by Anne Marsh
Harper snickers. “The man could play games for hours. He always made it to the bonus level and he’s my all-time highest scorer.”
“That’s because you hadn’t met me yet,” I tell her.
Might be a good idea to keep my mouth shut. I consider the possibility for a handful of seconds before discarding it. Why hold back?
“Are you aware that you have no filter?” Harper’s hands flex on the bench, opening and closing as she takes what I give her. She starts to say something else, but then winces, sucks in a breath and freezes. This is the point where some people quit, abandoning my chair, and others bitch and curse. You have to ride out the pain, find its rhythm, lose yourself in each wave. There’s a magic moment when you pop to the top, finding the crest, and you’re fucking flying in a whole other place.
I lay another, deeper line of ink into her skin. “Why putt down the highway of life when you can ride balls-out?”
“Do you like riding, Vik?” Harper’s voice is husky and amused, a thread of discomfort just beneath the surface. She has the strangest, sexiest effect on me. I shouldn’t want to lean down and kiss each raw line I’ve etched into her back. Lick the straight, strong line of her spine until she melts for me. She’s a client, and whatever fucked-up shit goes on in my head, it stays there.
“Yeah,” I say roughly. “I ride. I’m a member of the Hard Riders MC.”
“MC?” She turns her head so she can watch my face.
“Motorcycle club.”
“Isn’t that illegal?”
“Depends on who you’re asking, babe. Also on what kind of business we’ve got. Most days we’re practically Boy Scouts. Even do a toy drive at Christmastime.”
“And the other days?”
“We take care of business.”
I give in to temptation and run my thumb down the straight line of her spine. Woman’s got more knots in her back than that macramé shit my brother Cord learned in prison. Supposed to be therapeutic and relaxing as fuck as Cord can attest. He tied up a few strippers and taught them the finer points of bondage when he got out.
“You need to move on.” Blondie’s words come out soft and slurred. I don’t disagree with her, and if Harper wants to forget the douche, I’m the man to help her.
Harper winces as my needle finds a particularly sensitive spot. “How many minutes until we’re done?”
“Sweetheart,” I say, brushing my mouth over her ear, “we’re barely started.”
I know firsthand what the needle feels like when it bites through skin, how the pain doesn’t ever quite ease up. Shit hurts. Life hurts. But this pain is a choice and it leads to a thing of fucking beauty at the end if I do it right. My firebird slowly takes flight on Harper’s back, first the wings, and then the head. I lose myself in between the lines, drawing and coloring, pulling something from her and putting it on the outside for everyone to see.
Harper’s quiet for long enough that I lean over to make sure she hasn’t passed out on me. Not that she’s a constant talker, but some sign of life would be good. Her eyes are closed, her lips parted when I need her to be here with me.
“Hey. You okay?” I drag the back of my knuckles over her cheek, cursing the latex between my skin and hers.
Her lashes lift slowly. She’s got the prettiest, softest eyes. “It hurts.”
“Good hurt or bad hurt?”
Her forehead gets this cute little pucker like my question doesn’t compute. “Good hurt?”
“Yeah. The kind where the burn eats you up and you get lost in all that feeling and you just have to let go and ride it out. You feel me?”
The crease in her forehead deepens, so I’ll have to show her. I lay down a new line of ink. She’s a squirmer. She wriggles against my bench, working her pussy into the leather like it’ll open up and give her a way out of here.
“You chose this,” I point out. “You put your cute little ass in my chair. You can endure the pain, or you can let go and lose yourself in it. I think you might like it.”
I drag my thumb down the outside of her spine, working against one of those knots. Investment banking doesn’t sound like a fucking picnic, and her body seems to agree with me. She lifts into my touch, the muscle beneath my fingertip loosening. Then she wiggles against the seat again.
“If this makes you feel better, it’s a good thing,” I say roughly. The ink I’m tracing into her skin certainly is—the bright red feathers almost fly off her skin, they look so fucking real. “You deserve good things, you hear me?”
