She blinked and walked over, hips swaying, lips smiling. “Is this too big?” she asked, holding up the transfer.
I opened my legs a little wider. “No such thing.”
Penny laughed at that and held it over my arm, inspecting it. “I do like it when it’s extra big.”
She stood at the arm of the chair, and I slid my hand up the outside of her thigh.
“Oh, I know all about that.”
She was unfazed other than shifting to lean into me as best she could with an armrest in the way. “I think it’ll work. Let me put it on, and we can look at it.”
She went to work, arranging the transfer before wetting it down with a paper towel. When she smiled down at me, a little jolt shot through me.
“You ready for this?”
“Always,” I answered.
She peeled the transfer off and blotted my skin dry, inspecting it all the while. It was like she had flipped a switch and was all business and then flipped it again, all pleasure.
“Okay. Take a look.”
I stood and checked out the placement. It started just above my elbow and moved up and around my bicep and the cap of my shoulder — it was bigger than I’d imagined but exactly what it should be.
“I like it,” I said.
“Good. Me too.” She nodded to her chair. “Go ahead and have a seat.”
Her station seemed to already be set up, and she took a seat on a saddle stool with wheels, straddling it before rolling over to me, pulling on black rubber gloves.
Several reactions hit me. The sight of her rolling over to me with her legs open, snapping those rubber gloves, hit me below the belt. The realization that she was about to take a needle to me sent adrenaline shooting through my veins in a cold burst. And the look in her eyes got me right in the rib cage.
“All right,” she said as she poured black ink into a little cup. “So here’s the deal. This is way too big to do all at once if you want color. But I kinda think it’ll look better all black, just the outline. We’ve got to do that first anyway, so if you want to have it filled in later, you totally can.”
“How long until I can have more done?”
“A couple of months is usually wise.” She loaded her gun, wrapping a rubber band around the base of it. When she hit the pedal to test it, she smiled. “But anybody can do it. The line work is the hard part. You don’t have to come back to me to get it filled in.”
My heart deflated just a bit, just enough. Penny was putting space between us, telling me we wouldn’t be together in a few months, giving me permission to have it finished somewhere else.
She rolled her tray where she wanted it, scooting close to me with her eyes on my arm.
“Here we go.” She pressed that buzzing needle into my skin.
The thing about tattoos is that when it starts, you think it’s not so bad. Four hours in, and you feel like you’ve been carved like a turkey. So I enjoyed the burn before it consumed me.
Hearts worked the same way, I figured.
“You okay?” she asked after a moment, her eyes darting to mine for a solid second before looking back to my arm.
“I’m good.”
I watched her work, admiring the sureness of her hand, competence radiating from her. She was confident, so certain, completely capable. Penny could take over the world if she wanted to. She could take me over.
She kind of already had.
I looked over the shop and realized I’d met all the important people in her life — her family. I was in her chair as a customer, but it was more than that. There was an intimacy to the act and intimacy to her bringing me to the place that meant so much to her. Not that she’d made a big deal about it, but I knew by how she talked about everyone I’d met that they were her people. And that filled me with hope and pleasure at the connection to her.
Of course, that connection scared me too. Because I knew deep down that I didn’t have as much control as I’d thought I did over the situation. Every single day, she’d marked me in more ways than one, and I couldn’t turn back any more from my heart than I could from the needle in her hand.
“So, Bodie,” Ramona started from the wall of Penny’s booth.
When I glanced over, she was leaning on the wall from the other side, next to Veronica. They were both smiling unabashedly, their eyes never quite reaching mine — they were too busy scanning my chest.
“What is it you do again?” Ramona asked.
“I’m a software engineer. My buddies and I are working on a video game.”
They nodded their appreciation.
“What kind of game?” Veronica leaned in, shoulder to shoulder with Ramona.
“It’s an open world role-playing game. Steampunk, story-driven.”
Their faces were blank.
“Ah, like … think Victorian era, airships, like blimps. Treasure hunting, like Indiana Jones meets Han Solo but British.”
They lit up at that, including Penny, and I found myself feeling pleased.
“What’s it called?” Ramona asked.
“Nighthawk. It’s the name of the ship.”
Penny bounced a little in her seat. “Oh my God, that makes me want to draw stuff. This is seriously genius, Bodie. Who’s doing your artwork?”
“Jude. He’s a graphic artist and handles all of our 3D renderings. Phil and I are the code jockeys. Jude is the art.”
Penny waggled her brows at Veronica, who rolled her eyes.
“So how does that work?” Ramona asked. “Like, what do you do with it when it’s done?”
I took a breath and let it out as Penny carved a line in my skin and wiped it with a paper towel. “The first real step is to get a gameplay demo ready so we can pitch it to a big developer. The idea is that they pay us for the concept and bring us on as part of the development team. But we’ve been working on the demo for seven years,” I said with a laugh.
“Man, that’s intense,” Penny said as she dipped her needle in the ink and got back to work.
