Blame it on the Tequila by Fiona Cole (the reading strategies book txt) 📕

one side pressed to the wall and the other pressed against me. Wanting to look at her, I rolled to my side, propping my head on my hand, and just stared. I mapped the faint freckles across the bridge of her nose, the pink lips she drew her tongue across, her pert chin and slender neck. I traced the pale skin until it disappeared under the loose cotton tank top. My fist clenched to keep from reaching out to follow the same path my eyes took, especially when her nipples pebbled under the thin top.

I was damn near panting when her voice broke through my trance.

“What does this tattoo mean?” She fingered the oblong swirls and blurs decorating the side of my ribs, not at all hesitant to touch me.

Goosebumps spread from the light graze, and the shock shot straight to my length. I twisted off my side just enough to see the ink and remembered the night I got it. I’d been on a week-long bender, driving myself into the ground around a year after we left. I’d been home in New York and could have sworn I saw her hair blowing in the wind, and when I caught up to her, it hadn’t even been close. I’d stumbled back to the apartment I shared with Ash and shattered every glass piece I could get my hands on in our kitchen, trying to do anything to ease the destroying tsunami of emotions I had over missing her—over being so damn mad that I didn’t know where she was—over being so confused about the two taking up so much space and leaving no room for anything else.

Ash had come home and cleared a spot and sat with me, finally telling me it was okay to feel both, and apparently, all I needed was for someone to tell me it was okay.

We cleaned up, and the next morning, I went to a tattoo parlor and told them what I wanted.

“It’s a design of a supernova,” I finally answered.

Her finger froze. “Parker,” she whispered.

Her eyes met mine in the dim lights of the bunk, but they sparkled like the star we named her after. A beat of need pulsed in the cramped area and matched the thrum of my heart, urging me to take, take, take. Before I could move, she shifted, tugging the side of her tank up to bare a familiar guitar line drawing in the same exact spot as my supernova.

I huffed a laugh of disbelief. What were the chances? “My drawing.”

“It was good.”

“It was shit,” I laughed.

“Okay, I might have cleaned it up a bit.”

I traced the rudimentary outline of the guitar I drew for her one night, up and down the squiggled frets on the neck, down to the initials P-C resting inside the body of the guitar. Taking it further—needing to—I leaned over and pressed my lips to the soft skin, soaking in her gasp. Barely lifting my mouth, I turned to her skin, loving the increasing rise and fall of her chest against my mouth. I edged her shirt up an inch further and nipped at the curve of her breast.

She cried out and slicked her tongue across her parted lips, and I couldn’t take it a second longer. Moving slow enough to give her a chance to stop me, but with an urgency I knew we both felt, I adjusted myself up so I could reach her lips and latched on. She met me halfway, lifting her head off the pillow.

We’d kissed that night of spin the bottle, but this was different. This had been building and building and building, and there was no stopping it. This was years of waiting with the bare minimum between us, and I just wanted to live with her mouth on mine forever.

This kiss screamed desperation in the messy onslaught of our tongues fighting to taste each other, to memorize the give of her lips under my teeth, to never forget the angle she tipped her head to match mine perfectly. I sucked in every delicious sigh and savored every whimper. One hand delved in her hair to hold her up, and hers gripped my back to keep me close. I was so focused on finally kissing her that I couldn’t think of anything else.

At least until she arched up, and her nipples scraped my chest, a moaning whimper shooting straight to my cock. Then I couldn’t help but let my body take control. I rolled over on top of her, gripped her thigh, and pulled it wide enough for me to situate myself between them. I rocked forward, determined to make that whimpering cry again.

“Parker,” she gasped. “Ash is right there.”

“Does that bother you?” I asked. When she didn’t immediately say yes, I rocked again and leaned my forehead to hers. “Does it bother you that he can hear what you sound like in pleasure? That he’s probably imagining exactly what you look like when you make that sound?”

“Oh god,” she whimpered again.

I rocked softly, gliding my length up and down her slit, already feeling the warmth soak through the few layers between us. Trying to gauge her reaction, I watched her squeeze her eyes shut, and the faintest pink tinged her cheeks.

“It’s okay if you like that,” I said when she didn’t answer. “It’s okay to want to be seen, Nova.”

Ever since I knew her, it was like she’d been too scared to be noticed by too many people, but when she was, she flourished. Unfortunately, life kept shutting it down, but a person could still be seen without being seen by everyone. An insane thought popped in my head that made me about a million times harder, and I could’ve been wrong, but the possibility of trying was too great to pass.

“Do you want to be seen, Nova?”

“No, I—”

“Not like a famous person,” I clarified. “I mean, like when you kissed the guys the other night and sat on my lap…did you like them watching