Clipped Wings

14

HAYDEN

I took several steps down the hall and turned around. Shoved my hands in my pockets. It prevented me from knocking on her door before I could assess what I wanted and what was best. Even though Tenley echoed my lame-ass bullshit cop-out about complicating things, I didn’t believe she wanted me to leave. She absolved me of the responsibility of making the smarter decision when the door swung open.

“I change my mind.” She moved aside. “I want you to stay.”

I took a step toward her and hesitated. “You sure about that?”

“I’m sure.”

That was all the confirmation I needed. I was screwed anyway. Staying the night wouldn’t change what happened. But capitalizing on the current opportunity seemed like a good plan, since I made my stance clear on how things would shake down in the future.

I closed the door behind me. “What made you reconsider?”

“I like the way I feel when you’re here. I don’t want to lose that.” There was vulnerability in her confession, like it had been difficult to admit.

“Don’t expect to get much sleep tonight,” I warned, pinning her against the wall with my body.

“I thought you said just one time.” Her hands slid under my shirt and around my back.

“I meant one night.”

“You’re changing the rule?”

“Didn’t I tell you about the fine print?” I asked, working a knee between her thighs.

“Fine print?”

“Mm-hm.” My lips moved over her cheek to her ear. “Rules are subject to change.”

“Isn’t that convenient.” She pulled my shirt over my head and dropped it on the floor.

“It sure is.”

Sharp pricks on my chest interspersed with soft purring frayed the edge of sleep, pulling me from a dream I didn’t want to be in. I cracked an eyelid. The cat standing on my chest head-butted me in the chin and mewed.

“Mis?” I was so confused. Mischief ran away seven years ago. Panic gripped my chest; the possibility that my nightmare was a premonition of what was coming made it hard to breathe. I couldn’t get my brain to move past the images of blood spattered on the pale blue comforter, or the wall behind it. And there was someone beside me. A warm, soft body I felt compelled to protect. The dream began to fade as I became more lucid.

The room was dark, a slice of gray morning light cutting across the floor through a gap in the curtain, falling just short of the bed. But the bed wasn’t mine. I could tell by the feel of the sheets and the firmness of the mattress. I scratched the cat’s head as I worked to make sense of things. It was TK, not Mischief. She scampered across my pillow and jumped to the floor, landing with a soft thump. The fog in my brain dissipated. I was in Tenley’s bed. The body beside me was hers. We’d had sex twice. I wanted to do it again. Immediately.

My arm was pinned under her. Judging by the lack of feeling in my hand, I hadn’t moved since we’d crashed after Round Two. If I thought the first time had been intense, the second was like an explosion. A very lengthy, very satisfying explosion. If I was going to break the rule, I might as well obliterate it. Beyond the sex, staying the night at Tenley’s set a new precedent, one I wasn’t opposed to repeating. Maybe sleepovers weren’t so bad after all.

Tenley was curled up against me, her back along my side. I was in some serious trouble. I couldn’t make it another two months before getting inside her again. It felt too good.

She shivered in her sleep and I molded my body around hers; my cock nestled conveniently along the cleft of her ass. She made a little sound like maybe she didn’t mind and I wrapped my arm around her, cupping a breast. The unyielding steel of the barbell rested against my palm. I couldn’t wait until those piercings healed so I could show her how rewarding they were. Maybe we could make another loophole to facilitate that. I lay there for a few minutes, listening as her breathing grew shallower.

“Are you awake?” I burrowed through the wild tangle of hair and buried my nose in her neck. She smelled good, a fusion of vanilla and me.

“Mm. Hi.”

“Hi, yourself.” I kissed her shoulder. I liked this; waking up in her bed, wrapped around her. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I didn’t get much sleep.” She stretched out, and her ass pressed against my very ecstatic erection. “And sore in all the right places.”

“How sore?” My hand drifted from her breast down her stomach.

“Like I had incredible sex twice in a short period of time.”

My fingertips rested on her pelvic bone. “So I should back off?”

“I didn’t say that.” She covered my hand with hers, guiding it lower. I liked that she wasn’t shy about what she wanted. Getting her to voice it might take some work, but she didn’t have a problem showing me. It was unexpected and sexy.

“What time is it?” she asked with a soft moan.

I looked over at the nightstand. The glowing red numbers on the clock promised at least an hour before she had to leave to teach her class. I planned to make every second count. “It’s early still.”

“How early?”

“It’s not quite eight. We have lots of time.”

She rolled over and propped herself up, shoving pillows out of the way to seek confirmation. Her eyes went wide. “Oh God! I’m going to be late!”

