by Quinn, Cari
He was tan. Every inch of him rippled with muscle and sinew. He wasn’t overly vascular like some gym-types were, but he was positively ripped. And that was just the back. His shoulders were damn impressive under a shirt, but without one?
Awe-inspiring.
A tight waist flowed into his low-slung cargos. For the love of all things good and kind on this earth, he even had those dimples above his ass like she saw in pictures of models.
He was a damn Adonis under the vintage t-shirt. Any other man with a body like his would be wearing a white tank top and showing it off at all times.
To add into the not-freaking-fair column, he didn’t have a hair on him. At least on his back. She sidestepped until she caught the front of him and lost her breath. Six pack? Nope. He had an eight pack of solid muscle with pecs that rivaled any leading male in Hollywood. A light sprinkling of hair spread across his chest and then a darker trail started just above his navel and disappeared under his pants.
“You’re killing me, Harper.”
His voice broke her trance.
Shameless hussy.
Yep.
“Yeah, well the feeling is mutual.”
“If you let me do what I want on your back, I’ll do it for free.”
You can say that again.
Obviously surprised, Deacon’s attention returned to Casey. “What are we talking?”
“Full coverage.”
“In one session?” Deacon asked steadily.
“C’mon back and we’ll figure out a sketch.”
Deacon nodded and pulled his shirt back on. The collective awws that sprinkled through the crowd made her smile. Deacon rolled his eyes and held out a hand for hers.
He yanked her forward until her nose was buried in his amazing chest and his heat enveloped her. It strengthened the already heady reaction she’d had. Now his scent was back in her nose. She was so utterly screwed. He’d barely touched her and her nerve endings were frayed.
Did she mention screwed?
“I don’t mind you eating me up with your eyes, but I could do without the rest of them.”
She patted his belly. Now that she knew exactly what was going on under there, how was she supposed to concentrate? “Considering you’re going on camera, I think that ship has sailed, big guy.”
Okay, she didn’t sound nearly as breathy as she thought. She could totally do this.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?”
She shrugged. “If I get bored I’ll just leave your ass.”
He laughed and clutched her elbows, drawing her up until her nails dug into his sides. The very tips of her shoes scraped the floor as he swallowed her mouth.
The kiss was open-mouthed and carnal. A stamp of approval? Or was he calling her bluff? Because it would take a natural disaster to make her leave him right now. She twisted his shirt into her palms and gave back just as much. Her tongue slid along his. She sipped and nipped until they were flush together.
Harper laughed into the kiss and pulled her mouth from his. “As much as I’d like to continue this, I think we’ve given them enough of a show.”
“Just letting them all know that you’re mine,” Deacon said on a low voice.
She was his? Rewind that one a second or five. “Excuse me?”
His gaze was unflinching. “Mine for as long as you’ll have me. I don’t share, Harper.”
“Neither do I.”
Crap. She hadn’t meant to say that. This was fling material. She was all about having a little fun. She was already breaking her own rules by even talking to Deacon. And she knew she was going to end up skin to skin.
But his?
No.
She belonged to no man and no place.
“I’m yours for five weeks.”
No. That wasn’t what she was supposed to say, dammit. Why the hell had that slipped out? But the look in his eyes made her belly ease. Relief and pleasure stared back at her.
Run. Run for the door right this second, Harper Lee.
“It’s a start,” he said amiably and set her down.
She realized that she wanted to see what came next for the first time in…well, ever. A start with a definite end. She could handle that.
“Want me to hold your hand?”
He laughed. “You’ve got a mean streak in there, Chef Pruitt.”
“Nah, mean streak is making a pound of bacon and leaving you one piece.”
“Don’t joke about bacon.”
She laughed at his serious tone and shrieked out a laugh when he swept her up, tucked her under his arm, and headed into Casey Wilde’s makeshift studio.
It was probably a good thing he was holding on to her because the cameras, huge spotlights on tripods, and half a dozen crew members shouting would have sent her back out the door.
“Easy.”
“Don’t think you can handle me like you do your friends, Deacon McCoy.”
“I love when you get all growly.”
She dug her fingers into his forearm, but he just kept carting her over to the drafting desk Casey was sitting at. He plunked her down on the chair. “So what do you have in mind?” he asked Casey, wasting no time.
Harper huffed and dug her phone out of her pocket. This was going to take forever. With a sigh, she opened her Twitter account. She saw a few tweets from Jazz about the scavenger hunt the next morning and then a few general bickering ones between Simon and Jazz.
They really had the whole brother/sister deal going whether they knew it or not. With a sly grin, she opened a new tweet and typed.
Want to see your favorite bassist @DemonMcCoy getting inked? 200 RTs and I’ll take pictures.
She busied herself with email and Facebook as Deacon and Casey hashed out a sketch. When a text message bubble popped up, she grinned. Evidently Jazz and Simon were online and ready to fuel the fire into a tweeting frenzy.
When Jazz put it out on the main band account, it had a landslide effect. She had so many notifications of retweets that she couldn’t even text Jazz back right away. A few texts later and they had a plan. Maybe she wouldn’t be so bored after all.
