Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 130380 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 652(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130380 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 652(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
The reality of it all made me want a time machine so badly I’d kill for one.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Mary said, bringing me back to the present.
“Like I’d devour you if you said the word?”
The gun paused over my skin, and she went white before her eyes shot to mine. “What?”
“That’s what you said to me,” I reminded her. “When you were drunk off your ass during the preseason game.”
“No,” she said, pulling away and covering her mouth with one hand. Her eyes doubled in size. “No, please tell me you’re kidding.”
“Nope,” I said with a victorious smile. “To be fair, your assessment was spot on.” I let my eyes trail a blaze over her skin, from where her own sternum tattoo met the swells of her breasts down to where her hips made a delicious heart shape from her waist.
When I slid my gaze back up, her face was flushed, but she dipped the needle in ink and took position again. The pain had ebbed a bit, almost like my body had adjusted to the invasion.
“Well, that embarrassing tidbit aside, I meant the way you were looking at me just now.” She peeked up at me only a second before her eyes were back on where she was working. “Like I remind you of everything you regret.”
I swallowed down the urge to tell her that was partly true.
“So, back to the devouring look, then?” I asked, arching a brow.
She smiled and shook her head, focusing on the tattoo and not saying another word.
It took five hours total for Mary to leave her mark, and when she finished, she wiped away the excess ink and blood with a proud smile on her lips. She looked a little tired, but in the way only an artist could be after completing another masterpiece, like she left a little bit of her soul in me.
I loved the thought of that, that no matter what happened next, she’d always exist in me in some way.
“Okay,” she said, sitting back and admiring the piece. “Ready to see it?”
Carefully, I swung myself off the table, following her to the full-length mirror attached to the wall near her station. She blocked my view of myself, turning around to face me and biting her lip as her eyes scanned where she’d just inked me.
“I hope you don’t hate it,” she said, and her actual concern made its way through the joke she tried to hide it with.
“Step aside, Stig,” I said, grabbing her by the arms and shuffling her out of the way. I didn’t miss the way her cheeks reddened at the nickname, how her smile bloomed with it, too. But when I saw myself in the mirror, my focus shifted entirely to the ink on my chest.
Every muscle in my face went slack, awe striking me like a lightning bolt.
“Holy shit, Mary.”
The skin was still a bit red and angry from being stabbed a million times over the last five hours, but underneath the slight swelling was the most bad ass octopus tattoo I’d ever seen.
The dark ink of the outline was clean and precise, but the shading of the head, of each tentacle, of the little suckers and the textured skin — that was what stole the show. I would never say it out loud, but it was far better than what I’d expected.
It was the kind of tattoo I’d presume to get from an artist who had been practicing for decades, not one who didn’t even officially have her own chair yet.
I lifted my fingers to trace the ink, but she slapped my hand away.
“Do not put your grimy hands on my fresh tattoo,” she said. “It’ll get infected. I need to put a second skin on it, but I wanted you to see it first.”
I shook my head as I took in every detail in the mirror, stepping even closer. It wasn’t small, but it wasn’t gigantic either. The head sat right in the middle of my sternum, with the arms stretching out over my pecs and down to touch the top of my abdomen.
“Adding to your list of regrets?” Mary asked from where she stood behind me.
My eyes found hers in the mirror, and I swallowed. Emotion gripped my throat in a tight vise.
“It’s perfect,” I said.
The corner of her mouth lifted, but then she looked down at her hands, shrugging. “I haven’t done a chest piece before. The sternum was a little harder than I thought, and the shape—”
“It’s perfect,” I said again, and this time I turned to face her, and without a second thought about who was around us or the fact that I shouldn’t have felt comfortable enough to do it, I slid my hands up to frame her face, tilting her eyes to meet mine. “I know you’ve been worried about your style, but I can tell you confidently that you have nothing to worry about. Because this tattoo is sick. It’s bad ass. Fucking incredible. Maravilloso,” I said as her eyes teared up a bit. “And I love it.”