The news droned on in the background as I played a game of hearthstone against Smith while I waited. He was beating me currently, but I had a few tricks up my sleeve once I could gain enough mana crystals to execute my plans correctly. 

        I was preoccupied though. Once Amanda left for the comic book store, the three of us had discussed the Witcher event in Scotland next month. It was mostly for journalists, but we had still been invited and the three of us were beyond excited to get exclusives on the game. The minute I had heard, I knew I wanted to take Amanda, though I wasn't sure how to guys would react. Honestly, I wasn't sure how she would react. I might have been stepping too far over my boundaries if I asked her to go to another country with me; it was one thing to sleep over at my flat, and another to stay in a hotel room and spend almost every moment with each other for three or four days. 

        'Smith,' I typed, waiting for him to finish his turn, 'Do you think it would be okay if I invited someone else to the Witcher event?'

        'You really want two cameramen?' he typed, and I could almost hear the laughter in his statement, 'calm down, you're not that attractive.'

        I couldn't help but smile, even though my stomach was churning with nerves, afraid of what he might think. 'That's not what I meant,' I replied.

        'You want to take Amanda?' he guessed.

        It must have seemed really obvious, and considering the way I've been acting for the past few months, I could see why he would assume that. 'Yeah...' I answered, my heart catching in my throat as I waited for his reaction.

        There was a pause where I nearly exploded or threw up, but surprisingly Smith only typed, 'You'd probably have to list her as a producer or cameraman, like we were planning to do with Tom.'

        'But would you mind?' I asked, 'Would Trott or Tom?'

        'Personally,' Smith answered, 'I don't mind. She's sweet and quiet, I don't think she would cause any trouble.'

        'Really?' I asked, not expecting that kind of reaction from my coworker. Normally he wasn't keen on inviting people to go with us anywhere that wern't as crazy and wild as he was, which is why Sjin and Strippen often accompanied us to pubs, and Amanda wasn't exactly a party animal.

        'Do you want me to say no?' he asked, adding a 'haha' to the end of his message to make sure I knew he was only joking.

        'I guess I just don't know if she will like it or be miserable the whole time,' I said, voicing my fears honestly. I knew that none of us wanted to play babysitter during an event such as this.

        'You know her better than I do,' he replied, 'but she doesn't come off as a miserable person.'

        He was right in that sense; she was quiet, but that doesn't mean she was a gloomy person. I finished my turn and Smith asked 'Have you talked to her about it?', as he started attacking my creatures.

        'I'll probably ask her tonight,' I typed, looking at the time in the corner of my tablet. Amanda should be here any time now, and I only hoped she was okay as the snow fell heavily outside my window. There was a storm warning for tonight and tomorrow, and it was getting worse by the minute.

        'Oooo,' Smith cooed, 'she staying the night?' He added a wink emoticon after it, and I knew what he was suggesting.

        'It's not like that,' I added quickly, though it had crossed my mind more than once since I got home. I wasn't at all prepared, and a trip to the shop wasn't an option at this time of night and in this weather.

        'Naked pillow fights?' Smith mocked, continuing to throw he creatures at me mercilessly. 

        'Piss off,' I typed. 'Now would you just hurry up and kill me?" I asked, seeing no way to recover enough this turn to prevent Smith from finishing me on his go.

        My character appeared on my screen with the work 'Defeat!' under it, and I gave a sigh of frustration. Smith always seemed to beat me at this game.

        'GG mate,' he typed, saying his goodbyes. He gave me one more assurance about the Witcher event and then his icon when offline.

        Just in time too, because as I turned off my iPad, I heard the door open and saw a flurry of snow as Amanda stepped inside. Snow clung to her hair and shook off her coat with every move. "Is it snowing out?" I japed, earning myself a glare.

        "I thought Bristol wasn't supposed to get snow," she complained, hanging up her coat and kicking off her boots. She bent over and let her hair fall in front of her so she could shake the quickly melting droplets out of her curls.

        "We get the occasional blizzard," I noted as she made her way over to the sofa. It was actually very abnormal to get this type of weather, but I remember it had happened a few years ago, and the city was completely incapacitated for a day or two.

        She only had a pair of jeans and thin jumper, and she was shivering while rubbing her arms. "Do you have a sweatshirt I can borrow?" she asked, hunching her shoulders up against the cold. I nodded towards the grey Cornerstone jumper that was haphazardly throw across a chair, and she eagerly threw it over her.