She scrambled over me in all her naked glory, her sudden shift in mood a surprise. I caught her around the waist before she could fall face-first over the edge of the bed.

“Late for what? You don’t teach until ten on Wednesdays, right?” She was too busy freaking out to realize I’d memorized the schedule stuck to her fridge.

“I have a meeting with my advisor at nine. I’ll be kicked out of the program if I don’t make it on time.” She extricated herself from my grasp. Her nails bit into my arm as she struggled to free herself from the sheets twisted around her leg.

“For being late?” That didn’t seem logical. There had to be more to the story, but Tenley was too wound up to articulate it.

When her feet hit the floor, her right knee buckled. I sat up and threw my legs over the side of the bed, grabbing her hips to steady her. She was really fucking naked, her breasts right in my face, little jeweled barbells taunting me. When I averted my eyes downward, I was met with her bare kitty. She flicked on the bedside lamp, illuminating the room in a harsh glow. I let her go and blinked against the sudden brightness as Tenley crossed over to the closet, a slight hitch in her step.

Then I noticed her back. Scars littered her skin. She must have been in a serious accident to leave so much damage behind.

I’d felt them the night before; the divots. But I’d been too distracted to make sense of them. It looked like the Milky Way in the form of pale pink scars, marring her perfection. They traveled from her right shoulder down to her left hip in a diagonal spatter pattern, starting as a thin line and fanning out to the width of my hand. Physical suffering like that brought with it deep emotional wounds. Those took infinitely more time to heal.

Tenley’s sudden distress, combined with the tangible proof of her trauma, shut down my hormones. I retrieved my pants from the floor and pulled them on, tucking myself away. Pins and needles shot up my arm and I shook it out, trying to get the feeling back so I could button my jeans. I gave up when Tenley started rummaging through her closet, her movements panicky. Hangers clattered to the floor, clothes piling in a heap.

I came up behind her, getting a much better look at the severity of the scarring. It must have hurt like hell in the aftermath. “Hey.” I ran my palm gently across the marks on her back. “What happened to you?”

She spun around, her nakedness covered by the clothing hugged to her chest. Her fingers moved to her shoulder. She looked scared more than anything else.

I caressed her cheek with the back of my hand. “What kind of accident were you in?” She shied away from the touch. I didn’t like the heavy charge in the atmosphere. There were too many questions without answers. I had a feeling Tenley wouldn’t share them easily.

“I can’t do this with you right now,” she pleaded. Her eyes were watery and her bottom lip trembled. She looked like she was straddling the line between fear and anger, the latter a protective measure I was familiar with.

“Okay. We can talk about it later.” It wasn’t a topic she could avoid indefinitely, and I wanted her to know that. But for now I would let it go. When she shivered, I draped the robe hanging from her closet door over her shoulders. “Why don’t you have a shower and get ready?”

“I don’t have enough time. It takes a half hour to get there, and I’ll have to find parking.”

It didn’t take a genius to see she was fighting to keep it together. I took her face in my hands, keeping her focus on me. “We have plenty of time. Get ready and I’ll bring my car around.”

“I have to drive myself.” She sounded indignant.

“Says who? You’re too upset to drive.”

“I’m fine.”

“And I’m a fucking saint. Who do you think you’re kidding? Let me do this for you.”

“But I have to teach a class afterward and then I need to meet with my group and you have work.”

“I can rearrange appointments. I’ll pick you up when you’re done.”

“But . . . but . . .” she floundered.

Her breath came too fast, like she couldn’t get enough air, her hand at her throat. I recognized the signs for what they were. I remembered exactly what it felt like to have a panic attack. After my parents died, they were part of my routine for a long time.

“You need to breathe, kitten.”

Whatever had happened with her advisor had to have been pretty bad to send her into such a state. I would find out more when she was capable of having a real conversation. My questions about her scars probably hadn’t helped to calm her, either, which made me more concerned about how they got there. Tenley took a few deep breaths.

“Sorry,” she whispered, her embarrassment obvious.

“Don’t be. I’ll meet you downstairs in twenty minutes.”

“Okay.”

I dropped a chaste kiss on her lips and released her. She padded across the hall into the bathroom and closed the door. The shower came on and I tried not to think about her naked and soapy. There would be other opportunities. I tackled the mess of clothes on the floor, hanging up everything but a pair of black dress pants and a dark purple top. I made the bed, arranging all seven thousand pillows against the headboard, and laid the outfit on the comforter. If it wasn’t such an invasion of privacy, I would have picked out panties as well.

