bed.
“I’ll sleep on the floor,” he forced his mouth to say.
“You don’t have to do that,” she countered. “We’re both adults.”
Something pulled in his chest, like his heart was trying to climb into bed while his head was all gentlemanly-pillows-on-the-floor.
“Nah, you’ll be more comfortable this way,” he said, tossing the remainder of his pillows onto the rug beside his bed. Good thing he hadn’t yet packed this rug—it would be the only thing between him and the hardwood.
“Scott, if you sleep on the floor, I’m leaving.”
Her no-joking tone made him stop. She was sitting with her arms crossed over her chest and even in the dimness, he could see the challenging expression on her face.
She wasn’t letting this go—and she really would leave if he pushed the issue.
He drew a breath, knowing what he was about to do.
“Okay,” he said. Then he stooped and picked his pillows up again. After tossing them onto the bed, he went to his dresser and took out the pair of sweats he hadn’t yet packed away and pulled them on. When he went to crawl up onto the bed, Cecily was lying down already. She stayed on her back, but closed her eyes and let her face turn away as he slipped beneath the covers, as though she was now satisfied that he wouldn’t push the point of floor-sleeping once he was on the mattress beside her.
“Is Zander gonna freak when she finds you in my bed in the morning?” he asked with a whisper of a laugh as he settled in.
“She won’t,” was Cecily’s simple response.
He couldn’t bring himself to ask if she meant that Zander wouldn’t freak out, or wouldn’t find her here. He wasn’t sure which he wanted more.
He laid down, but he couldn’t force himself to turn away from Cecily. So he laid there, staring at her while she couldn’t see him, fighting with his hands that itched so bad to touch her—his arms that begged to stretch the short distance between them, and fingers that longed to trace the graceful, beautiful lines of the tendons in her neck. He wanted his pencils. He wanted to draw her laying like that—relaxed, unposed.
A clap of thunder startled them both.
Remembering his open window, Scott bound out of bed before the sound faded. He crossed the room, slid the pane back into place, and rounded the bed once again—but not before stealing a glimpse at Cecily.
Her eyes were squeezed shut and her face was turned into her shoulder while the opposite hand was pressed over her ear like she was trying to block out the sound.
She opened her eyes and looked at him as the rumble quieted. “I’m ruining your storm appreciation, aren’t I?”
He chuckled as he went back to his side of the bed and slid between the sheets. “Nah. Don’t sweat it.” This is way better.
Cecily rolled onto her side as he rearranged his pillows. He could feel her eyes on him, and he wondered if she’d been able to feel his, before.
“What is it about thunder you hate most?” he asked, a desperate plea to distract himself from the fact that Cecily was laying in his bed.
In. His. Bed.
He saw her shrug from his peripheral vision as he leaned himself back against the pillows, reclining but not fully horizontal.
“I don’t know. I’ve just always hated thunderstorms,” she said, propping herself up onto her elbow. “They’ve freaked me out as long as I can remember.”
With the last word, thunder rolled over the house, so close the sound resembled a jetliner taking off more than anything in nature.
Cecily tensed, her eyes squeezing shut and brows furrowing.
“That’s a pretty brutal one,” Scott admitted, the sound still fresh, his ears still ringing as he looked at the window like he expected to see something more than rain hitting the glass in the spaces between the blinds.
Cecily’s sigh was sharp and bitter. “I’m so over this.”
“It’ll be over soon,” he replied. He looked at her in time to catch her swipe her fingers under her eyes at lightning speed.
Concern warmed in his chest. He reached across the short distance between them without any plan of what he was reaching for and his hand dropped to the mattress without making contact.
“I’m fine.” She turned like she was about to get up. “Maybe I should go back to the sofa.”
“Don’t go,” he said. “If you go out there, then so will I.”
She stopped and looked at him. Slowly, a smile spread across her parted lips. Then she slid back down between the covers until they were lying together.
Face to face.
And Scott was fighting to keep his hands to himself once again. “How’s your side?” She way lying on her right side when she faced him—the tattoo was on her left.
She shrugged. “Good. I mean, sore, but fine.” She smirked. “I’m glad I packed my loosest, lowest slung pair of boxers for pajamas.”
Oh wow. He had to keep talking or he’d start thinking about that way too hard. “So what do you normally do to ride out a storm?”
He knew what he wanted her to say—especially after that last comment—and had no expectation that it was about to come out of her mouth.
“Talk,” she said, confirming his expectation—that’s definitely not what had been running through his mind. “To be honest, though, nobody knows how much I hate thunder except Alyssa. And Trey.”
“And now me,” he added, hoping to lessen the weight he could hear in her voice.
She paused in a funny way, but ultimately nodded. “Anyway, we should try to get some sleep.”
Then she rolled onto her back again and turned her face away, leaving Scott feeling exposed—and certain he’d missed something. “Yeah. Okay.”
He rolled over, punching his pillows back into shape out of habit more than need. Then he pushed his head into the soft mountain of down and cloth, closing his eyes and trying hard not to let his thoughts spin on the look that had flashed across Cecily’s eyes.
Trying like hell not to focus on the feeling of her body on the mattress, on the sound of her breathing behind him. The faint smell of her shampoo.
You should talk to her, he thought to himself. If that’s how she likes to distract herself during a storm, talk. You know what you should talk about.
Yeah, okay. He drew a breath, steeling himself to start a conversation he really wished he didn’t have to have—
“My dad locked me outside during a thunderstorm.”
Scott’s mind was wiped clean, and his head was up off that pillow, his body turning toward Cecily’s before he’d consciously thought through the reaction.
She was staring at the ceiling.
Had he heard her wrong? “What did you just say?”
“I was ten. It was a tough love, face-your-fears kind of thing.”
“It was a child abuse kind of thing,” he replied simply.
Her lips parted like she was getting ready to argue, but instead she shrugged and shook her head. Then she rolled so she was looking at him. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
Scott reached across the space between them until his fingers found hers beneath the blankets.
Her eyes flared when he took her hand in his, but she didn’t pull away.
She held on.
“Cecily, I...” don’t know what to say. Because what was there to say, really?
God, the feeling of her hand in his was like some sort of magic.
He wasn’t sure if she did it, or he did, but next thing he knew, they were bringing their clasped hands up between them.
“Now you’re one of the few who know why I hate thunderstorms,” she said, her voice low.
He just stared at her for a long, inhale of a moment.
You should ask her about her dad. That’s what Callum had told him.
She was sharing one of those hard facts about herself. Something about her only those closest to her knew.
“Can I kiss you?” The words were out of his mouth before he’d thought them through.
She moved to close the distance between them as she breathed the words that lit fire under his skin, “God, yes.”
And then her mouth was on his, her chest against his chest. Her lips tasted like cherries, her breath like spearmint. He wasn’t sure when they’d let go of one another’s hands, but her hair between his fingers was smooth and soft, the sound of her heavy breath was like auditory art.
Kissing her quenched a desperate thirst he hadn’t realized had been killing him.
