Page 62 of Contempt

She didn’t know anything.

Not until he kissed her, anyway. His lips found hers—a lot like the kiss in the car, this one was just as hungry and vicious. All teeth and tongue and lips working against hers. There was no questioning what he was feeling when he kissed her like this. Like it was the last thing he was ever going to do. She couldn’t breathe, not properly. She couldn’t drag in enough air to satisfy her lungs.

But it was lovely.

So good.

And like when he had touched her, she found this was all she wanted. The rest of her thoughts and sadness drifted away when she had him like this. It just made sense for her to reach for him—to peel that shirt he was wearing up over his body, and toss it to the side.

She froze, then.

Stunned.

Lucia blinked at the ink that colored up a good portion of one side of his body. She reached out with tentative fingers to trace the lines of the ink as he let out a husky chuckle. She didn’t know what to say about the ink. The nose ring he wore was a new thing, too, but the ink … it told a completely different story than his new piercing.

Memories, she thought.

His tattoos were memories.

She recognized them easily.

A portrait of Diego on his bicep; one of Rose’s favorite artworks down his inner forearm. Fireworks colored the space in between the larger pieces. A dreamcatcher drifted down his outer forearm. She was curious why he seemed to only tattoo the one side of his body, other than the ink she could see slightly on the back of his neck, but she didn’t want to ask him about it. Mostly, her attention kept drifting back to the eyes staring out from the roses that seemed to be covering a face.

She knew those eyes.

She looked at them everyday in the mirror.

“He got them right, then,” Renzo murmured.

She peered up at him. “The eyes?”

“Mmm.”

Her fingers drifted over the tattoo again—over rose pedals and hazel eyes so expressive and lifelike, it was astonishing.

“Did you have a picture?” she asked.

“Memory,” he replied. “I learned Rose isn’t the only one who can draw, I guess.”

Huh.

“They’re just tattoos,” he added when she stayed quiet.

No, she didn’t think they were just tattoos. They were something else entirely to Renzo. Moments in his life that he didn’t want to forget. Pieces of memories that he wanted to memorialize forever in a very permanent way.

It was kind of amazing.

And she was part of it.

“Is that really what you want to call them—just tattoos?” she asked, smiling up at him slyly.

Renzo swallowed thickly, and his tongue peeked out to wet his bottom lip as he grinned in such a way that flashed those white teeth at her. Fuck. He looked good like that—almost ready to eat her whole, she thought.

“I want to do a lot of things right now—mostly to you,” he said, his grin deepening with each word. “But talking about these tattoos is not one of those things, Lucia.”

She sucked in a sharp breath.

Her mind whispered good.