by Avery Flynn
“You can put me down as the one off to the side taking the bets, armed with a bat just in case you hurt her.”
The remark slid home with the pinpoint accuracy of a shank between the ribs. Making that bet with D’Andre was twisting his gut tighter and tighter each time he thought about it. “I just might surprise you.” Maybe he’d even surprise himself.
She paused at the open door. “I don’t think so.” Then she walked out.
Nearly an hour later, he’d chatted with almost every Daring Ink employee who’d filtered in to have a snack and try to get the scoop about the boss. The lone hold out? The skinny guy who’d been trying his hardest to make time with Staci when Sawyer had walked in. That said something, but exactly what, he wasn’t quite sure. All he knew is that it set off that extra tingly sense that had helped him avoid tackles on the field in a football uniform and kept him alive on the streets in a police uniform.
The employee only door opened inward and Penny strode in, all sass and swinging hips that made his tongue stick to the top of his mouth.
“You ready to finish this up, princess?” she asked, her voice louder than normal.
They must have an audience on the other side of the door. They’d discuss his doubts about the skinny kid later when they were alone. His dick twitched behind his zipper, more than happy at the prospect of some one-on-one time.
“I was born ready,” he said.
“Good, no more breaks.” She sauntered over, smirking, then snagged his half-full can of warm Coke and downed it in one long swallow.
The move brought him eye-to-glorious-tits with her as the peach smell of her shampoo wrapped around him. He was never going to be able to have his favorite pie again without thinking of this moment. It took everything he had not to grab hold of her luscious hips and yank her down to his lap for a little more fake boyfriend/girlfriend time. He’d spent months undercover pretending to be just the kind of guy he loathed, doing whatever it took to convince the frat bro drug dealers that he was legit, and hating every minute of it. However, despite how things had started between them, what he felt with Penny wasn’t a ploy. He’d never wanted someone so much in his life.
“Come on.” She crushed the can and tossed it into the nearby recycling bin. “We have at least three solid hours of work to go.”
“I think you like jabbing me with that needle,” he teased.
She winked at him. “You have no idea.”
Then she pivoted and strutted out of the door, leaving him no choice but to follow—something he found he didn’t mind. After all, the view was magnificent.
Chapter Five
Miami’s humid heat slapped Penny in the face as soon as she slid open the glass door to her condo’s balcony. The heat felt good on her sore forearms and achy hands, loosening the muscles like a massage from nature. She needed it. Sawyer’s tattoo had ended up taking a little more than five hours total with the grey and black shading and detailing. Not bad for a custom tattoo, but still enough to make her want to sink into the cushion on her balcony lounge chair and pretend it had been another day at the studio, as opposed to a secret investigation.
She hated liars and secrets. Yet, that’s exactly what she’d been doing and keeping today. She’d done it for a much better reason than her mom had, but that didn’t make the lead weight in her stomach shrink.
“You shouldn’t leave your front door unlocked,” Sawyer said from her living room.
Startled, Penny jolted up and let out a pinched squeal before the owner of the voice registered in her brain. “You shouldn’t walk in without knocking.” She sank back into the cushion, taking in long, slow breaths with her eyes closed to get her heart rate back under control.
Sawyer joined her out on the balcony. He didn’t say anything to let her know he was there. He didn’t need to. An excited awareness prickled her skin despite the thick, sultry early evening heat, just as it did every time he came near. One sniff of the sandalwood cologne mixed with his signature personal scent and her nipples tightened into stiff peaks. Even as she fought to remember that he had a revolving door on his bedroom, the dampness grew between her legs. The man wasn’t just dangerous. He was fucking lethal to her better judgment.
“I need your help and I figured we could debrief at the same time,” Sawyer said.
She opened her eyes and was treated to the awe-inspiring sight of his delectable ass shown off to perfection in a pair of khaki shorts, and lost her ability to make sensical thoughts. “What do you need my help with?”
