To drive my point home, I buck up into her again with that scant half-inch of hip room I have to work with. But I fill her up so much, it still rocks her back with a squeak of surprise.
With that, her thighs shake like earthquakes, and the most glorious, sex-sodden wail escapes her throat. Cinder’s hips rub and buck desperately, while her inner muscles strangle me in alternating waves.
I war between shutting my eyes to keep hold of the fast-unraveling threads of control and forcing them open to watch my writhing tattooed fake fiancé take my throbbing erection deep inside her orgasm-shattered core.
Sweat and exertion have destroyed her normally perfect line of bangs. She's flushed, messy, and so very fucking hot. Hotter than anything I’ve felt or known.
By some fucking miracle, I hold back as she fucks out two more orgasms on my dick before she says the magic word with a kiss at the corner of my (still full) mouth.
“Come for me, Kai.”
My name on her lips has me exploding like a party popper. My body strains against the rope as a tortured half-groan, half-cry escapes me. The blood disappears from my head and gravity doesn’t exist. Nothing exists except the fingers stroking my chest and the lips softly laying trails of kisses down my throat.
I thought I came in here to have fun. To scratch an itch around this need I have for Cinder. But even as I’m still inside her, I realize that whatever this is. . . it isn’t that.
It’s not just fun.
She isn’t a novel amusement ride to try out before moving on.
I already know I’ll be playing this memory out over and over in my head. I’ll be counting minutes, seconds to when I can touch her again, see her face vulnerable, open, and breaking from pleasure, from when I can hear my name pass on her lips.
Despite being part of the royal family, I realize with a solid block of ice dropping in my stomach, she’s charmedme.
For a moment, I think she’s right there with me. Falling. Feeling. Succumbing to this thing between us.
Then something shutters down in her gaze, and I’m locked out. Her walls are up, the doors are sealed, and as she lifts off my body to stand, I know she’s retreated to the internal fortress she’s built.
While I sit out here, with a softening dick and a different kind of need inked all over me in plain sight.
A need for Cinder.
Chapter 30
Inked by Tink
CHARMING
The fluorescent lights of the tattoo parlor, Inked by Tink, are a stark contrast to the warm seductive lights of the Poison Apple where the girls just finished their shift.
Cinder moves with purpose, her combat boots thudding against the tile as she strides up to the counter. Each time they connect to the ground, I get a little harder. She’s back in fishnet, adorned in her many piercings, and dark makeup. And I’m obsessed.
Goldie and Snow flank her with their ripples of laughter, their camaraderie a living thing in the cramped, ink-scented space.
“We need a tattoo,” Cinder announces to the artist.
My bride downs the last of her massive pumpkin spice latte and chucks it into a trash bin a couple feet away like she’s done the exact same movement here at least fifty times.
Behind the counter stands a figure almost too vibrant to belong to the dreary surroundings—a pixie-like woman whose punk-rock presence is topped with a wild mane of spun gold.Her bangs are curled perfectly, and a kerchief that screams 1940s glam falls back to her high, full ponytail. Her tattoo-laden skin is a vibrant tapestry telling tales of deep magic and wild forests.
The delicate features of the tattoo artist’s face are enhanced by bold makeup and piercings that glint under the fluorescent lights. Her skin, a golden tan like sun-kissed sand, seems to radiate with its own inner glow.
More than that, two iridescent wings tinged with pale green and purple extend out behind with ethereal elegance. Tink doesn’t hide the fact she is pure fairy, though she operates in the middle of the dense human population of Boston.
Tinkerbelle, the tattoo artist whose name is whispered in both reverence and awe across the Common World, smiles at Cinder. The artist’s needles weave not just ink but with a touch of fairy magic, capturing the essence of one’s spirit in her art.
Tink arches a pierced eyebrow, her gaze sweeping over us like a beacon through her heavy-framed green glasses. “Looks like we've got a party. Who's first?” Her eyes blink in recognition when she catches sight of me. “Long time no see, Kai.”
“Tink,” I say with a quick salute.