After a few measurements—which, she had to admit, she enjoyed—Casey’s graphite pencil was flying across the page.
“Why the hell is my phone blowing up?” Deacon juggled his phone out of his thigh pocket. “Four hundred and thirty-eight tweets?” He turned to her. “I’m not that popular on social media.”
“You are now.” She held up her phone and snapped a shot of his growly face with his arms out. “That’ll look good on Instagram.”
“What do you know about Instagram?”
She tilted her head to the side. “I know all about Instagram. In fact, I used social media as my thesis platform.”
“Oh, did you now?” At Casey’s direction Deacon lifted his arms over his head.
She snapped a picture of his ridiculously chiseled profile before the thought actually fired into her brain. At his raised brow, she shrugged. “What can I say? I am officially objectifying you for the world to see.”
“Uh huh. For—wait, for the world? What did you do?”
“I may have gotten the Oblivion Instagram password from both Jazz and Simon in separate texts. They’re pretty excited about this.” She glanced down at her phone and back up, taking another picture. “Possibly a little too excited.”
He dropped his arms to his sides and strode toward her. “C’mon, Harper.”
“Saying my name all sexy-like isn’t going to stop me.” She flicked through the settings and shared the photo via Twitter and Facebook.
Deacon must have heard the snick and whoosh of it posting because his chin dropped to his chest.
She slid her phone back into her pocket. “The fans are eating it up, and it’s good for Casey’s show too. I plugged both. Win-win.”
“I’ll take the free publicity,” Casey said without looking up from his papers.
Deacon groaned, looking up at the ceiling. “Well, I guess it’ll
get Gordo off my case, too. I suck at Twitter.”
“It’ll be cool for Jazz’s scrapbook thing too. You should see all the stuff she’s got.” At his blank look, she shrugged. “What? She gave me the link.”
Deacon slumped in his chair. “I feel stupid.”
“God, why? Have you seen your body?”
He shrugged. “I’m not some model.”
Kate snickered behind her. “Darlin’, if the guys who came in wanting back tats looked half as fine as you, I wouldn’t mind doing the prep work.”
“Kate.” Casey’s tone was unyielding.
Kate just rolled her eyes and flashed a grin at Harper. “My brother is far too serious.”
“And I wonder why I put up with her every day,” Casey muttered.
Harper snuggled down into one of the netted chairs that were scattered all over the room. It looked like an oversized basketball hoop that hadn’t been clipped out. It was the perfect size for her and surprisingly comfy. She tucked her feet up and listened with half an ear as Casey and Deacon went through the details. When she heard full back tattoo, she looked up. “Wait, you’re serious? He can’t do all that in one night, can he?”
Deacon looked over his shoulder at her. “One of the reasons Casey’s so famous is that he can do in four hours what most artists take eight to do.”
“And it’s done well?” She winced. “I didn’t mean—” She twisted an invisible key in front of her closed lips. Nope, she didn’t want to know. Besides, she didn’t have any art on her body, so how did she know how long a session took?
When Deacon climbed onto a padded table that had a face cut out, she immediately held up her phone for some shots. As he got comfortable she was struck again by just how ridiculously fluid his body was. Hardly a freckle marred his skin.
Going with instinct, she slid under him and took a shot of his face peeking through the donut opening. “I see chairs like this at spas. Those involved a massage, not self-inflicted madness.”
With the narrow opening, she didn’t have any choice but to focus on his eyes, and they were clear and bright. No fear, not even an ounce of trepidation.
“The end is worth it.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“Not a very convincing argument, Deacon.”
He snaked his arm down and flipped the wisps of hair she’d styled forward. Usually she had it all pinned back away from her face. “Why do you do your hair?” He brushed the back of his knuckles over her cheek where she’d dusted bronzer. “And this.”
“That’s not permanent.”
“When I make a decision, it’s final.”
She swallowed. In her ever-changing world, finality seemed so…rigid. She understood flux and quick bursts of satisfaction. For God’s sake, she couldn’t even decide to keep her hair long or short half the time.
She slid out from under the chair and got sidetracked when Kate started prepping the large piece of the sketch across Deacon’s back. She taped it to his shoulders then tapped Deacon’s calf. “Up and at ‘em, Muscles. I need to make sure you’re all straight.”
Harper swallowed as he stood in front of her and Kate ordered him to stand straight. Kate sprayed his back with some sort of solution. For the oversized camera on the trolley track, she explained about the prep work and the lotion that would adhere the design to his back. Kate fussed with the paper, and then pressed down firmly enough that Deacon had to widen his stance to stay still.
Harper took pictures and tried not to focus on the fact that another woman was rubbing lotion on his back. It really wouldn’t be nice to break her fingers. Kate’s strokes were smooth and sure, but she was taking a little too much pleasure in the task.
Harper finally dropped the phone and growled, causing Kate looked over her shoulder with a grin. “I’m a professional.”
“Professionally step back then.”
Deacon snickered, and Harper swallowed back a biting comment. She had no reason to be jealous. None whatsoever, but Kate was getting a good deal more familiar with Deacon’s back than Harper had yet. The chick needed to step back.
