by Nia Farrell
He didn’t do relationships, but he wanted more than tonight. What exactly did that mean? Did he plan to fuck her until it got old or she got clingy, then cut her loose?
He wanted her on birth control. That didn’t happen overnight. Even if she started next week, it would be a month before it would be effective.
She would need it if they stayed together. And if they didn’t… well, now that she was sexually active again, she would need to protect herself.
Flynn had dressed while she was gone. It was a shame to hide all that ink beneath his clothes. Now that she’d seen his body, she could look at him and imagine him naked.
He turned and caught her staring.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she quipped. “I was just thinking that I didn’t give you permission to put on your clothes. It hardly seems fair that you’re dressed and I’m not.”
He crossed the floor to where she stood, fisted her hair and scored her neck with his teeth. “If I had my way, I’d keep you naked. But it’s getting late. You get dressed. I’ll clean up here.”
She waited for him to say more. When he didn’t, she figured this was it. “I suppose I ought to get going.”
That stopped him short. “It’s Saturday,” Flynn reminded her. “There are places still open if you’re not ready to call it a night, or we can go to the clubhouse. You can follow me. Better yet, you can ride with me and we’ll come back for your car in the morning. There’s no time limit for parking on weekends. If you’re worried, you can always park it in the staff lot off the alley behind the shop. What do you say?”
Riding with him to the clubhouse…coming back for her car in the morning? Was that Flynn-speak for saying that he wanted her to spend the night with him?
Sara smiled to have figured out his secret code. Turnabout was fair play. Rather than acquiesce too easily, she figured that she would make him work to figure out her code, too. “If I ride with you, I’ll need my panties. If you don’t want to give them to me, then I think I’ll just call it a night and head home.”
In other words, I’m not going to jump when you snap your fingers. If you want me, prove it.
Flynn gave her the skunk eye. “Jesus, you play hardball, woman.” He shook his head and pulled her panties from his pocket. “Here. Now get dressed before I change my mind.”
Sara hid her smile and slipped into her underwear, panties first, then bra. She put on her skirt, stuck her arms through the sleeves of her knit top, and pulled it over her head. Smoothing it down, she slipped on her shoes.
“I’m ready when you are,” she called, plucking her purse from the floor and hooking it over her shoulder.
“I’m in the laundry room. I’ll be out in a minute.”
He met her in the hallway. “What do you want to do with your car? Leave it or move it out back?”
“Leave it’s fine.”
“I need to get my keys from the front door. I’ll only be a sec.”
He was back in no time. “My bike’s parked behind the shop. I’ll let you use my helmet.”
“I’d feel better if you wore it. Your back will protect me. You’re going to be catching bugs in your teeth—or worse, in your eyes—without it.”
He chuckled. “Maybe. And just so you know, those panties are on loan. As soon as we get to the clubhouse, they’re mine.”
She should have known better. Flynn played to win, and he seemed used to getting his way. He was far more practiced at it, for sure. Still, she was flattered that he wanted to keep her with him. She appreciated that he was willing to bend a little to make it happen. There might be hope for them yet.
The clubhouse parking lot was far less crowded than last time she was here.
“Most of the guys are at Paradise Found,” Flynn explained, parking in his usual spot.
“That strip club outside of town?” she asked. She waited until he was standing so that he could help her down.
“Yeah.” Flynn took hold of her waist and lifted her off his bike, setting her on her feet beside it. “The club owns the place. Mad Dog’s the man in charge. He had a guest artist appearing tonight. The guys are fans.”
“What about you?” she asked, tamping down the jealousy that reared its ugly head.
Flynn shrugged. “She’s okay.”
“So you’ve seen her.”
“She does porn, so yeah, I’ve seen her. Aren’t you forgetting something?”
He dropped his gaze to her lap.
“Here?”
“I told you as soon as we were at the clubhouse. We’re here.”
“We’re in the parking lot.”
Flynn shook his head and tsked. “Are you telling me, you’d rather go inside and take them off in front of everyone in the lounge?”
“No. I thought your room—”
“Don’t put words in my mouth. I never said my room. Come on, now. Hand them over.”
Clearly, this was only going to go one way.
His way.
Biting her tongue, Sara sat her purse on his bike and turned to face Flynn. Keeping all the reveal away from him and the clubhouse, she reached under the back of her skirt, hooked her fingers in the elastic waistband, and pulled her panties down. When they reached her ankles, she lifted one leg free, then the other. Straightening, she shoved them at Flynn. “I’ll need them back tomorrow unless you’re going to loan me a pair of sweatpants or boxers.”
Flynn took her undies. Shoving them in his front pocket, he grinned unapologetically. “Tomorrow, then.”
The clubhouse lounge had more women than men, for once. Jack Daniels was anchoring the bar while Carly watched him drink. Sara hated to think that might be her in the future, looking at Flynn while he focused on something else. His work. His art. The bodies of women who came to him for tattoos. Sweetbutts and mamas in the clubhouse lounge.
Jesus. She could drive herself nuts with what ifs.
Shaking herself, she followed Flynn upstairs to his room.
He put his helmet on the dresser, emptied his pockets, and started taking off his clothes. Surely he wasn’t ready to have sex again.
