Tall, Tatted and Tempting (The Reed Brothers 1)

There’s one thing I’m already sure of and it’s that this chick means no when she says no.

Suddenly, the guy from the diner, the one she called Bone, walks up beside us. “Need some help, Kit?” he asks.

His lips are dark in the night, and I can barely see them. But I can see hers. She smiles what I know to be a phony smile at him, because her real smile will drop a man to his f**king knees, and she says, “Fine.”

“This your guy for the night?” he asks.

She looks at me and steps forward, running the tips of her fingers down my chest. I go hard immediately, and I catch her hand in mine. She startles for a second, but then I cover her hand with mine, pressing it against my heart, tight and secure. She looks up at me and bats those brown eyes. I hadn’t realized how dark they are. But they’re almost black in the darkness of the night. “This is my guy,” she says. But I can tell she’s talking to him, and not to me.

The hair on her arms is standing up, and so is mine. But it’s probably for very different reasons.

Bone walks away, looking over his shoulder at her ass. I want more than anything to punch him in the face. But I have a feeling that wouldn’t be a good idea. “I’m your guy?” I say to her.

She deflates, and lifts her hand from my chest. “He’s gone,” she says. She slips her bag off my shoulder and puts it on her own. She stands up on tiptoe and kisses my cheek, her lips lingering ever so briefly. I want to turn my head and catch her lips with mine, but she’d run if I did that. I’m sure of it. Thank you, she signs. My heart leaps when I realize she’s speaking my language. I just taught it to her, but still.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“Home,” she says with a shrug. Then she turns on her heel and leaves me standing there. I shake out a new cigarette and light it, and I watch her walk away. She doesn’t look back. Her black bag is bouncing against her leg, and her guitar case is in her other hand. She hunches down against the wind. Does she own a coat? I wish I’d given her mine.

I follow her. I can’t help it. I need to see where she’s going, or I won’t be able to find her again. Not to mention that her being alone in the night in the city scares the shit out of me. She’s not hard enough for this place or for these people. If I let her get away from me, I might not ever find out what that tattoo means to her. And I sort of need to know now that it’s on my arm. I might be able to find her in the subway tunnel. I realized when I saw her today that must be why she looked so familiar. I’ve seen her in the tunnel, busking for change.

She crosses the street and goes toward the old bank building, the one that was turned into a shelter for the homeless a few years ago. There are people in a line outside, and she gets in line with them. She doesn’t have anywhere to stay. She’s going to a f**king homeless shelter? But before she can go inside, they close and lock the doors. The people in line stand and protest. But they’re full.

The throws her head back, her long dark hair falling even longer, reaching her ass. She’s frustrated, I can tell. But she doesn’t complain. She picks up her case, and starts down the street. There’s another shelter a few blocks over, but my guess is that it’s full, too. The shelters sprung up around here like fast food restaurants when the city began to change. But there are too many homeless and not enough places for them to stay.

I follow her, finishing my cigarette while I do. But instead of going to the next shelter, she stops and sits down on a bench, dropping her face into her hands. She’s tired. And I feel weighed down by her burden, too. I approach her and sit down beside her. She looks up, her brown eyes blinking in confusion.

“You followed me,” she says, looking up and down the street like she’s not sure where I came from.

I nod.

Her chest bellows with air, and I’m guessing that was a heavy sigh. “You don’t have to sit with me,” she says.

I look at her, and I make sure to use my voice. “Come home with me,” I say.

She looks into my eyes, hesitates for a moment, and then says, “Yes.”

Emily

He’s going to expect me to sleep with him. They usually think they can get in my pants if they give me a bed and a meal. He’s given me food, and now the bed is the next part of it. He wouldn’t be hard to sleep with. He has those dreamy blue eyes and curly locks of blond curls spring about in wild disarray all over his head.

I retrieve the money he gave me earlier from my pocket and try to give it to him. “For the place to sleep,” I say. So he’ll know I don’t plan to sleep with him.

He shakes his head, looking at me like I have lost my mind. He slides my canvas bag off my shoulder again and puts it on his. His building is surprisingly close. All this time, I’ve been staying at shelters right around the corner from this guy. And I didn’t even know he was there.

He opens the door and motions for me to step inside. “Do you live alone?” I ask.

He shakes his head no.

I stop him and press on his shoulder. “Who do you live with?”

He does that thing again where he shows me two people taller than him and two shorter than him. He lives with his brothers. Shoot. I’m not going to an apartment filled with men I don’t know. “I can’t,” I say, but he rolls his eyes at me. Then he bends at the waist and drives his shoulder very gently into my midsection. He hefts me over his back like I’m a sack of potatoes. I’m still holding on to my guitar, and I knock him against the backs of his legs with it, because I know I could be screaming at him right now and he would have no idea. I can’t talk to him. I can’t tell him to put me down.