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“Is that where your friends were?”
“I didn’t have any friends. Not then anyway. Not until a group of us got caught marking up the schools and businesses in town.”
“You didn’t?” Her expression says she’s not sure if she should believe me.
“We had to clean it all up. Took all summer long, six days a week, eight hours a day. Worst summer of my life. And then we spent the rest of the year providing free labor to the businesses we damaged.”
“Is that where you connected with those guys you told me about the other day?”
I nod. “I don’t know why any of them joined me. It’s not like they knew me. They just started showing up on the nights I was out tagging and soon there was a group of us.”
“The Sutherland Group? I think that’s what you said. How did you come up with that name?”
“Pat Sutherland. He owns the bar we tagged. Unlike some of the others, he took pity on us, figured we needed a safe place to hang out so we wouldn’t loiter around town. He gave us his back room. We started calling ourselves the Sutherland Group.”
“They’re good friends.”
“The best.”
The clock on my mantel strikes midnight, and the sound of it echoes through the room, bringing us back to reality.
It’s almost time for her to go. She’s got an early flight I tried to get her to change. I even offered to pay for a charter. But she refused.
I try to tell her how much I wish she wouldn’t go, but the words stick in my throat. I can see the sadness in her eyes, and I want to take away the pain. I want to make her stay, but I don’t know how.
So I hold her in my arms and kiss her with all the emotion I have in me.
I breathe in the smell of her hair and run my fingers down her back. I press against her, frantic to remember every inch of her against every inch of me. I need to burn the feeling into my memory.
When I pull back, her eyes are bright with tears.
I roll her to her back and lower my head, stopping when our lips are a breath apart. “I want to make love to you,” I whisper.
I realize this is where I’ve been heading all along.
I love her.
She smiles, but her lower lip trembles. Her eyes dart back and forth over my face, as a tear escapes down her cheek, as though she’s memorizing my features like I’m memorizing her touch.
I press tender kisses all over her shoulders, pushing the sheets away to expose more of her body.
I slide my hands over her. I want to feel every curve, every dip, and hollow. Everywhere my fingertips touch, my lips follow, savoring each part of her. I trace a path along her collarbone and down the delicate curve of her neck. I work down to her breasts, taking each sweet peak into my mouth and sucking gently.
I move down her stomach, dipping my tongue into her belly button.
She giggles and sucks in her breath.
I pick up her arm.
She gasps softly as my lips brush over the sensitive skin of her inner wrist.
I work my way up her arm and then back down. When I reach the tips of her fingers, I kiss each one tenderly before letting go. I repeat it all over again with her other arm.
Feeling the smooth curve of her waist under each palm, I shift my body lower until I’m nestled between her legs. I press my face to her warm belly, just above her pubic bone, and inhale her scent, learning it, remembering it.
I glide my hands lower, running them along her thighs and then sliding them to the back and lift her legs to rest them over my shoulders.
Her skin is hot. She quivers. She responds to each singular touch with a sigh or a gasp.