He reached around behind his head and tugged his T-shirt off and sitting down at the foot of her lounge chair. “It’s time for the bandage to come off and there’s no way I can put the ointment on myself. I’m good, but I’m not that flexible.”
She froze. For a moment all she could do was stare at the bandage crisscrossing his broad shoulders and going halfway down his muscular back. She’d patched him up like that after spending five hours tattooing his bare skin, but that was different than this. That was work, the creative process. He hadn’t been Sawyer, so much as he’d been her canvas for the day. Touching him like this? This would be something else entirely.
“Can’t you call one of your girls?” she asked.
“What’s wrong?” He looked over his shoulder at her and winked. “Scared you might melt at my feet if you touched me without your latex gloves?”
Yes. Her pulse went into overdrive and she had to really concentrate to keep her base instincts from overriding her brain and jumping at any excuse to touch him. “Your ego is out of control.”
He twisted so he half-faced her and held out the tube of Neosporin. “Please.”
She hesitated, butterflies doing Kamikaze dive-bomb missions in her stomach, before taking the ointment. “Fine, but I want to hear what you found out while I do this.”
Sawyer turned back around, presenting her with his back. “You got it. So the first person to come in was Staci—”
“Hold on,” she interrupted. “I’ve got to get some stuff.”
After a quick trip to the kitchen to gather anti-bacterial soap, a bowl of filtered lukewarm water and a paper towel, she laid everything on the side table, swung one leg over the lounge chair and sat down behind him.
“This part’s gonna hurt.” She scooted forward on the lounge chair, stopping when she was about six inches away, and then reached up for one corner of the bandage. He’d slept through the tattoo, but she’d never met anyone who didn’t at least flinch at this. Using her fingernail, she picked at the top right edge.
“Ready?” she asked.
His muscles tensed. “Always.”
Taking pity on him, she stripped away the bandage as quick as possible and gave him a second to recover before washing his healing tattoo with her wet hands. By the time she’d patted it dry with the paper towel, the puffy redness where the bandage had adhered had turned to a soft pink.
“So Staci cornered you first.” She picked up the ointment and opened the top, her lips twitching at the mental picture of her best friend putting the screws to Sawyer. “I’m not surprised.”
“She didn’t buy the boyfriend routine.”
Total non-shocker there. “Trust me, I know.” She giggled. “She was none to happy when I told her I’d explain everything later.” Between the two of them, it was hard to know who hated secrets more, but some things couldn’t be helped. Staci’s lack of belief in secrets meant she couldn’t keep one either, and this was one case where it couldn’t be avoided.
Squeezing the tube, she got enough ointment on the tip of her finger to apply to his tattoo. The talking made it easier, but she was still going to have to touch him—and not jump his bones. Setting her shoulders, she mentally put on her big girl panties—the ones with the deadbolt-locked chastity belt—and smoothed a dollop of ointment across one of the scales. The warmth of his skin seeped into the ointment, making it easy to spread with a light touch.
“Your apprentices, Dozer, Savannah and Kip, and the oth
er tattoo artists all stopped in,” Sawyer continued, his voice a little more strained than before. “Everyone found a way to get around to the whole boyfriend thing.”
She softened her touch as she spread ointment down Lady Justice on his spine. “Which one do you think it is?” she asked, as she watched his back muscles tighten and twitch under her fingers. It was like viewing one of those visual light shows or the fountain show at the Bellagio in Las Vegas—so utterly fascinating that she didn’t want to look away. If he decided to give up the badge and become a stripper, he’d make a killing at bachelorette parties.
“I don’t think it’s any of them,” he said.
It took a second for his words to filter through the six mile-thick fog of lust blockading her brain. Then, like a nuclear-powered fog light, his words cut through everything and snapped her right back to reality.
“What?” She stood up, grabbed the paper towel and wiped off the remaining ointment from her finger. “It has to be one of them.”
