Chapter 41
“It’s starting to hurt,” she mutters, voice strained.
I slide closer, my thumb brushing the inside of her wrist as I catch her hand. “Tapping out already?” I murmur against her ear. “Didn’t think you’d fold before the outline was even done.”
“I’m not folding. I’m adjusting.” Her eyes flash up at me, watery but fierce. “He’s only done the outline?”
I can hear the panic, and it makes me laugh. “No, I’m kidding. He’s shading now.”
Sable grips my hand harder, nails digging in just enough to make me feel it. God, she’s gorgeous when she’s wild and stubborn and trying so damn hard not to give in.
“Don’t make me punch you with my non-tattoo arm.”
I lean in, close enough she can feel the heat off my mouth. “You try it, Legs, and I’ll make him give you a second tattoo that says crybaby across your ass cheek.”
The artist snickers behind his machine. I keep holding her hand like I’m not the biggest sucker for her in the room.
She’s doing so fucking good.
I glance over. The skin is flushed and raw but beautiful beneath the slow reveal of black and gray lines. The outline of the angel wing is already mapped out, stretching from the top of her shoulder down to just above her elbow. Completely her.
Remembering the night she said how strange it felt to never have anything permanent enough in her life to ink into her skin. It did something to me. To never feel that…
Then to have her look at me a week after proposing and say she wanted one: “The angel wing. Just one. Just the one you drew.”
So I sketched it again. Poured everything I had into it. The softness. The strength. Designed to move with her, curving so fluidly it will seem one breath away from lifting her off the ground.
Bash watched me draw it. The kid is so enamored with creative arts, just like his mama. Every time he pointed out a line gone too thick or a curve off mark, the design grew more meaningful.
Her first tattoo. She walked into the shop nervous as hell and doing her best to fake calm. But I could feel the tremble in her hand. See the way her breath shortened when the stencil hit her skin. The nervous chatter she couldn’t control.
Still, she didn’t flinch.
Not once.
“You’re doing incredible,” I whisper, rubbing my thumb across her knuckles.
She turns her head, eyes meeting mine through lashes that are heavy with heat and a little bit of pain. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I say, kissing her hand. “Tough as hell, angel.”
“Have I officially graduated into my grown-up pet name?” she asks.
The artist looks up from her arm and gives me a nod. “Almost there. Last bit of shading.”
Sable exhales, steady now. Focused.
I glance at her hand in mine, at the ring I picked that fits her like it always belonged there, then back to the ink stretched across her skin.
“Not quite,” I breathe, kissing the back of her hand, then trailing my mouth lower. “But I’m gonna lose my shit the first time I get to call you wife.”
She laughs. Soft. Real. Like it lands somewhere deeper than she expected.
The woman I love wears my art on her skin like it’s a badge of honor, inked in trust and permanence.
And I’ve never been more fucking sure of forever.
The artist smooths ointment over the tattoo with careful fingers and wraps it in a thin band of medical film, securing it tight against Sable’s skin.
The wing curves perfectly, the way Bash suggested I draw it.
Every feather inked in with the kind of detail that makes my chest ache.
She looks down at it, eyes wide, as if her mind is just now registering what her body now carries.
Mine has.
It was always meant for her skin, her story, her soul.
We thank the artist and head out, hand in hand. It’s still early afternoon, warm and slow, the kind of day that wants you to go home and do nothing.
Back at the loft, we kick the door shut behind us and drop our stuff near the couch.
Bash is still at school for another forty-five minutes.
Sable stretches her arm out carefully, already wincing at the soreness. “No way I’m going back to the shop today. This thing hurts.”
“That’s your dominant arm too,” I say, moving to the kitchen to grab her a glass of water.
“I know,” she groans, holding it up and mimicking a sanding motion that accidentally—and very clearly—looks like a hand job. She pauses mid-move, eyes narrowing in mock offense.
“Nope,” she says, shaking her head. “That’s no good. Can’t even pretend to be productive.”
I smirk as I step back toward her, glass in hand.
“Oh, I can think of something else we can do for forty-five minutes.” I hand her the water, brushing her hip with mine. “Your arms are not required, but your legs are mandatory.”
She barely has time to laugh before I scoop her up, one arm under her knees, the other at her back. She yelps and clings to me, grinning through a wince.
“Hex!”
“Shhh,” I murmur, pressing a kiss to her shoulder with care as I carry her to the bed. “Doctor’s orders.”
I lay her down slow, careful not to jostle her arm too much. She hisses when her elbow brushes the sheet, and I freeze.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” she says, breathy. “Just… don’t touch the wing.”
I give her a grin that feels downright predatory. “Your elbow is nowhere near where I want to be.”
Sable bites her lip as I slide my hands down her hips, easing her pants past her thighs, then off entirely. I drag my palms up her inner thighs, moving with the kind of patience that says I’ve got time. Because I do. For her, I always do.