Finally, Kate peeled back the large sheet of acetate that held the design sketch and the huge, purple network of lines left behind made her gasp. All of that was going to be etched into his skin?
She moved around to the front of him and met his steady green gaze. “Really? Your whole back?”
“He’s one of the best in the business. I trust him.”
Her eyes drifted down to the sheer perfection of his chest. The flat brown nipples that pulled tight, the even breaths that expanded his chest, the light dust of hair that made her want to touch. She curled her fingers around her phone until it bit into her palm.
“If you don’t stop looking at me like that I’m going to have a hard time laying on my stomach again.”
“Right. Sorry.” She sidestepped him to see what Kate was doing. When he reached for her, she skipped out of reach. She really couldn’t handle that just now. “Mind if I take pictures?” she asked Kate.
“Nope. I’m used to the camera.”
Crap. She totally forgot about the camera. It was totally rolling. She must have looked like a swooning idiot. That was just fabulous.
Harper took a few pictures of Casey Wilde’s setup: his bright green tattoo gun, the needles. So many needles. Better to not dwell on the needles. She focused a few more shots on Deacon then flicked out of Instagram. If she took any more, the entire world would figure out just how much she was obsessing about his stupid, perfect body.
She dropped back into her netted chair and flicked through the Twitter feed. The replies ran from the cool factor to the hot. After a solid three minutes of scrolling through replies about how delicious Deacon’s body was, her blood pressure was somewhere in the high one hundreds.
Yes, he is very attractive, thank you very much.
Now stop fucking looking at him.
“Overreact much?” she muttered and jammed her phone in her pocket.
Monster Arms McGee was scrolling through his phone as if he wasn’t trussed up on a table waiting for torture. Casey was talking to the camera, explaining what he was going to do and how excited he was to work on Deacon.
How the hell was she going to sit through this for four hours?
She cracked her knuckles and hopped out of the chair to sit below him again. “C’mon, let’s get out of here. I can guarantee I have a better idea of what to do for four hours.”
“You couldn’t have told me that before they transferred the design onto me?”
She glanced at the bottles of ink and the now two tattoo machines. Not to mention the compressor and the low hum of other people being worked on. “Woman’s prerogative.”
“Hey.”
Cutting her eyes back to Deacon she cracked her knuckles again. “What?”
“Relax. It’s going to be fine.”
“What? I’m fine. I’m not the one that’s going to have a needle buzzing into my skin at Mach thirty. Drilling ink into my skin permanently.”
“Harper?”
“What?”
“Breathe.”
“I am breathing. You’re just crazy. Did you see the size of the tattoo he wants to do?”
“Yes, I helped him design it.”
God, was the room getting dimmer? “Are you freaking insane?”
“Harper.”
His voice was low and calm. It was pissing her the fuck off. “What did I tell you about trying to handle me? Don’t.”
“Baby, you gotta breathe.”
“Don’t call me baby,” she gasped. “Oh, God.” She brought her knees up and put her head between her legs. He slid his hand into her hair, his long fingers slipping right through the strands until he got to the back of her neck and massaged lightly.
Deep, even breaths, Harper Lee.
“Okay, I’m good.”
He tipped her head up and she burst into laughter. His face was flushed from lying face down and his eyes
were all bulgy, but they were worried for her.
“Nice,” he said with more growl than voice. “I’m trying to have a moment here.”
“I’m sorry.” She cleared her throat, but the laugh escaped again.
The sound of the gun was painful. She couldn’t imagine—didn’t want to imagine how it felt.
She scrambled out from under the table and hissed as a black gloved Casey dabbed some sort of ointment on the transfer then tugged Deacon’s skin taught and began. And her Deacon went from tapping and teasing to stone.
She watched in fascination as his chest—which previously took fairly deep breaths to fill up that monster rib cage—let out one long breath and then, it barely rose. The man went all Zen on her in less than twenty seconds.
She took a few pictures of Casey starting the work. At the first well of blood, she backed up and averted her eyes. Intellectually she knew there would be blood, but watching it bead up under the flat black ink was more than she could deal with. She flicked through the pictures she’d taken and uploaded the best of them to Instagram. She fielded texts from Simon and Jazz and busied herself with answering tweets.
When the music snicked on and One Direction blasted through the speakers, she finally laughed again. Casey’s face said it all.
Kate was going to die.
Now this she understood. The brother/sister dynamic put her on even ground. Harper couldn’t help but brush her fingers through the strands of hair that escaped Deacon’s stubby ponytail as she walked by.
To keep herself from going crazy, she took pictures of the studio. The huge lamps that shot perfect daylight through the dark room, the other chairs that were set up with more clients, the camera crew that was rolling. She even took a few pictures of the people that were behind the glass as they’d been a few hours before.
When she spotted Jazz in the front of it all, she grinned.
“See someone you know?”
Harper turned at Kate’s voice. “Yeah, Jazz is here.”
“Jazz from Oblivion, Jazz?”
“Is there any other?”
“Holy shit. Where?” The previously unflappable Kate disappeared. The exact same light green eyes that her brother had were wide and a little panicked.
