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“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 jokes 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.
“So how come you’re the one who’s out on the street, looking for a new place to live?”
You know what? I don’t have a good answer for that. I take a stab at it anyhow.
“Because his name was on our lease?”
Vik makes a dismissive noise. “If he’s the one who wants change, he changes. You stay and he goes.”
It’s dark outside, and the few people walking past the window are either staggeringly drunk or so wrapped up in each other that they don’t look inside Ink Me’s windows. It’s liberating knowing that everyone and no one is watching, that Vik and I are alone in this pool of light inside a bigger sea of darkness. I suddenly understand why all those detectives in TV shows shine a spotlight on their targets, willing them to speak.
The words spill out of me with each question that Vik asks. He can’t care about my answers, not really. He’s working, filling the minutes and the silence the same way he colors in the blank spots on my skin, and yet it feels both surreal and good at the same time. It has nothing to do with my noticing how powerful his thighs are in those wash-worn, threadbare jeans of his, or how his motorcycle boots make me think really, really dirty thoughts.
“There was no magic putty for my relationship with Mark. The problem is I get distracted by a pretty face and Mark had that in spades.”
“I’ll be your booty call,” he says as he presses a bandage over my lower back.
“Excuse me?”
I sound like I have a stick up my butt. Prissy. Uptight.
And he repeats the utterly ridiculous, totally crazy thing he just said.
“If you need a pretty face for sex, you can call me.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Harper
VIK SHOVES A tattooed hand in my face. “Up,” he says.
His voice is phenomenal. Low and rough, full of heat and humor, the man could make a fortune as a sex line worker. He could read bedtime stories, dirty limericks, the stock report...anything, and I’d be jilling off on the other end of the line because he’s that goddamned sexy.
Danger, danger.
Getting up is exponentially harder than lying down. Not only am I more sober, but I’m stiff. There’s also the whole business of my skirt and my blouse, and even though what goes up must come down, my skirt is a challenge. The fabric clings to my legs, and the strong possibility of flashing my high school lover-turned-biker my cotton-covered butt makes me self-conscious. Frankly, I’d feel better about putting myself on display if I wasn’t wearing sensible white cotton.
Vik solves my logistical issues for me. Large hands close around my waist and yank me upward. I try not to giggle, but a squeak escapes me anyhow. I’m painfully ticklish, and his fingers dig gently into every spot I wish he’d avoid. At least he’s quick. I don’t even have time to worry about the doughnuts I’ve been stress-eating because he flies me through the air and sets me gently on my feet. I’m not a small woman; I started growing up when I was ten and then out two years later. And while I haven’t achieved Jolly Green Giant proportions, I’m not precisely sylph-like, either. I’m tall, I’m sturdy and I’m wearing four-inch heels.
“Warning would be good.” I dig my nails into his forearms trying to find my balance. The skin beneath the dark scrolls of ink is sun-bronzed. It’s also totally lickable, but I need to not think about that.
“Vik Air at your service,” he deadpans. “Although you either have to let go or come home with me.”
We both look down at the death grasp I have on his arms.
Right.
I let go.
Vik strips off his gloves and tosses them into the trash. I guess we’re done here. He might be hot and talented, but this isn’t personal. Sure, I’ve felt this man’s hands on my body, his breath on my skin for three hours, but it’s a business deal. His ink in exchange for my money. Anything else was absolutely not on the price list the girl at the front desk gave me.
But I want more.
God help me, but I do. I don’t want tonight to end. Right now, it feels like I’ve lost everything. In the morning, I’ll end my pity party, but right now, I don’t remember what’s right with my life. I just remember the crap. I don’t have my place anymore. My stuff’s packed up in a storage pod. My ex hijacked our Siamese. All I have is work on Monday and...this night. The tattoo, this man’s hands on me waking me up in places I didn’t know I was asleep. Would you want it to end? If I’d been Cinderella, I’d have stuck around on the top of those stairs.
He steers me away from his bench, his hand low and firm just beneath the spot that burns and aches from his needles. And okay, just above another, slightly more southern spot that also aches and burns because clearly I’m all kinds of messed up.
“Harper?” His mouth brushes the hair by my ear.
“Yeah?” My stupid feet stop moving toward the front desk, where an astronomical bill waits for tonight’s piece of folly. Ink and this man do not come cheap.
