Page 835 of End Game

I wipe away the excess ink and his gaze returns to my face.

“You okay?” I ask quietly.

“Yes.”

“Need a break?”

“No.”

His mouth shifts almost into a smile. “Do you?”

My grip tightens involuntarily around his wrist. “Asshole.”

“That wasn’t an answer.”

“I’m fine.”

He hums.

I know exactly what he’s doing, and the bastard knows that I know.

I lower my head and start the next line, the buzz of the machine filling the quiet between us while his pulse stays steady beneath my fingertips.

There was a time when touch like this between us would have meant nothing, or maybe would have existed so far outside what either of us considered possible that I wouldn’t have known how to name it.

Now I know where I’m allowed to put my hands. I know when he wants warning and when he doesn’t need it because he’s watching every move. I know the difference between Ronan tolerating touch and Ronan choosing it.

This is chosen.

Maybe that’s why it feels more intimate than it technically should.

Or maybe tattoos have always been intimate to me, and I stopped admitting it somewhere along the way.

The memory of Cami on this same table comes without me trying to summon it—her hip beneath my hand, the d20 slowly appearing on her skin while she watched me with the kind of trust that terrified me then.

Nineteen.

Critical hope.

Then her climbing into my lap the second I told her she was done.

I don’t consciously compare Ronan to her.

The feeling finds the same place anyway.

Trust in my hands. Stillness that isn’t passive. Someone letting me leave something permanent on their body because they want me to be the one who puts it there.

Ronan’s breathing changes slightly when the needle moves over a more sensitive patch.

“You good?”

“Yes, Micah.”

His voice is low, his attention still fixed on me.

I swallow. “Okay.”

I don’t rush the last few lines.