        "How was your tournament?" I asked as she came and curled up next to me on the couch. I threw my arm around her shivering frame, and linked my hands together to pull her into an extended hug.

        She pecked my jaw and said, "I placed third, but I won a 15 dollar card!"

        "That's good," I said, not really understand what that meant for her. I looked around as I held her, not knowing how to fill the silence. "So what do you want to do tonight?" I started.

        "Mmh," she mused, shifting to face me and bringing a leg over mine so that she was straddling me on her knees. "I have an idea," she hummed, her voice low and her eyes dark with lust.

        I smiled into her lips as she kissed me, enjoying the feel of her small waist under my large hands. Her fingers found their way into my hair and the sensation sent shivers down my spine. This only made me want to take her to Scotland more, and as much as I wanted to continue kissing her, I was too anxious to ask her about the trip.

        I pulled away, much to her confusion, but still kept a grip on her waist. "So Hat Films was invited to the Witcher 3 event last week," I started, trying to get some type of reading from her expression. Her eyes remained passive, and I couldn't discern any type of reaction from them.

        "So you guys will be leaving?" she asked, her voice giving off a hint of worry and her grip around my neck and shoulder twitching tighter, "When?"

        "Well," I continued, trying to work up the nerve to ask the question, "It's in January."

        "For how long?" she pressed quickly, desperation creeping faintly into her question and posture.

        "I...it's only for a few days..." I stammered.

        "Oh, okay," she said, relaxing in my grasp, "That's amazing. I'm sure you guys will have a great time!" She tilted her head and leaned down to kiss me again, seemingly done with the conversation.

        It was getting harder to break apart when she seemed to eager to make out, but I was also getting increasingly anxious to invite her on the holiday. "Actually," I said when she broke away to take a breath, making her lean back to look in my eyes again. "I was thinking..." I muttered, loosing all courage with her brown eyes boring into mine, "You could come with us."

        Her eyes seemed to widen in surprise, and in the dim light they shined with fear as she considered my question. She got off of me and sat back down on the sofa next to me, no longer making any contact with me. "I wouldn't want to get in the way," she said quietly, her head bowed to look at the hands in her lap. 

        "You wouldn't!" I assured her, grabbing her shoulder and trying to turn her so I could look into her eyes. As much as I felt intimidated by them, I always felt like I could get a better idea of her emotions if I looked into those deep, hazel orbs.

        She only turned her head away from me, blocking me with a curtain of hair. "I don't know," she muttered, "I don't think Chris Trott and Alex Smith want me around. I'd only bog you guys down..."

        I got off the sofa to crouch down in front of her, gently turning her head so that she would look at me. "That's not true," I stated, "Smith said he was okay with it and I'm sure Trott will feel that same."

        "I don't think they like me," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. Her eyes were swirling and shifting with sadness at the idea.

        "I really doubt that," I scoffed, remembering how much they had expressed their admiration for her when they had first met her formally. She didn't seem to believe me, and I quickly leaned up to kiss her. "Please come with me," I asked one more time, my eyebrows furrowing as I looked up at her.

        She absently grabbed at the hand that held her jaw, and I took it as a good sign as she intertwined her fingers through mine in her lap. Turning to sit back on the couch, she shifted closer so that our legs and shoulders touched. "If you really want me to," she said, her face turning up towards mine, "Then I'll come."

        I smiled at her, feeling genuinely happy that she agreed to it with a lot lessopposition than I had expected. "I'd love to take you," I said letting go of her hand to wrap it around her hip, "We already have tickets, and since they're first class we can always exchange them for more coach seats." She started to protest, but I silenced it with another small peck, "And we can get our own hotel room away from the rest of the guys."

        I saw her shoulders rise and fall as she took a deep breath, and a blush crept it's way up her neck and across her cheeks. She tried to hide it by turning and staring strait ahead with the same analytically look she always wore, but I could see the corners of her mouth trying to twitch their way into a smile. It was a good sign, and reassured me that she wouldn't be too nervous about sharing a room together. Arousal stirred in the pit of my stomach as I thought about it, and suddenly January couldn't come soon enough.

        "Do you want to play some GTA?" she asked, nodding to the CD case that sat on the coffee table in front of my personal Xbox.

        "Sure, you can go first," I offered cuing up the machine.

---------------------------------------------

        We passed the controller back and forth for a while every time someone died, but that soon was abandoned to 'watch' a movie. Both our jumpers were also soon abandoned as I laid on top of her, our legs staggered and my hands holding her waist. I was breathing pretty heavily by this time, and I played with the waistline of her jeans as I rested my forehead against hers.

