by Ophelia Bell
He leans forward and rubs his hands together as he rests his elbows on his knees. His gray eyes are sharp as razors when they focus on me. “Toni, I need to lay all my cards on the table, because keeping secrets is a good way to ruin lives and that’s the last thing I want. You need to know that if you go down this path, I’m all-in, and it won’t be an act for me. I know I’m risking having my heart ripped out, but that’s how much you mean to me. So think long and hard about whether it’s worth it to you.”
“Sam . . .” I begin, my heart in my throat. God, what the hell have I done? I let him in just a little, to blow off some steam, and now he’s burrowing under my skin in a way that makes it difficult to push him away.
The thing is his confession feels good to hear, no matter how ridiculous it is. All-in for what, exactly? To baby me through whatever residual shitstorm of neuroses I’m fighting? Nobody deserves that.
And yet we have to work together, and the last thing I want is to ruin the friendship we’ve built, or any possibility of continuing a partnership with him.
I take a deep breath and sit up, for the first time aware that both Mako and Vic are surreptitiously watching us from their booth. Gritting my teeth, I nod. “I get it. Just one rule, right? What happens in Cancún . . .”
“. . . stays in Cancún,” he finishes with a bitter laugh. “I’ll live with that. For now.”
“Good. Thank you,” I offer a hesitant, grateful smile and reach out to squeeze his forearm. He slips his hands into mine as he rises, pulling me up with him. Then he wraps his arms around me, and my entire body heats with awareness of how big and sturdy and strong he is.
He holds me tight against him for a breath, then dips his mouth to my ear. “Just a warning that I intend to do everything in my power to make you want to break that rule.”
“Sam.” I give a helpless chuckle into his chest, then tilt my head up when he touches my chin with his fingers. Before I can object, he presses his lips to mine, the heat of his kiss sending every last thought flitting off into the ether.
“Hell yeah, that’s what I’m talkin’ about!” Mako whoops, then starts to clap. More applause sounds from around us. Most of the show’s guests have filtered out of the big room, but the other artists are still cleaning up, so we have an audience. Sam laughs against my mouth and I can’t help but give in too. I turn my head and bury my face in his shoulder again, cheeks flaming.
“Oh god, make it stop.”
“No fucking way, I earned this. I plan to enjoy it.”
The cheering dissipates after a minute longer, and I finally feel brave enough to show my face. I catch Chelsea and her camera man from across the aisle, the camera trained on us. She gives me a thumbs up as the camera drops. Now I know the entire world is going to believe Sam and I are an item. Even I believed that kiss was the real thing.
It can’t be, but it also can’t hurt to let myself relax about the whole situation for now. He feels good to be around, to give into the attention he seems more than happy to bestow on me. I should just let it happen and stop overthinking it. We can regroup and have a long talk when we get home about why we need to leave this fling in Mexico.
“Let’s get some food in us and then talk about this collaboration. Our dinner reservation’s at six, so we better get a move on,” Sam says. “You two joining us tonight?” he calls to Vic and Mako.
“Nah, brother. You two have fun. We’re hitting the concert over in the arena. Tomorrow we’ve all gotta go check out the Sweet Child show, though. They’re that Guns N’ Roses tribute band. You guys down?”
“Hell yes!” Sam says. “I’m so fucking there.” He belts out an operatic-level lyric from “Welcome to the Jungle” and plays air guitar. It’s so fucking cute I can’t help but laugh.
Vic waves us off with a grin as Sam leads me by the hand out the door.
16
Sam
I study Toni over our dinner, looking for any sign of misgiving or regret, but I find none. There’s still the occasional wistful stare into the distance, but when I prod for her to share, she easily relays some fond memory of her visits here with Manny.
“I’m sorry for bringing him up all the time,” she says, catching herself. “It isn’t fair to you . . .”
When I raise my hands and shake my head at her, she lifts both eyebrows. “You don’t need to keep apologizing, trust me. It isn’t like I haven’t seen you struggle to put his death behind you. Do I need to point out that you usually don’t smile when the memories get dredged up? It wasn’t that long ago you’d get triggered and disappear for a day or more.”
