Ink Lust
Ink Lust
Jayne Kingston
Ellora's Cave Publishing Inc. (2012)
Tags: Erotica
Eroticattt
Leni Brewster should have been disappointed when her twin sister had to bail on holding her hand during her first tattoo, but going to her appointment solo means time alone with the sexy-as-hell tattoo artist who falls into the Do Not Touch category two-fold.Only Jamie Rodriguez isn’t as off-limits as Leni thinks. Privately single for months, Jamie finds himself more than looking forward to having the hot little librarian in his chair. And when she accidentally reveals a naughty secret about herself, he can’t get his hands on her fast enough—he has to know what else she’s hiding under that buttoned-up exterior of hers.What he discovers sets his blood to boiling, igniting a burning determination to test every single one of the boundaries, both personal and physical, that she’s set for herself.
Ink Lust
Leni Brewster should have been disappointed when her twin sister had to bail on holding her hand during her first tattoo, but going to her appointment solo means time alone with the sexy-as-hell tattoo artist who falls into the Do Not Touch category.
Only Jamie Rodriguez isn’t as off-limits as Leni thinks. Privately single for months, Jamie finds himself more than looking forward to having the hot little librarian in his chair. And when she accidentally reveals a naughty secret about herself, he can’t get his hands on her fast enough—he has to know what else she’s hiding under that buttoned-up exterior.
What he discovers sets his blood to boiling, igniting a burning determination to test every single one of the boundaries, both personal and physical, that she’s set for herself.
Ink Lust
Jayne Kingston
Chapter One
“You ready for me?”
Leni looked up at well over six feet of lean, muscled and tattooed man, bit the inside of her bottom lip and thought,
More than you’ll ever know, buddy
.
“You bet,” she answered, giving Jamie her sweetest smile as she sent the text she’d been writing to her sister, tucked her phone into her purse and stood.
“Are we still going with the rib cage?” he asked, leading her out of the tattoo shop’s busy waiting area and through the hall to his room at the back of the building. “It’s a tough spot for even the most seasoned aficionado. You think you can hang getting it there your first time out?”
She caught the small smirk on that beautiful mouth of his, the glint in his mossy-green eyes. He was fucking with her.
“You calling me a wimp?” she asked, arching an eyebrow at him.
“All right.” He shook his head, his tone dripping skepticism. He stepped aside and swept his arm through the open door to his room, motioning for her to go first. “We’ll find out what you’re made of when it gets down to it. Are you all right with me locking the door so no one walks in on us?”
“Please do.” She nodded and felt the first shiver of nerves. Whether it was from the long hours she had ahead of her in the chair or being locked in a room with a man she’d started fantasizing about long before her love life went to hell, she couldn’t be sure.
Jamie Rodriguez was off limits. Way off limits.
Leni lived by the rule “you don’t do your ex’s friends or your friends’ exes”, and Jamie fell woefully into the category of the former. Which was a big,
big
shame. Just the sight of him made her feel all warm and gooey inside.
She loved the contrast of his purposely mussed black hair and olive skin with his deep-green eyes. More rugged than outright handsome, he had an edgy look that intimidated some people, and with good reason. He’d more than earned his reputation for being tough when the situation called for it, but he was also the kind of guy who’d do anything for the people he held closest to his heart.
On top of that, he had a warm, wide, readily available smile that was absolutely breathtaking. Factor in his tall, athletic frame, arms tattooed to the wrist on both sides—she had no idea how far they went under his shirt as she’d sadly never seen him without one—and the man was sex on two very long legs.
Since she didn’t “do” boyfriends, fiancés or husbands either, the fact that he had a longtime girlfriend helped to reinforce her willpower, but not by a whole lot.
She knew that crushing on rock-star types at almost thirty years old was just sad, especially after suffering so much humiliation at the hands of the last rock-star type she’d been involved with, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.
“No sister to hold your hand?” he asked, moving around the tattoo chair standing at an angle in the middle of the compact room. He reached between his legs and centered his rolling stool under himself as he sat.
“Frankie came down with a cold, and Jo didn’t want to leave her,” she said, meaning her eight-month-old niece and twin sister, as she turned in a little circle and reacquainted herself with his room.
She liked Jamie’s space, with its dark blue walls and lush spider plants hanging in front of the small frosted-glass windows set high up on the wall. His black lacquered bookcases were filled with all sorts of odd statues, knickknacks and an amazing array of books that ranged from glossy picture books of all kinds to odd curiosities that were fun to flip through. The walls were covered in framed photographs of him with various celebrities he’d met and/or tattooed mixed with small paintings of his.
“Poor little critter.” He made a sympathetic face as he pulled on a pair of black nitrile gloves. “You sure you want to do this without her?”
It was Leni’s turn to get the matching trio of tiger lilies—one orange, one pink and one red—she and Jo had decided to get both in honor of their mother and their bond as sisters. Their mother had raised them on her own without help from their father, his family or hers from the time they were infants, and the three of them had always been extremely close and fiercely protective of each other as a result.
The orange lily was for their mother. The field behind the house she’d raised her girls in was full of them. Her father—Leni and Jo’s grandfather—used to cut them out of the ditch in front of her childhood home and burn them every year, calling them weeds. It broke their mother’s heart, so when she had a place of her own, she filled her yard with them and let them run wild.
When she had her girls, she planted huge numbers of pink and red lilies to the field—pink for Leni, her quiet, happy girl and red for Jo, her little spitfire.
