My angel, pretty and delicate and shiny. I wouldn’t let anyone take him from me. I wouldn’t let anyone hurt him.
He listened intently as I gave the aftercare instructions, covering it with ointment and popping the protective adhesive on top.
I didn’t bother pretending not to stare as he wriggled his tight jeans back up his legs, or pretending I didn’t notice how perfectly they hugged his bubble butt. We were a little past that phase of our dynamic.
As the adrenaline of tattooing him started to ebb, just a bit, I realized the gravity of what we’d done. He’d asked for me to put something on him that would be there forever, something that directly related to me and my feelings for him.
He didn’t want another alpha, ever. He’d told me over and over but my stubborn brain, terrified of being discarded and abandoned, had tried to keep me safe by making me believe he hadn’t meant it. But Jordy Nolan wasn’t the type of person to make gestures casually. He’d gotten the tattoo to show me that he was mine, and he always wanted to be mine.
I didn’t have to be afraid of losing him.
“Hey,” I said quietly, and he instantly turned, the rough intensity in my voice alerting him to my high emotions.
“Yeah?” He asked, his brows drawing together as he looked up into my eyes, like he was trying to decode how I was feeling so he could fix it. Like he couldn’t stand to let me feel unhappy or upset for even a minute.
“I… Um…”
I wanted to let him know I understood what he’d done, and how much it meant to me. How it felt like my heart was swelling in my chest, splintering and warping into something new, stronger and sturdier. How incredibly grateful I was to have someone like him, who truly understood me and what I needed, and how completely fucking miserable I would bewithout him. But I didn’t have a clue how. Or if my tongue would even cooperate and let me form my jumbled thoughts into understandable English.
Reaching out for him, I gripped him around his waist, nudging him closer until he was pressed up against me. As always, he snaked his arms around my neck, allowing me to lift him up into my arms so he could snuggle into me.
It was normal and expected for him to like being picked up by me. It demonstrated my biological size and strength over him, and implied that I could be his protector if needed. But it still always made my ego go crazy when he made those happy little purring noises against my neck.
“I just want to say…” I stopped, letting out a light groan of frustration. Why was this so damn hard? “Thank you.”
I waited for him to ask what I was thanking him for, before I remembered who I was talking to.
“You’re welcome,” he murmured, the feel of his lips moving against me as he spoke making me shiver. “I’m really, really happy.”
“Me too.”
“Kieran?” He asked, after a stretch of silence where we’d just breathed each other in. “You love me, right?”
My breath rushed out, catching in my throat. It had been too hard for me to say, even though I’d desperately wanted to. He’d known I’d needed his help.
“Yeah.” The sheer relief of expressing it, the release of all those knots and scars that kept me pinned down under my own self-loathing, almost had tears forming in my eyes. “I do.”
“I love you, too,” he said.
We hadn’t taken the most traditional avenue to get to those words, and maybe other people wouldn’t understand how I felt in that moment and why it was crashing over me so strongly. But I knew he understood, and that was all that mattered to me.
JORDY
SEATED AT THEkitchen table, I watched my mom scurry her way from one end of the house to the other a few times, items stacked in her arms like a cargo train.
“You sure you don’t want me to help with anything?” I asked, resting my chin on my hand. Kieran wasn’t awake yet, but I knew he’d be in a good mood when he did come down. Our parents were going on a little date day, a matinée and then dinner, which meant it would just be us in the house, for a few hours at least, until he had to go to work. The few hours we were able to snatch together to be alone were quickly becoming my absolute favorite thing in the world.
“Oh, no, sweetie, you just relax. I’m just finishing up a couple things before your dad and I leave.”
Since I’d basically forced Kieran to admit that he was in love with me, things had been really great. Like, heart-shaped confetti bursting out of me all hours of the day great. He’d said it to me a bunch more times since then, even if sometimes he did this really sexy and adorable thing where he’d lean in really close to my ear and say it into my skin, like he couldn’t bear looking into my eyes. Like it was the most vulnerable, intimate thing he could ever say or do, being honest with me about how he felt.
And I guess it was.
“Oh, and I washed this for you,” she said on one of her trips by, dropping Kieran’s hoodie in front of me, folded into a neat little black square. I wore his jackets so often she probably couldn’t even keep track of which ones belonged to who.
Heat washed over my face as I realized it was the hoodie I’d worn on our trip, the one he’d taken my virginity on in the woods. I hoped she hadn’t noticed that it was crusted in her son’s cum. “It was really dirty,” she commented.
Clearing my throat, I stared down at my phone and tried not to look guilty. I’d meant to wash it myself, eventually, but I’d ended up leaving it balled up in the corner of my room like a disgusting shrine.
