I laugh and start the machine up again. Of course she’s worried about her questions and not the needle driving into her skin several hundred times a minute.
“It’s cute how you always feel like you need conversational consent,” I say, glad to be able to pivot away from her questions about my former career and what happened to it.
“I’m sorry! I worry that my questions bother you. You’re not a very talkative person.”
“I don’t really like to talk,” I say, my eyes on my work. “But I love hearing your voice.”
She sucks in a breath, and for a moment I worry I’ve hurt her—more than I’m supposed to, anyway. But when I look up, her lips are parted and curved, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
Fuck, I want to kiss her so bad.
“Can I askyoua question?” I try, bringing my focus back to the tattoo. I’m so lucky I get to do this. I absolutely cannot fuck it up.
“I mean, you’re certainly owed a few,” she says.
“What made you come here today?”
She sighs. “I’ve been on my own for nine months, and I felt like I was just starting my real life. I joined the roller derby team. I skinny-dipped. I told a terrible date to go fuck himself. I was making progress. But then my mom showed up, and suddenly I felt sixteen again. It was like nothing had changed. I just stood by silently while she kindly, sweetly, in that supportive mom way, took me apart piece by piece.”
My grip on the tattoo machine tightens, my molars grinding. The rage I feel that anyone has made her feel this way turns me feral.
“But then I went to practice, and Dan? I kickedass. Literally. I laid skaters out using my body. The very one my mom is always telling me I need to change, hide, minimize. Like I should be embarrassed about who I am and what I look like. And I want to commemorate that feeling I had on the track today. I want to remember that I can do this. That I can be tough and strong just as I am.”
“I’m honored that you came to me,” I tell her, putting the finishing touches on the shading. I set the machine down on the tray, wipe away the excess blood and ink so she can see the final product, and look up at her.
She gazes down at the tattoo, her bottom lip between her teeth as she fights a grin.
“I love it, Dan,” she says, and dammit, the sound of the wordlovefalling from her lips does dangerous things to me. Then she reaches up and takes a fistful of my shirt, pulling me down to her lips.
CHAPTER 30
CARSON
Adrenaline is coursing through my body. The bite of the needle, Dan being so close, the enormity of this permanent decision…and now Dan’s lips are on mine. Kissing him only amplifies the burning tension sizzling through my veins. Our connection is immediate and intense, his tongue tangling with mine. I moan into his mouth, and he devours the sound. The contours of the room melt away until it’s just Dan, me, and the need between us that’s so intense it feels like a physical presence.
I release the fistful of his shirt so I can wrap my arms around him, pulling him closer, as if I could ever get close enough to him.
And Dan obviously agrees, because in an instant, he springs off his stool and sends it rolling backward across the floor, pressing his knee into the vinyl of the chair just beside my hip. His large, strong body covers mine, one hand holding him up, the other cradling my cheek. I’m so lost in him that I barely notice how narrow the chair is until Dan grasps my hips, flipping us so that I’m sitting astride him. His rakes thrusts upward, his blue eyes burnished with lust.
“So fucking gorgeous,” he mutters, and I can’t help myself. I giggle. His eyes narrow. “Something funny?”
I glance down at my shirt, sweaty from skating, a black smudge on the shoulder from Jax’s eyeliner. I’ve lost the elastic at the end of one of my braids, and the hair is rapidly trying to stage an escape. I have scrapes and bruises, I probably smell, and there’s a fresh tattoo on my arm, already bleeding beneath the protective shield Dan applied.
But Dan, who looks at me like he can hear every one of my intrusive thoughts, digs his fingers into my hips.
“Carson, I’m not fucking around here. You? Like this? Undone from spending your afternoon being a fucking badass? You look happy and strong and like you don’t give a fuck, and you’ve never looked more beautiful.”
“I don’t,” I reply. “Give a fuck, I mean.”
The word tumbles out of my mouth, no hesitation at the profanity, no need to hold it back. The realization that I have never felt more myself is too powerful.
“I don’t give a fuck how my body looks. I give a fuck what it cando. It can skate, and hit, and lift,” I say, running my hands up Dan’s chest, across his shoulders, and down his firm, rounded biceps. “And I know what else it can do.”
I roll my hips, grinding into the stiff length beneath me, straining at the zipper of his jeans. Dan lets out a low, masculine groan, his head tipping back. His jaw flexes as he works to hang on to the fraying ends of his control.
But I don’t want him to be in control.
I reach for the hem of my shirt and drag it over my head. It lands in a pile on the linoleum. Then I reach for the thick band of my sports bra.