“It’s moving a lot faster now that we’ve been working on it full-time, but yeah. It’s been a long time coming. I mean, we came up with the idea in junior high and have been working toward this ever since. Phil’s focused on our outreach, networking through college and career buddies to see if we can get a meeting. There’s this one development company that’s at the top of the list. If we can get in with them, it’s a guarantee that the game would be everything we could possibly dream of. They’ve got the chops and the cash to throw at it.”
“What’s the company called?” Veronica asked.
“Avalanche,” I said, unable to keep the excitement out of my voice. “The games they produce are off the charts. But that’s the pie-in-the-sky kind of dream. We’ll probably get it picked up by a smaller company — I just hope they’ll let us do the work to make it what we want.”
Another gigantic hairy dude walked out of the hallway and into the shop, eyeing me in the chair, then he smirked at Ramona. He slapped her on the ass, and she yelped, laughing when she saw him.
“Hey, Shep,” Penny chirped. “This is Bodie. Bodie, this is Shep, Ramona’s fiancé and Joel’s brother.”
I jerked a chin at him in greeting. “How’s it going?”
“Not too bad,” Shep said, every word loaded, “other than the fact that my future wife is salivating over Penny’s guy.”
Everyone laughed but me. I was a hundred and ten percent sure that he could wreck my face without breaking a sweat.
“Come on, girls,” Shep said. “Leave Penny alone so she can do her job without an audience.”
They grumbled about it, but he effectively shooed them off, leaving Penny and me as alone as we could be in a tattoo parlor full of people.
Penny was engrossed in her work, and I watched her, smirking.
God, she was so beautiful, so talented, so strong and wild and free. A force of nature. I couldn’t imagine ever changing her, couldn’t imagine ever taking what made her her away. To lose those qua
lities would be tragic, a loss to everyone who knew and loved her. The thought that Rodney had tried to pin her down all those years ago, that he hadn’t been happy until he’d stripped it all away, made me hate him all the more.
“Something about you with that gun in your hand is almost too much for me, Penny.”
Her eyes caught mine and moved back to her work, though she was smiling. “You shirtless in my chair is almost too much for me, Bodie.”
I chuckled. “Tell me you’re free tonight.”
Her smile fell at that. “I wish I were. I promised Ronnie and Ramona that we’d go out. You know, since last time we tried to go out, I bailed on them.”
“Worth it.”
She laughed. “So worth it.” She shot up in her seat, eyes wide and smile big. “Oh my God, I have an idea. We should all go out together. Like, you should come with us and bring your brother. Make a group thing out of it. I want to hook Veronica up with Jude — she needs to get laid so bad. And then Ramona can bring Shep, and maybe Joel and Annika can come too.”
“I doubt Veronica has trouble with that on her own.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Well, I’m sure Jude would be down to help out,” I joked.
She lit up like a floodlight, her red lips smiling wide. “It’s perfect. This way I can see you, and Veronica can get the grump nailed out of her. Everybody wins.”
I shook my head, smiling at her. “Schemer.”
She shrugged and got back to work. “I get what I want.”
“I’m sure you do.”
As she worked, I considered the fact that she’d just asked me on a date. A group date, sure, but we would be going out with her friends, the important people in her life. In public. Not just getting together to hook up. No, we’d be hanging out all night, and then we’d hook up.
If that wasn’t a date, I didn’t know what was.
As she traced the lines of the ocean on my skin, I wondered if she realized it. I wondered if she knew. Or maybe things were just the same for her as they ever were. Maybe this was all just for fun, all for the thrill.
But I told myself not to overthink it. Because if I did, I might lose the glimmer of shine I’d found on Penny.
My eyes scanned the thick crowd at Circus, looking for Bodie. We stood clustered next to a gigantic painting of Siamese twins in an ornate gilded frame. Ramona and Shep laughed with Joel and Annika, leaving Veronica and me on the edge of the circle, a little isolated. I considered canoodling with her, but she seemed as edgy as I was. Setups weren’t her thing. Waiting wasn’t mine.
Not that Veronica wasn’t great company, but after having my hands on a half-naked Bodie all day and not doing anything about it, I was anxious to see him. And by anxious, I meant I felt like my insides were trying to get outside.
I should have gone home with him like he’d asked me to after his tattoo. But I wanted to see him tonight even more than just the afternoon, and I was afraid to overdo it with both. In hindsight, I should have just committed. God knew I couldn’t get my fill of him, so it wasn’t like I had to save myself.
I laughed to myself at the thought. The most he’d gotten out of me in a day was six orgasms. Six. The last one had taken him a full hour, but Christ almighty, was it a ringer.
My phone buzzed in my hand, since I was holding it like a needy girl in preparation of him getting there, and when I saw it was him, I fired off a response, navigating him to us.
I caught sight of him and hopped over, my heart doing all the warm and squeezy things in my chest. I slipped my hand into his much larger one and popped up onto my toes to kiss him for a brief, fluttering second.
“Come on!” I yelled over the music. “This way.”
I led him, Jude, Phil, and Angie over to the group, standing between the tightrope walker in pasties with a sparkly thong and a platform for two hoop dancers who might have been naked — they were covered in body paint and glitter and sparkles.
