CHAPTER SEVEN
Connor
S itting in a pub I know and trust, I toss back a shot of Midleton and chase it with a pint of ice-cold Guinness.
“How’s your neighbor?” I ask to make him talk and not toss me any more questions about why I’m holding on by a thread about what just happened.
“The nosy lass keeps breaking into my flat.” He tosses back the shot.
“Did she burn your mail again?” I snort, sipping my beer.
Rhys scoffs, signaling for another shot. “Fucking Trace and his exaggerations. She steals my mail.”
I face him. “Sounds like she has a crush on you.”
“She’s fucking stalking me.” He exhales and shakes his head.
I tip my head back and laugh. “I believe that’s called flirting.”
“No.” He gets serious. “She doesn’t say a word to me. I pass her in the hall and see her in the lobby. Nothing. But I know she’s been in my flat.”
My spine snaps to attention. “Do you keep anything incriminating lying around?”
“No. My heat is all locked up.”
I blink. “How do you know she’s been in your apartment?”
“Because she leaves me plants,” he snaps.
“What?”
“Herbs, whatever. That’s how I know she’s stalking me. One night about two years ago, I mentioned that I liked the smell coming from her place. She was cooking something that smelled amazing. Now I have a fucking greenhouse in my kitchen.”
“Cooking something? Are you sure it wasn’t someone’s pet rabbit?”
Rhys chokes on his shot. “Thanks for the visual.”
“Is this something Trace and I need to handle?”
“My brother thinks it’s funny. He checked her out. She’s not dangerous. She’s not connected to anyone. I’ll deal with it.”
“Is she hot?” I wonder if he’ll start fucking her.
His jaw jumps. “No comment.”
Bingo!
The pub eventually gets loud and rowdy enough to grate on my nerves, a sign of my thirty-seven years. With a head full of Quinlan-brand steam that sizzles under menacing laughter and shared stories of death and blood, I drain the last drops of my pint.
By the time I swipe my thumb across the rim, my mind is already miles away from this place. Rhys is still nursing his drink like he doesn’t have a care in the world. Typical assassin.
Grinning like the devil, Blade ends a call and nudges Jett. “Your brother Dirk had an opening. Let’s go.”
“Opening for what?” I ask, fingers around my empty glass that I might trade for whiskey shots once my team goes back into their shadows.
Where Blade keeps pretending he doesn’t want to fuck Jett.
Where Rhys plays it cool with his neighbor, who I know he wants to fuck.
Me? Until today, I thought my biggest problem was being in deep for a woman. Period. Hard stop. Just a lass.
A stranger .
Now there’s about a ninety-nine percent chance she will kick my ass before she gets in my bed again.
Given what I do.
Given what she does.
So, I have to pretend, too. Pretend she doesn’t exist.
She made it out of today’s mess. She can handle herself.
“How much do I owe?” Jett asks, reaching into his wallet for some green, but Blade rests a hand on his thigh, eyes narrowing.
He smiles, covering their tab, adding twenties to the pile of money on the bar like he’s all-in at a Vegas poker table.
Dominating much? What is happening with them?
“You coming, boss?” Blade asks me, shaking me from the idea of my trackers fucking each other in the off-hours.
I arch a brow. “Where?”
“Tattoo parlor.” Blade jerks his chin toward the door. “Jett’s bro Dirk needs to finish the shading on my graveyard piece tonight. Thought I’d swing by, maybe bleed a little.”
Rhys snorts into his glass. “Most people schedule their pain. Your pain sits up and begs for it, aye?”
“That’s why my art’s better than yours, Rhys,” Blade fires back.
I glance at my cousin, who shrugs and gives in to the late-night trip to a tattoo parlor. He’ll do anything to avoid talking about his neighbor.
“I can use some pain, too.” I push everyone’s cash away and slam my black card on the bar.
I’m the fucking alpha.
Finding that woman today has messed with my head. I need a distraction. Every facet of her memory sits just under my ribs, making each breath heavy.
“A graveyard, huh?” I ask Blade while I sign the bill .
He smirks. “Yeah. Bleeding headstones, twisted trees, and crows. Might add a screaming woman trapped in one of the crypts.”
“Jesus,” Rhys mutters, standing up.
I consider asking why a screaming woman, but really don’t want to get into it. I pinch the Audi keys before Rhys even realizes it. He won’t mind. Probably.
Rhys and I get into his car, with me driving. Blade and Jett load themselves into his Denali, arguing about whether Dirk’s color work is worth the premium cost, even though Blade gets the friends and family discount.
Despite the chaos of the city streets for August, the drive is quiet. The kind of late-night silence that makes your thoughts echo louder than the rubber tires sighing against the hot asphalt.
All I hear is her voice in the back of my mind.
DEA!
I lost visual.
Fuck me. Fuck me harder!