“It takes forever to get back on your books if I cancel.”
Not that he didn’t already know that. Jamie was one of the best tattoo artists in the area, and in high demand. His books were filled months in advance year round.
“She insisted I come without her,” she added. She put her purse on the small chair in the corner of the room and tucked her hands into the back pockets of her jeans.
“I’d have cleared my schedule for you,” he told her, his gaze steady on hers.
She pressed a hand to her stomach as it dipped dangerously at the look in his eyes.
“Any day, anytime.” His eyes never left hers, even as he stepped on a pedal under the chair. A motor hummed to life and the back and leg rests started to lie flat, making it look more like a flat table than a dentist’s chair. “Any way, anyhow,” he added, so serious he left no question about whether he was messing with her or not.
The heat rising in her stomach burst and spread in a molten wave through her.
“Good to know,” she breathed, crossing her arms to hide that her nipples had come quite fully to attention. “Are you ready for me?”
His answering smile was positively wicked.
“Ready, Freddy,” he said, gesturing to the small rolling table at his right.
He’d already set everything up before she’d arrived. All of his supplies stood ready like neatly organized soldiers. Colored inks in little bottles that made her think of grade school art class stood in a line at the back of the sterile covered table. The spray bottle of skin cleanser and the tattoo gun were both already wrapped with plastic to protect both her and the machine. The stencil he’d apply to her side and use as a guide had already been prepped and was taped to the edge of the table.
All she had to do now was take off her shirt.
“All right.” He held his hands palm up and made come-on motions with his fingers. “Let’s see ’em.”
Her eyebrows went up and her mouth went dry.
“Kidding.” He smirked, rotating on the stool to face the opposite wall.
“Does that ever work for you?” she asked, turning her back to him even though she was sure he wasn’t looking.
Cripes, she didn’t know why she was being so modest. How many times had she thought about showing him her tits, and the newish nipple rings she now wore with pride? Between the heavy gauge earrings he had in both ears and the rumored Prince Albert, she knew he’d like them, maybe admire and—please, please, please, oh please— want to touch them. Not like Aaron the Asshole Hypocrite, who was both pierced and fairly heavily tattooed, but hadn’t “allowed” Leni to do either for herself.
The nipple piercings had been a gift from Jo to celebrate her finally leaving Aaron three months earlier. She wanted to show them to someone, damn it.
No, she thought as she pulled her shirt off, she wanted to show them to Jamie.
“Now that you mention it, it rarely works on the women I want it to,” he answered.
She gave him a look over her shoulder but he missed it. His back was still to her.
“I’m sure you don’t have the slightest trouble getting women to take their shirts off for you.”
“Again with the emphasis on the right women.” He looked at her finally and won himself lots of points for looking right at her eyes without detouring to her chest even though she was standing there in nothing but her bra.
She unhooked it when he looked away again and tossed it next to her purse, covered her chest with her shirt and bravely faced him.
“Ready,” she announced.
He was all business when he spun around again. “Come around here.” He held his arm to the side so she’d go around the chair toward him. “Are we going on the right like Jo?” he asked, pulling her close so she had to stand between his knees.
“Yes, we are.” She lifted her arm to expose her side to him. And shivered when he ran his glove covered hand over her skin, looking at her like a painter would look at a new blank canvas before starting to work. The feel of his fingers traveling over her ribs like that, in a place no man had ever really touched her since they invariably seemed to go only for the obvious—tits, ass, twat—was intimate, almost erotic.
Jeez, it had been way too long since she’d gotten laid.
“I don’t usually like to do the same piece twice, but I liked this one in particular. This is going to be cold,” he warned, a bare fraction of a second before he sprayed her rib cage with cleanser. He grinned up at her when she gasped. “See?”
“You’re a funny guy,” she told him around her arm.
“I have my moments.” He wiped her side dry, sprayed her again and reached for a disposable razor. “Or at least I like to think I do.”
He popped the cap off the razor and started clearing her side of any fine body hair that might complicate things while he worked, or get infected and cause problems later.
“Jesus, that tickles,” she said through her clenched teeth.
“You need me to go higher while I’m here?” He moved her arm slightly to peek into her armpit. “Nope. Looks like you’re clean.”
She narrowed her eyes. Jamie chuckled quietly as he tossed the razor into the trash. He sprayed and wiped again, this time leaving her skin a little damp. He reached for the stencil, turned back and eyed her side.
“Can I move this until I get the stencil on?” he asked, tugging gently on her shirt.
“Sure.” She made sure her arm was across both her breasts—easy to do since they were on the small side—and let him pull it out of her grip.
Her nipple ring clicked against one of the rings on her hand as the fabric came free. Jamie’s eyes flicked to where her hand covered her breast and then quickly up at her, pupils dilated and nostrils flared like a predator catching the scent of his prey on the wind. There was a long moment when neither of them seemed to be breathing, eyes locked, each silently daring the other to make the first move.
Leni struggled with the urge to drop her hand, expose herself to him once and for all, see where it would take them. He was right there, at just the right level. Liquid heat pooled between her legs and her nipples drew up tight at the very idea of that mouth of his on her tits, licking, sucking, maybe even biting, driving her slowly out of her mind.
But he was very, very taken.
He cleared his throat, and just like that the moment passed.
He was quiet as he lined up the stencil and smoothed it over her rib cage. She ventured another look at him under her arm as he peeled the paper aside, but he’d slipped back into professional mode.
