“God, I was miserable without you,” I confessed into her neck.
She squeezed me tighter. “I was a mess, too.”
“I thought I’d lost you again. I thought…” I shook my head, and then I was pulling her in closer, like even a centimeter of space between us was too much. “Have I apologized enough yet? Because I really want to say I’m sorry another million times. Oh! I could start saying it in Spanish. Lo siento. Lo siento mucho.”
Mary kissed my hair. “Save your apologies for the next time I’m a stubborn witch.”
“Witch,” I mused with a laugh, leaning up on my elbows so I could look down at her. “That’s pretty accurate, considering the spell you have me under.”
“Mmm,” she mused, trailing her fingertip down my chest. “I wonder what I can use my powers to make you do…”
“I think at this point we know the answer to that is anything.”
Mary bit her lip, shaking her head on a long, sated sigh. She kept trailing lines on my skin, her expression softening. “So… what now?”
“What do you want?”
“To be together,” she said, lifting her eyes to mine. “Really be together.”
“As if there was another option.”
She smiled a bit. “I just mean… I know there’s a possibility of you getting drafted. And, if you do…”
I arched a brow, waiting. “Say it. What do you want, Mary?”
She glared at me, but her smile broke through. “You’re such an ass.”
“I just like to hear my girl confess how badly she wants me,” I argued with a roll of my hips into her. I was covering her in kisses again as she wrapped her arms around me, her soft laugh the sweetest sound.
“Fine,” she conceded, making me stop with a hand pressing against my chest. “I want to go with you.”
“Say it again.”
“I want to go with you,” she said louder, pinching me in the side. “You cocky sonofabitch.”
I resisted the urge to make a joke about just how cocky I could be — mostly because I was high off her saying she wanted to go with me if I was drafted.
When I was drafted.
“What else?” I asked.
She considered. “Well, I want to figure out a way to tattoo wherever we end up.”
“You will.”
Mary didn’t seem as confident. “Before I can move forward, I have to deal with what happened with Nero.” She curled into me a little then. “I think… I think I want to talk to the other girls at the shop, see if any of them went through what I did. My word against his isn’t much, but if there are more than us?”
I nodded.
“And… God, it makes me sick to consider, but… I think I need to tell his wife.”
“I’m with you,” I said. “Whatever you want to do. And I promise not to punch the fucker in the face again. Or any other place — even though I still stand firm that he deserves a dick punch.”
Mary laughed. “I have a confession.”
“Mm?”
“I actually found it really hot when you laid him out.”
My jaw dropped. “And you made me pay for it with weeks of misery?!”
“Just because it turned me on didn’t mean I wasn’t still pissed!”
“It turned you on?” I smirked against her skin. “In that case, I take back what I said about it never happening again.”
I smothered her with another round of kisses while she squirmed, and I knew I could stay just like that, in bed with her, forever, and I would live the happiest life.
“I don’t know what will happen with him, if anything. And I reserve the right to change my mind,” she said. “But… I want to at least try. I don’t want him to keep doing this to other girls.”
I nodded, leaning up on my elbow so I could brush her hair from her face. “I’m with you. And, when you do have your own chair again, I have a long list of clients for you.”
Mary frowned.
“The entire NBU football team.”
At that, she laughed. “Right.”
“I’m serious. They love your work. They all want in. So, when you have a chair again, you’ll be busy.”
“If I have a chair again.”
“You will. In fact, when I get signed, you can bet your sweet ass that fat signing bonus I get will go to opening up your own shop.”
Mary bit her lip. “I have always wanted to open my own… I was thinking maybe one with all female artists. A real bad bitch spot. Palico could be our shop cat.”
“See? That asshole can’t keep you down for long.”
“I’d never use your money for it, though.”
“Like you have a choice,” I said. “Besides, it’s our money.”
“We’re not married, Leo.”
My tongue hurt from how hard I had to hold it back from saying yet.
“If you get a bonus, you should invest it.”
“Nah, too safe,” I said, but I was done talking, and I let her know with a slow trail of my fingers down her shoulder and over the swells of her breasts. Her breath caught when I thumbed her piercing, her nipple pebbling beneath the touch.
“What happens if you don’t get drafted,” she managed through a raspy breath. “And I never tattoo again?”
I shrugged. “We sell everything we own and move to a new country and figure out who we want to be next.” I flipped her until she was on her back, until I was between her legs. “Wherever we go, whatever we do, you belong to me,” I said, kissing along her jaw. “And I belong to you.”
Mary grabbed my face in her hands, stopping me so I had no choice but to look at her.
“I love you,” she said.
My chest squeezed, heart throbbing inside it. “Fuck, I love to hear that.”
“I love you,” she repeated, wrapping her legs around me and pulling me flush against her.
“Te amo, cari?o,” I echoed, claiming her mouth with a hard, demanding kiss.
She opened for me then, letting my tongue sweep in to dance with hers as her hips widened. She was already wet, my cock sliding between her lips and making us both inhale on a groan. But I’d ravaged her once tonight in a frenzy.
Now, I wanted to take my time.
“Come here,” I rasped, climbing off of her and the bed altogether. I stood at the edge of it, stroking my cock where she’d slicked me with her desire.
Mary’s eyes were glued to my fist as I pumped, her breasts heaving, every curve of her on display in the sheets where she waited for my instruction.
“Lie on your back,” I said. “I want your head right here.”
I pointed to the edge of the bed in front of me, and she maneuvered herself down, shimmying until she was lying under me with her eyes cast up and waiting again.
She was so fucking gorgeous it hurt.
Her knees were together, as if she was suddenly shy, but her hands still roamed her body, plucking at her piercings and trailing every lush curve. I let my eyes roam slowly over every color of ink that sprawled her skin — black and blue and red and green, bright orange and deep violet. My chest hummed with possession as I did, like a king marveling at his riches.