“Not based on the way they talked about you and Daring Ink.” Sawyer’s gaze followed her as she paced the balcony, a look she didn’t recognize softening the lines around his eyes. “You may not be aware of it, but you have quite the protective fan club—for the most part.”
“Who?” Dozer complained the most about the hours, but otherwise was a really good-natured guy who’d never met a shade of black he didn’t want to wear.
“The skinny kid. He was hitting on Staci when I came into the studio.”
Her steps faltered. “Chase? He’s our mascot. He just likes to hang around.”
And get in the way, but no one seemed to mind much. He was kind of like a lost puppy they’d started feeding and now he spent several days a week at the studio.
Sawyer stood, blocking her pacing path. “He’s the only one who didn’t come in and threaten to cut my balls off if I hurt you.”
Unable to move forward, she halted inches from him. “They didn’t say that.” Gaze ensnared by the happy trail zipping down from his belly button to disappear behind his waistband, she fisted her hands to stop herself from reaching out to trace it.
“They did—a lot.” He twisted one of her errant hairs around his finger and pushed it back, the pad of his thumb grazing the shell of her ear. “They’re not the most creative bunch when it comes to threats, but they made up for it with sincerity.”
Her breath hitched. She pulled up the memory of the women’s satisfied moans coming through her bedroom wall and the rhythmic thuds of his headboard hitting the drywall. But instead of pissing her off, the recollection made her curious. Just what did he do to them to make them scream and would she like it? Her body gave a thigh-quivering yes. Still, she hesitated, buying time with a defense of Daring Ink’s adopted mascot.
“It doesn’t make sense,” she said, her voice breathy. “Chase tried out for an apprenticeship once, but the skill level just isn’t there yet. I told him to keep practicing. Now, he stops by a lot and watches everyone work so he can get better. He’s a good kid, just a little lost.”
Sawyer closed the small distance between them, a dangerous hunger rolling off of him so intense and hot that her panties combusted. As if he could smell the singed cotton in the air, his nostrils flared slightly and he inhaled.
“Sounds like motive, opportunity and means to me,” he said as he dropped a hand to her hip and toyed with the belt loop on her jeans. “He wants to prove himself, he’s there all the time so he has access, and he is at least a peripheral part of the Miami tattooing scene. You left your portfolio in your office at the studio like we’d planned?”
She nodded, the tingling sensation working its way south from her hip to the juncture of her thighs overwhelming her ability to do more than lick her lips in anticipation.
“So we watch the GPS tracker I embedded in it and see what happens.” His thumb brushed against the sliver of exposed skin above her waistband. “How late is the studio open tonight?”
Answer. She had to answer with words. Who knew that could be so hard? “Until midnight,” she said, her voice soft and breathy. “Saturdays are our busiest nights.”
He dipped his head lower. “Looks like all we have to do now is wait.”
His mouth was so close to hers she could practically feel it against hers already, but he didn’t make the final move to brush his lips across hers. The message was clear, she had to be the one to decide.
Taking in a shaky breath, she tried to reason through the insanity of an attraction so strong it nearly knocked her off her feet. She could push him away or draw him closer. Trust wasn’t just a hurdle for her, it was a hundred-foot-high wall, and yet somehow Sawyer had managed to scale it. Maybe it was just his open, take-me-as-I-am, no-apologies nature or maybe it was that he’d placed his trust in her first, whatever the reason, she found that against all odds, she did trust him…almost as much as she wanted him.
Winding her arms around his neck, she pressed up on her tiptoes until her lips met his.
*****
Sawyer deepened the kiss, stroking his tongue along the seam of her lips and plunging inside her sweet mouth. The press of her tits against his bare chest made him forget about any lingering sting from his fresh tattoo and only about the woman in his arms. Penny wasn’t like the other women he brought home. She was more than the subject of a bet where half a month’s salary was on the line. She was…Penny with her snarky humor and her quick brain and her dangerous curves.