Her eyebrows twitch and she tries to speak, but just shakes her head. Finally she clears her throat and reaches out her hands. I take them across the table and squeeze.
“I don’t know how you do it, but you are definitely full of surprises. Show me what you’ve come up with so far for our collaboration.”
I reach for my messenger bag and pull out my sketchbook to show her some of the ideas I’ve been noodling around with. She flips through, eyes bright and excited. I can tell she’s into the sketches when she reaches for my pencil and begins to add on to one of them. It’s barely more than a concept based on an art nouveau princess surrounded by botanicals, with a halo around her face. Except one half of her face is the stark, silvery perfection of a biomechanical goddess, the halo made of tubes and wires instead of branches and vines.
She adds detail to the nature side and shows me. “You think it’ll work?” I ask.
“Hell yes! Let’s go up and scan this into my art program so we can flesh it out.”
We wind up in her room, where she hooks up her laptop to the flat-screen TV. I pull the sheet out of my sketchbook so she can feed it through her small scanner, then she pulls it up on the big screen where we can both view it easily. With her drawing tablet, she starts making adjustments to the design, etching out distinct lines, adding color and shading. Then she hands it to me and I flesh out the other side of the woman’s face.
I glance at her as I’m adding contours to the nose and eyebrows, wondering if she’ll see the resemblance to her, but she doesn’t say anything. I figure whoever wins this design in the raffle can request a likeness and we’ll make the necessary adjustments before we do the actual tattoo, but for now, Toni’s face is the one I see in my mind’s eye when I’m drawing.
She leans back to look at it, then at me. I’m certain she’s going to call me on it, but she just smiles. “You love your sister, don’t you?”
“Elle’s fantastic. Why?”
“You made it look like her.” She points at the face on the screen. It takes a beat before I realize that she isn’t seeing herself at all because it hasn’t occurred to her I’d choose to replicate her face. Of course the most logical option is Elle—who I love and is gorgeous in her own right—but it never hit me how closely they resemble each other until now. Elle’s actually taller and skinnier than Toni, with a slightly more in-your-face rebellious streak. You’d never know she was the youngest sibling. Her hair is also dark brown where Toni’s is jet-black, aside from the single stripe of red.
I nod and smirk. “You got me.” But my stomach twists in a knot over the small omission. If it comes down to it, I’ll tell her the truth, but for now I’m going to keep it to myself.
We keep working on the design, passing her tablet back and forth for the next couple hours. She pulls out a set of speakers and sets her music player on her phone to one of her favorite playlists while we work. Watching her in the zone is one of my favorite pastimes, but for the first time I feel her eyes on me when I take the tablet and stylus. I smirk to myself as I draw, darkening some of the lines of my biomechanical princess face.
“What’s so funny?” Toni asks.
“You’re checking me out, aren’t you?” I keep my eyes on my work, but suppress a laugh when she huffs and stands, heading for the minibar.
“Maybe a little,” she admits, pulling out a miniature bottle of wine and popping the
cork. “Your arms look good covered in ink, even if it’s fake. I was just admiring my own design. Thinking maybe you should let me make it permanent.”
I pause and twist my arm to look down at the artwork she drew on me the night before. It’s still bright as new, but isn’t going to last forever. If I want to keep it the way it looks now, I need to lock it in while we’re here. I love the idea that she wants to make the ink permanent, but wish like hell she felt that way about more than just the art on my arm.
“Let me think about it,” I say. “Let’s get this one done first.”
She pours the wine into two plastic cups and hands me one, shrugging with one shoulder before taking a sip from her own cup. “I think it’s done. I don’t have any more changes. Let’s go ahead and prep a stencil for tomorrow.”
