Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 63282 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 316(@200wpm)___ 253(@250wpm)___ 211(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63282 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 316(@200wpm)___ 253(@250wpm)___ 211(@300wpm)
Fifteen minutes after we enter the chapel, Luca and I are husband and wife.
We take a picture with Elvis in front of the cute little chapel. We’ll put it somewhere in our home—previously known as Luca’s bachelor pad—to keep the memory fresh.
The picture was quick and painless, but I can’t say the same about the other ways Luca brands me as his.
I’m not talking about the wedding band, of course. The plain ring curled around my finger has yet to inflict any pain on me.
I’m talking about the piercing that Luca gave me a few months ago in his tattoo parlor. Other than the sharp pain when the needle went through my pussy lips, it also hurt during the healing process. It was torture in a whole other sense, too, because I wasn’t supposed to have sex for a month, which only made Luca more eager to tease me.
I’m also talking about the way his tattoo gun is tearing into my skin right now, marking me with indelible ink. The mechanical noise pierces my ears, making the pain feel more intense—not that I mind.
As I lie on the bed, I look up and squint my eyes. The sunlight streaming into our bedroom through the windows hits the white-gold wedding band around my finger, and the metal handcuffs around my wrists.
I grunt as the pain on the outer side of my right thigh grows more intense.
“Regretting this already, doll?” Luca asks without taking his eyes off my skin. The concentration in those knitted eyebrows and intense gaze makes my heart flutter.
“No.” I bite my lower lip to distract myself from the pain.
My core clenches, and I feel myself growing wet. Without a thread of clothing on my body, it’s not going to take long now until my arousal drips down onto the bed.
“Good. Because I’m far from done.” Luca puts his tattoo machine aside for a moment and leans down to kiss my inner thigh before he continues his work.
“Hey, remember when you catfished me online and got me to meet up with you?” I ask, trying to distract myself from the sharp pain.
“Yeah,” Luca says without looking up, keeping his focus on his work.
“How did you get me past the hotel lobby wearing a blindfold?”
“I told them I was giving you a birthday surprise,” he says concisely as his steady hands guide the needle marking my skin with ink.
Okay. It doesn’t seem like he can talk right now. Luca’s great at a lot of things, but multi-tasking isn’t one of them.
We were going to do this at Luca’s tattoo parlor. But since this is basically foreplay for us . . . we decided to do it at home, where I can be naked and tied up on the bed while Luca tattoos me.
I mean, at the parlor, it’d be completely inappropriate for me to have a spreader bar between my legs . . . It would’ve been more convenient, though, because I’m always at the parlor anyway, now that the clinic has moved into the space above it.
Since the move, it’s been a lot easier for me to avoid my mom. Now that I’m not her tenant anymore, she can’t make me talk to her if I don’t feel like it.
I have to give my mom some credit, though. After Luca’s anonymous tip and the subsequent police visit, she’s stopped blackmailing us for drugs.
Judging by the way she looks, she’s still using. I have no idea where she buys from, and I don’t care. But if she tries to bother us again, we’re not above making another phone call to the police.
The cops let her off with a warning the first time, but they’re likely to give her something harsher if they get her a second time.
All in all, I’m glad Luca and I have chosen to stay here in Ashbourne. The clinic’s patients have been happy to follow us to our new location, and I feel like I’m providing a necessary service because there’s literally no other vet in town.
Pretty much all pet owners in town come to the clinic. My days are never boring because I know all my clients, and I can never guess who’s going to drop by on any given day.
I’ve watched Martin’s puppy grow into a handsome adult Maltese with a fluffy coat. I’ve put down a couple of sick, old dogs with terminal conditions. I’ve helped farm animals give birth.
My work forces me to watch intimate moments between pets and their owners. I can choose to get depressed about all the sickness and death, or I can celebrate the new lives I’ve helped to bring into the world and the old ones I’ve helped to prolong.
Sometimes, though, truly unexpected things happen. The kind of things that belong in the “Weird News” section of the paper.