“Yeah,” she says, so softly that I almost don’t hear her. “I do.”
Blondie’s head hits the window with an audible thunk. I can’t tell if she’s passed out or fallen asleep, but girlfriend looks painfully uncomfortable.
“Give me a moment.” I set my equipment down and strip off my gloves. “Sleeping Beauty needs an assist.”
“Sleeping Beauty?” Harper twists her head and takes in her friend sprawled half on, half off the window seat. Not my circus, not my fucking monkeys, but she’s here with Harper.
I brush my hands down my thighs. “You need a chaperone?”
Harper outright laughs. “Are you planning on hiding Brooklyn’s body?”
“Nah.” I shake my head and cross the room to Blondie. Harper watches like she can’t quite figure me out as I scoop her friend up in my arms. “I’m offering relocation services. Think she’d be more comfortable on the couch.”
I take her out front and set her down on the leather couch. Gia never looks up from whatever game she’s playing on her phone. The room’s chilly from the air-conditioning that ran for most of the day so I shrug out of my leather jacket and drop it over Harper’s friend. The nipples poking the front of her sequined tank top advertise loud and proud that the woman’s cold. It may be August in Vegas but it’s also two in the morning. The sun’s not up, and I don’t need her to fucking freeze to death—or wake up—before I’m done with Harper.
When I go back into my studio, Harper gives me a smile. The sight of her bent over my bench, waiting for me to put my hands back on her, makes me hard, but then everything about this woman gets me going.
“You’re a nice guy.” She sounds surprised. Not sure why everyone seems to think bikers do nothing but kill shit. We’ve got other hobbies and mayhem’s just one of my many talents.
“Everybody loves me.” I wink at her reflection in Ink Me’s windows. “So what does an investment banker do all day, Harper darling?”
“I make other people money.”
“Are you good at what you do?” Harper doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who’d settle for half-assing anything in life.
“I’m the best.” A small, self-satisfied smile licks up the corners of her mouth. I’ll bet she goddamned is the best. I know better but I press my fingers a little harder against her skin, spreading them so I can feel the little shivers as the needle bites into her skin and then the moment when she relaxes. She’d feel like that when I was deep inside her, too, making her come.
“Me, too.” Either you rock your shit, or you don’t, and I’m the best goddamned tattoo artist in Vegas. I already know that tonight’s ink is my best ever. My firebird looks ready to streak into the sky—or curl up and dig in because it’s hard to imagine a sweeter spot than the curve of Harper’s back.
“This is the hard part,” I warn.
Sure enough, when I start shading the feathers, she tries to hold it all in but a groan escapes her mouth.
“You don’t have to pretend for me,” I tell her. Mean it, too. “You do whatever you fucking feel like doing.”
She nods—and then she reaches down, feeling for me with her hand. The fuck? My dick may be hoping for a hand job, but instead her fingers find my thigh and pinch. Fucking hard, too. She can’t get a good purchase on me thanks to my jeans and my being built like a medieval Viking, all
hard and no soft.
Christ, she’s amazing.
Still, she needs to understand that she doesn’t get to be the one in charge here. “Do that again and I’ll spank your ass.”
Not the smartest thing I could say, seeing as how it doesn’t just cross the line of what’s appropriate and what’s not. More like my words blow the goddamned line up and bury it in a mountain of TNT.
“You said I could do whatever I wanted.” Did she just blush? Been a long time since I’ve been with a woman who got embarrassed.
“Sure thing.” I draw her hand up by her head and pin it there lightly. “But if you make me jump, sweetheart, you’re gonna end up with a mutant firebird. This next part hurts the worst.”
“How long?” I can hear the tears in her voice. Fucking sucks. Harper’s made for smiles, not crying.
“Not long. Be good and I’ll kiss it better.”
“Be specific.”
