Barging In
Page 30
I sat back and scrutinized the lines. Gesturing at the mirror on the other side of the room, I said, “Have a look. Make sure it’s straight and exactly where you want it to be.”
He got up and went to the mirror. For a moment, he inspected the outline. He reached for it as if he wanted to run his fingers over it, but wisely hesitated before smearing the ink. His expression was almost reverent, and for the millionth time, I wondered just who A.J. was.
He must have been someone special, I thought, and that tightness in my chest had nothing to do with jealousy.
Jealousy. Jesus. The very thought of being jealous of A.J. was both petty and pathetic. The man had died, for God’s sake. Whoever he was, he was gone now, and obviously he’d meant something to the man who’d repeatedly treated me like a doormat for his revolving door.
Anger swelled in my chest, but I took a deep breath and reminded myself to be professional. No sense getting worked up over the past. Relax, be civil and just get through this. Then it would be over and he’d be gone. Forever. I hoped.
I cleared my throat. “How does it look?”
Barely whispering, he said, “Perfect.”
“Ready, then?”
He took one last glance in the mirror, then nodded and returned to the chair. Once he was comfortable, I picked up the needle. He eyed it warily as I moved it toward his skin.
“This is just going to be the needle,” I said. “No ink. To make sure you can tolerate the pain.”
He swallowed. “Is it really that bad?”
“You tell me.” Not like it’s the first prick you’ve ever felt. I bit my tongue to keep from laughing.
Then I pressed the pedal down, and Luke shivered when the needle buzzed to life. Using my right thumb and forefinger to keep his skin tight, I touched the needle to him with my left. Just like everyone did, he sucked in a hiss of breath and every muscle in his body tensed, but he didn’t jerk his arm away, nor did he freak out.
“How does that feel?” I asked.
“It fucking tickles,” he muttered.
I laughed. Typical response. “So you can handle an hour and a half of that?”
He took a breath, then nodded.
I dipped the needle in a cup of black ink. “Here we go, then.”
At first, just like most people, he tensed every time the needle touched him. With every line, though, he relaxed a little more. If the endorphins hadn’t kicked in yet, they would soon. Some people were in pain right to the end; others sailed away on an endorphin high, especially if the tattoo was in a highly sensitive area. Still others winced and flinched the whole time, but with progressively less enthusiasm as they got used to it.
For a long time, we didn’t speak. I concentrated on the lines. He probably tried to think of anything but what I was doing.
All the while, I couldn’t shake that unsettled feeling, the same feeling I’d had since he’d walked into the shop the other day. There were things that needed to be said. What, I didn’t know, but there was something. If, as my father had suggested, Luke was here to talk to me, he wasn’t being very forthcoming about it. Though I supposed he might not have predicted just how intense the pain would be. That burn was something to which I’d long become accustomed, but it hurt. It definitely hurt. Whatever speech he’d intended to give was probably stuck behind his tightly clenched teeth.
Or maybe he knew that whatever he had to say would elicit an emotional reaction from me. Perhaps from both of us. As my dad had said, Luke wasn’t stupid, and maybe he’d thought twice about pissing me off while I was already inflicting pain on him.
I was of two minds. Get it out and get it over with? Or just quietly proceed with my work and hope this was the end of it? Either way, this was going to be one of the most difficult tattoos of my career, simply because I couldn’t fucking concentrate.
If it wasn’t the unspoken or the unknown, it was his physical presence. The very fact that he was here. In my shop. In a muscle-tight T-shirt stretched over those abs and those shoulders. Thick, medical grade gloves kept me from touching his skin, but they might as well have been made of the same ultra-thin latex as some of the newer, barely there condoms for all they did to keep his body heat from reaching my nerve endings.
As much as it killed me to admit it to myself, I couldn’t deny I was still attracted to him. Physically, anyway. He had an amazing body, and I had the misfortune of knowing exactly what that body was capable of. For all he’d hurt me back then, I’d have been lying to myself if I tried to say our sex life had been anything but spectacular. We had knee-trembling quickies whenever and wherever we could. We burned the midnight oil making love, even if it was just kissing and touching, for hours. It could be a single candle, Fourth of July fireworks, or anything in between. If anyone ever asked me to name the hottest sexual moment of my life—or wildest, most sensual, most daring, most emotional, whatever—I could guarantee it involved Luke.
Barging In
Josephine Myles
When the boat's a rockin’, don't come knockin’!
Out-and-proud travel writer Dan Taylor can’t steer a boat to save his life, but that doesn’t stop him from accepting an assignment to write up a narrowboat holiday. Instead of a change of pace from city life, though, the canal seems dull as ditchwater. Until he crashes into the boat of a half-naked, tattooed, pierced man whose rugged, penniless appearance is at odds with a posh accent.
Still smarting from past betrayal, Robin Hamilton’s “closet” is his narrowboat, his refuge from outrageous, provocative men like Dan. Yet he can’t seem to stop himself from rescuing the hopelessly out-of-place city boy from one scrape after another. Until he finds himself giving in to reluctant attraction, even considering a brief, harmless fling.
After all, in less than a week, Dan’s going back to his London diet of casual hook-ups and friends with benefits.
Determined not to fall in love, both men dive into one week of indulgence…only to find themselves drawn deep into an undertow of escalating intimacy and emotional intensity. Troubled waters neither of them expected…or wanted.
Warning: Contains one lovable tart, one posh boy gone feral, rough sex, alfresco sex, vile strawberry-flavoured condoms, intimate body piercings, red thermal long-johns, erotic woodchopping, an errant cat, a few colourful characters you wouldn't touch with a bargepole, and plenty of messing about on the river.
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Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
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Barging In
Copyright © 2011 by Josephine Myles
ISBN: 978-1-60928-592-0
Edited by Linda Ingmanson
Cover by Scott Carpenter
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: September 2011
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