I make one more tweak to the eyes, then wait for her to pull out her portable stencil printer. It’s a large piece, so we have to slice the image in half and print in two parts, but the design lends itself to being cut in two with each aspect of the face on a separate sheet. I hide the layers of shading and color so all that’s left are the lines, then hit print. When the sheets emerge, Toni carefully tapes them together from the back, then adheres them to the TV so we can stand back and admire the finished design.
“I fucking love it. Sam . . .” She turns to me and I look down at her, brows lifted. “I’m not putting this on a stranger. It has to be yours.”
My heart gives a heavy thud, because it’s as if she’s seen straight into me. Every stroke of the stylus on the tablet, adding more detail and depth to the design, I couldn’t help but regret that the first piece we worked on together was going to wind up on the back of some lucky stranger.
“Unless you don’t want it . . . God, I hope you’re not going to be that picky about your tattoos.”
“I’m not,” I blurt. “Yes! I fucking want to keep it. Jesus! But how the hell do we manage it? And it needs two artists if it’s going to get done in time. I can’t ink it myself, especially if it’s going on my back.”
“Which is absolutely where it should go,” she agrees.
“And it’s not like you have time to devote to the whole thing. That’s a good twelve hours of work.”
She swallows and stares up at me. “Do you trust Vic and Mako with the design?”
“Are you thinking all three of you work on it at once?”
“It’s the only way this monster’s getting finished in time for the best of show judging. That way we can at least do it in stages so you can still take some more tattoo clients while we’re here.”
I’m so fucking elated I’m practically floating. I look into her eyes, hoping the bright light I see and the smile on her face means she feels it too—feels the synergy we have after hours of working together.
We’ve had our moments like this over the past few years, when we were particularly attuned to each other during a workday and everything just seemed to click. After I finished my apprenticeship, she didn’t waste time offering me a permanent spot in her studio. She stood up in the middle of the room after the last client left one night and announced, “Well, guys, since Sam’s proven himself the missing piece to our puzzle, I think he needs to officially be one of us. What do you say?”
Vic and Mako both heartily agreed, and we went out that night to celebrate. It was the first time I felt like my ancient infatuation with Toni might have more to it. If we were that in sync with each other at work, how amazing would it be if we were a couple?
I feel it even more right now, and it’s so profound I get caught up in the moment. She’s still staring up at me, but her smile falters the smallest degree at the same time mine fades, giving way to a deeper need. There’s uncertainty in her eyes for a split-second before I reach for her, but I don’t let that stop me.
I bend down to kiss her.
She does the opposite of resist me. She curls her arms around my shoulders and lets me lift her off her feet, opening her mouth to take my tongue and sliding hers alongside. God, we fit together perfectly. She has to feel it.
As we kiss, I tug at the sticks holding up her hair, letting the sleek, dark tresses fall around her bare shoulders. She’s wearing a snug halter top that displays as much skin as she can get away with, but when I find the tie at the back of her neck and yank the end, she pulls back, breathless.
“Sam, I need to set some boundaries.”
I nod, too eager to keep undressing her to bother with conversation. “I know. What happens in Cancún . . .”
“That’s not what I mean. Please don’t make me kick you out, because I really don’t want to stop. But there’s something that can’t happen. I’m just not ready to make love to someone new.”
I take a deep breath to force myself to focus, repeating to myself what she just said and trying to parse it. “No fucking. Is that what you’re saying?”
Some of the tension eases out of her and she lets out a breath. “Yeah. I hope that’s not a dealbreaker.”
I’m too buzzed from wine and endorphins to argue with her logic, but I get it. “I just want you naked. We can do whatever the hell you want once that happens.”
She chuckles. “You said that this morning. What’s so special about getting me naked?”
“You being naked isn’t special enough?” I ask, unraveling the tie at the back of her neck and tugging her top down until the edge of the elastic barely covers her nipples.
Her breath catches and she wraps one arm across her breasts, holding the top up. “Explain,” she demands.
“You saw me naked. Fair’s fair.”
“You’re practically a nudist, the way you parade around in the buff. I’m just a tad more modest.”
I take a beat and breathe, trying to cool off enough to form words. Space . . . I need space.
