In minutes, Bolt was back, got on the cold table. The artist snapped on gloves, dipping the needle into black ink that gleamed like a challenge, slipping off a swath of cloth, exposing the hard cut of Bolt’s hip bone and the vulnerable stretch of skin leading into his groin, the exact path the lightning bolt would take.
Shamrock let out a strangled noise the moment he realized the angle. “Oh, Jesus, Mary, and tactical Joseph, he’s going full commitment.”
Bolt smirked, though a tight flicker of nerves curled low in his gut. This wasn’t the safe canvas of his chest or arm. This was the raw, sensitive strip of flesh that made grown men reconsider their life choices. The place where skin was thin and nerves lived close to the surface, and where even a breeze could make a man twitch.
But that was the point, wasn’t it? A strike didn’t land in places that didn’t matter.
The artist touched his hip and Bolt almost jerked.
Holy fuck. Yeah, that was going to hurt.
“Gonna need you to angle your hips toward me,” the artist said, clinical, already bracing his wrist for the first pass of the needle.
Bolt exhaled slowly and shifted, baring more of himself than he’d planned, not in the sexual way he could handle blindfolded and half-asleep, but in the exposed way, the private way, the trust way.
He felt the cool air on that strip of skin, the place so near to his dick that his entire body coiled tight with instinct.
He heard Fly swear quietly. Than coughed and politely averted his eyes. He met Shamrock’s eyes, and damn if that crazy bastard knew exactly what was coursing through him.
Bolt grinned, because if he didn’t grin, he’d think about the truth, that this tattoo meant more to him than he could explain,
“Whenever you’re ready,” the artist murmured.
Bolt braced himself.
“Hit me.”
The needle met his skin, and white-hot pain ripped through him like a live wire.
He sucked in a breath. Every man in the room winced in sympathy, even Shamrock went quiet for half a second.
The artist followed the natural curve of Bolt’s hip, dragging the needle downward, closer and closer toward the inner thigh. The closer it came to his groin, the more the pain sharpened into a kind of blazing clarity that stole his breath.
He locked his jaw, refusing to flinch.
Not here. Not in front of the men who had pulled him from oceans, from nightmares, from the worst of the world. Not in front of the brothers who forged the lightning inside him long before it ever hit his skin.
The needle bit down, a hot, unforgiving sting that lanced deep into flesh, and Bolt inhaled sharply through his teeth. Pain didn’t scare him; he’d lived with worse. But tattoo pain was its own creature. A steady, burrowing burn that hummed through nerves and bone, a reminder that some choices etched deeper than skin.
He let his eyes fall half-closed, drifting on that thrum of sensation. Pain had a way of slowing his mind down just enough to let the truth get close. Faster than he liked, slower than he usually allowed.
He’d grown up in homes that weren’t homes at all, drifting from one foster family to another, learning early that laughter was safer than silence and charm was easier than heartbreak. Quiet moments made room for thoughts he didn’t trust. Stillness was a mirror he didn’t want to look into. Steadiness, the kind Bear expected, the kind SEALs lived and died by, was a quality he wasn’t always sure he had in him.
Then he’d gone to BUD/S. He’d endured the kind of bone-deep pain few men survived. Hell Week wasn’t a misnomer, and brotherhood wasn’t just a word to him now. It was scored into his skin, wrapped around his soul, and etched on his heart.
The needle carved lower, a diagonal slash toward his hip, and he hissed under his breath. Yeah. That one hurt. Good. Let it hurt.
The ache grounded him, anchored him in a way that nothing else did. Ink under skin was permanence, and permanence was something he’d never had the luxury of claiming before the Teams. Every home he’d ever lived in had been temporary. Every adult had been temporary. Every promise had been temporary. He learned to live for the moment because tomorrow had always been a question mark.
But this? Choosing this? Letting a lightning bolt, his lightning bolt, be scored along his body, pointing toward the most intimate, reckless part of him? That wasn’t temporary. That was ownership.
It was the closest thing to belonging he’d ever carved for himself.
Commitment was iffy when he’d been a kid, but now, as a newly minted Navy SEAL, he was all fucking in.
“Doing all right?” the artist asked without looking up.
Bolt smirked. “I’ve had worse,” he said lightly, though his pulse thundered in his ears. “Hell Week. Just put it as close to the goods as you can.”
