Inspire (6 page)

Except that I’m not sure exactly what day it is, and based on the crowds on Sixth Street, I’m going to guess it’s a weekend. Which means no classes. And even if I manage to find a bus stop, I have no money. Or shoes.

I let out a frustrated exhale and lean my head against the cool glass of the window.

“You okay?” he asks.

I nod in lieu of an answer.

“You need water or something? Are you going to be sick?”

I resist the urge to laugh. Because I do feel like I might be sick, but not because of alcohol. “I swear, I’m fine. I’m not drunk.”

He doesn’t look like he believes me, and I don’t blame him. In fact, it’s probably easier if I just let him think that I am. Less explaining for me to do in the long run.

“Why Atlas?” I ask on impulse.

“Hmm?”

“Your tattoo. Atlas.”

He frowns, and from his expression I gather he’s surprised I recognize the image.

“The myth interested me.”

“Just interest?” The tattoo takes up nearly his entire forearm. “Must be a lot of interest to have it permanently etched on your skin.”

He shrugs. “I can identify with him.”

“His punishment? Have you done something deserving of punishment, Wilder?”

Oh gods, I’m flirting. Why am I flirting? What is
wrong
with me?

He laughs and shakes his head. “I just always thought it was interesting that out of all the Titans that betrayed the gods, he was chosen to bear the weight of the Earth.”

“That’s a misconception, actually. It’s not the Earth that Atlas holds, but the celestial spheres. The heavens. He keeps them from colliding with the Earth. And the others didn’t exactly get away with it. I would rather Atlas’s punishment than spend eternity being tortured in Tartarus.”

He lifts an eyebrow. “You like mythology?”

I smile. “Loathe it, actually.”

“Okay then. There went all my plans for small talk.” He throws me a wink before turning back to the road, and somehow …
miraculously
… I find myself smiling.

Then I immediately feel awful. I shouldn’t be here with him. Not after what I’ve done tonight … not ever.

Exiting the interstate, he turns under the highway heading into a residential part of North Austin. I’d guess we’re between three and five miles from campus, which might not be a completely unreasonable walk if it came to that.

After a few turns, he pulls up in front of a simple duplex. It’s boxy and gray and not anything special, but I’m suddenly overwhelmed with curiosity for what I might find inside. He pops open his door and turns off the car.

“Hold on a sec.”

His door slams shut, and I watch him jog around the front of the hood. He pulls my door open and then his eyes dart down to the floorboard.

“How are your feet?”

I swallow and shrug. “They’re fine.”

He gives me that already familiar expression of doubt, and I laugh. “Why do you bother asking me questions if you’re not going to believe what I say?”

“Because maybe one time you’ll slip up and tell me the truth.”

“My feet
are
fine, and I’m
not
drunk.” I slide out of the car to prove my statement, but I know it’s a mistake the second my sore feet hit concrete. I try to hide my wince, but it’s not exactly something one controls with conscious thought, so instead my face ends up doing this weird twitch thing, and he gives me a knowing smile that makes me want to punch him. Or kiss him.

Maybe a little of both.

I keep my chin up and take a few steps past him, enough to push the door closed behind me. I turn, intending to head for his door with whatever dignity I can manage to scrape up. I take two hobbling steps before he’s at my side, sweeping me up into his arms.

Dignity is long gone when I squeak and try to hold onto him with one arm while desperately yanking on the hem of my dress with the other.

“No one’s around but me,” he murmurs. The side of my breast is smashed up against his chest, and the vibrations when he speaks move through me, distracting me from my panic. “And I promise not to look.”

I don’t even answer him. I haven’t the slightest clue what to say.

Me
. At a loss for words. I’ve spent centuries learning how to speak to men, how to capture their interest, how to maneuver in their world, and now I’m undone by this dichotomy of a man and his not quite smile.

“Hold on to me,” he says, and I wrap both my arms around his neck in answer. He drops the hand at my back to search for his keys, and I tighten my arms around him, drawing myself closer to his chest. I catch my breath at the sensation, glad for the thickness of his leather jacket that hides the way my breasts have become swollen and tight and gods … this is wrong. So very
wrong
. But I’m not sorry.