“I’m sorry I don’t remember you and I mean it. I’d be happy to be your booty call,” he whispers roughly. “All you have to do is ask, sweetheart.”
I just...can’t.
Vik disappears while I settle up with his receptionist for my new ink. I shouldn’t be disappointed. Obviously, the flirty come-on lines are just part of the service—kind of like a hairdresser chatting you up while you’re in her chair and pretending she’s super-interested in your life. I force myself not to look around while Gia runs my credit card. After I sign the receipt, however, I discover a logistical problem.
Brooklyn’s sound asleep on the couch.
Since leaving her here would be a gross violation of the girlcode (we’re besties even if she didn’t talk me out of getting a tattoo), I need to get her home. And while I definitely outweigh her, I can’t deadlift her. While I consider and abandon constructing a travois out of her borrowed jacket and hauling her ass home, Gia disappears with a little wave. Guess it’s quitting time at the zoo.
I could drag Brooklyn outside. The odds of that causing physical damage, however, seem high.
While I’m weighing bruises against camping in a tattoo shop overnight, a bike roars up, the noise of the pipes bouncing off buildings. Vik seems even larger and wilder straddling the enormous bike, which I figure out fast because my eyes just keep checking out his thighs, those long, muscled legs that end in the sexiest pair of boots, the powerful forearms that effortlessly guide the bike to a stop. I can’t stop looking, which in retrospect probably should be a red flag that this man isn’t easy. That he’s capable of riding all over my nice, tidy, way-too-single life as easily as he does the road.
I should have run out of Ink Me screaming.
Instead, I watch him swing off the bike and stride toward me. Possibly, I entertain a few fantasies about pillaging Vikings and village maidens. The fun parts, not the shitty moments involving murder and mayhem. Of course, Mr. Beautiful has no clue about the daydreams playing out inside my head. He’s just being a Boy Scout and making sure I’m sorted before he leaves for the night and whatever fun, sexy stuff bad-boy bikers who look like Vikings do in their downtime.
“Called you a taxi,” he says when he gets to me, reaching out to touch my arm lightly. The man is definitely snugglier than a cat. A really, really friendly alley cat, I remind myself. Even in high school, his dick had its own frequent flyer club.
“Thanks,” I blurt out while he stares patiently at me.
“You want me to follow you home and carry Sleeping Beauty inside?”
“Do you follow all your clients home?”
“Only the cute ones.” He winks.
I think about that for a moment too long. Nope. I’ve got nothing. Flirty banter is not something I excel at—I have a goddamned finance degree from Cornell. Sexy Quips 101 was not part of my Ivy League curriculum. Instead, I reexamine Brooklyn, hoping she’s magically decided to wake up, sober up and get up.
No such luck.
She snort-sighs, settling deeper into the leather couch. Vik laughs.
“She’s out for the night.”
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
He puts all those gorgeous muscles to good use, however, sliding his arms underneath her and scooping her up against his chest. They look perfect together, a beautiful blond god and goddess pairing. Her hair trails over his arm as he heads for the door. This is my cue to follow him, and since exhaustion is hitting me hard now, I do. If he’s got a solution for my Brooklyn problem, I’ll take it.
When we get outside, the taxi is just pulling up. Vik juggles his load of sleeping blonde, and says something to the driver. The guy nods, money changes hands, and then Vik walks around the car, pops open the back door and slides Brooklyn inside. When I open my mouth to protest about his paying, he cuts me off.
“Duane here is gonna see you back to your place. He can carry Sleeping Beauty in if she needs it.”
I shouldn’t find his ruthless, roughshod side attractive. I blame the broad shoulders stretching the leather of his jacket, or maybe it’s the way he leans in to buckle up Brooklyn. He’s big but he makes me feel both safe and sexy. He’s just playing around, but it’s been a long time since any guy made me feel like the queen of sexy. Like I don’t have to try harder or do more because I’m enough right now, just as I am. I thought I’d have to wait until I met my Mr. Right to feel like that. Looking back, I guess that should’ve been my first clue that Mark wasn’t the guy for me.
“Give me your address.” Vik flashes me a wicked smile and I’m grateful I don’t have to admit how wet my panties are.