TK was sitting by her bowl on the floor, mewing at the top of her little lungs when I came out of the bedroom. I checked all the cupboards until I found her food and filled the dish. Soft cat food smelled disgusting, but she dug right in.

My shoes were still in the middle of the kitchen floor where I’d left them last night, and my shirt lay discarded by the door. Since Round Two had been explosive, I had wanted a slow Round Three. Too bad it was interrupted by a near anxiety attack. It looked like sex with Tenley was on hold for a while, which sucked, because touching her was becoming a sensory addiction.

I locked the door when I left. There was a beat-up Toyota Tercel and a newer, but equally emasculating, Prius parked behind Serendipity. I wouldn’t be caught dead driving either one. I jogged across the street to my building, taking the stairs to the parking garage. My ’68 Camaro was parked in its designated spot, right under the security camera.

Once out of underground parking I drove around to the back of Tenley’s apartment and waited. I debated whether I should go up and make sure she was okay, given the state I left her in. She solved the dilemma when she burst through the door and almost wiped out on the stairs. It was twenty after eight—plenty of time to get to Northwestern, considering the way I drove.

I hopped out of the car and met her on the passenger side. “Are you all right?” I asked as I helped her with her things.

“I’m fine, just frazzled. Thanks for driving me.” She gave me a tremulous smile.

“No problem.” I didn’t bother to tell her I would have physically forced her into my car if she hadn’t agreed in the first place.

Once she was settled, I rounded the car and took my place behind the wheel. We were on the freeway in less than five minutes.

“This car is fast,” she said, white-knuckling the dash while I slid neatly between two cars.

“I like fast.” I shifted gears and changed lanes again, getting ahead of the pack.

“I can tell.” She ran her hands over the black leather seat. “It’s like a race car inside.”

“It was my dad’s. I had the interior updated when I made it roadworthy again.” Restoring the classic ride became one of my primary projects once I got my shit together.

Tenley surveyed the inside of the car. “It’s really cool.”

“Thanks. Can you fill me in on the issue with your advisor?” I asked, seeking insight into her reaction this morning.

I couldn’t imagine being kicked out of a program less than a month into the semester. Granted, my knowledge of master’s programs and how they worked was limited.

“I was late for my last meeting, and my advisor hasn’t been happy with my thesis proposal or my research so far. I haven’t made a very good impression.”

She started chewing her nails, already bitten to the quick, so I reached across the center console and took her hand. Tenley was too preoccupied for there to be any weirdness between us, which was good under the circumstances. We needed to talk about last night, but I was in no hurry to address the issue, especially now that I’d seen Tenley’s scars. She was more damaged than I’d realized. The tattoo would serve to cover some of the ones on her back and might explain why she chose that specific location. It would work well as a way to mask the reminder of her accident.

“What’s your advisor like?”

“Professor Calder is brilliant, but not very warm.”

I noticed she kept it gender neutral. “So is she bitchy?” I did not want her advisor to be male. A smart man in a position of power over a beautiful, fragile woman did not make for an equitable arrangement.

She evaded the question. “Maybe I’m not cut out for the program. Can we talk about something else?”

“Sure thing. You want to listen to music?” I would try again when she wasn’t so worked up about a meeting with her gender-nonspecific advisor. I passed over my iPod, and she scrolled through my albums until she found something she liked.

Heavy guitar riffs blasted through the speakers, scaring the crap out of her. She fumbled with the volume and turned it down, but she kept it loud enough to discourage talking.

When we reached the exit, Tenley directed me to her advisor’s building. She still had ten minutes before her meeting, which gave me enough time to arrange where to pick her up later.

“I think one of the guys in my group lives around Serendipity. I can always ask him for a ride,” she said as I programmed my number into her phone.

“That’s not necessary.” I tried to keep the spike of irrational jealousy from lancing through my words. I didn’t want her in a car with some guy I didn’t know. “What time does the meeting with your group end?”

“Around four, maybe four thirty at the latest?”

“If you think it’s going to end early, just call.” I sent myself a text from her phone, smiling at the content. When mine chimed in my pocket, I handed hers back.

“Okay.”

I leaned over and unbuckled her seat belt. Her hair was in a ponytail. I ran my fingers through the damp ends. “I’ll see you later.”

“Hayden?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.” She leaned in and kissed me, sucking on my bottom lip. Her teeth dragged across the skin. “For everything.”

Before I could react, she bolted from the car and rushed up the steps to the entrance. I watched her disappear inside. I had the unsettling feeling that things were about to get far more complicated.