For weeks he’d been getting lost between the legs of women he knew next to nothing about and getting nothing more than an orgasm out of it. Now he wanted—needed—more, and only from Penny.
Tightening his grip on her hips, he pulled her closer so there was no way she could miss his hard cock straining against his shorts, then he tore his mouth away from hers. “You feel what you do to me?”
“Yes.” She grabbed his wrist and slid it between them until she could press his palm to the juncture of her thighs. “The same thing you do to me.”
It was hot and no doubt wet and swollen underneath her jeans. Was she commando or cotton under there? Lace or silk? He wanted to see her in and out of all of it—but later. Right now he wanted her naked with her thighs splayed wide so he could taste his fill as she came all over his tongue.
“Unless you want all of our neighbors to see you naked and coming hard,” he managed to get out before he lost control and threw her over his shoulder caveman style, “we need to take this inside. Now.”
She undulated against his palm, her lust-darkened gaze never straying from his face. “Anxious to get between these thighs?”
“You have no idea.”
She flicked her tongue against his nipple, sending a fresh surge of lust roaring through him. “Tell me.”
“I’m perpetually hard around you.” He slipped his fingers under the hem of her T-shirt. “I stay up at night wondering what you taste like, what you sound like when you come, and what it will feel like when you clench that tight pussy of yours around my cock as I pound into you.” Sliding upward across her smooth skin, he cupped her full, firm tits and glided his thumbs across her hard nipples pushing against the confines of her bra. “I want to fuck the memory of every other guy you’ve ever been with out of your head. I want to leave you sweaty and satisfied but still wanting more. I want to make you forget about everything else happening in your world because all you can do is ride the orgasms washing over you.” He leaned down, nipped at the sensitive spot where her neck met her shoulder and then gave it a sucking kiss. “I want all of you.”
“Orgasms?” The tip of her pink tongue darted out and wet her full bottom lip before she grazed her teeth across it. “Plural?”
“Absolutely.” Hating to do it, but knowing he had to, he smoothed his fingers back down over her smooth stomach and out from underneath her shirt. Like the kiss, she had to make the call. He could only present his best case.
“You’re so cocky,” she said.
“No.” He curled a han
d around the back of her neck, high enough that his fingers tangled in the soft red strands of her hair, and then leaned down and brushed his lips across hers in the briefest of kisses. The disappointed mewl Penny made when he pulled away told him everything he needed to know. “I’m confident.”
Sawyer stepped back, immediately missing the taste of her cherry Chapstick on his lips, the feel of her warm curves pressed against him and the temptation of fisting her hair and pulling it tight as he slid balls deep inside her.
Lust darkening her eyes, she considered him for a moment before hooking a finger into the waistband of his shorts and tugging him toward the door leading inside. “Then show me what you’ve got, big boy.”
Chapter Six
Penny led him through her apartment to her bedroom, the one room no one else ever got to see. In her three years living in the condo, she’d never brought another man to her own bed, preferring to bang and leave from their homes, which made for less mess or stress in her own life. But with Sawyer, things were different. He strutted around surrounded by an invisible cloud of sex pheromones and the intangible promise of possibility.
She didn’t stop until the back of her legs hit the bed, then she released her hold on him. “Take it off.”
“Miss Bossy all of the sudden, huh?” A sexy grin curled up one side of his mouth as he strummed the metal button of his shorts, toying with it.
The move drew her attention to right where he no doubt wanted. The outline of his cock was plain to see as it pressed against his shorts. Thick. Long. Hard. Heat pooled in her core, making her slick and needy for him. The bastard, he knew exactly what he was doing. Then again—she unsnapped her jeans and shimmied out of them—so did she.
“I know what I want.” She slipped her arms inside her T-shirt, undid her bra and let the satin material slide down her body before extending her arms through the shirt again. Her nipples puckered against the thin cotton material that stopped well short of the hot pink satin thong sitting low on her hips.