Читать книгу Inked - Anne Marsh - Страница 12

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.”