Chapter 41
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
DECLAN
Last night played on a loop in my mind, and I couldn’t seem to shut it down. Penelope’s back pressed against the brick wall. Her breathy gasp when I slid my hand into her panties to find her wet and wanting. The way she’d locked her eyes on mine as she came apart on my fingers, moaning my name.
Jesus Christ.
I forced those thoughts out of my mind and refocused on my sketchpad. The last thing I needed while sitting in Steele Ink waiting for my three o’clock was to be hard as hell behind my fly.
Music floated around the space—Rowan’s bullshit again since she’d gotten in before I did. That, mixed with her humming along completely off-key, was going to give me a fucking migraine.
“If you’re going to play this shit, the least you could do is stop butchering it,” I said without looking up. “I’m sure your client doesn’t want to listen to it any more than I do.”
Rowan didn’t even glance over from her station, where she was almost done with an intricate Pomeranian portrait on the bicep of a guy who looked like he could bench-press my motorcycle. “Clay has earbuds in and can’t hear me tell you to fuck off.”
“I should just tattoo ‘Tone-Deaf’ on your forehead so everyone knows.”
“Touch my forehead, and I’ll tattoo ‘Penelope’ on yours while you sleep.” Rowan hummed louder, deliberately and obnoxiously off-key just to piss me off. “We both know you wouldn’t even be mad about it.”
I didn’t dignify that with a response.
The bell above the front door chimed, and I glanced over to find Lincoln strolling in, a small crate of some of Willa’s jam tucked under his arm. “Afternoon, artist and asshole. I brought treats, courtesy of my wife. You’re welcome.”
Rowan lifted her tattoo gun from the guy’s arm and raised a brow at Linc. “Baby Steele. Treats or not, I better be the artist in that greeting or you can get the fuck out.”
“Obviously.” He scoffed and set the crate on the counter, tipping his head in my direction. “He knows what he is.”
“Sick of your shit?” I muttered.
Lincoln grinned and dropped into the chair at Cam’s empty station, sprawling out like he owned the place. “Already? But I just got here. Haven’t even had a chance to check in on my favorite emotionally unavailable brother.”
“Then don’t.”
“Too late. I’m already invested.” He propped his ankle on his knee and studied me with that look—the one that said he’d come here specifically to be a pain in my ass and intended to enjoy every second of it. “So. How’s our hot librarian?”
My pencil didn’t falter. My jaw, however, didn’t get the message to show no reaction and ticked once before I could stop it.
Rowan perked up like a bloodhound catching a scent. “Oh, you mean the one he just dropped five hundred dollars on like she was his last hope for human connection?”
“It was for coffee,” I said flatly.
Lincoln snorted. “Five hundred bucks for coffee. From the same guy who only drops that kind of cash on body art or his bike.”
“He didn’t care about the money.” Rowan’s voice was dripping with barely restrained glee. “He was possessed. I genuinely think he blacked out for a minute.”
“I think you can both fuck off. I like coffee.”
“Right.” Rowan nodded slowly, patronizingly, like she was agreeing with a toddler. “The coffee. Because that makes perfect sense.”
With a grin, Lincoln leaned back, lacing his fingers behind his head. “Bro paid five hundred for a coffee he could’ve made at home, a chat with the woman he shares a kitchen with, and the entire town to know she’s off-limits.”
I leveled him with a glare. “Are you done?”
“Not even close.”
I ignored him and continued perfecting the final version of the sketch I’d left this morning for Penelope. The vines winding around the stack of books were taking on a life of their own now, curling in soft, deliberate arcs that reminded me of the way her hair fell across her shoulders.
Thank Christ these two couldn’t hear my thoughts, or I’d never live that down.
“Speaking of everyone’s favorite hot librarian…” Rowan said, brow raised.
I slid my gaze to her, knowing without a doubt she was setting me up for something. I just didn’t know what.
Lincoln sat up straighter and rubbed his hands together. “Oh…gossip. Give it to me.”
“Not gossip, but are we just going to pretend she didn’t say what she did at family dinner?” Rowan’s tone was deceptively light as she shaded the Pomeranian’s ear with surgical precision. “That she’s been thinking about getting a tattoo for years?”
I couldn’t pretend shit. Not since the second those words had left Penelope’s mouth three nights ago and lodged themselves somewhere deep in my chest. Her confession had kept me up that night, even after coaxing half a dozen orgasms out of her and coming inside her twice.
