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He stared down at the paper for the longest time before he reached up and scratched his cheek with a tattooed finger. “You know what font you want?”
“If you can leave it hand drawn like that?” I wanted it in my handwriting.
His eyes flashed to mine, and it was then I noticed there were sooty grays mixed with the black, like the sky during a monsoon. A shiver ripped down my spine.
“Yeah, we can definitely do that. Give me a minute to get a stencil printed up. Fill out this information while I do.”
He spun around and grabbed a tablet from the counter behind him and passed it to me so I could fill out my information and waiver, while he turned the stool and wheeled himself over on the heels of his boots to a lower section used as a desk.
His back was to me as he worked, a baited silence all around us.
After a few minutes, a printer whirred to life, and then he was back, spinning around and using his heels to glide himself close as he held out the stencil.
I could hardly breathe.
“Lay back and lift your arm above your head.”
Shaking, I did, and he leaned in close, setting the stencil against my skin in the exact spot where I’d indicated. He glanced at me with those stormy eyes. “Good?”
I gave him a jerky nod. “Yeah.”
He carefully pressed it against my arm, meticulous as he transferred the design before he pulled on another pair of black gloves. He already had a tray set with inks, and he moved some things around, squeezing the darkest black into a tiny pot, then he flicked on a machine.
He leaned in close, his mouth nearly brushing the lobe of my ear, his potency swallowing me whole.
Coarse words muttered there, hitting me in a way they shouldn’t. “Last chance, gorgeous, before I mark up this bare, perfect skin.”
But I was already scarred. He just couldn’t see it.
So, I murmured, “Do it.”
THREE
RIVER
I letthe needle brush her skin, my stroke as fuckin’ light as I could get it.
She gasped a throaty, bottled cry at the contact, body arching as a lick of pain whispered across her flesh.
“You okay?” I asked, barely able to get the words off my tongue as I struggled to grip whatever the fuck it was that I was feeling.
This stranger had me twisted.
Was bad enough the way I’d reacted when she’d first come through the door. It was an entirely different thing when I’d read the statement she’d had written in her pretty handwriting on the piece of paper.
In grief we must live.
Had nearly demanded that she tell me exactly what that meant, but I’d shoved it down because I didn’t have any space to get stupid like that. Wanting to know the details of her life when I knew there was no chance that I could care.
“Yeah,” she breathed, and I turned my attention back to the design, and I started sweeping the needle over her flesh that was blooming pink.
Could tell she was trying to hold her breath. Doing her best toignore the burn that erupted on her skin as I marked her deep. Cutting into the lines and filling it with ink.
She squirmed and whimpered, and fuck me, my dick strained.
A twisted fiend who was eating up that little bit of pain. Consumed with the fact that I was causing it and wanted to soothe it at the same time.
Loving that I was the one etching her permanently. That she was going to walk out of here and forever carry a piece of me.
