Page 54 of Thunder

He looks at me. "You drawin' the snake or am I?"

"You draw it. I'll tell you where it's wrong."

He laughs, because that's how it always went with my sleeves.

He gets Presley set up on her side on the table with her shirt off and a towel and her ribs bared.

I pull a stool up by her head where she can hold my hand and look at me instead of the needle.

She's brave about it.

Of course she is.

The first pass of the needle over the ribs makes her breath hiss out sharp, and her hand clamps down on mine.

I lean in close and give her my eyes and my low voice, the same tools I use on her in the dark, because pain's pain and I know how to walk her through it.

"Breathe for me. There you go. In through the nose."

"It—fuck—it burns⁠—"

"I know it does. Ribs are the worst of it. You're doin' beautiful." I press my forehead to her temple while Rafe works. "Look at you. Takin' it like it's nothin'."

"Says the man—ow—who's not getting stabbed a thousand times a second⁠—"

"I've got a bullet in my hip, darlin', don't talk to me about⁠—"

She laughs, and it jostles her, and Rafe growls at both of us to hold still, and it's—God, it's good.

Even here, even with her hurting, it's the kind of good I stopped believing I'd get.

Her hand in mine, her smart mouth going, and a snake taking shape on her ribs that means she's mine and knows it and chose it.

I watch the rattlesnake come up out of her skin line by line, coiled and dark, twin to the one on my throat, and something in my chest I don't have words for goes tight and full.

It does something to me I wasn't ready for, watching it.

I've wanted this woman since a bar in the spring, wanted her in every way a man can want, and I thought I knew every shade of it.

But this is new.

Watching my mark go into her, permanently, watching her choose the pain of it and hold my hand through it and never once flinch off the decision, it lights something in me that's older and darker than desire.

Something possessive down to the root.

Mine, the snake says, coming up on her ribs.

Mine, in her skin now, in her blood, for good.

And the animal part of me that I keep chained up most days is pacing its cage and pleased.

She catches it on my face. Of course she does. She reads me better than anyone alive.

"You like it," she says, breathless, half a question.

"I more than like it." My voice comes out rough enough that Rafe pointedly studies his needle. "We'll talk about how much when there's not a third party holdin' a machine to your ribs."

Her pupils go wide and dark, and she bites her lip.