Say it Louder by Heidi Joy Tretheway

work. If the artist can’t lay down the primary lines right, everything else looks wonky.
    Dave sighs and his breathing evens. I press my fingertips to his primary lines, then trace the spiderweb-thin secondary lines. It’s good work. The fluidity of the lines feels like a drawing rather than a tracing, which is another mark of a bad tattoo.
    I work my fingertips across the tattoo, up and down Dave’s back, until the last traces of pretense that I’m just looking at his tattoo are gone. I’m just touching him to feel his skin, to learn a little more about his body with every stroke.
    I take a risk and shift to my hip, leaning down on my elbow, chin to the back of my hand. My breath feathers the hair on the back of his neck. I touch him in slow, even strokes, sometimes letting my fingernails scrape his skin to draw little white lines that turn red with heated blood.
    Dave turns his head on the pillow and suddenly our faces are a few inches apart. “Thank you for tonight,” he says, his voice low and husky.
    “Thank you—for the quick save in the alley.” I force an awkward laugh, embarrassed that I can’t just own that I made him kiss me. For every time I’ve been pissed off and cranky at him, I’ve been wondering and watching. This lost boy has intrigued me from the moment he walked into Violet’s apartment, and I selfishly turned his quick save into an opportunity to explore him.
    And here I am again. Exploring. Wondering. I don’t know if this is what normal people do, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t. Don’t they kiss (and not in an alley), and then make out, and then go home and fuck like bunnies?
    Dave’s in my home but I honestly have no idea what to do with him.
    He sighs and reaches for me, curling one arm around my waist and nudging his knee between my legs. He pulls me closer and inhales.
    Is he smelling me?
    Now I’m all kinds of self-conscious about how I smell, but Dave’s got a half-smile on his face. He’s watching me.
    “I’ll save you anytime you want,” he says, “but you don’t seem like you need much saving.”
    My lips turn down. That’s about right. I’ve saved myself, handled eight years on my own. I climbed my way from being a broke, homeless runaway to a gainfully employed girl with enough clients to this apartment stocked with groceries and art supplies.
    I got everything I wanted.
    But that comes at a price: flying solo. Dave’s arm tightens around me and his breathing evens. The clock ticks toward five a.m. and I’m painfully aware of this truth: building a solo life doesn’t leave any room for this.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

    Gangsta rap pulsing through a wall wakes me in Willa’s bed. I roll over and reach for her, but there’s no Willa.
    Disappointment knocks me down. What happened last night? I remember every minute clearly, but I can barely wrap my head around what it means. Why she’d touch me with such tenderness and purpose. Why she’d let me pull her close at night when she’s prickly during the day.
    She has my brain in knots, but my dick has absolutely no doubt about what it’s supposed to do. I grab my morning wood and breathe in the scent of eucalyptus on her pillow, tugging on my shaft as I remember what her fingers felt like on my flesh.
    What her lips felt like on that darkened side street. The curve of her ass and the heat of her center beneath thin leggings as she pulled my hips to hers.
    I stroke harder, faster, as I imagine what her lips could feel like wrapped around my cock. How she’d taste, rich and full, how sinking into her would feel. I imagine the grip of her as I slide in all the way to the root, as I pump myself with my hands, and her eyes, wide and clear blue when we’re joined.  
    Equal parts wanting and trusting. And that deep belief is my undoing. My body clenches as an orgasm shakes me, and I’m flying on this fantasy of her.
    Stunned.
    That’s the only way I can feel as I pant through the aftermath. I drag myself and my mess out of