Fuck, I so badly want to find out.
My eyes drop further, skimming over her shoulders and bare arms. Her skin is lightly tanned, likely from days spent at the beach with her friends. I ache to reach out and grab her, to pull her into my lap and run my hands down that smooth skin. My vision goes hazy with thoughts of my rough, tattooed hands on her body while she writhes with need beneath me. Would she be loud, or would I have to coax each and every noise out of her?
A voice at the back of the shop snaps me out of my filthy thoughts about Elsie.
“Alright, I’m ready,” Eddie’s client announces, standing in the doorway of the back room. I’d forgotten she was here. “Let’s pierce this other nipple.”
Elsie nearly chokes on her pizza. Noah pats her on the back, chuckling over her discomfort, and it takes every ounce of willpower I possess to keep my hands in my lap instead of prying Noah’s left hand clean off his body. I know they’re just friends – the sexual tension between those two is non-existent, in the negatives. Apparently the pressed shirts and crew cut don’t do it for her. Thank fuck for that.
“Not a fan of nipple piercings?” Maya asks. She crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow, like she’s challenging her, but I see thecorners of her mouth twitch. She’s just fucking with her, trying to make her squirm. Being Maya.
“Oh, no, that’s not it,” Elsie assures her, though there’s not a goddamn chance in hell she’d ever have her nipples pierced, and we all know it. “I just… wasn’t expecting that.”
“Declan has one pierced,” Sean supplies helpfully, rejoining our group to grab the appointment book from Frankie. “You know, in case you’re considering it and want to see one up close.”
Andthatis something I didn’t need to consider, not at work with my idiot coworkers around. I have a quick flash of Elsie’s tongue sliding across the cool metal, her teeth biting down around the small barbell.
“Fucker,” I mutter, just loud enough for Sean and Frankie to hear. They both snicker.
Elsie, meanwhile, has turned a pretty shade of pink. I have the ridiculous urge to sock Sean in the arm for making her blush.Iwant to be the only one making her look like that.
The fun is over, though, when my one o’clock walks through the door. She’s young, the sorority girl type who wants some flowers on her shoulder in memory of her late grandmother.
“Hey,” she says, waving to us all. Her eyes spot me behind the counter and she grins. “Let’s do this.”
I watch Elsie eye her and wonder if she’s jealous, the way I get when I watch her and Noah working together, a level of comfort between them that she and I don’t have.
“I’m ready,” I tell the woman whose name I’ve forgotten. I stand and head over to my work station, needing my tablet to show her the design I’ve been working on. As I pass by Elsie, I can’t help leaning down and saying, just low enough for her to hear, “If you want to take me up on Sean’s offer, just let me know.”
Only I must not have been as quiet as I’d meant to be, because Noah gasps behind me.
I’m grinning like an idiot while I sit at my station and scroll through my designs, looking for the floral pattern I finished up last night. My client chats with Maya while she waits for me to be ready. When I hear someone stop at my side I look up, finding Frankie looking at me with a small smile on her face.
“You and Elsie…” Her voice trails off and she shakes her head. She looks at me for a moment, like she’s expecting me to say something, but I don’t. “I like her for you,” she finally says. She gives me a knowing look before she turns away, calling over her shoulder, “Don’t fuck it up.”
CHAPTER 18
Elsie
“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” I say for the fifth time in as many minutes.
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” Grace says, waving me off. “You were going to get it done anyway.”
“Not on alunch break,” I point out. “It’s the middle of my work day.”
“Elsie, honey, you’re not going to need the rest of the afternoon off for getting your ear pierced. I promise, you’ll be okay.”
I roll my eyes, but she’s too busy flipping through a book of tattoos to notice. Grace and I had been in the middle of having lunch on a bench near the water when I offhandedly mentioned that I want to get a helix piercing. I’ve thought about it in the past, but never really felt strongly enough about it to find somewhere to get it done. Now, with a tattoo and piercing studio right next door, there’s no real reason not to.
“Yes,” Grace had said excitedly, clapping her hands. “Let’s go get pierced!”
I hadn’t meantnow, but she ignored that part. The next thing I knew, she was dragging me into Immortal Ink to get piercings together. She’s going for a third hole in each of her lobes. We’d been fifteen or sixteen when we got the second ones done together, along with Olivia.
“I just meant it might take a while,” I tell her now. “I don’t normally take such a long lunch.”
“Noah can handle things until you get back,” she assures me. I know she’s right. It’s only been a week and a half, but he’s learning the ropes quicker than I expected. It probably helps that I’m brand new at this whole thing, too, so there are a lot of things we’re learning together.
“I think I want to get a tattoo,” Grace announces.