I’ve got a lot of bare skin to fill in. This won’t be quick or easy. “Forty minutes.”
“Are you shitting me?” She shifts and I back off.
“Kisses,” I remind her. “I’ll make everything feel better if you hang in here.”
“You’ve got magic kisses?” That’s her drunk talking, laughter blurring the edges of her words and pushing away the tears.
“You can find out.”
“I already know how you kiss,” she announces, that cute pink blush getting deeper. “We’ve met before.”
Shit. I rack my brain trying to remember her. Women come and go in my life. Pretty sure I wouldn’t have fucked Harper and forgotten her, though, so maybe she’s just messing with me. Fair enough, seeing as how I’m planning on getting her out of those cute little panties just as soon as I can.
“That so? We’ve shared adult naptime? Done the bedroom rodeo?” I start in on the skin over her spine.
“It doesn’t matter.” She shrugs like whatever memories she’s got are NBFD—no big fucking deal—and I tap her ass.
“Freeze,” I remind her. “Or you’ll make me color outside the lines. And while you’re holding that thought, give me details about what we did together.”
“Nope.” Now I get the smile I wanted earlier, a big, wicked grin that lights up her entire face.
“A hint,” I suggest.
“We met in high school,” she concedes.
Huh. I do some more thinking while I work on her ink. High school wasn’t my finest moment. I was too busy being angry at the world to stop and think. Used my fists, my mouth, my dick—whatever got the biggest rise out of my audience. Guess Harper here must have been on the receiving end of my dick.
“Tell me all about it.”
“Not a chance.” I see her roll her eyes in the window. I forgo smacking her ass, seeing as how we’re in a public venue and all. I don’t need the shit Prez would give me if the club’s lawyers had to get me out of an assault charge. Instead, I try my words again. I can work miracles with my tongue, but that’s in the eating-her-out department. Once I start working her clit over, she’ll tell me what I want to know.
Not that she seems to remember things that way.
“You don’t want to piss off the guy holding the needle, sweetheart.”
She narrows her eyes. “I’m paying you. You have to do what I say.”
Christ, she makes me laugh. “Do I look like I follow the rules? Remind me.”
She rolls her eyes. “You’re impossible.”
“But you like me.”
“And you don’t remember me,” she counters. “At all.”
“I was your best, right? So fucking awesome that the Douche couldn’t hope to compare?” I squeeze her shoulder with my free hand. I can feel her bra strap beneath the silky fabric, so I nudge it downward an inch just to piss her off. “No. Don’t tell me. I’ll guess.”
CHAPTER THREE
Harper
“MOVE YOUR HAND and I won’t have to sue you.”
The words fly out of my mouth automatically, the way you blurt out excuse me when you stand on a stranger’s foot in the train or accidentally slam your boob into someone. They’re just words, things that should be said. I have no clue what I’d do if he actually acted on them.
Okay.
I might know.
I suspect—but can’t confirm—I’d beg him to keep on touching me because he’s right about one thing. The pain has melted into something else, a throbbing, hot sensation that makes me squirm against the leather seat and imagine dirty, depraved acts. It’s wrong. It’s completely unprofessional and I’m entirely certain I could be thrown out of Ink Me with a half-finished tattoo on my back for propositioning the talent and getting the seat all wet.
“You’re really not gonna tell me?” Swear to God, the man is pouting—and he’s got the face for it. He could model for an underwear company. His billboard would stop traffic, he’s so damned pretty. I had no idea I was this shallow but his cheekbones and that mouth... I’d happily look at every inch of him, in or out of his briefs.
I really need to have sex again.
“We did it in the gym,” he suggests, big hands moving over my skin. I know he’s just doing his job, but I’m having the most inappropriate feelings for him. Fortunately he has no filter himself.
“Earth to Harper.” He taps my back to get my attention. “Did you check out like this when we made love? Because you might have scarred me.”
Ordinarily, his inability to recall me—naked no less—would be humiliating, but my recent breakup with Mark has set the bar high.
