Tyler (Inked Brotherhood 2)

Clamping around him, I cry out as I break into a million shards, the ripples of pleasure rising to my breasts and then to the crown of my head until I feel like I’m flying in blinding light.

He hunches over me, moaning my name, as his body shakes with his own release. Heat pulses deep inside of me, where I’m still sensitive and throbbing, triggering small eruptions of pleasure that have me gasping. Every tiny shift of his body or mine causes my breath to catch and my body to tighten again.

Tyler kisses me again, softly this time, not pulling out of me yet, leaving us connected.

“Okay?” he whispers, and I tangle my fingers in his wild hair. I don’t want to move, or speak.

I want to stay like this with him forever.

But now I know that such moments are like glass baubles: you can’t hold on to them too hard, or they’ll break.

Chapter Seventeen

Tyler

I wake up to a curvy, soft body pressed to my morning wood. Drawing in the scent of cotton candy that wafts from her gorgeous hair, I realize I could get used to waking up like this every morning of my life. Easily. No trouble at all. Feeling this comfortable in my skin, in my bed, feeling good and hopeful and all this shit I never thought I’d get a chance of feeling ever again... Sure, a man can get used to that.

Even when it’s probably gonna end soon.

I gaze at the girl in my arms, golden and dark, sugar and cream, and try to convince myself she’ll stick with me through this mess until I pull myself together and be the man she needs.

And I fucking will be. Visiting that basement almost broke me all over again—but I survived. I stopped the pills. I came back. I confronted Ash and figured out what I want from my life.

Now I need a plan, a way to convince Erin she can trust me and depend on me. What’s on her mind? How does she feel about me? She left when she saw Marlene’s message, didn’t reply to my texting, but dropped everything and came running when I asked for help. That has to mean something, right? That she feels something for me still.

How to show her she’s not like the other girls I’ve been with? Not like Marlene? I’ve never had to do this before. Girls came to ask me out in high school, and then I met Erin, and that was it for me. After I left, I never went looking for anything more than a quick fuck.

Who can I ask? Zane is still out of town. Ash is out of the question—we may be talking to each other now, and not with our fists, but I don’t think it’s time yet for me to go asking for dating advice.

Dating. I want to date Erin.

I grin in the morning light and brush my knuckles over her cheek. It’s like going back into time, where we left off. We’re not that old. I’m twenty-two. She’s nineteen. This could work.

I’m getting light-headed with hope; it’s like inhaling helium, like I’m going to float to the ceiling. We can still do this. Go for ice cream. Go to the movies. Have picnics in the park.

If she wants.

I slam back down to earth. I snare a shiny dark lock, twine it around my forefinger. She never did answer what she wants from me. Okay, sure, I had her in a compromising position by then... And damn if the memory doesn’t make me hard again.

With all the blood flowing to my dick every time I see her, it’s a wonder I manage to string more than two words together every time we talk.

I pull the blanket up to her shoulder and run my fingertips over her delicate jaw to her cute little chin and then stroke my thumb over her plump lower lip. Her eyes move behind her lids, and she sighs, her warm breath caressing my skin.

Try not to think that she’s naked underneath the covers.

Fuck, she doesn’t know what she does to me, lying in my arms so soft and sweet. I intend to kiss her, and touch her, and arouse her until she moans my name like she did last night, until she loses control and thrashes on the bed, and then I’m gonna thrust inside her and make her come so hard she will pass out.

Then I may finally get up and go grab us some breakfast. And then...

“Tyler?” Those copper and gold eyes open and look right at me. Her lips tilt in a sleepy smile. “Hey...”

“Hey.” I stare at her, transfixed, as she rolls onto her back and stretches, the blanket slipping, baring her awesome breasts. Fuck, I could look at them and touch them and kiss them for hours. So sue me.

I prop myself up on my elbow and reach out for her—but she rolls away and hops off the bed.

Wait. That’s not part of my plan. “Erin...” The covers drag on my hard dick, and I struggle to focus. “Come back here.”

She scrunches up her cute little nose and rubs it. “I should go.”