I park behind the Denali in front of a shop with a red neon sign. Flashing in the dark, it reads: TATTOO. The cracked open door means the AC has either crapped out or Dirk never bothered.
Blade is through the door first, already unbuttoning his shirt to show off the half-done work sprawling over his ribs.
Dirk sits over a guy lying on one table. “Sorry, this moron went somewhere else. Where they don’t know how to spell. I gotta fix this. He’s got a plane to catch.”
“I’ll get you started,” Jett says, pulling the cart up to the one empty table.
“You do tats?” I ask.
I guess everyone has a hobby.
“Sure. Bro taught me.” Jett smiles warmly at his near-identical other half .
Blade hesitates, but a look passes between them. Next, the needle is buzzing and Blade is grinning from the pain with his eyes closed.
“I’m taking off.” Rhys reaches for his keys.
“Here.” I toss them. “Drive slow.”
“I’m fine, dosser,” he says and strides out the door with no qualms about ditching me.
I’m ready to chase after him when heat tingles under my skin. A need I can’t name. I want something that hurts more than this empty feeling.
My gaze shifts to Dirk’s wall of sketches. There are raven’s wings, bloody roses, blades, skulls, and crosses. All the usual dark ink artwork.
Then one sketch catches me. Tucked between a clock and a mermaid.
A green cobra.
But the back is twisted to show off gorgeous, intricate scales.
Time stands still for me. I’m frozen for I don’t know how long. The suit getting his kid’s name fixed is off the table and out the door.
Dirk eyes me through a puff of cigarette smoke. “Quinlan,” he drawls. “Haven’t seen your smug face since Griffin’s ink.”
He got his kids’ names Alexander and Lucien tattooed on his chest.
“Been busy,” I say.
He motions to the wall. “You like that Kingston?”
“Kingston designed that tat?” I point to the snake.
“Sure did. It’s a one-off. Expensive as fuck.” He fills his ink bottles.
With Jett buzzing away over Blade, who I think has a semi, I stride to Dirk. “Can you make the back of the snake a braid?” I lean in. “Like golden blonde?”
Dirk smiles and goes into his cart. “Got bit hard, did you?”
“Feels like it.” I roll my eyes.
“It’s not the bite that kills you,” Dirk says all gruff. “It’s the venom.”
Venom... The perpetual sting in my veins has a name.
“Can you do this in one night?” I ask.
“If you got the cash, I got the time.”
I take off my suit jacket and open my dress shirt. Glancing at all my other ink in the mirror, I realize I’ve ignored the real estate over my left pec.
My heart.
Dirk looks me over like he’s trying to figure out what the fuck happened to me. Then he nods. “Upper arm?”
“No,” I say. “Left pec.”
“Right over the ticker. It will bleed like a mother.”
I toss my shirt on the bench and flex my muscles. Scars that replaced my innocence will soon outpace tats. “Blood stopped making me flinch when I was six.”
“Another tough Quinlan.” Dirk’s gloves snap on.
I don’t even wince when the needle hits.
I think about her. Her hands holding that gun, the shape of her face watching her mark, the grin on her lovely face, thinking she was taking down a notorious drug dealer. She was on the edge of disappearing forever. Now I’m carving her memory into my skin.
“This green and gold is art. That’s got bite, Quinlan,” Dirk says quietly as he works. “This blonde got a name?”
Blade finally looks over as Jett’s ink gun goes quiet at the exact moment of the question.
“No.” I lean in and whisper, “Just a cunt I can’t get out of my mind.”
Dirk looks up at me. “Try asking her for a date. Less extreme. Cheaper and pain free.”
She’s fucking DEA, and I kill people.
She’s officially on the off-limits list .
I run every minute with her in my head. How I took her so many times in my bed and she let me. She seemed a little shy at first.
Then I whispered to her, “ Open for me, baby. I’ll go slow and get you used to my cock and how rough I like to fuck. You’ll be begging me to fuck you harder by the time I’m done with you. ”
By four a.m., the needle’s stopped, and my obsession is inked into my skin, carved into my soul.
I glance at the table next to me. “Where did Blade and Jett go?”
Dirk raises one eyebrow, getting ointment ready. “They left.”
Message received. They left together.
Dirk tapes down a massive clear bandage, but the pain isn’t gone. It’s throbbing. Pulsing. It’s a second heartbeat that has a place now to live and breathe.
And she does, too.
I stand up, Dirk catching me. “Easy, boss, you lost a lot of blood.”
We get to a mirror, and even underneath the plastic, the vibrant mix of green and gold pops on my skin. A goddamn tear wells up.
That might be the pain, though.
“Christ, that’s gorgeous,” I mutter.
“If you come back with your mystery lady, I can adjust the snake eyes to match hers more closely,” he says, tone normal, no longer needing to whisper since the place is empty.
I smile and sign the credit card bill.
That will never happen.