"I love Julian too," I told him, "from, like, the first day I met him."
Drawing my hands to his mouth, Pick kissed my knuckles. "Thank you."
I nodded. "So, all this . . . love . . . it's really only happened within the last year. You'd th
ink I'd be overwhelmed from it, right? I mean, I go from basically caring about no one but myself, and not even really about myself either, to completely loving four people. But I'm not overwhelmed. Not at all. In fact, I feel as if I have so much more room, because . . . " I looked up and met his beautiful brown gaze. "I love you, too."
His face filled with a dazed kind of shock and joy. Then he whispered, "Tinker Bell," before catching me by the back of the neck and hauling me against him.
Our mouths collided. I inhaled him as his lips crashed against mine. But even that wasn't enough. Not nearly enough. My fingers fumbled to grasp him, digging into the flesh at the back of his neck and over his shoulders, afraid to slow down because I needed to feel every inch of him before I lost my chance.
He was just as desperate, pulling me close, right up onto his lap. I straddled him and slid forward until I could feel his erection through his jeans as it ground against my core.
I'd never felt this carnal and delicious, as if my entire body had just become a vessel for pure pleasure. Or maybe that was Pick's feeling channeling into me, because I'd also never felt this connected to another human being before. He was me, and I was him, and we were just this beautiful twisted mass of all our hopes and dreams coming together and exploding into a dizzying array of euphoria.
"Please tell me I'm not dreaming," he broke away from my mouth to gasp, right before kissing his way down my throat and into the collar of my shirt.
"Stop reading my mind," I said and then bit his earlobe. "This feel like a dream to you?"
He groaned and threw his head back, "Fuck, yes. My favorite kind of dream."
I chuckled and decided to do to his neck what he'd done to mine. I licked my way over the tattoo of a tree root and then grew curious about the ink on his heart. Plus I wanted him shirtless.
"This is in my way."
"Then by all means." Pick was quick to grab the cloth at the back of his shirt and yank it over his head.
My vision went a little bit fuzzy at all that fine, tanned, toned naked flesh before me. I wanted all of it at once. Greedy, my fingers reached and immediately skimmed over the smooth, hard planes of his perfect canvas. And that nipple ring . . . ooh. I was going to have some fun with that. As Pick caught the hem of my shirt and started tugging it up, I finally focused on his one chest tattoo.
And that's pretty much when everything went to hell.
"What the . . . ?"
I pulled back so fast I started to tumble off his lap.
"Tink?" Pick caught me, but I batted his hand away as I scurried to the other end of the couch, unable to stop gaping in horror at the words inscribed on his chest.
"What's wrong, baby?"
He started to crawl toward me, his concern thick and wild. But I held up a hand to ward him off.
"You . . . your chest . . . names."
His eyes flared. "Oh, shit. I forgot." Slapping his hand over the mark, he closed his eyes and shook his head, cursing under his breath as he bowed his face.
"You forgot what?" I screeched. "That the name you call me is tattooed to your chest? That my daughter's name is . . . Oh my God. What the fuck is going on?"
His lashes parted. His eyes begged me to calm down even as he lifted his hands in a placating gesture. "Promise me you won't freak out."
Oh, that ship had sailed, buddy. "But you . . . you . . . Oh. My. God. That's not fresh ink, Pick. That's . . . This tattoo is old. It's like years old."
His brown eyes filled with worry as his gaze darted around my face. "Yeah."
"How the hell can you have my daughter's name tattooed to your heart for years when she's only a few months old? And Julian . . . and oh my God. Tinker Bell? There's another Tinker Bell in your life? All three names listed together like that is a mighty big coincidence. That cannot be a coincidence. The only name not freaking me out right now is Chloe, but I still hate her because she was obviously important to you."
"No, don't . . . I will tell you everything. I swear, Eva. But it's a . . . " He shook his head and blew out a breath. "It's a pretty crazy story, so please try to listen until the end. Okay?"
I folded my arms over my chest, and I'm sure he could tell just how upset I was. I'd pinched my mouth with displeasure and put up all kinds of walls to block him because I knew, I just knew, whatever he had to say was going to hurt. He had that panicked, apologetic look on his face as if he knew he'd fucked up big time. No bastard looked that way unless they knew they were about to majorly upset a woman's life.