Chapter 8 #2
“Grow up, Sher,” I said, hiding my own smile. “Who’s taking me back to Alex’s?”
“I got the car,” Viper said. “I’ll take you there. Bear’ll have my nuts for breakfast if I left you alone.”
“At least they’ll be getting used,” Savage retorted before he smirked and walked away with Hawk and Morena. Viper grunted as he led us down to the car and we headed toward Bear’s place.
I finished the final line on the end of the r for her to spread it over to her hip, and looked down at the masterpiece.
The black ink shone up at me, her skin peppered with red and pink from the pain, but she hadn’t winced once.
A tattoo over the hips and just above the pussy was painful, and yet Sheridan had been resolute in what she wanted.
I usually wouldn’t tattoo a name on someone, unless it was the kid, but I had no reservations about tattooing Cooper’s name on her. I knew they were endgame.
“That’s it, let me just wrap it and you can get up,” I said. I set about cleaning it up, rubbing cream into it and placing the tattoo wrap over it. She got up, and pulled her shirt back down.
I knew why she’d done it. She needed to take back the power she lost in that courtroom today.
“The girls asked me if they could change their name to Malone today,” she said.
“Wow,” I replied, packing up my stuff. “That’s amazing, what did Coop say?”
“I haven’t spoken to him yet,” she said. “With everything going on…I don’t know…I think it’s something to ask when we aren’t battling the hounds of the devil, you know?”
“Or,” I said, standing to come and stand next to her at the door to the back courtyard. “It’s exactly what he needs to hear right now, to take the pressure off. He would protect those girls with his dying breath, and we all know it. He’s been more of a daddy to those girls than Neal ever was.”
“I wish they were his.”
I put my arm around her and squeezed her. “They already are, so tell him what they want. I’m sure he would be so fucking honoured.”
Sheridan pushed away from me. “So why are you hiding away here, and why is your shit here?”
When Sheridan was done with the sappy shit, she was really done. It’s why I loved her so much.
“Matteo Barone is here, Alex kidnapped me to keep me safe.”
Sheridan’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“You knew?”
“I knew Matteo was here, yeah,” Sheridan said. “I didn’t know you were staying with Bear.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “When he finds Matteo, I’m sure we’ll figure out what to do after that.”
Sheridan didn’t respond, but I could see she knew something.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Sheridan, don’t play dumb. What is it?”
“It’s just…Cooper told me that Alex found Matteo already, and he’s dead.”
The air left my lungs quickly as I tried to understand what I was hearing. “What do you mean?”
Sheridan sighed and sat down on the tattoo chair again.
“Alex had put some of the boys out there to track him down while he kept you here I guess. When he found him, he killed him and had to come to Cooper to ask for his permission. No one is allowed to go out on their own without asking for Cooper to be okay with it, so he asked after he’d done it. ”
“Why would he lie to me?”
“Maybe he’s enjoyed having you here,” Sheridan offered. “He was scared you would leave like you always do, and he wasn’t ready for that.”
“I wouldn’t have left, Sheridan.”
“He doesn’t know that, Orla. Talk to him.”
“Oh, I intend to,” I said as Sheridan rolled her eyes.
“I already feel bad for him.”
Bear
I opened the door to my house and headed down to the room I’d set Orla up in for tattooing. She could have people here if they were vetted properly by Rebel. He’d told me she was tattooing today but didn’t tell me who. I’d almost killed him.
After being on the road all day, missing Orla like crazy, I wasn’t in the mood for his shit.
“Orla!”
“In here,” she called out. I moved down to the door and saw her putting her ink pots down on the side, after refilling them.
“Who were you tattooing?”
“Sheridan,” she answered. “Why?”
“Rebel wouldn’t tell me who it was, the little shit.”
Orla shrugged. “Why does it matter? Do you not trust me?”
Something in the way she said it put me on edge. She refused to look me in the eye, and she hadn’t bounded into my arms the second I got home, which meant she was probably pissed off.
“How did today go?” I asked, trying to see if something happened at the courthouse. I hadn’t seen Hawk yet to ask him.
“It was fine, I suppose. Neal is a dick, but we all know that.”
I nodded. “Sorry I had to go on a run. I wanted to be there for you.”
She shrugged. “I had almost the rest of the crew with me, so it was fine. How was your run? Do anything fun?”
“Hardly,” I said, feeling the anger seep off her in waves. “You got it in you to tattoo me some more today?”
“Sure,” she said, picking her gun up. “Come over.”
I pulled my jeans off, kicking them to the side of the room and jumping up on the chair.
