Chapter 37 Very Much Yours
Very Much Yours
Emily's Search History: can you cause real damage by digging a tattoo gun too deep into the skin?
Eli
I ball up another sketch and toss it in the bin with more force than necessary. The lines are wrong. It doesn’t capture her emotions the way I want it to.
Emily looks up from her laptop, her brow furrowed adorably. “What are you working on?”
I groan, staring at the graveyard of unfinished drawings scattered across the table. “Designs.”
“For tattoos?”
I hum low in my throat, my gaze snagging on the beginnings of a hyper-realistic eye. Emily watches me, her own eyes flicking to the image.
“Who is that for?” she asks, picking up the paper to study it.
I snatch it back a little too quickly. “No one, really. I’m just practicing.”
“Shouldn’t you practice on people, not paper?”
A smirk tugs at the corners of my mouth. “It’s not that kind of practice. But yes—you learn using either synthetic or real skin.”
“How different is it?” she asks. “Doing it on a person?”
I think for a moment, searching for the right words. “Skin stretches. It bends; it breathes. It’s not flat. Bodies have curves—bones, muscles. If you don’t hold it correctly, keep it taut, the image distorts.”
Emily’s attention is solely on me now, her laptop forgotten. It’s a heady feeling.
“It’s also different using the needle,” I continue.
“You have to know how deep to go, what the image will look like once it heals.” My voice drops.
“And it’s permanent. There’s no do-over.
Mistakes can’t happen. You have to be certain of what you’re drawing.
You need to react to your client—anticipate flinching, twisting, breathing. ”
“Isn’t it scary?” she asks softly. “Permanently marking someone?”
I shrug. “You’ve permanently marked my soul. Is that scary?”
“Yes,” she says immediately, the word barely more than a breath.
“I like the permanence,” I admit. “I like knowing it can’t disappear. It can’t be undone.”
She nods—in understanding, in acceptance, I’m not sure.
I stand, head down the hall, then return with my tattoo gun—my travel one. Emily eyes it with open curiosity.
“Draw on me,” I say.
Her breath hitches. “What?”
“I want you to feel it. To understand the weight.” I meet her gaze, unwavering. A challenge. “Draw on me.”
She shakes her head, but she can’t hide the spark of excitement in her eyes. Curiosity wins.
I set everything up, my hands moving with practiced ease. I prep the gun, wipe my forearm with alcohol, then apply the stencil of the eye—the one I’ve been obsessing over. There isn’t much untouched skin left on my arms, but there’s a gap near my wrist, right over the blue map of my veins.
“Eli.” Her voice wavers as I hold the gun out to her. “I can’t. What if I ruin it?”
“Then it’ll be perfectly imperfect.”
She laughs quietly, nervous and beautiful. “You’re insane.”
“Probably.”
But she doesn’t protest again.
I guide her fingers around the handle. “All you have to do is outline.” I lift a brow, daring her.
She bites her lip, teeth sinking in as she decides.
“The needle only needs to go one to two millimetres,” I remind her. “Don’t push too deep.”
Her hand trembles as she brings the gun closer. My arm rests flat on the table, offered.
The buzz fills the room when she flips the switch.
The first touch is rough—jagged, too deep. I grit my teeth, the sharp bite grounding me.
“Not so deep,” I rasp.
Her face is scrunched in concentration as she follows the stencil. She leans in close enough that I catch the scent of my body soap on her skin. Every time she strays, she pauses, wide-eyed, looking up at me.
Every time, I nod. Keep going.
It takes just over thirty minutes. By the end, her hand is cramped, her forehead damp with sweat.
The design isn’t perfect. The lines are shaky. The iris slightly lopsided.
But that isn’t what matters.
I look down at my wrist. She’s marked me. Claimed me with ink.
Her drawing is on my skin for eternity.
An eye watching over me, the way I watch over her.
Emily
I can’t stop staring at the droplets of blood dotting Eli’s skin. Can’t stop seeing the uneven lines, the inflammation I caused.
“I told you I’d ruin it,” I whisper, unable to meet his eyes—afraid of the disappointment I expect to find there.
His fingers slip under my chin, tilting my face up. “What are you talking about? It’s perfect.”
“The lines are jagged. I went too deep in the corner—”
“Em.” His voice cuts off my spiral before it can take hold. “Look at it.”
He grabs a wipe and swipes it over his wrist. Black ink and red blood smear together before he holds his arm out to me. It’s small—easy to miss among his other tattoos, the professional ones.
“Do you know what you’ve given me?” he murmurs, his grip firm on my jaw.
“A scar?”
He chuckles, shaking his head. “You. You’ve given me you.” He releases me to wrap the tattoo carefully. “It’s always been me watching from the shadows, waiting for someone to disappear. Like my mother. Like Jenny.”
He leans across the table, his forehead resting against mine. “But now? Now I have your eye on me. Permanently. Wherever you are, I’ll have your gaze with me.”
I should be horrified. The clinical markers of delusional attachment and transference are so thick they’re suffocating. I should be running.
Instead, I reach out and trace the edge of the bandage.
“I’m the most unprofessional person I’ve ever met,” I whisper—the truth I’ve known since the beginning.
“Good,” Eli rasps as he moves around the table.
His hands find my waist, pulling me flush against him.
He doesn’t care about my thick thighs or the way my stomach presses into him.
He doesn’t see the patient-therapist boundary I should be enforcing.
He just sees me. “Professionalism is for people who don’t belong to each other.
And you, Doctor Morgan, are very much mine. ”
His lips brush mine—featherlight, barely there. “And I am very much yours. You own me, Angel.”
I close my eyes and lean into him.
He lifts me onto the table, his bandaged wrist a constant reminder of the claim I’ve left on his skin.