Clipped Wings Read online

  “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.

  15

  HAYDEN

  The drive back to the city was slow, thanks to morning traffic. After a long shower, I polished off half the contents of my fridge, then headed over to Inked Armor. Two clients were scheduled back-to-back in the early afternoon, but they were both small pieces. There would be plenty of time to pick Tenley up before my evening sessions. Lisa arrived while I was blocking off time on the schedule.

  “You’re here early.” She gave me the once-over. “Did things go okay with Tenley?”

  “Uh, yeah, it went all right.” I continued to check out my lineup of clients, unsure how to broach the subject. When I closed the book, Lisa was still hovering near me. “What’s up?” I asked, suddenly nervous.

  “All you can say is ‘all right’? What happened last night?”

  “She let me in. We talked and stuff.” I pulled my first client’s folder from the filing cabinet, avoiding eye contact.

  “Would you like to elaborate?”

  “I fixed things,” I lied.

  That was questionable, at best. Those scars on her back were a huge problem. Not because they made me want her any less but because physical damage wasn’t always in direct correlation with the emotional kind. Tenley was far more fragile than I ever could have guessed. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have let things go as far as they did, because in being with her I’d made her even more vulnerable. It was too late to take it back, and I wasn’t sure how to handle it.

  None of what happened last night fit into my usual postorgasm routine. Nothing about Tenley did, and that gave me more cause to worry. I still wanted to put the tattoo on her, but my reasons had changed. I wanted it to help her heal from whatever happened. I was looking forward to that time with her, and not because she was hot and I wanted to get into her pants again. Which I still did. But more than that, I wanted to know her, and maybe she would want to know me.

  I needed to talk to Lisa about it,
but I didn’t want to hear that I shouldn’t have taken the loophole.

  “Why don’t I believe you?”

  “Because you’re a naturally suspicious person and you always expect the worst from me.” I played the hurt angle and hoped it would be enough to make her back down.

  “That’s not true.”

  “Oh, no? The other week at the bar you thought I pulled a Chris.”

  “You disappeared without telling anyone where you were going.”

  “See? I’m right. When was the last time I did something like that?”

  Her nose crinkled as she tried to recall my last foray into the world of nightclub hookups. “I’m sorry,” she said when she realized it had been a damn long time.

  “Whatever. It’s fine.” I went back to looking over my first client’s design, the eventual conversation derailed until I found the right way to tell her. I felt moderately bad over her guilt, but it was self-preservation. Chris showed up a few minutes later and, like Lisa, asked about Tenley. I gave him the same vague response before I got busy setting up my station.

  I had the unsettling sensation of being watched and looked up to find Chris staring at me. “What?”

  “You’re whistling,” he said, forehead creased.

  “So?”

  “Did you get laid?”

  “What? Why would you ask me that?” It came out defensive.

  “It’s what you do, man—you whistle when you get action. And you’re way too chipper . . .” He trailed off, looking like he was about to have a brain aneurysm from thinking so hard. “Did you fuck Tenley?”

  I was across the room and in his face before I considered the ramifications of my reaction. I seized him by the shirt and lifted him out of his chair. Chris outweighed me by at least thirty pounds. “I didn’t fuck her.”

  “Hayden!” Lisa raced over and forced her way between us. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Hayden fucked Tenley,” Chris repeated, like Lisa hadn’t heard him the first time he’d yelled it across the studio.

  “Say it one more time and I’m going to break your face.”

  Chris pointed an accusatory finger at me. “You broke the rule!”

  I smacked his hand away, anger flaring.

  “Touch me again and I’ll put you in the ground,” Chris growled.

  “You want some? Let’s go.” I tried to get around Lisa, but she wasn’t having it.

  “In the back,” Lisa ordered. When I took a step toward Chris, she shoved against my chest. “Now.”

  “Better do what she says.” Chris shooed me away.

  “Shut it, Chris.” Lisa pushed me in the direction of the office.

  I was in for one hell of a tear down. I shouldn’t have gotten in Chris’s face, but he outted me before I was ready and now I had to deal with Lisa’s wrath. I’d wanted to tell her on my own terms and find a way to spin it to avoid her anger.

  She ushered me into the office and shut the door. “You’re a jerk for making me feel bad. I knew something was going on the second I saw you this morning.”

  “I wasn’t ready to talk about it.”

  “Well I hope you’re ready now. What were you thinking?”

  “That it would feel good, and I was right,” I said too quietly for her to hear.

  “What was that?” She crossed the room to sit on the edge of her desk.

  “I was going to tell you.”

  “Oh? When? Before or after you started on her tattoo?”

  “Before, probably. At least I fixed things with Tenley.”

  “By having sex with her?”

  “That happened after.” I paced around the office, my anxiety spiking.

  “I’m not seeing how that fixes anything. I thought you were going to talk to her.”

  “I did. I said what you told me to. Well, not exactly,” I amended, “but I told her about the rule.”

  “And then you went ahead and broke it? She’s your client. You’re going to put a huge tattoo on her that will take months to complete,” Lisa said, her annoyance shifting to concern.

  I rifled through the unopened mail, arranging the envelopes by size to keep from looking directly at her. “I haven’t started it yet, so she’s not technically my client.”