While she’d slept soundly next to me, her hair fanned across my pillow, I’d sat upright with my sketchpad and a dim book light and drawn something soft and intricate and exactly her.
A woman with her eyes closed like she was holding a secret.
A crown of books resting above her brow.
A tree rising from their pages with vines threading through it all and binding the whole thing together.
Grounded and beautiful and complex. Just like her.
And then this morning, I’d left that version on the kitchen counter with an appointment card on top.
Eight p.m. tonight. When the shop would be empty.
No pressure, no expectations. Just a door I’d left open for her to walk through if she wanted to.
“That’s right,” Lincoln said, his grin broadcasting that he was more than happy to play Rowan’s little game. “Since this would be Pen’s first, she needs someone with a soft touch.”
“You know who’s great with first-timers? Cam,” Rowan said, nodding thoughtfully like the two of them were having a genuine professional discussion and not orchestrating my slow, torturous death. “Quiet voice. Good energy. He talks them through it, takes his time.”
Fucking Cam. With his easy smile and his steady hands and his bullshit small talk that always made clients feel at ease. Cam, who’d lean in close to place the stencil and rest his palm on Penelope’s hip or arm or thigh and spend hours with his face inches from her bare skin while she—
No.
Absolutely the fuck not.
Since Sunday night—longer, if I were honest—I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about my needle on Penelope’s skin. My ink sinking into her flesh. A permanent mark of mine she’d carry forever.
Long after our arrangement ended.
That thought—the end of us, the expiration date we never acknowledged but both knew was coming—sat on my sternum like a cinder block. I didn’t want to picture her packing up her shit. Moving out. Going back to a life where I was just the grumpy asshole she used to live with.
And I sure as hell didn’t want to picture her with a tattoo on her perfect body given to her by someone else when it was the only permanent thing I could offer her.
“Cam’s hands aren’t going near her.” The words—low and firm and laced with something I wasn’t going to examine too closely—were out before I’d even made a conscious decision to speak.
Lincoln made a sound like a game-show buzzer. “There it is. Took, what? Five minutes?”
“Four,” Rowan said. “Which means you owe me ten bucks.”
Lincoln pulled some cash from his pocket and slapped it on the top of Rowan’s tool chest. “Well-earned, Ro.”
I narrowed my eyes on them. “You two are a pain in my ass.”
“And you’re transparent as hell.” Lincoln leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Bro, we sat at that dinner table and watched you nearly snap your fork in half when she said it. You think we didn’t notice?”
“I think you need to mind your fucking business.”
Lincoln shrugged. “Be a lot easier to do if you got your head out of your ass. You sketch something for her yet?”
I didn’t answer. Which, unfortunately, was answer enough.
Rowan’s eyes positively gleamed. “You did.”
“Don’t,” I warned.
“That definitely means he did,” Lincoln said.
“Oh shit, is that what you’ve been sketching any time you have even a minute of peace?” Rowan asked, glancing over as she wiped down the finished tattoo.
I flipped my sketchbook closed, not wanting to share any of the art I’d drawn for Penelope with anyone else.
Lincoln leaned back in the chair, a slow grin stretching across his mouth. “Nah, I’m sure whatever he just scrambled to hide is definitely for a client and not a five-foot-nothing redhead who has him by the throat.”
I didn’t look at him as I shoved the sketchbook in my drawer and shut it harder than necessary. “Eat shit, Linc.”
“Love you too, man.” He stood, clapped a hand on my shoulder, and headed for the door. Once he was there, he paused and glanced back. “For what it’s worth? If I were Pen, I’d want you to be the one holding the needle too.”
His words landed somewhere unexpected, and I paused half a beat too long. But I couldn’t give it space to breathe.
I set my jaw and forced my expression flat. “What’d I tell you about calling her Pen?”
With a chuckle, Lincoln headed out, Rowan walked her client through aftercare, and I sat there, twirling a pencil while thinking about what would be waiting for me at eight o’clock.
If Penelope didn’t show, I’d never bring it up. I’d tuck the sketch into a drawer along with all the others and pretend it didn’t matter. The same way I pretended a lot of things about her didn’t matter.
But if she did show up?
If she walked through that door and sat down in my chair and trusted me to mark her skin with something permanent? Something of mine that would remain with her long after our arrangement ended?
It felt really fucking close to staking a claim I had no right to make.