“Definitely the gym,” Vik murmurs. He’s changed since that night in high school—filled out and gotten even bigger. The football coach was always after him to play, although he never would.
“You think?” The constant pleasure-burn of the needle loosens something inside me and not just my tongue. I can’t hold on to any kind of anger right now. It leaches out of me.
“Yeah.” I see Vik nod in the window. His hair slides around his face, longer and sun-bleached, a thick, shaggy mane better suited to a tiger or some kind of wild animal. “Bet we got nasty on the mats beneath the bleachers. Bet you were worried someone might walk in on us.”
“Not the gym.” The needle bites into my skin again, but the burn isn’t so bad now. It’s a deep, insistent rhythm of its own, this sharp scratching as he remakes me.
He’s silent for a moment, but he’s not done. “Empty classroom, then. Fucking loved those big teacher desks they had.”
“You didn’t.” God, I hope no one did the whole apple-for-the-teacher thing after he’d done the nasty. Talk about unsanitary.
“I can’t believe I don’t remember you.” I have to give him credit. He sounds like he means it.
I point out the obvious, however. “Maybe you have a volume problem.”
He winks at me in the glass. “Practice makes perfect.”
I roll my eyes. “There’s a time and a place for overachieving. Do you even know how many girls you’ve slept with?”
“Do you know?” he counters.
“Zero,” I say promptly. “Absolutely no girls.”
“Tell me it’s not so.” He sighs. “All guys know that you college girls go wild and crazy in your dorms as soon as it’s lights-out. Tell me you lived at home and I’ll forgive you.”
“On campus. All four years. Pick a new fantasy.”
“Do you promise to help me reenact it?”
“When hell freezes over,” I say companionably. This is crazy. Despite our brief but memorable (on my part, anyhow) past, I don’t really know Vik. He’s changed, I’ve changed and his idea of conversation would get me fired at my own job. On the other hand, I wanted to start over. New Me is getting her very first tattoo because Old Me wouldn’t have so much as glanced at a tattoo parlor. So perhaps New Me can also trade witty sex joke
s with the crazy-hot tattoo artist. New Me wouldn’t give it up in the back seat of a Dodge Charger and then head home panty-less. If nothing else, New Me will be a thong girl all the way.
I think about this to pass the time, but there’s only so long I can meditate on my past underwear choices. The more Vik works, the harder it gets to stay still. No one warned me that getting a tattoo sounds way too much like we’re having sex. The sound of his hands brushing over my skin is followed by the rush of my breath as I exhale a little harder. Bite back a moan when he finds a particularly sensitive spot with his needle. I’m not quite to the point of screaming oh, oh, oh...but I’m getting there.
“Can I ask a question?” he says eventually.
Thank God. At this point I’d take a recitation of the dictionary from front to back over the interesting sensations building up where he’s touching me. Especially since those sensations don’t seem to stay put—they insist on migrating lower.
Because he’s inking my lower back, his hands brush the top of my butt. It’s unavoidable. It doesn’t mean anything, but certain parts of me take notice. Plus, there’s the delicious, wicked burn of the needle. At first the needle hurts, but as I relax into the sting, the feeling changes.
Because even if it hurts, it also feels good.
I want him to do it again and again, so that I can figure out why I like this. He lays another line of ink against my skin, and this time I push up toward him rather than away. The burn becomes something else, a heated sensation that’s mine, that I own, that I crave.
I’ve never been into kink. I’m as vanilla and boring as they come and I don’t mind that. I like who I am. I may be vanilla cake with cream cheese frosting surrounded by more exotic, colorful flavors, but I go with everything. As long as you’re in the mood for cake, I never disappoint.
And yet my panties are wet and the sensations get stronger and better until I’m fighting not to clench or rub myself against the bench.
“Your boyfriend broke up with you, right?”
“Yeah.” I’d really rather not think about that right now.