I hear the jingle of keys, but I don’t know how he manages to get the door open because his eyes never leave mine. Our faces are so close together that when he leans forward to push the door open, my lips accidentally brush his jaw. He sucks in a breath and closes his eyes. Stepping over the threshold, he shuts the door behind us, and I don’t think. I just act.

Before he can lower my feet down to the gray carpet below me, I tilt my chin up and touch my mouth to his. His arm returns to my back, his fingers curling around my side, but other than that, he doesn’t move. Doesn’t kiss me back.

I press a little harder, willing him to respond because if he doesn’t … if I read all of this wrong … that would be the icing on the terrible fucking cake that is this night.

I pull back, already squirming in an attempt to get him to put me down.

“I’m sorry. I—”

He drops my legs, but loops that arm around my waist too, keeping me up and against him, my toes still off the floor. I don’t look up at him and he says, “Kalli.”

His voice. It’s so smooth and warm, and I just want him to keep talking to me. I could forget everything about tonight, ignore it all to listen to his voice.

“You’re really sober?” he asks.

He must take my scowl as truth enough because as soon as I open my mouth to reply, his lips slam into mine, hot and hard.

He pulls my bottom lip into his mouth, sucking and nibbling and driving me crazy. I thread my fingers through his hair like I’ve wanted to do since the first time I saw him. One of his hands slides up my side, grazing the curve of my breast before trailing up to my neck. A thumb runs along my jaw, and he tilts my head back, taking control.

Passion
.

It comes from a Latin word that means
to suffer
. And that’s what the slick thrust of his tongue against mine is—a suffering so sweet that my head spins.

His mouth slants over mine, rough and possessive, and all I want is to be closer to him. Slipping a hand beneath the back of his shirt, I follow the slopes and valleys of his muscled back with my fingers. When he drops to my neck, grazing his teeth and then tongue over my pulse, I dig my fingers into his lower back. He groans, and the feel of his hot breath where my neck meets my shoulder pulls goose bumps across my skin. So, of course, I do it again, slipping my hand farther up and then dragging my nails down.

He says my name, and I say his back.

“Wilder.”

He traces two fingers over my swollen lips and groans. “This mouth has been driving me wild since the first time you smiled at me.”

I do just that, pulling my lips wide, and he kisses me, frenzied and so, so good. He takes a step forward, then another, moving toward a plain couch in the center of the living room. When we’re almost there, he finally lowers my feet to the floor, sliding his hands down to the curve of my ass. I stumble a bit and wince when a sensitive part of my foot drags across the carpet.

“Shit,” Wilder breathes, pulling away. “I forgot. I’m a jackass. Sorry.”

It takes me several long seconds to stop staring at his mouth. His lips are wet and swollen, and I know I have a matching pair. “It doesn’t hurt that bad. Really.”

He scoops me back up, and this time I don’t pay attention to my dress. I wrap my arms around Wilder and go to kiss him again. He shifts, placing a kiss on my cheek instead and says, “Feet first.”

“Look at you,” I say, dragging my mouth over his jaw. “Chivalry is alive and kicking apparently.”

He groans when I close my lips around his earlobe. “Alive, yes. But definitely in danger of being put aside for a
better offer
.”

He nudges open a door with his foot and says, “Light on the right.” I reach out and flip the switch. The bathroom is small and sparse, one of those where all the necessary items are crammed into as little space as possible. He has to turn sideways to get me through the door. There’s no bathtub, just a standup shower, so I’m not sure how he intends for me to wash my feet. The sink is tiny too, so there’s no perching up there.

Carefully, he sets me down in front of the shower. “It’s cramped, I know.”

I open the glass door, and then laugh. “Handheld showerhead, huh? Well, isn’t that … helpful.” 

His eyes fix on me, and I swear I can almost see what he’s picturing. Mostly because I’m picturing it, too. He takes two steps back, putting him out of reach and out of the bathroom. “You’re single-handedly trying to kill off what’s left of my control.”

