“Looks good.”
“Told you it would,” she sassed back. Goose bumps rippled across her skin when I applied the cool sanitizer to her rib cage. Then I placed the stencil I’d drawn into place, the crack in the heart matching the jagged edges of the scar slashed permanently into her flesh.
I had a mind to trace my tongue along the rough edges, listening to her shudder and come around me as I milked all the pleasure from her body.
I slipped my fingers along the edges of the transfer paper, making sure the ink outline deposited onto her skin. She shuddered when my fingertip drifted across her wrist.
Fuck, she was so sensitive.
I had visions of her spread out beneath me, my hands in her hair, my tongue licking up her silky skin. The thought of burying my head between her legs had blood rushing through my cock.
What the hell was that scent? And sweet fucking lord, did she taste that good too?
No. Better.
Probably better.
I shifted in my chair, and her eyes averted to me before the shadow of her eyelashes fell onto her cheeks. The air vacated my lungs, blood raging through my veins and making my heart pound a tattoo against my ribs. My cock throbbed, aching to push inside her, fuck her until she was breathless and begging.
Christ, what the hell was wrong with me?
Jericho had given me hell about living like a damn monk, but I’d never reacted to a woman this way. But this wasn’t just any woman; this was Sienna fucking Taylor, too young, too innocent, too good. Way too good.
“It’s bigger than I thought it would be.” She spoke up, and I nearly choked.
“Excuse me?”
Her eyes flickered up to me, a smirk turning up those succulent lips. “The tattoo, it’s big.”
“Ah, right.” I cleared my throat, peeling off the transfer paper and focusing on her eyes for the first time since she’d sat down. “I don’t think I could make it much smaller. You'd start to lose detail on the skeleton.”
“Oh, I like it. I just didn’t envision it that big, but I’m ready. I want it.” Her big, round eyes peered up at me, sweet, untouched. Heartbreakingly fucking beautiful.
I turned, opening the black ink and placing it at the table beside me. “Think you can handle the pain? This is gonna take me a while.”
Her eyes sparkled. “Bet I can handle more than you think.”
Jesus.
Who was this girl?
TWO
Sienna
River Madden, tattoo artist and the most gorgeous man I’d ever laid eyes on, was tattooing my body. His fingertips rasped across my skin like sandpaper, making my nipples pebble and bead under my thin T-shirt. I crossed my legs, hyperaware of every touch, every breath, every glance of his eyes up and down my body.
I liked the way his eyes on me made me feel. My panties were soaked, my thighs damp with this foreign need racing through my bloodstream. I shifted my hips again, resenting the way the soft leather stuck to the backs of my thighs. Praying he couldn’t smell how much I wanted him.
He’d turned in the chair at my side earlier, the outline of his thick cock tenting the loose jeans he wore.
My mouth had watered shamefully, all sense lost from my head and replaced by the fantasy of sliding onto my knees between his thighs and taking him in my hand.
Tracing the ridge of his naked cock with my fingertips and listening to him groan and grunt with desire and lust. Maybe he’d push his hands into my hair and force me to swallow him, suck down his length and empty his come down my throat.
My fingers twitched and ached with the urge to slide my hand between my thighs, slide the pads of my fingers over my clit and come, thinking of pleasuring him.
I was handling the pain of this tattoo just fine. It was the maintaining some sense of normalcy under his hard gaze that was my problem.
I’d made an appointment with River and had been willing to wait for it because I’d seen his work online, not because I’d laid eyes on the man himself. If I had, I may have run the other way. Men like River didn’t see me. I was the scrawny, little-sister type, not the girl who made hot-blooded men everywhere fall to their knees.
I’d never been that girl, and I didn’t want to be. I had a brain in my head, I cussed like a sailor, and who gave a shit if River liked it or not? I was here for his artistic skills—the fact that he made my thighs damp with a single glance was totally beside the point.
“So, I’m thinking a high school boyfriend broke your heart?” He interrupted the silence. If only it were that simple, I sighed inwardly.
“Sure you wanna go assuming again?” I cocked an eyebrow.
He chuckled. “Probably not.” His eyes held mine, fingers pausing as his gaze penetrated my soul. “Got a mouth on you, Sienna Taylor.” His eyes danced when he teased. I loved that.