Inked

“Kisses,” I remind her. “I’ll make everything feel better if you hang in here.”

“You’ve got magic kisses?” That’s her drunk talking, laughter blurring the edges of her words and pushing away the tears.

“You can find out.”

“I already know how you kiss,” she announces, that cute pink blush getting deeper. “We’ve met before.”

Shit. I rack my brain trying to remember her. Women come and go in my life. Pretty sure I wouldn’t have fucked Harper and forgotten her, though, so maybe she’s just messing with me. Fair enough, seeing as how I’m planning on getting her out of those cute little panties just as soon as I can.

“That so? We’ve shared adult naptime? Done the bedroom rodeo?” I start in on the skin over her spine.

“It doesn’t matter.” She shrugs like whatever memories she’s got are NBFD—no big fucking deal—and I tap her ass.

“Freeze,” I remind her. “Or you’ll make me color outside the lines. And while you’re holding that thought, give me details about what we did together.”

“Nope.” Now I get the smile I wanted earlier, a big, wicked grin that lights up her entire face.

“A hint,” I suggest.

“We met in high school,” she concedes.

Huh. I do some more thinking while I work on her ink. High school wasn’t my finest moment. I was too busy being angry at the world to stop and think. Used my fists, my mouth, my dick—whatever got the biggest rise out of my audience. Guess Harper here must have been on the receiving end of my dick.

“Tell me all about it.”

“Not a chance.” I see her roll her eyes in the window. I forgo smacking her ass, seeing as how we’re in a public venue and all. I don’t need the shit Prez would give me if the club’s lawyers had to get me out of an assault charge. Instead, I try my words again. I can work miracles with my tongue, but that’s in the eating-her-out department. Once I start working her clit over, she’ll tell me what I want to know.

Not that she seems to remember things that way.

“You don’t want to piss off the guy holding the needle, sweetheart.”

She narrows her eyes. “I’m paying you. You have to do what I say.”

Christ, she makes me laugh. “Do I look like I follow the rules? Remind me.”

She rolls her eyes. “You’re impossible.”

“But you like me.”

“And you don’t remember me,” she counters. “At all.”

“I was your best, right? So fucking awesome that the Douche couldn’t hope to compare?” I squeeze her shoulder with my free hand. I can feel her bra strap beneath the silky fabric, so I nudge it downward an inch just to piss her off. “No. Don’t tell me. I’ll guess.”

CHAPTER THREE (#u115d2751-7af2-5889-bd97-c1244875cbf1)

Harper

“MOVE YOUR HAND and I won’t have to sue you.”

The words fly out of my mouth automatically, the way you blurt out excuse me when you stand on a stranger’s foot in the train or accidentally slam your boob into someone. They’re just words, things that should be said. I have no clue what I’d do if he actually acted on them.

Okay.

I might know.

I suspect—but can’t confirm—I’d beg him to keep on touching me because he’s right about one thing. The pain has melted into something else, a throbbing, hot sensation that makes me squirm against the leather seat and imagine dirty, depraved acts. It’s wrong. It’s completely unprofessional and I’m entirely certain I could be thrown out of Ink Me with a half-finished tattoo on my back for propositioning the talent and getting the seat all wet.

“You’re really not gonna tell me?” Swear to God, the man is pouting—and he’s got the face for it. He could model for an underwear company. His billboard would stop traffic, he’s so damned pretty. I had no idea I was this shallow but his cheekbones and that mouth... I’d happily look at every inch of him, in or out of his briefs.

I really need to have sex again.

“We did it in the gym,” he suggests, big hands moving over my skin. I know he’s just doing his job, but I’m having the most inappropriate feelings for him. Fortunately he has no filter himself.

“Earth to Harper.” He taps my back to get my attention. “Did you check out like this when we made love? Because you might have scarred me.”

Ordinarily, his inability to recall me—naked no less—would be humiliating, but my recent breakup with Mark has set the bar high.

“Definitely the gym,” Vik murmurs. He’s changed since that night in high school—filled out and gotten even bigger. The football coach was always after him to play, although he never would.

“You think?” The constant pleasure-burn of the needle loosens something inside me and not just my tongue. I can’t hold on to any kind of anger right now. It leaches out of me.

“Yeah.” I see Vik nod in the window. His hair slides around his face, longer and sun-bleached, a thick, shaggy mane better suited to a tiger or some kind of wild animal. “Bet we got nasty on the mats beneath the bleachers. Bet you were worried someone might walk in on us.”

“Not the gym.” The needle bites into my skin again, but the burn isn’t so bad now. It’s a deep, insistent rhythm of its own, this sharp scratching as he remakes me.

He’s silent for a moment, but he’s not done. “Empty classroom, then. Fucking loved those big teacher desks they had.”

“You didn’t.” God, I hope no one did the whole apple-for-the-teacher thing after he’d done the nasty. Talk about unsanitary.

“I can’t believe I don’t remember you.” I have to give him credit. He sounds like he means it.

I point out the obvious, however. “Maybe you have a volume problem.”

He winks at me in the glass. “Practice makes perfect.”

I roll my eyes. “There’s a time and a place for overachieving. Do you even know how many girls you’ve slept with?”

“Do you know?” he counters.

“Zero,” I say promptly. “Absolutely no girls.”

“Tell me it’s not so.” He sighs. “All guys know that you college girls go wild and crazy in your dorms as soon as it’s lights-out. Tell me you lived at home and I’ll forgive you.”

“On campus. All four years. Pick a new fantasy.”

“Do you promise to help me reenact it?”

“When hell freezes over,” I say companionably. This is crazy. Despite our brief but memorable (on my part, anyhow) past, I don’t really know Vik. He’s changed, I’ve changed and his idea of conversation would get me fired at my own job. On the other hand, I wanted to start over. New Me is getting her very first tattoo because Old Me wouldn’t have so much as glanced at a tattoo parlor. So perhaps New Me can also trade witty sex jokes with the crazy-hot tattoo artist. New Me wouldn’t give it up in the back seat of a Dodge Charger and then head home panty-less. If nothing else, New Me will be a thong girl all the way.