She stayed by the door, far away from his bed. “What are you doing?”
He hung his cut on the back of a chair and sat down to pull off his boots and socks. “Getting ready for a shower. I suggest you do the same. Right now, we have the bathroom to ourselves. If Hawk comes back with company, it can get crowded.”
Huh? “It won’t if you lock the door.”
“No,” he drawled. Getting in his closet, he tossed his socks into a handled laundry basket. “But we’ll have to cut it short if they need in and start knocking.”
She shook her head and sighed. “I was hoping I’d left those days behind me after college graduation. The whole time that I was at SIU, we had one shared bathroom for two dorm rooms. It was a madhouse when all four girls were trying to get ready at once.”
He reached for the hem of his T-shirt. “Come on. Shower with me. When we’re done, I’ll let you look at my ink. Ask me nice, and you can even touch it. Front, back, wherever.”
Holy cow. That’s exactly what she’d been itching to do since she met him. She didn’t know how to ask without sounding like she was treating him like a piece of meat. Since he seemed all about reciprocating—energy exchange, he called it, she needed to offer something in return. She didn’t really have anything she could show him that he hadn’t already seen. Maybe if she offered to model for him?
“When I’m done looking, how about if I let you draw me like a French girl? With one condition,” she added. “You can’t show my face or make it where anyone would recognize me.”
Flynn lit up like a night sky over Las Vegas. Wadding up his shirt, he tossed it in the basket, too. “I can do that,” he swore, reaching for the button on his jeans. “Now strip, woman. We don’t have all night. Well, we do, but I want to get clean—and the hot water will be good for you. It’ll help ease out some of the soreness. You do know that you’re wa
lking funny, right?”
He kicked off his jeans and added them to his laundry. Closing the closet door, he stood there wearing nothing but a smile.
His body was glorious, but his grin was maddening. He was taking entirely too much pleasure in her pain.
“Um. Yeah. Quit smiling. It’s not funny.” Slipping off her shoes, Sara set them by the chair. She peeled off her top and reached for her bra.
“No, it’s not,” he agreed. “And since I made you that way, I think that I should give you a massage. Before or after I draw you. Your pick.”
She knew Flynn. The man had a libido as large as Texas, and he knew how to make her want him. If they did her massage beforehand, she might never get her portrait done.
Sara hung her bra on the chair back and took off her skirt. Heading for the bathroom, she tossed her answer back at him.
“After.”
Chapter Ten
Flynn actually behaved himself in the shower. Sara expected him to get frisky but he was all business… well, except for snapping her with a towel when he caught her staring again.
Jesus. She felt like she’d regressed to the geek she’d been in high school, in lust with the jock in English 1.
Flynn didn’t like her dawdling but he didn’t seem to mind being the object of her adoration. She tried to study his ink without touching but it was so damn hard when he had this perfectly sculpted body—really, really nice pecs, washboard abs, an Adonis belt, long, tattooed legs, an athletic back, and a perfect bubble butt.
The barbells, though, were her undoing.
They were in his bedroom. She was wearing a towel. He was wearing ink. She’d started with his back, comparing his original painting to Kaylee’s interpretation of it. There were subtle variations, but she’d done an impressive job.
“How long did it take?” she asked. It was solid coverage from neck to waist.
“Months,” he said. “We had to do it after hours and on weekends, whenever she could fit it into her schedule. Her mom had been in a hit-and-run accident. She was out of rehab but she needed a lot of help with things. The eight kids are still supposed to take turns with her but it seems like Kaylee does more than the rest.”
“How awful.” Sara suppressed a shudder. “I lost my dad to a drunk driver. Mom couldn’t handle the stress. She was gone within a year. Died of a broken heart, really. I went to live with my aunt after that.”
She didn’t usually talk about her past, but she wanted Flynn to know that he wasn’t alone in his loss.
“How old were you?”
“Twelve. My brother Dell was nineteen. He and his boyfriend had a one-bedroom apartment. They wouldn’t have had room for me, even if Aunt Ruth would have let them take me in. She’s okay with his being gay, but at my age, she thought I needed a woman’s guidance. She was right. My brother would have been helpless when I was going through puberty. Poor Aunt Ruth earned stars in her crown, putting up with all that teenage angst. I see her gray hair now and wonder how many I put there.”
He looked skeptical. “You couldn’t have been that bad.”
She bit her lip and told him her most dreaded secret. “I got caught shoplifting cigarettes when I was thirteen. The funny thing was, I didn’t even smoke. I was trying to impress a boy who dared me.”
Flynn scowled. “Where was he?”
“Outside the store.”
“What did he do?”
She rolled her eyes. “He cut and ran, of course.”
That had been her experience from then until now. Picking boys and men who left when things got tough. She’d like to think that Flynn was different, but who knew, really? Only time would tell.
“Punk.” His lip curled in distaste. “Tell me you didn’t go back to him.”
“I didn’t,” she said. Even at that age, she knew better. “I don’t do second chances.”
Meeting his gaze and holding it, she hoped that he’d take her warning to heart. She’d give him one shot with her. If he ever blows me off, that’s it. I’m through.