I shed his jacket and hang it up on an open hook on the wall.

“Maybe control isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Stepping inside the shower, I leave the door open so I can see him slide down the wall to take a seat in the hallway. His broad body and long limbs look so good posed there. If I were in the business of making art, rather than prompting it, I wouldn’t hesitate to snap his picture, to capture that look he’s giving me. As I reach for the showerhead, he says, “So your name is Kalli. You’re twenty-one. You’re
not
intoxicated. You have an incredible knowledge of mythology even though you despise it. You have a sweet tooth, and a tendency to misplace your footwear. What else should I know about you, Cinderella?”

“Not drunk. Sweet tooth. Hates mythology. That’s about the gist of it.”

I turn on the water, and jump at the first spray of ice-cold water. I adjust the heat, directing the nozzle at the wall while I wait. I look back at him, and my stomach clenches. I want him. Badly. I can’t explain why it’s happening or why it’s him, but my body knows even if my mind doesn’t. But now that there’s distance between us, and warm water stings against my abused feet, my mind is firmly in the driver’s seat.

This guy isn’t my type. Or at least, he shouldn’t be. In my head, I keep seeing that guy from the grocery store. He looked all business. And typically that kind of man isn’t exactly open to artistic expression. That doesn’t mean I can’t influence him, but it does mean that his reaction to me would be unpredictable. The more ordered and analytical the mind, the more likely that my abilities will cause adverse effects.

So for all intents and purposes, I should be nowhere near this guy. I should clean up my feet, maybe borrow a pair of flip-flops or something, and get the hell out of here.

But I’m not thinking of him like one of my artists.

No, he’s something altogether different. Not to mention his appearance tonight has left me questioning all the assumptions I’d made in that grocery store. I was already wrong about him being Gwen’s father. What else am I wrong about?

I don’t like being wrong. Not about people. My ability to read them and analyze them is a skill I need in order to maintain the line … that damn line that I cannot cross again.

“You’re in school?” he asks.

I nod, leaning over to get a better angle on my feet. “You?”

“Yeah.”

“You graduating this semester?”

He rubs at the back of his neck, a nervous habit of his. I want to replace his hand with mine, soothing whatever thoughts have him troubled.

“No. I got started late. I’m in my second year now.”

Hmm. Maybe that explains the tattoos. Perhaps they came before all-business-Wilder.

“I figured you were already out. Don’t see many college guys wearing ties.”

“That’s just for work.”

“Where do you work?”

“An office that would bore you to tears. I work part-time for a friend of the family. Accountant.”

“Accountant? And is that what you’re planning to do after school?”

He shrugs and instead turns the question back on me. “What about you? What’s your major?”

I smile and switch to my other foot. “Undecided.”

He stands and steps into the bathroom. He pulls open a medicine cabinet and removes a box of band-aids, setting them on the sink. “Is that because you don’t know what you want to do?”

If only things were that simple. I’ve had lifetimes to chase whatever career or hobby I wanted. Those wants are superficial though. They’re ornaments meant to pretty up existence. What I want … it goes far deeper than that. And it’s completely untouchable.

“Sometimes the last thing that matters is what we
want
to do.”   

He crosses until he’s standing just outside the shower.

“I get that. I used to think I could do whatever I wanted as long as I wanted it bad enough.”

I stand up straight, holding the showerhead at my side.

“What changed?”

He shakes his head, tangling his fingers in his hair for a moment.

“Everything changed. All of it.”

I don’t like the way the lines of his face transform, turn defeated. Now I see Atlas in him. I don’t know what it is he’s holding up or how long he’s been at it, but I can see the fatigue. It’s a feeling I know like the back of my hand. I want his almost smile back.

I ask, “Do you ever just want to say fuck it all? Screw common sense and go after what you want anyway?”

If possible, his expression grows even darker. Defeat overlaid with guilt.

“Every single day.”

All I want to do is wash that away. I can inspire genius works of art, moving music, writing that pricks the soul of humanity. I can elevate a person to the kind of success of which they’ve never even dreamed. But at the moment, I feel like none of that means anything if I can’t make him smile.