Orla pulled her stool over and got to work on finishing the tattoo she’d been doing on my shin for the last few days.
My other leg was already almost complete.
The pain was intense, being on my bone, but I’d give anything to have her sweet artwork on me.
I wish I had a fresh canvas for her to work her magic on, having her tattoo me did things to me that I didn’t even think were possible.
She didn’t speak as she went to work, but I could feel the quick needle work and the swiping. She was pissed off about something.
“Are you upset I went on the run?” I asked her.
“Nope.”
The p made a resounding pop, but she didn’t continue, rather she kept at the tattoo, not even looking up at me.
“Fuck,” she said, putting the gun down and slowly looking up at me.
“You make a mistake?”
“No,” she said. “I meant it.”
“What’s going on?” I asked her, finally. “Orla, come on, why are you so fucking mad at me?”
“How’s the hunt going for Matteo?” she asked me. She hadn’t mentioned his name for weeks. I’d hated lying to her about the fact that he was gone and she was safe now, because I couldn’t watch her walk out of this house back to her life.
I just couldn’t let her go.
Not again.
“Still going. Don’t worry, you’re safe.”
“Am I?” she asked, but it was rhetorical. “How could that be? Matteo wants me dead, doesn’t he?”
“You’re safe with me, Or.”
“But you aren’t always here, Bear, how could I be safe?”
I hated it when she called me Bear. She only did it when she was pissed off with me which did happen a lot, but not recently.
“You know, don’t you?” I asked her. She finally looked into my eyes, and I saw it there. Sheridan had been here, and I knew Ace would have told her. There wasn’t a secret between the two of them.
“Why the fuck would you lie to me?”
I slid my hand into my hair, frustrated. I didn’t want her to find out this way. “I’m sorry, I just didn’t want you to freak out.”
“About what?” she rounded on me. “I shot him, remember? I don’t care that you killed him, Alex. I actually kinda love that you did it for me, to protect me, but lying?”
I closed my eyes, feeling the pain in her voice. “Orla.”
“I’m sorry for what I did to your leg,” she said, looking down at the leg she’d just tattooed.
“What?”
She looked away. “I can fix it.”
I moved over to the mirror on the wall, stood, and looked down at the new addition. I felt my cock get hard at seeing her name etched into my skin, permanently. Why the fuck hadn’t I thought to have it on me before?
“There’s nothing to fix,” I told her, moving back over to her.
“But I tattooed my name on you, out of fucking spite,” she protested.
“Or, if I was to ever have a name on me, it would be yours. I’m pissed I didn’t think of it myself.”
“You wa-want my name on you?”
“Why wouldn’t I have your name on me?” I asked her. “At least now, you can’t leave me again.”
“I wouldn’t have left,” she said and my eyes shot open, taking in her relaxed shoulders, the way she looked nervously at her feet. “If you didn’t want me to, I wouldn’t have gone back to my apartment. I would have stayed here…with you.”
One moment she was on the ground, looking at her feet, and the next, before I knew what I was doing I had lifted her up, her legs wrapping around my waist as I pushed her into the wall.
Her mouth claimed mine instantly as I pulled her skirt up, ripping at the thong she had on underneath.
I pulled my cock free of my underwear and drove into her.
She gasped against my mouth as I settled into her, allowing her body to acclimate to my cock before I fucked her against the wall, hard and fast, claiming my woman.
Finally.
My woman.
Orla
We lay on the floor of the tattoo room after a few rounds of fucking all over the place. It had been needed after everything that had happened. Now, we had no more secrets, and he’d promised me the world.
I believed him too.
Alex O’Leary was mine.
“What’s this one?” he asked me, pulling my arm up and tracing over my old tattoo, one of my first, on my wrist, over my veins.
The faded O.O design gave me a flutter.
“It was what I wanted my initials to be,” I told him honestly. In high school, I expected them to be that.
He froze, tensing under me. “Orla O’Leary?”
I nodded. “Stupid teenage crush shit.”
“When we get married, I’ll tattoo it onto you and maybe put one on your ass claiming my territory.”
I chuckled into his chest. “Why don’t you do it now?”
“Don’t play, Or. You know I will.”
“Do you know how to do it?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I’ve been in the chair long enough to know.”
I pulled my tablet up from the bottom of the chair and drew a design, showing it to him where he nodded and I hit print. The stencil printed out, and I got up to grab it.
“Here.”
Bear jumped up, and took the stencil from me. “You’re sure?”
“Alex, if you don’t, I might tattoo another guy’s name on my ass.”