Veronica perked up as we approached, and I smirked.
I doled out introductions where necessary, saving Veronica for last.
“Jude,” I said, grabbing him by the arm and pushing him toward her with my free hand, “this is my friend Veronica.”
She smiled. He smiled.
“I dunno. I’d say you were more of a Betty.” One of his brows rose salaciously.
Her smile flattened faster than you could say douchebag. So did mine — that look meant he didn’t have a chance in hell.
“Hey, Jude. Don’t make it bad,” Veronica snarked, throwing the Never heard that before back at him.
A girl in a top hat and red tails mercifully interrupted the awkwardness to take drink orders before disappearing into the ocean of people, and I leaned into Bodie, smelling him like a weirdo. I couldn’t help it. The smell of his soap and whatever other products he used made me think of my face buried in his neck or his pillows or his chest. Other places too, places where I’d like to be buried in at that moment.
He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me closer, pressing a kiss to the top of my head.
“How’s your arm?” I asked, sliding my hand around his middle.
“Still works,” he answered with a flex.
I giggled like a dum-dum and leaned away, though I kept my arm around his waist, my fingers fiddling with the top of his pants.
“Thanks again for today,” he said. “I wish you’d let me pay you.”
“I’ll tell you what — you can pay me back later.”
He angled toward me, pressing his lips against my ear. “Oh, I plan to,” he whispered straight to my vagina.
A shiver rolled down my back. “Can’t we just leave now?”
“We could, but I’d rather tease you for the next couple of hours first.”
I laughed as his hand slipped down to my ass and gave it a squeeze. “Ugh, I hate waiting.”
“I know. That’s why I love to make you wait.”
Within a few minutes, everyone had moved around and mixed up, talking with each other, and I smiled to myself as I floated from group to group, happy that the odd collection of friends jelled. Joel and Phil were deep in a conversation about sci-fi that I understood zero of. Angie, who was the sweetest little bookish thing with big brown eyes and a giggle that instinctively made everyone in her radius giggle with her, had been talking with Ramona and Veronica about baking. Shep and Jude laughed together, swapping stories with Bodie, who smiled at me when I walked up.
Everything felt so good. All of us hanging out and talking and laughing. Bodie hanging his arm on my shoulder and kissing my temple and touching my hand, reminding me over and over again how much I enjoyed being around him. He made me feel good, and I wanted to make him feel good too.
The group shuffled around a few times, and a little while later, I found myself watching them all from the outside with Ramona, who bumped my arm.
“Have I told you that you’ve ruined my life?”
I frowned. “What? Why?”
“I went to the grocery store yesterday, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the little old checkout lady’s nipples when I noticed how pale her lips were.”
I burst out laughing. Ramona looked pleased.
“Bodie’s great, Pen.”
I smiled. “He is, isn’t he?”
She nodded, smirking. “I never thought I’d live to see you on a real date.”
I frowned. “This isn’t a date. This is a preamble to naked cartwheels and an attempt to get Ronnie laid.”
That earned a laugh. “First, this is totally a date. And you guys have been all over each other in the cutest way.”
My frowned deepened. “Yeah, because we’re hot for each other.”
“Oh my God, Penny. It’s a date. Open your eyes.”
I blinked, watching Bodie from across the room. “I mean, I guess technically it is, but that’s not what we’re doing. I’m not his girlfriend.” I said it like it was a filthy word.
Ramona laughed, shaking her head a
t me. “You know that being a girlfriend doesn’t mean you’re chained up in somebody’s basement, right?”
“If you say so.” I took a sip of my tequila.
She let it go, thankfully. I was starting to feel itchy.
Ramona nodded to the group. “So Jude and Veronica went over about as well as lead frisbee.”
I sighed. “Man, I’m so disappointed. They had to go and open their mouths and ruin my plans.”
She chuckled. “They didn’t even make it two sentences into a conversation. But look at them eyeballing each other.”
“I think they’re trying to explode each other.”
They really were — the two of them were staring across the room with narrowed eyes, and I wondered what else had been said. It must have been seriously infuriating, and I wished I’d heard every word.
“Well,” Ramona started, “even if the Ronnie trap failed, the Bodie trap is still fully in place and ready to blow.”
I snickered. “Yeah, it is.”
She smiled at me. “I’m happy for you, Penny. I really like him.”
I sighed wistfully. “He’s perfect for me right now. I had no idea that guys like him existed in the dating wild.”
She opened her mouth like she had something to say but stopped herself, smiling instead. “Speak of the devil.”
When I followed her eyeline, I found Bodie walking over, his eyes on mine in a way that made my knees go weak, though there was nothing lewd or suggestive about it. It was just pervasive, slipping into me, through me, spreading all over me in a way that set me on fire.
“Hey,” he said with a smile.
“Hi.” I smiled back like the fool that I was.
Ramona touched my arm. “I’m gonna go make sure Shep’s not telling any stories he shouldn’t. You know how chatty he gets.”
I laughed. “Oh, man. Hopefully not the dick sock story again.”
A Kiss For You Page 31