She deserved a man who would cherish her. She wasn’t going to settle for anything less.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t have fun in the meantime.
She made a detailed study of his front, tracing his designs with her eyes. When she looked at his chest, she lifted a finger and touched his barbell, fascinated by it. Static electricity snapped, shocking them both but especially Flynn. His areolas puckered and contracted. His nipples knotted into pebble-hard peaks. His cock sprang to attention.
“Fuck!” He caught her hands and planted both of them on his chest. The barbells and his nipples pressed the center of her palms.
Sara looked up at him. The apology on her lips died, incinerated by the searing heat in his eyes.
“Now you can touch me,” he rumbled.
Afraid of tempting him too much, she slid her fingers to his shoulders and ran them down the corded muscles of his arms. He had full sleeves of ink on both of them, a maze of intricate whirls and patterns. There was a tattoo on his upper left chest, then a blank canvas of skin until his waist, where the pattern on his back wrapped around to the front and continued down his hips and legs.
“You shave,” she said, feeling the slight prick of stubble.
“Once a week. It’s a pain in the ass.”
She smiled. “I know, and I don’t have nearly as much to shave as you do. But I can see why you do it. It would be a shame to hide any of this.”
She paused with her hand on the side of his hip and looked at the erection he was sporting. “I’m sorry about the shock. I never thought…”
“Don’t tell me you can’t feel the electricity between us. It’s like being near a live wire when I’m with you. Where your hand is…there’s a current running straight to my groin. You’ve got me so hard now, it hurts.”
She caught her lip between her teeth and slid her gaze up to meet his. “Shall I kiss it and make it better?”
Flynn groaned. “I’m trying to be the better man here, sugar. If I’m gonna draw you, oral’s gonna have to wait.”
She’d been worried about his libido, but being denied his cock was strangely disappointing.
There was no hiding her reaction from Flynn. Chucking a finger under her chin, he lifted her downcast face and pressed his forehead to hers. “It’s not the first boner that I’ll make go away, and it won’t be the last. Right now, I want you on the bed. Let me get my art pad and I’ll pose you when I’m ready.”
Flynn was using a summer-weight blanket without a bedcover. Since he hadn’t told her to turn it down, she sat on the mattress, swung her feet up, and lay on the side of the bed closest to his desk.
Evidently, he kept art supplies in the top of his chest of drawers. Opening it, he rummaged around before pulling out an art pad and several pencils, a sharpener, and a smudge stick. Next, he got out a tablet, turned it on, and searched until he found what he wanted. “We’re going to do a modified pose of this.”
Sara looked at the nude woman. She was sitting in a twist, with both hands by her left hip. Her left leg was slightly bent and stretched out. Her right knee was drawn up enough to touch her forehead, but you could see the left side of her face.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly.
Flynn touched her cheek. “Trust me. Do this, then I’ll switch things from there.”
She sat on the bed with her feet pointed towards the headboard and posed the same way as the model.
“Now, lift your head and bring your right arm to the other side of your body. That’s it. Put the ball of your right foot on the mattress. Rest your forehead against your knee, the farther to the right side, the better. Now, wrap your right arm around your knee and face. Reach as far as you can and still be comfortable.”
The way he had her sitting, her hair and her knee hid her face and right breast. Her left leg hid her groin, leaving only her left breast visible. This would work.
“You comfortable?” he asked. “It will take me a whil
e to sketch it…or I could take your picture with my phone and draw from that.”
“I’m good,” she told him. She’d rather not have photographs taken when she was less than dressed. Not that she didn’t trust Flynn, but things happened.
“Okay. Try to hold still, then.”
She heard him flip open the art pad and turn to a blank page. Putting pencil to paper, he began sketching. She realized that he hadn’t gotten dressed and almost smiled at the irony of a naked Flynn drawing her nude.
Taking shallow breaths, Sara tried to stay as still for him as she possibly could.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“Okay. How are you doing?”
“Almost done. Just give me a few.”
She managed to hold the pose until he finished. “Done,” he said. “You can let go. Stretch out, and try to relax.”
Straightening, she arched her back and stretched it, wincing when her muscles complained.
“Does it hurt? Do you need to take something?”
She was still sore from their sexual marathon at Angel Ink. “I have some ibuprofen in my purse, but I could really use the massage that you promised me.”
Flynn nodded. “You’ll get it as soon as you take your pills. Do you need water?”
“I have some, thanks.” She’d filled her travel bottle before meeting Flynn. Pulling it out of her purse, she felt around until she found the slim travel vial of analgesics. She was sore enough, she took three, washing them down with a healthy dose of water.
Flynn had disappeared into the bathroom. Sara padded over to his desk, where the sketch pad lay opened to the page that had her portrait. It was stunning. The rendering was so lifelike, it almost looked like a black-and-white photograph. He was brilliant. Truly brilliant. She was convinced more than ever that he needed to do something with his art. It was a shame to deny the world the pleasure of seeing it.
He came back into the bedroom with two large towels, a dry washcloth, and a bottle of coconut oil. Spreading the towels on top of the bed, he patted the looped terry. “Up you go. I need you on your stomach to start.”
