Page 29 of Drawn Together

The tattoo artist, paying no mind to the conversation, gestured for me to go into the little studio. I did as he said, Sebastian stepping into the room with me, which I hadn’t been expecting.

“You can wait outside,” I said.

“In your dreams.”

I rolled my eyes, and when the man asked me where I wanted the tattoo, I thought for a few seconds. “On my back, right in the middle, under my neck.”

“All right. I’m going to go make some sketches. In the meantime, you can take off your dress and lie down on the table.”

I hesitated. If I’d been wearing a shirt, I wouldn’t have had to get fully undressed. I didn’t want to lie there with nothing but a thong and my ass out in front of them.

The tattoo artist seemed to understand my dilemma. “Don’t worry, I’ll cover you with a sheet.”

“How about I cover her and you come in once she’s lying on the table?” Sebastian suggested in his usual cool tone.

“Jealous boyfriend, huh?” He laughed. “Don’t worry. That’s the standard procedure.”

Sebastian didn’t answer, and I didn’t feel like explaining that he wasn’t my boyfriend but my bodyguard, who was currently looking at me like he wanted to kill me.

The tattoo artist laid a white sheet on the table and left the room.

“Are you sure you’re not going to regret this later?”

“Totally sure, and don’t you dare mention this to my father,” I said, starting to take off my dress. He let out a soft “I won’t,” then turned around as I slipped it over my head and stood there in my matching red bra and underwear. I picked up the sheet and lay face down on the table, covering myself. “You can look now,” I said calmly, wishing, not for the first time, that the tattoo artist’s comment about Sebastian being my boyfriend were true. I liked him; there was just something so sexy about the way he protected me, albeit annoying at times, and I wanted so badly to break through his impenetrable façade. “Can you pull the sheet up a little higher?” I asked him. “Oh, and unhook my bra, please.”

If he was at all affected by my request, he didn’t show it. He leaned over and lifted the sheet to just above the end of my spine, his fingers brushing my naked skin. It was a fleeting caress, but it made my entire body tingle. Then, with one smooth motion of his fingers, he unhooked my red lace bra. I closed my eyes and imagined him running his hand up and down my body, from the base of my neck to the end of my back.

But he didn’t.

The door opened, and the tattoo artist got to work. First, he cleaned the area where he was going to tattoo me, the cold alcohol giving me goose bumps.

“Are you cold?” he asked, running his hands up and down my back the way I’d wanted Sebastian to do.

I tensed, and Sebastian noticed.

“Keep your fucking hands still,” Sebastian said.

The tattoo artist laughed and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.

Sebastian then grabbed a stool and, to my surprise, sat beside me, where he could see the man’s hands up close.

“Let’s get started,” the tattoo artist said after placing the outline of the image on my skin.

The buzzing of the machine scared me, and I suddenly had second thoughts.

“It’s going to hurt,” Sebastian said. “It’s a tricky area because there’s hardly any fat, just skin and bone.”

That gave me a clue.

“Is that where you have one of your tattoos?” I asked as I felt the touch of the needle against my skin. I closed my eyes tightly. Fuck, it hurt.

“Not in the middle of my back, but on one of my shoulder blades,” he confessed, and I knew he was saying it to distract me.

“What do you have there?”

“The Japanese symbol for bravery. And before you ask, I got it as a tribute for a fallen comrade.”

“Just that? You don’t have any more?”