I feel him setting everything he needs on the bed around me and on the bedside table while I keep my eyes closed, finally relaxing after an entire day spent walking the city. I shift restlessly, playing with my legs, lifting and crossing them.
“Why you needed me fully naked for a back tattoo, I’ll never know,” I tease him.
The mattress dips as he sits behind me. I feel his body heat first, then his teeth sink into my arse cheek, biting hard, and I feel wetness pulsing between my thighs.
The machine starts humming, and my body goes still. The sound lulls me toward sleep, and with the number of tattoos already covering my back, this is familiar territory by now. Pain is not something I shy away from, so it doesn’t take long before my eyes finally close.
When I wake again, Markev is gathering his things.
“I want to see,” I say, my voice thick with sleep.
He smiles darkly and lifts a mirror.
I stare at it, my mouth falling open, my jaw might as well have hit the bed.
The art is unreal.
Otherworldly.
It flows seamlessly into the pieces I already have, as if it was always meant to be there.
And I don’t know how to feel about that.
Because it is a phoenix.
Rising from the ashes.
But it is the detail that stops me, the beauty of it.
The phoenix wears a crown.
And that… is not me.
Because I am broken.
Killed.
But I will not rise, I will stay dead.
Nothing can bring me back.
I am pulled out of the spiral by a sensation at my finger. My eyes drop, and my mouth falls open all over again.
“You did not,” I snap.
I grab the first thing within reach on the bedside table, a lamp, and hurl it at his head. It doesn’t hit him. The cord snaps it short, sending it crashing to the floor at his feet instead, still plugged in.
I might actually kill this man.
“You didnottattoo your name on my fucking ring finger,” I yell.
He only smirks, pleased with himself, his arms crossed as he leans back against the wall.
Shirtless.
A pair of grey trousers hanging low on his hips.
Those abs…