“I’ll keep away from your wing,” I murmur, dragging my mouth along the soft skin of her hip. “But everything else is fair game.”
Her breath catches as I nudge her thighs open. She’s already warm. Already wet.
“I love you,” I say against her skin. “The way you taste. The way you lose yourself for me.”
She lets out a soft, trembling sound as I kiss her inner thigh. The hand on her good arm fists the sheets.
Long, deep strokes of my tongue make her hips twitch. Soft moans turn into broken gasps. I don’t stop. I don’t rush. I keep one hand on her stomach to keep her still, the other gripping her thigh while I worship her with my mouth.
Her breathing goes ragged. She tries to muffle her sounds, biting her lip, eyes squeezing shut, but I don’t let up. I want her to feel everything. To let go.
“Come on, angel,” I whisper, voice low and rough against her skin. “Let me have it.”
And when she breaks—head thrown back, free hand clutching my wrist, desperate for something to keep her grounded—it’s fucking beautiful.
She shudders through it, panting, her body flushed and glistening, her eyes barely open as I rise back up and press a soft kiss to her mouth.
She hums, dazed and content. “That definitely beat going back to the shop.”
I settle beside her, and she curls up into me, cheeks still pink, arm draped carefully over her stomach. I brush a strand of hair from her face and press a kiss to her temple.
She’s quiet for a second, then smiles.
“I can’t wait to see Bash’s reaction,” she murmurs. “He was so excited this morning. Totally bummed I wouldn’t let him stay home from school and come with us.”
I grin, imagining his wide eyes when he sees the ink. “He’s gonna lose it.”
“Yeah,” she says, eyes soft, voice fading into something sweeter. “He’ll love it.”
She dozes off, her hand on my chest, body tucked close.
I watch her sleep.
She’s tucked into my side like she belongs there. Like I’m not dangerous. Like I didn’t once drag a man into the woods and bury what was left of him so no one would find the teeth marks I left.
I’ve killed for people I cared about. Hurt others without blinking. Moved bodies. Burned evidence. Sat across from the devil and offered my soul just to make sure someone I loved didn’t have to suffer.
But this is harder.
Not the proposal. Not the ring. I knew the second she looked at me like I was worth keeping, I’d ask her to be mine. That part was easy. She already was mine.
What’s hard is this silence. The stillness. The part where no one’s bleeding and no one’s screaming and nothing’s on fire… and I’m supposed to exist.
I know how to be a weapon. The one who kicks the door down. Who handles it. Who never flinches.
I don’t know how to be hers.
Not like this. Not without looking over my shoulder.
The ring on her finger should feel like peace. It does. And doesn’t. Because peace is foreign. Peace is something I give to other people, not something I wear like a second skin.
She thinks I can be this man.
A partner. A future.
But the truth is, I’ve spent so long surviving in the dark, I’m not sure I’ll know how to breathe if no one’s trying to kill me.
The street, the fights, the bar, I know how to move in those places. I don’t know how to sit still and be loved.
But for her, I’ll learn.
When she leaves to pick up Bash, I wait until I hear the door close, then head downstairs.
The bar’s mostly quiet. The buzz of the cooler whirrs in my ears, the scent of wood polish at my nose, and the vibration of plotting in the air.
Will and JT are at the far end of the counter, both hunched over a notepad, a bottle of bourbon between them.
They look up when I walk in.
JT lifts a brow. “Sable asleep?”
“No,” I say, sliding onto a stool. “Went to grab Bash from school.”
Will spins the bottle in his hand, then nods toward the paper. “Good. We’ve been talking.”
“Not talking,” JT says. “Laying out options.”
“Scouting possibilities,” Will adds. “Carefully.”
They don’t say his name. They don’t have to. I know we are talking about Stauder and the lingering debt Will promised to pay.
Just the idea that fucker thinks he still has a grip on everything that matters to me, boils my blood. And I know the second Will looks at me with that steady, unflinching calm, we’re past the planning stage.
This isn’t a conversation.
It’s time.
“We’ve got a way in. Infrastructure softens. He’s gotten comfortable.” He taps the coaster, numbers marked in pen. “Security rotates on this twelve-day cycle. And like clockwork, Ned makes a drop himself that same day. ”
He traces the loop once. Then again. Then again.
“I want to watch it repeat. Make sure it’s consistent. But if it is—” His finger stops. “That’s our window.”
I glance toward the loft stairs.
Picturing Sable in my bed, her bare shoulder, the ink still fresh. I think of Bash’s grin when he sees it. Think of what it took to get us here.
And most importantly, I think of what I’ll do to make sure no one takes it away.
I’ll erase his name from the goddamn earth.
I look back at them—my brothers. Weapons.
"Track it." I nod. “We wait. And when the time is right, we make him disappear.”