  “Really?” She used the opportunity to barricade me behind the desk so I couldn’t get away. “Because if memory serves me correctly, you put a cupcake tattoo on her a few days ago, which makes her your client.”

  “I don’t get what the big deal is.” That was untrue. The issue was pretty damn straightforward. “Tenley found a loophole.”

  “A loophole?”

  “Yeah. It wasn’t even my idea. I was checking her new ink, and she asked for clarification on the rule. So I explained it again. Tenley pointed out that I hadn’t started the official tattoo, because the little cupcake doesn’t count for shit. She had on these kitty . . . I just couldn’t . . .” I scrubbed my face with my palm, knowing the more excuses I spewed, the deeper my hole got. I met Lisa’s disapproving glare with an imploring one of my own. “She said it was okay to want someone, and I want her. And not just for sex because that’s not what it’s about with Tenley, but I wanted that, too, and so did she, so I stayed the night and we had sex again—”

  “You stayed at Tenley’s?” Lisa asked, her surprise genuine.

  “Uh-huh. And I was all set for Round Three this morning, but she had a meeting with her advisor and almost ended up being late, so I drove her to school instead.” My chest felt tight, so I rubbed it.

  “I don’t even know what to do with that information. Three times? Is she okay?”

  “It was only twice, and why wouldn’t she be okay?”

  “Hayden, remember who put that piercing in your special place?” She pointed at herself.

  Like I could forget that experience.

  “I’m far too well aware of what kind of damage you could do with that thing,” she added.

  “I’m not that big.” It should have been weird to talk about, but it wasn’t. Probably since she’d stuck a needle through my junk.

  She gave me a patronizing look. “Yes. You are. And I don’t get the impression Tenley’s the kind of girl who has a plethora of experience in that area.”

  I frowned at the implication. “I was careful with her.” In hindsight, she’d mentioned I was a lot to handle. Maybe I hadn’t been careful enough. I dropped into the chair and waited for Lisa to lose it on me. She didn’t. She either felt sorry for me or thought I was the stupidest person alive, or maybe a bit of both.

  “It’s not like any of it matters now anyway. I told her we can’t have sex again until the back piece is finished, so there really isn’t a problem.”

  “You told her what?”

  When I said it aloud, it didn’t sound quite as logical as it did when I heard it in my head. “I told her—”

  She put a hand up to stop me. “Oh, I heard you. I can’t believe you’re serious.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be serious?”

  She shook her head and took a deep breath. “Look at the rule you’ve created. Remember why you created it in the first place and tell me if you think it still applies where Tenley is concerned.”

  “This isn’t anything like the situation with Sienna,” I snapped, irked by the reminder. If Chris hadn’t started fucking Sienna when I’d taken a pause, the damn rule wouldn’t even exist.

  “No, it’s not, thank God. This is about more than that, and you know it. You’re going to be spending a lot of time with Tenley alone in the near future, and she’ll be partially unclothed.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “And she’s going to be vulnerable.”

  “I won’t take advantage of her.”

  “I’m not saying you would. But come on, Hayden, you know as well as I do how heightened emotions can be after a session. The process is intimate, even more so when you’re into the person you’re inking.”

  “So?” I rubbed at my lip, which was tender from Tenley nipp
ing at it last night.

  “Would you be able to deny her when she’s emotionally fragile?”

  I didn’t want to admit she already was. The postcoital buzz had worn off, replaced by a nagging worry. Lisa had a valid point, and I hadn’t even told her about the scars or Tenley’s near breakdown over her advisor. Spending hours with her alone in a private room, putting art on her skin, would be consuming. I would want to take care of her in whatever capacity she needed me, well beyond what would fall within the boundaries of what was professional. Keeping the two sides of our relationship separate would be difficult at best.

  “I don’t want anyone else to put that design on her.”

  “I’m not saying anyone else should.” Lisa sat on the armrest, looking at me with a practiced patience I didn’t have or understand. Despite all the stupid things I did, Lisa always forgave me. “You’re missing the point. Everything doesn’t have to be black-and-white, Hayden.”

  I didn’t work well in shades. I wanted to be able to go back to last night and do things over so I didn’t have to contend with this shit. “Being with her takes away that empty feeling, you know?”

  “I get that, Hayden, but you can’t go back to the way things were before you had sex with Tenley. You need to be careful with her. She’s broken.”

  “Worse than me?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe? That tattoo she wants is so dark.” She settled a hand on my shoulder.

  “She has a lot of scars.” I touched the bleeding heart on my forearm. It covered the claw marks Mischief left behind the night my parents died.

  “Physical or emotional?” Lisa asked. She was always so perceptive.

  “Physical. There are some on her back; they’re pretty bad.” I knew all about scars. They served as a visual reminder of physical pain, but like tattoos, scars could also hold a whole world of emotional strife.

  “How did she get them?”

  “I don’t know.” I didn’t want whatever happened to her to be too big for me to handle. “Maybe I can fix her. Jamie fixed you, right? So maybe I can do that for Tenley.”

  Lisa’s smile was sad. “It’s not that simple, Hayden. We’re not machines. We don’t have replacement parts. I love Jamie, he’s my world and he always will be, but he didn’t fix me. He gave me a reason to fix myself.”