I step back, holding her at arm’s length. My stiff dick stretches the front of my jeans, but I’m not too modest to try to hide the effect she has on me. I also really enjoy the way her lips part when she notices. Then her gaze shoots to mine.
“Remember that Maxim shoot you did?”
She snorts and rolls her eyes. “Yeah, it pretty much destroyed any sense of mystery about me.”
“I disagree. It made you more alluring, especially when it became clear you’d just begun getting inked. You didn’t have as many tattoos then as you do now. Just the one arm and a little on your torso. And I’ve been dying to see all of them. It’s been a goal of mine, I guess.”
She blinks up at me, then clears her throat. “Exactly how long has seeing me naked been a goal of yours?”
“Ah . . .” I lift my eyes to the ceiling, not sure I’m prepared to answer. I let out an oof when she jabs me in the belly with her finger.
“Sam! Tell me the truth or you can go back to your room and deal with that alone.” She points at my hard-on with a scowl.
“Fine! Pretty much since you did that shoot.”
“That was eight years ago! I was such a naive kid then. I was younger than you!”
I smirk. “Fourteen-year-old me didn’t care about your age any more than I do now. I still have that issue of Maxim, by the way.”
“Oh god, I bet the pages are stuck together, aren’t they? Don’t tell me—I don’t wanna know.” She holds up a palm, which I grab and kiss, giving her begging puppy-dog eyes over the tips of her fingers.
“Pretty please? I promise not to touch unless you want me to.”
She bites her lip, her cheeks turning bright pink, but then her hazel eyes heat and she pushes me toward the bed. I obediently sit, shifting my hips to readjust the swollen bulge in my jeans. I’m hoping she’ll bend and kiss me again, but instead she backs away, keeping her eyes on me.
When she reaches the dresser across from the bed, she half turns and taps at her phone. The music changes to a bluesy beat and she turns up the volume, then faces me fully again and begins to sway. She wraps both arms across her chest at first, dancing slowly in a circle to the beat, and I silently praise all t
he gods in heaven that she’s game to play. At the moment I don’t give a crap whether I ever get to fuck her—right now she’s making one of my oldest, dirtiest dreams come true.
She grinds her hips, her ass undulating in her black leather pants. My fingers itch to touch her, but I hold my ground, watching and waiting. She tilts her head back, letting her hair sweep across her back, then looks over one shoulder at me as she begins to tug the top down.
All I see are the black coils of her ink that cover her shoulders and sides, her long hair obscuring the designs down the center of her back. She pauses to sway, then gathers her hair up on top of her head and holds it there, baring her entire back.
The design that spans her shoulders and extends down her spine is one I hadn’t seen until yesterday when I massaged sunscreen into her back. It’s an image she no doubt designed herself of a woman in shadows and moonlight, facing a man made of fire, both of them reaching for a goblet that hovers in a sphere between them.
She keeps dancing to the slow, pulsing beat, gracefully kicking off her low boots before she turns, arms crossed over her breasts. She twists and slides her knees back and forth against each other, swinging her head so her hair flies around her shoulders, then slides her hands down her belly. My breath catches and my dick aches when she bares her breasts, dark strands of her hair cascading over them. She unfastens her pants and begins to push them down, taking her stretchy top with them.
I can only stare, hypnotized by her rhythmic dance and the dark black and deep red designs she reveals as she disrobes. When she kicks her pants aside and stands, she’s wearing nothing but a black silk thong. She stares at me, writhing to the music only a little now.
“Was this what you wanted?” she asks.
I swallow hard as I nod and drink her in. As if reading my mind, she slowly spins, giving me a full view of all her gorgeous curves and the whorls and tangles of inked designs that stretch over her hips and down her legs. It’s an entire cohesive image rather than a mishmash of multiple designs like I tend to see on most people who get their entire bodies tattooed. She still has some un-inked skin, but only in small sections between all the rest, as well as across her breasts and sternum, though the ink resumes beneath them.
