All that was awesome, and scary, in equal measure (maybe a wee bit more scary).

But …

Hang on.

“What you built up?” I queried.

“Babe, you gotta learn how to take off the blinders he put on and see you.”

“Okay, I like that, honey. But you don’t have to make a job of that.”

In fact, I really didn’t want him to make a job of that.

I wanted to be his girlfriend.

No, I was his girlfriend.

What I wasn’t was so deep in the la-la land of Axl Pantera (and his bare chest) post-orgasm, croissants-and-coffee-in-bed goodness that I didn’t think that we’d hit rough patches and it would take work to keep our relationship strong. And frankly, at this point, build that relationship. Because we were in our infancy and anything that was shiny and new was exciting and seemed like it’d never lose its luster, but it always did.

But I didn’t want to be a job to him.

I didn’t want to be work.

His head ticked. “Sorry?”

“You don’t have to make a job of that,” I repeated.

“What do you mean?”

“Telling me all the time I’m beautiful and perfect and you like how I dance and stuff like that. Make it your job to do that.”

He fell silent.

So silent, his silence was the definition of silence.

And after it went on awhile, it started freaking me out.

“Axl,” I said.

“I thought we went through this,” he replied, his voice strange. Low. Careful.

“We did.”

“I’m not blowing sunshine.”

“Okay.”

The silence came back and now he was examining my face in a way I felt he might be able to count my pores.

“Axl.” That one came out as snappish.

Because, what was the deal?

Again with the careful tone. “You’re not hearing me, Hattie.”

“I am.”

He shook his head. “No. You’re listening. But you aren’t hearing.”

“I don’t get what you mean.”

“I’m not feeding you a line.”

“You’ve said that, now repeatedly,” I reminded him.

So suddenly I jumped, he reached out and caught my face in both hands and brought his so close to mine, all I could see were his eyes.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

“What?” I breathed, now not starting to freak out.

I was in a freak-out, full bore.

“You were beautiful in that dress yesterday, Hattie.”

“Okay.”

“Listen to me.”

That was not careful.

It was deep. Resonant. Luke-I-Am-Your-Father intense.

“When you were doing those twirls up on the tips of your toes to Joan Jett—”

“Pirouettes,” I corrected.

“Yeah, those,” he said. “The table next to me gasped. Punk is pounding through Smithie’s sound system and I could hear them gasp.”

Wow.

That was huge.

I stared into his eyes.

“You doin’ ballet to Joan Jett with dark eyes and safety pins in your shirt was genius.”

My heart started beating hard.

Axl continued.

“You say ‘Okay,’ you say ‘Thanks,’ you brush it off when I’m telling you the god’s honest truth. I told you that you were remarkable—”

“I know and that’s sweet and—”

His hands pressed in and he got so close, the tip of his nose was brushing mine. “I told you that, Hattie, because you’re remarkable.”

Okay.

Wow.

I began panting.

“You have no idea because you heard him tell you over and over again that you’re not. But he’s wrong. You are. And it’s not because you have a fantastic body, and I swear to fuck, it took a lot out of me not to drag you to the dressing room and bang you against the mirror when I saw you in that dress yesterday. It isn’t because you trained for years and know the moves so you can execute them. You make people feel when you dance. You make them gasp. Your dad’s been a dick to you all your life, he messed with your head, hurt you, and your loyalty to blood doesn’t break. Your art, babe, we haven’t even gotten to that. Fuck, we haven’t even scratched the surface of you.”

Scratched the surface of me?

Yup.

Definitely panting.

“I’m not tellin’ you shit because I like you or I wanna get in your pants. I’m telling you the truth. I misspoke when I said I was building you up. I didn’t mean propping you up. I meant putting back together the pieces he tears from you. Pieces that are already a part of you. They’re who you are. The compliments I share with you aren’t a means to any end except to remind you of who you are.”

Okay.

Enough.

Putting my hands to his shoulders, I kissed him while shoving him to his back.

He rolled me, and I was pretty sure jam and butter got on his sheets, and even if his hands had a firm clasp on my ass, he lifted his head and said, “Hattie, not sure we’re done talkin’ about this.”

I had a firm hold on his head and was trying to pull it down to me. “We’re done.”

He pushed back on my pull. “I need to know you heard me.”

“I’ll assure you of that after I suck you off.”

There we go.

A steely flash of blue in his eyes and then he quit talking and let me pull him down so I could kiss him.

This I did.

Hard.

And so, he could do no preamble before giving head?

I could too.

I planted a foot in bed and rolled him.

I slid down his body.

No, wait.

Maybe I couldn’t dispense with any preliminaries.

Because there was his chest.

I sucked in a nipple.

And shift …

I raked my teeth over the other one.

The noises he was making?

The way his long, strong body was shifting under mine?

I sucked that nipple too.

He wasn’t playing fair, and I knew this when he cocked a knee, separating my legs, which meant his thigh was pressed to the heart of me.

Well, since it was there …

I rubbed against it.

“Jesus, Hattie,” he growled.

As I started to head to that line of hair that pointed to buried treasure, I lifted my eyes to his.