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“I’m a busy man. I can’t just shuffle things around as I please. Besides, you’re being well-compensated for tonight—I can’t imagine that it’sthatmuch of a detriment—”
Emma snorts, smoothing the last of the stencil against my lower back. “I’m not getting paid for this,” she says crisply. “My boss is. Now go look in the mirror,” she adds, as she peels the stencils away. “Let me know if you want anything changed or moved. I’ll have to reapply if so. But better to know now than before it’s permanently on your body.”
Shit. Somewhere in the midst of the conversation and her touching me, my cock has risen to full mast. I can’t think of any way that I can stand up without her noticing. I’m not exactly lacking in that department, and I can feel it straining against my fly.
“I trust you.” The words come out more quickly than they should have, and I grit my teeth, hoping she doesn’t notice. “I’m sure it looks perfect.”
“Better if you check.” That humor is back in her voice, but there’s a note of insistence, too, a clear message that she’s not going to take no for an answer. The bossiness does nothing to abate my arousal—if anything, it makes it worse.
I spend all of my time with either sycophants and clingers, peers who are only my allies so long as it serves us both, enemies, or my brothers. I can’t say I’ve ever encountered a woman before who would talk back to me, or who didn’t behave as if sheneededmy attention. But Emma neither needs nor wants it. She’s confident and forthright, and, if I had to guess, would actually prefer to be anywhereotherthan in my penthouse tonight.
And for some reason—perhaps out of sheer novelty, if nothing else—that fact is making me almost painfully erect.
“If something is wrong with it, and it ends up on you permanently, I don’t want that coming back to bite me.” Emma takes a step back, motioning for me to get up. “This is my job. So please, go check it, and let me know if you want anything different.”
It’s clear she’s not going to give me much of a choice. I honestly think she might refuse to go through with the appointment if I didn’t. So I stand up, trying to angle myself away from her as I walk to the staircase. “I’ll be back down in a moment,” I tell her, glancing back to see her leaning against the bar, her gaze carefully blank. I can’t tell if she’s noticed the state I’m in or not—Emma clearly has an excellent poker face.
She shrugs. “Go ahead.”
Once in my bathroom, I look at the stencil. Everything looks impeccably placed, just as I expected—I can’t think of anything I would change. I reach down, pressing the heel of my hand against my cock in an effort to get it to soften, letting out a long breath as I once again wonder what the hell is wrong with me. It’s been a long time since a woman has gotten me so worked up, and never this easily.
My cock throbs under my hand, and I consider, just for a moment, quickly rubbing one out while I’m alone up here. It would relieve some of the tension, if nothing else—and the appointment ahead of me is a long one. But something about the idea of jerking off while Emma waits for me downstairs stops me.
There’s an appeal to it, certainly—the slight chance of getting caught is more than a little exciting. Jerking off in the privacy of my own home isn’t usually a furtive thing—it’smypenthouse, and if a woman is here, she’s always involved. But even that flicker of added arousal isn’t enough to push me over that line.
I’d think about her while I did it—I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. And I can’t help but feel that she deserves better than that, than unknowingly being the subject of my fantasies while she waits downstairs to do her job.
It’s a ridiculous feeling, honestly. I don’t even know her. But it’s enough to make me shake off the urge, and head back towards the stairs.
I’m a grown man with a healthy sex life. Surely, I can manage one evening with an attractive woman without being overcome with lust.
Surely.
3
EMMA
Iwatch Dante go upstairs, grateful for a moment alone to compose myself.
He’s not my usual type. I go for men who are less intimidating—or rather, men who don’tthinkthey’re intimidating. The arrogant, upper-class shtick doesn’t work on me. In fact, I typically find it to be a turnoff.
But I can’t help feeling a twinge of something around Dante. More than a twinge, if I’m being honest. From the moment he turned around, I was struck by how distractingly attractive he is. Seeing him take off his shirt didn’t help. It’s been a while since I’ve watched a man even partially undress in front of me, and it made it more than a little difficult to focus on setting up. That lean physique that I’d glimpsed under the shirt became more apparent when he stripped it off, revealing taut muscles, the tattoos on his arms, and the smooth planes of his upper chest. I’d had the urge to reach out and touch him—and getting to a moment later, even in a purely professional capacity, sent a heat through me that felt incrediblynotprofessional.
He must have felt it, too, if the thick ridge that I saw pressing against his fly when he stood up was any inclination. I understood very quickly why he’d been hesitant to go and check the stencil.
But at the end of the day, this is my job. I remind myself of that as I lean against the bar, waiting for him, trying to push all inappropriate thoughts out of my head. I won’t see him again after tonight anyway—Rico will be doing his future appointments—and that’s for the best. Especially considering what he is.
Mafia. The thought makes my stomach twist with anxiety. I’ve been on edge ever since he told me his name, trying my best not to think about it. It’s yet another reason why I wasn’t about to put so much as a drop of ink in his skin without being certain he was happy with the design. I don’t know very much about the mafia lifestyle, but I have enough of an idea to feel fairly sure that an unhappy mafia boss would be bad for my health.
I’ve had enough going on in my life in recent months. I don’t need to add anything else to it. In fact, if Rico had bothered telling me Dante’s name, I might have actually tried to argue against filling in for him. This is the last thing that I even need to associate with—the last thing that I should be letting even a glimmer of into my life.
Strictly business, I remind myself again as I hear Dante’s footsteps on the stairs, heading back down. I force myself to turn back to my station, checking the ink and needles again, rather than get a full view of his bare chest as he descends back to the first floor. I can’t shake it from my imagination, though—not the firm muscles beneath smooth inked skin, or the way his defined abs make that v-shape as they disappear beneath his belt.
“Everything looks perfect,” he tells me in his smooth, lightly accented voice as he sits back down. “You can start whenever you like.”
“Alright, then.” I triple-check everything, and then turn to him, the buzz of the machine filling the air as I move to stand behind him. “The less you move, the easier this will be.”
“I’ll sit like a rock,” he promises. Although I don’t entirely believe him—I’ve known plenty of men who flinched and squirmed at the first hit of a tattoo needle—he doesn’t so much as twitch as I start to outline the base of the tattoo. Dante is perfectly still, as still as the marble pillars on either side of the tattoo stenciled across his back, and I let out a slow breath. At least he’s going to make this part of my job easier.
