Inked Destiny

Jamaal snorted. “Better crank up the music so we won’t be hearing what’s going on back there. Imagining it is bad enough.”

“Shall I send Myk for your kit? Or do you have what you need here?” Eamon asked, smiling at the banter around them.

“You’re serious about doing this?”

“Absolutely. I thought you might prefer to do it here, but if I’m mistaken…”

She wavered, torn, fear nearly getting the upper hand. Her surety about the design and it’s placement, the same confidence she’d always felt and what had turned out to be foresight when it came to Cathal, slammed hard and fast against the possibility she was somehow being influenced by the Dragon.

This is what it feels like to be mind-fucked. And with sudden insight she understood it would never end if she didn’t take control. Didn’t decide and move on, learning through trial and error and consequence rather than being paralyzed by doubt.

Doubt had never been a problem for her before. She wouldn’t let it continue to plague her.

“No. Send Myk for my kit.”

She guided Eamon to the area set aside for tattoos and piercings done on breasts, buttocks, and genitals, or that risked flashing those body parts.

Seconds later Adele blasted through the room speakers a couple of decibels louder than usual, Jamaal’s laughter saying he was making good on his comment to block out sounds coming from behind the screen.

She laughed too. It worked for her. It meant they could talk more freely.

With a grim expression, Liam took up a position leaning against the screen while she had Eamon sit on the massage table rather than the client chair. “I didn’t hear you offer him any assurances,” she said, reintroducing the assassin’s unanswered question.

Eamon shrugged, producing a ripple of muscles beneath his very expensive shirt. “I am lord here.”

“Careful,” she said, touching a fingertip to his lips, a flutter going through her belly when he pulled the finger into his mouth for a quick suck as his gaze dipped to nipples that ached to have him do the same to them.

Two could play this game.

Her hands went to the front of his shirt. “This needs to come off.”

He made no move to help or hurry her as button by button she exposed smooth golden skin. He trembled when she circled pebbled nipples, inhaled sharply when she covered them with the eyes at the center of her palms though she didn’t need them to see what they had between them. Like to like, the call of it was an ever-increasing compulsion she had no will to resist.

He spread his legs and she stepped into the space he’d created. Her hands moved upward, sliding across his collarbones and then down to his biceps, closing around them to the extent she could. “This is where the tattoos will go, like something a Viking would wear, except instead of fashioned gold it’ll be my ink.”

“A fitting analogy. Truth has been distorted over the centuries and with the merging of one culture into another. The Vikings once called those of us they glimpsed gods. The Aesir. Though the name was a broad label encompassing a number of the supernatural.”

Aesirs. She didn’t want to delve into the reasons he’d named his place what he did. But she couldn’t resist saying, “A god, huh? Don’t expect me to worship you except like this.”

She kissed him, teasing him with lips and tongue and hands that had already learned how and where he liked to be touched, his desire rebounding, ratcheting up her own until they were both breathing hard, the craving for more heightened by the impossibility of having it, given the Elven guard.

Eamon’s smile was pure masculine satisfaction. “As humans are fond of saying, this works for me.”

It took a moment for the haze of need to clear. She laughed. “You mean as worship goes?”

“Yes.” His eyes darkened as he fisted her hair with enough strength to be both threat and turn-on. “Though I also enjoy having you on your knees in front of me.”

Taking his cock in her mouth. Pleasuring him.

Her cunt clenched at the imagery. At the remembered feel and scent and taste of him. With the knowledge that he gave as good as he got, and then some. Always.

We could forget about the tattoo and go home. But the words remained unspoken, held back by premonition or instinct or something other than the Dragon, and then Myk arrived with her kit, locking the future in place.

She shook the weird thoughts and sensations off, the routine of setting up tools and ink reducing the burn of desire until it simmered in the background even when her hand circled Eamon’s arm. She held it steady as she used an antiseptic wipe then picked up the disposable razor and stroked it over skin that looked as though it didn’t need it.

“Last chance,” she said after a second hit with the wipe and the application of a small amount of Vaseline.

“Proceed, Etain.”

The corners of her mouth kicked up at the lordly answer. “Go ahead and lie down then.”

If she were using her machine, she’d put him in a different position, but the handheld needles required intense concentration and strength of will, along with physical stamina and control to push them through skin and put the ink in at a consistent depth.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as a final step. The design was there in her mind with crystal clarity, the muscle memory of it already in her hand from putting it on Cathal.

A second deep breath and she picked up a thin needle, dipping it in black ink. “If you need a break from the pain, tell me.”

Lord Eamon didn’t deem the instruction worthy of comment, and she felt his utter confidence as she placed her left hand on his right biceps and stretched the skin.

Outline first. The change in position required by it allowing him relief from the sting of the needle even if he didn’t ask for it.

Then shading, though unlike the all-black art she’d put on Cathal, she threaded red and blue and gold into Eamon’s tattoo, the same shades found in the vines and band she wore. The electric hum of connection and awareness snapped into place, stronger than what she’d experienced hugging Jamaal and Derrick, and not yet what she had with Cathal.

Eamon took her hands as she rested after finishing the work on his right biceps. He brushed his thumbs over the eyes on her palms, and immediately Liam was there, stepping into her consciousness like the dark promise of death. “You tempt fate, Lord.”

Because of the magic. Because of the Dragon he believed was only an avatar.

“Come with me to Aesirs,” Eamon said, thighs widening as he pulled her forward until she stood close enough to feel the heat always radiating from him. “Meet more of those who will call you Lady. Spend time in the world that’s your birthright.”

She couldn’t deny him. “I’ll need to detour to my apartment for a change of clothes.”

“The dress of the other night wasn’t the only clothing I purchased with you in mind. An entire wardrobe of outfits suitable for Aesirs is in our suite there.”

She balked at hearing suitable, the word still capable, after all these years, of scraping off the thin scab covering old wounds of rejection. She couldn’t prevent the instant stiffening, but she did manage to keep from pulling away and taking the first steps toward escape.

He touched his forehead to hers. “If you like none of the outfits then wear what you have on. I bought them for your pleasure and my own, though personally I prefer you with nothing on at all.”

“I bet you do,” she said on a laugh, kissing him before stepping back, her gaze going to the broad, bold band announcing her claim on him. “I’ll go with you to Aesirs after we’re done here.”

Twenty

Pass it,” Sleepy Ruiz ordered, mood shifting from generous to pissed as Puppy kept sucking on the