Josie Guerrero is focused on one thing: getting accepted into the prestigious art studies program within the Art School at the University of Southern Washington. With thirteen weeks to create her sophomore portfolio, she knows she can't afford any d...
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I'm drifting in warm amber heaven.
Bedsheets, pillowcases, and my own hot skin are marked with the heady scent — the distinct, unmistakable touch of Micah. Grazing my nose against the inside of my wrist, I smile at the masculine fragrance, and the heated shiver that caresses my spine pulls me back to last night — to our time at the creek, to our bodies burning together under the stars, to the memory that's been branded onto my soul like a tattoo in irrevocable, iridescent, invisible ink.
I can still feel the imprint of him deep inside my chest, an everlasting fingerprint searing beneath my skin. It was enough to send my body into a smoldering heat that even the bite of icy wind on the ride home couldn't extinguish.
A heat the steaming shower he drew me into after only coaxed hotter.
He kissed me under the spray and washed my body with the familiar scented soap, kneeling to massage the silky suds up my calves. My heart faltered when I noticed the crimson smears on the inside of my thighs as I pulled my dress on at the creek, but standing in the shower's stream, I couldn't deny the poetic air of watching his hands — battered, bruised, and ink-coated with the permanent ghost of blood from his fights — tending so delicately to my blood-stained thighs.
Blood, always blood. Only this time, it wasn't blood born of violence that washed over his fingers before disappearing into the stream of hot water. It was blood of passion, blood of desire; of lust and need and...
I didn't let myself finish that thought. Instead, I interwove my fingers through the soft locks of hair at the nape of his bronzed neck and watched as he took his time kneading the soap into my sore muscles, his calloused touch so tender it left a path of pebbled skin in his wake. My fingernails grazed the nape of his neck in a soft caress as he washed the last of the suds away and pressed a lingering kiss to my upper inner thigh.
His stubble grazed my skin — sensitive, searing under his gentle touch — and my breath froze in my throat when he looked up, gray eyes contemplative as they silently searched mine. His face was stoic, though not with the same hardened, emotionless nature I'd always known him to have before truly meeting him in that fateful art studio two months ago. His jaw was relaxed, and the same inexplicable sense of safety enveloped me whole as his hands tightened on the backs of my thighs and his lips brushed the faint pink scar healing on my hip.
His murmur was low and throaty, and the sound of it alone sent another wave of goosebumps up my stomach and chest. "How do you feel?"
Even though I knew he was asking if I was sore or hurt or uncomfortable, I couldn't think past the thrumming of languid heat pulsing through my veins as he hooked my leg over his shoulder and brushed his nose up my inner thigh. His eyes were a vibrant, breath-catching gray — my very own sky before a storm, staring up at me with a precipitous glow. My skin pebbled again as a rush of goosebumps climbed my back. That's what it was, I knew. A cosmic warning that if I didn't turn and run now, I'd never be the same.
