Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 131916 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131916 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
That first night when I’d tattooed her, I’d chalked the reaction I had to her up to me being a twisted fiend. Hungering for something I should never take.
I’d loved that I had been the one to etch her permanently. Loved that she had been going to walk out of my shop and forever carry a piece of me.
What I hadn’t known was this woman was the one who would permanently etch herself on me.
The one who would change everything.
The one who was going to take my guilt and shame and knit it back into love.
I edged back, and I wiped up the excess ink and the bit of blood with the towel before I leaned in and blew across the heated skin to give her some relief. Didn’t feel I was crossing a line that time.
Not when the Little Runner was mine.
“How you holding up over there?” I rumbled as I kept brushing the needle over her flesh that bloomed pink.
“I’m great.” It was all kinds of breathy.
A rough chuckle rolled out of me. “Great, huh?”
She shifted to look back at me from over her shoulder. The cinnamon flecks in her eyes flamed. “Any time I’m with you, I’m great.”
“That so?”
“Mm-hmm.” There was a coyness to it. The girl playing nothing but temptation and a tease.
“If this is great, then I can’t imagine just how good you feel when I’m tryin’ for it.” I let the suggestion wind into my tone.
A raspy laugh escaped her. “Now that is something else entirely.”
“Only thing I want…to give you pleasure.” I said it as I finished up the last few passes I needed to make. I set my tools aside and ripped off my black rubber gloves, then I eased back, inspecting my work.
Pride gripped me by the chest.
But it wasn’t of my work. It was of this woman who’d only known running.
Fear.
Terror of what might catch up to her.
But when she’d finally found her way home…to us…she had been willing to give it all to protect it.
This home.
This place.
Our son.
“How does it look?” she asked on a whisper.
I let my gaze travel up the column of her back. “Stunning. Steal the breath straight outta my lungs stunning.”
Goosebumps lifted on the surface of her flesh. She knew I wasn’t talking about the tat.
Still, I pushed from the stool and took one step to the side so she could peer behind her to see the reflection of it in the mirror that hung on the wall.
Tears blurred her eyes as she glanced up at me. “Oh wow, River. It’s…beautiful.”
My fingertips slipped along her bare shoulder. “You’re what’s beautiful, Charleigh.”
“You’ve always made me feel that way. I felt seen the moment I met you.”
“Think you’ve been the only thing I could see since the second I found you standing in that doorway.”
I sat back on the stool and began to clean the tattoo.
Charleigh hummed as I did, as if she found pleasure in that bare touch.
She had her shorts pulled all the way down so the band only covered half her ass, and she’d removed her tank, her bare tits smashed to the leather of the seat.
I was inundated by the way I’d felt that first night. The way I’d wanted to peel her out of her little shorts and rid her of her tank so I could get to those sweet, tiny tits.
How I’d wanted to sink my cock deep into the well of her squirming body.
Fucking her right here on my chair, something I’d never done before because it was fucking unprofessional.
I had every intention of changing that tonight.
Making sure I didn’t touch any of the area I’d tatted, my hands slipped down to grip her by the outside of the waist. “You, Charleigh,” I murmured. “You came into my life like a hurricane. Thought you were fuckin’ it all up. Destroying the foundation I’d set. The commitment I’d made to a little boy after I’d failed his mother. My commitment to Sovereign Sanctum. And there you were…filling the hollow spaces we didn’t know had been empty.”
She shifted so she was looking back at me, her hands still clinging to the chair. “And there you were…showing me that I didn’t have to be alone. That I didn’t have to be afraid. Lighting the places inside me that I thought were forever dead. Making me fall in love with a little boy. The two of you becoming my balm. And then to find out he was mine…”
My palms glided up her ribs. “We’re both yours, Charleigh. Think we would have been either way.”
“Yes. I loved him, no matter what.”
Energy swelled, two of us trapped, the already cramped walls of my station closing in.
Lust and possession smacked me in the face.
I pushed to my feet, rising up behind her.
“Get on your knees…I want to fuck you on my chair.”