“Full circle or something like that,” she says with a smirk. “If I were a poet I’d make that sound all artful. But I’m just a wannabe. And now I want your shirt off.”

“Be my guest.”

She’s up on her knees now, grabbing the waistband. I raise my arms over my head and she tugs off my shirt. There’s no striptease, no slow, lingering removal of clothes. It is frenzied and necessary. She closes her eyes briefly, then opens them and inhales sharply. Seconds later, her hands are on my chest, her palms spread wide on my pecs, and I don’t ever want her to stop touching me.

She moves her index finger to my throat, then trails down my chest, softly, painting a line, drawing on me. I feel like I’m being marked by her, like she’s claiming my body. Down my ribs, along my side, across my waist.

I hitch in a breath as she touches my abs, her fingers turning me ragged with want.

I’m fighting every instinct to yank her down on top of me, to rip off all her clothes, then flip her over, open her legs and thrust into her. To look into her eyes as I enter her for the first time. I won’t do that though until she’s ready. But I won’t do anything tonight either until she explores me like she wants. Her hands leave my chest, reach my arms, her fingertips traveling from my shoulders down to my wrists, each second of contact winding me higher. I swear I’ll have to grip the edge of the futon soon to stay still.

She stops at my wrists, then bends her head, and her lips are on my skin, mapping an agonizingly slow trail of kisses up my arm until she reaches my right shoulder with the trio of sunbursts.

“What are these for?”

“Life,” I tell her. Her hair is draped over my arm, silky soft sheets, as she layers quiet kisses on my ink. First one sun. “Energy. Heat. Strength,” I add.

“To remind you to be strong?”

“Yeah,” I say with a forced laugh. “Didn’t work.”

She looks up, her eyes fierce again. Powerful. Passionate. “You are strong, Trey. You are so strong. Don’t ever think otherwise.”

Her belief in me is the strangest thing I’ve ever known. I’ve felt lust, I’ve felt rage, I’ve felt pain. I’ve felt sadness. I’ve felt power. But now this – faith in myself from another person. It’s foreign, and it’s heady, and it’s addictive in its own way.

She returns to my arm, kisses the other sun.

“And, I know this may seem obvious, but the sun means a lot of things to different cultures. Some believed it had the power to heal,” I tell her.

“And you wished the sun could have healed the hearts of your brothers?”

“Yeah,” I say, nodding, choking back the emotions that threaten to overtake me again. “But it’s also a symbol of light. And light in hard times. So I kinda wanted the sun to represent that. That the sun would shine through the past, and the darkness, and the death. That the day would start over, and maybe…” I say then trail off, because this is too much, too much closeness, too much admission.

The shadows from the moonlight stream in through the window, playing across her beautiful face.

“It’s okay, Trey. I believe that too. That maybe the sun can shine through the darkness. That’s what you were going to say, right?”

I nod.

“You wanted all of that,” she says, and it’s like she can see inside me, like she understands on such an instinctual level. “You marked your body because these were your hopes and your wishes for a new life. For a new future. For a life without so much pain. So much death.”

She moves to my chest now, kisses the three small silhouetted birds on my right pec. “And this bird? Is that for freedom? Flying away or something?”

“It’s a phoenix,” I whisper.

She tilts her head to the side. “I didn’t realize it was a phoenix.”

“It’s small. It’s hard to tell. It’s supposed to just be a representation anyway.”

“And does it mean resurrection? Rebirth?”

“Yeah. That’s why I did it. But then I was researching the phoenix when a client wanted one, and I learned something kind of cool. The Chinese believe the phoenix represented grace and femininity.”

“Really?”

I nod. “Yeah. It’s like a yin and yang thing. Dragons and phoenix together are a yin and yang. They are each other’s other halves.”

“They’d make quite a couple.”

“Maybe I need a dragon now. You know, so I can be whole again,” I say, reverting to mocking myself, because sometimes that’s easier.

She flashes a quick smile, but then continues her travels, the tip of her fingernail outlining one of the birds. I draw a deep breath. The feel of her is almost too much. “Or you could put a dragon on me,” she says in a low and husky voice.

I swallow. “I can?”

“Yeah. I liked it when you inked me. I want more.”

“I would love to give you another tattoo,” I tell her, and I can’t resist. I thread my hands through her hair, grab hard on the back of her head, and pull her in for another kiss. This time, I lead. I inhale her, savor her, run my tongue along her sexy lips, then crush my mouth to hers, hearing her whimper as I kiss her deeply. I want to kiss her so hard and so fiercely that it erases every other kiss she’s had, every memory, every client, every moment with another man. I want to brand her with my kisses, mark her as mine, make her lips all red and swollen, so everyone knows I’m the only one allowed to touch her, the only one with permission, the only one she’s ever wanted.

We kiss like that for hours, or maybe minutes, and she’s wiggling against me, and sighing into my mouth, but then her hands are back on my chest, and she pushes me away. A firm clear push.

Her nimble little fingers sneak their way down to my ribcage, to the new fresh art on my body. Three trees, twined together.

“Your trees,” she says, ginger with her touch, even though it doesn’t hurt. “You had them done today.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“They’re beautiful. And they’re perfect, because a tree can be many, many things. But it is always, forever and ever, the symbol of life,” she says with a kind of reverence as she stares, mesmerized, tracing the outlines on my flesh.

Life. It’s what’s happening now. It’s the real, scary, dangerous, amazing possibility in front of me. There are no guarantees. I don’t know what happens next or tomorrow or in a week or a month. With all my other women, I knew what they were. They were temporary. They were pills, they were bottles, they were long, slow hits on a pipe. Some left you high for hours, some for days, the rare few for a week or more. But you always came down. You always found another. I kept painting over all the vacant corners in my heart, a new coat, then another, then I’d try for one more.

But now, I don’t know what’s going to happen.

And I have to be okay with that. All I know is this moment, this night, is the closest I’ve ever come to magic, and I want to feel every second of it.

“Your turn,” I say, grabbing her hip, tugging at her shirt. “Let’s take your shirt off.”

“Why, I thought you’d never ask,” she says, playfully, and in seconds she is shirtless too.

God, she’s breathtaking. She has the most beautiful body I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen plenty. But no one can hold a candle to Harley. I could say it’s her breasts or her belly or her legs. But it’s not. It’s the tiny mole on her right shoulder. It’s her elbow. It’s her ragged cuticle. It’s the slim white scar on her kneecap from field hockey. It’s every part.

“I have no choice. I have to take your bra off,” I tell her, then loop my hands around her back and undo her bra, letting it fall to the floor. I cup her breasts and she gasps. I knead them and watch her reaction as she closes her eyes and her head falls back. Her lips are parted and she breathes out hard as I run my thumbs over her nipples. Reflexively, she moves closer, shifting her hips, and I don’t know how the hell I’m going to hold out, because I love everything about how her body reacts. I want to know every inch of her. I want to kiss her from head to toe. I want her under me, on top of me, beside me. I want to drown myself in her scent, in her taste, in her.