        She bit at her bottom lip as she looked up at me in the darkness, half of her face lit by the flickering tele screen. Her breath was hot and sweet on my lips, and my senses were overloaded with everything I was feeling, smelling, seeing. I hadn't really seen her so flirty before, and even though there was still a quiet, reserved underlay, I was still shocked with the way she was acting. It wasn't a bad thing, just a bit unexpected.

        She followed my lead; her hands ran down my back and tugged playfully at the end of my shirt, running her fingers across the skin of my back and down the side of my pelvis. I smiled and kissed her quickly before pulling myself up so I could take my tee shirt off.

        I could hear her breath hitch in her throat, and her eyes silently scanned my body as she reached up and ran her fingers down my stomach lightly, causing bumps to rise on my skin. I wasn't even close to fat, but that didn't mean I was still slightly self conscious about taking my shirt off infront of her. I fell back onto me heals and tugged her up into a sitting position, kissing her again as her hands came to rest on my chest.

        I waited for her to stop me as I played with the hem of her jumper, not wanting to push her too far if she didn't want to. There were no physical or verbal cues to signal her discomfort, so I went ahead and tugged at her shirt, only breaking the kiss when the fabric passed over her head. I ran my hands up her body, making her shiver and squirm as my fingers brushed over the sensitive skin on her sides, and was about to kiss her again when I noticed something quite alarming.

        I nearly fell off the couch when I noticed what was decorating her chest and stomach. "Y...you have t...tattoos..." I stammered, the English language suddenly escaping me. Black ink spelled out a quote across her ribs and stomach, and more tattoos ran up both of her sides and on her shoulders and chest. They were all able to be covered by a tee shirt, or a hospital gown, and explained why I had never noticed them. 

        Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before, it read, and I had only to see the raven that extended across her hip and oblique to guess who had written that quote. I could see a gnarled and twisted tree that decorated one of her sides, and a skull with tentacles spouting from it's base that could only be Cthulhu ran down her other. 

        I was so distracted by looking at all her tattoos that I didn't even notice her concerned look until she called my name. "Ross Hornby? Are you okay?" she asked, her eyes full of worry as I stared down at her.

        "Y... yeah," I stuttered, "yeah, I... I just didn't know you had tattoos..." I tried to cover up my discomfort, but she had already picked up on it.

        She watched me, and I tried to hold her gaze but my eyes kept flickering down to the ink that was permanently in her skin. I barely even noticed the lace that covered her breasts, something that would have made me both nervous and aroused before, but I was too disconcerted to focus on anything but the tattoos. "You don't like them..." she said accusingly after a while.

        I didn't know what I thought of them. "No," I defended, "I was just...surprised is all..."

        She sighed and pulled herself out from under me, bending over to grab her shirt off the floor. I felt panic rising in me, but I couldn't say anything as I noticed even more tattoos on her back. Her spine was what caught my attention, which had a pattern like ink being dropped into water. A bear stood on it's back legs on her shoulder blade, a patter of music notes swirled up from under her jeans. I could have spent hours looking at all the pictures that decorated her torso.

        "Don't," I said, grabbing her wrist suddenly. I flinched instinctively when she pined me with a look of accusation, but I didn't back down. "I'm sorry," I pleaded, "I've just never dated a girl with tattoos..."

        Her face softened, but her voice remained hard. "Obviously," she spat, "You look at me as if I'm some freak show."

        "No," I try again, letting my shoulders drop in defeat, "I was just..." I sighed, knowing that I was only going to dig myself into a deeper hole by talking. I grabbed her bare shoulders and kissed her passionately, trying to convey how much I loved her and her body. I probably should have expected it anyway; she was an artist after all.

        We kissed for a while, and I felt her fear and anger melt away as her posture relaxed. She had forgiven me for my reaction, and as we settled back into the sofa, I asked nervously, "Can I see the ones on your back?"

        She wordlessly turned around and pulled her hair to one side to give me a full view of her back. For the rest of the night, I would spend it exploring the artwork that dotted her body, kissing and running my hands across the skin, as if I were an art appraiser observing a masterpiece.

A/N Sorry it's taking so long to post these chapters, midterms and finals are killing me. I hoped you liked this chapter! Sorry it was so long and not as fluffy as I normally make them. Thank you, Happy reading!