Punctured, Bruised, and Barely Tattooed(36)

She was glad he wasn’t paying attention, because if he had given her one of those hot and sexy looks, she might have been tempted to skip class…and that wouldn’t have been good. She glanced at her makeup table. As much as she would have liked to put some on, she knew she just didn’t have time, so she crammed her books and a spiral notebook in her backpack and said, “Ready.”

On the drive to the community college, Stone had asked what she was going to school for. “Business, I think.” He started laughing. “What’s so funny about that?”

He looked over at her. “Oh, you’re serious?”

“Yeah.”

Stone looked back at the road. “What are you gonna do with a degree in business?”

She felt her jaw grow firm, her fight response to his challenge…because he had challenged her, whether he knew it or not. “Make money.”

He shrugged and glanced over at her again, and she thought she saw a touch of sadness in his eyes. “You don’t have to work in corporate America to make money.”

Oh, God…Kory really wanted to ask him the question, but the time wasn’t right…and she had a feeling that Stone’s money was connected to his big fucking secret.

And he’d asked her to be patient. He’d tell her in time.

So she rolled her eyes and looked out the side window. “Maybe not, but it was the fastest, easiest way I could think of.” She took a sip of her coffee. Damn, that was good. She hated how Stone was right a lot, and there was no way she was going to point that out to him now. She certainly wasn’t going to mention that people in business were not her people. The ones at the top—the douchebag CEOs who made a million a minute by crushing the backs of minimum wage workers in the U.S. and dime-a-day workers in sweatshops outside the country—were definitely not her people, would never be her people. But it didn’t change the fact that she knew business was a great way to earn money.

She did not want to be her mother.

She would not rely on a man to take care of her, especially if it meant a child would be harmed.

But that was beside the point. Kory didn’t want to live her life as a poor person. She didn’t want to have to worry about her next meal or having to take cold showers for three months because the hot water heater went out and she couldn’t afford to replace it.

She didn’t want to have her old life, not now, not since she finally had control of her own destiny.

And she was surprised, because Stone didn’t say another word. Instead, he drove her to the school, dropping her off by the building where her class was, and he got out, giving her an innocent kiss before letting her go.

That kiss might have been innocent…but Kory’s thoughts in class were not. Not by a long shot.





Chapter Fifteen



OH, THE GUN. The fucking tattoo gun. It was coming at her in the darkness and the buzz was loud, consuming. She couldn’t escape, no matter how hard she tried.

She tried to scream, but no sounds left her mouth.

There was no escape…no escape…none.

It was just a nightmare.

Kory bolted up in bed, surrounded by the darkness in her bedroom. She was covered in a thin sheen of sweat from head to toe.

At first, she just felt a sense of fear and dread. But then she began to remember the dream. Jesus, Art had fucked with her head so badly. Would she ever feel normal? Would she ever be able to escape?

What she’d done with Stone yesterday morning seemed like progress. She would have thought as much before, but the fact that she was having nightmares again and thinking of little else made her begin to believe otherwise.

She got up and turned on the light, deciding to catch up on reading for classes. She’d only been asleep for a couple of hours, having worked a late shift at On The Go. She was tired, but she knew there was no way she’d be able to sleep now.

She got back in bed with a textbook and leaned her head back against the headboard. The best way she’d discovered to get that bastard Art out of her head was to think about Stone. Before reading, she closed her eyes and imagined him in her head—the tattoos all over his hard body, the way he towered over her, looking down in her eyes with a smart ass smirk on his face, his beautiful dark hair that was almost as long as hers, the way he let the hair on his face grow out just enough that it made him look rugged but without looking overly hairy, and those eyes…she could get lost in his dark eyes.

Thinking about him made her tempted to grab her phone and type his name into a search engine so she could try to discover his secret…but she’d promised. She cared enough about him to respect his request, but she wasn’t going to wait forever.