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“I can’t bear to see you in pain.” He raises his palm, and I know if he cups my cheek or touches me, or shows me any tenderness, I’ll fall apart. And I don’t want to do that. Not now. Not when I’m trying to figure out what I want to do with the feelings I have for him.
“Don’t.” I put a little distance between us, but not enough that I can’t tend to him.
His jaw tics. His eyelid twitches. It’s a clue that he’s not as much in control as he’d like me to believe. Funny how I know his every tell, his every expression, his every gesture of tenderness, of anger, of dominance. I know him almost as well as I know myself and that...is not a surprise.
I wipe away the blood, plop the washcloth on the counter, then reach for the antiseptic. I smear it across the wound, and his breath catches. It must burn, but he doesn’t say a word. He’s back to being his namesake—that damn Stone I hate so much.
I want him to say something, do something, anything that will reveal he’s suffering as much as I am. I finish dressing the wound, and he still hasn’t said anything. He hasn’t stopped watching me, either. I glance up at his features, then flinch when I see the turmoil in those cerulean eyes. Apparently, he’s not the Stone I knew anymore. He holds my gaze and I see the plea in them. The apology. The longing. My heart knocks against my ribcage.I can’t forgive him. I can’t.... Can I?
I look away then back at him. “Did you tattoo yourself anywhere else?”
“On my back,” he offers.
“Your back?”
He turns around and I sweep my gaze across the solid expanse. Sure enough, the same half-moons—which is where I’d dug my fingernails into his skin—dot the top of his shoulders with a few tracking across his shoulder blades.
"Is that it?" I clear my throat. "Any more I should know about?”
He turns back to face me. "You sure you want to know?"
"I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t."
"You don’t have to see this. I don’t want you to feel obliged to—"
"Forgive you? Want to take you back? Fuck you?" I burst out.
He doesn’t smile. "All of it. I want to earn back the right to be in your life. These tattoos are not a quick fix for that, I promise."
"Okay.” I lock my fingers together. My heart rate kicks up, and my pulse points turn into pockets of quicksand absorbing all my feelings and amplifying my nervousness. Why am I so nervous about what he’s going to say or do next? It’s only a tattoo, a tattoo of where I dug my fingernails into him, where I bit him, where he’s forever etched the evidence of my passion into his skin. Where he’s marked his flesh with the proof of how I lost myself in him. How we lost ourselves in each other.
He reaches for the waistband of his briefs, then stops. "I don’t think you should see this, and—"
"Okay, enough already." I push his hand aside, then tug down his briefs. His cock springs free, massive, huge, bigger than I remember it. And on the skin that sheaths his length are a row of tiny quarter moons. He had them tattooed into the most sensitive part of him?
I push my knuckles into my mouth to stop myself from crying out.
"Why, how… Oh my god, this is unbelievable. Why did you do it? What made you do something this crazy?" I shoot out my fist until it connects with his chest. "You’re crazy, certifiably insane. How could you—" The rest of the words are lost against his chest, for he pulls me in close.
"Shh, baby, it’s okay."
78
Rick
"No, it’s not. You marked yourself, not only all over your body but also on the most important, most intimate, most sensitive to pain part of you, and I can’t understand why you did it. Why did you, Rick?" She looks up at me. "Tell me why."
"I wanted to look at it and remember you. I wanted to see myself in the mirror and see how you’d marked me forever. Somewhere along the way, I realized how important you were, and I wanted to find a way to show it. I needed to declare to myself that you come first. Not my ego, not my needs, but yours.Youare what matters. You were my love at first sight, at last sight, and every sight in between, and I wanted a way to show it. I knew it wouldn’t be easy for me to tell you this, but I could do this. I could show you I loved you, if not by words, then by my actions."
"By tattooing the imprint of my bite marks on your cock?"
"By tattooing how much it meant to me to have your mouth on my cock. By tattooing your touch permanently into my skin. By etching into me those moments when you clung to me in ecstasy, capturing those seconds when we were one."
Her eyes dilate, and her cheeks flush deeper. She looks at me like she wants to slap me then kiss me, or both at the same time. "I can’t believe you did it and I wasn’t even aware of it."
"I marked them out with permanent ink, then went straight to a tattoo artist I trust."
“What about the ones on your back?”
