Inked Magic (22 page)

They dried off, gathering their clothing before going inside. Cathal took her hand, guiding her up a curving staircase and into his bedroom.

Like the rest of what she’d seen of the house, it was high-ceilinged and open. Sconces provided muted light and the moon did the rest, pouring in through bay windows running the length of a sitting area and encompassing all but a six-inch strip at the bottom and top of the wall.

She looked longingly at the bed, a king positioned in a windowed alcove more narrow than wide. “I need to dry my hair.”

Cathal pressed kisses along her shoulder. “Sit on the bed. I’ll get the hairdryer.”

A tug and he took her clothes with him when he left, leaving her standing naked and feeling vulnerable. It brought the urge to bolt for the safety of her apartment.

The intimacy unnerved her, the aftereffects of allowing him inside her without a condom. She was self-aware enough to know that and yet she couldn’t look away or stop herself from wanting him again when he returned.

He was naked, masculine perfection. Primal man with his dark mat of chest hair, his cock and testicles on display.

Cathal felt himself hardening as he walked toward her. There was no hiding the power she wielded over him, the fuck-me expression that became a command his body couldn’t refuse.

“Get on the bed,” he said, fighting the urge to wrap his hand around his cock when she obeyed with a sloe-eyed look, testing his control.

He’d make her wait this time. He’d make
himself
wait. Prove to himself he could, that he didn’t have to give in to the craving, the clawing, almost constant desire for her.

“Turn around,” he said, kneeling behind her.

He’d intended only to retrieve the hairdryer and a brush for her to use. Now he took care of her hair himself, performing a service he’d never done for another woman.

Intense satisfaction surged through him at the way she enjoyed his tending to her, in how trusting and vulnerable she seemed in the intimacy of it.

Possessiveness gripped him with the thought of her starting the day in Eamon’s bed. Fear trickled in. A warning he was getting in too deep and losing sight of his reason for being with her. He suppressed both, rationalizing away his unusual behavior and feelings as normal. She was beautiful and the sex was the best he’d ever had. She was a challenge and he didn’t like to lose.

When her hair was dry he stretched her out on his bed, the soft invitation in her eyes an enticement, a reward, her splayed thighs a beckoning he couldn’t resist. With a quick thrust he entered her, swallowing her gasp of pleasure, her low moans as he moved in and out, bringing her to climax before giving himself over to the same.

D
reams followed Etaín into a hazy precursor of wakefulness. They blurred the lines between real and imagined, coming with confusion and tumultuous emotions.

Despair and hope. Rage and guilt. Desire bathed in beautiful light, and desire that was dark obsession, making her skin crawl and her heart beat as if it belonged to a trapped, cornered thing.

Flames melted tearful clowns into grotesque mirror-house distortions, turning them into dark puddles that gave birth to demons, a twisting mass of faces with their mouths open, inhaling souls and feeding on terror. A knife slid through flesh while jagged red lightning bolts streaked downward and swastikas spun like martial arts stars, striking shadowy figures to the ground.

She shivered, recognized the images, all of them related to ink and her connection to it.

Heat seeped into her. Comforting. Calming. Like the swipe of a warm, soapy bath sponge across her psyche, cleansing it of toxic debris.

She pressed more tightly to the warm body lying next to her. A fresh image came then. Teresa, the young mother at the shelter. It was followed by the picture of her son, Lothar, with sigils of strengthened resolve concealed in his hair, and others, fortifying resistance to temptation and bad influences in his lips.

Her fingers twitched and moved, capturing the lines in muscle memory. She wasn’t aware she sketched out Lothar on the rough texture of a masculine arm until another image followed, one coming with the memory of those first moments after Cathal had entered Stylin’ Ink and introduced himself.

Heat pooled in her belly, waking her fully and bringing with it the desire to feel him inside her again. She opened her eyes and looked downward, at Cathal’s arm draped across her stomach, her fingers tracing a pattern on his skin, honeysuckle and thorn, stylized, more symbolic sigil than literal interpretation, a tattoo that would pass as tribal art.

The design still wasn’t complete but more of it was there and she knew it wasn’t something to be inked on with the machine, but done by hand, like those she did at Justine’s request and the eyes she’d placed on her own palms.

It wouldn’t matter that the dark hair on his arms would grow back, partially obscuring the details. His willingness to accept the ink and her being the one to put it on his inner forearms were the only things bearing any importance.

She sat up, her instinct to reach for the tablet and pencils she kept next to her bed. A precaution. A habit. She wasn’t overly worried about forgetting either design.

A scan of Cathal’s bedroom revealed there was nothing she could use to write on. “Bad dreams?” he asked, sitting as well, his hand going to her breast while his lips pressed kisses along her neck.

A small shrug. “There are always dreams. One of them was a tattoo for you.”

“Not happening.”

The certainty in his voice made her smile. “Never say never.”

“Some things are an absolute certainty.”

His hand moved from her breast, smoothing downward over her belly and pushing between her thighs.

She parted her legs willingly for him and he cupped her mound, burning her with the heat of his palm.

“Like this,” he murmured, stroking the underside of her clit and sliding two fingers into her slit. “Wanting you again is a definite yes.”

With wakefulness came obligations. Responsibility weighed too heavily on her to stay and play all day though she found she wanted to.
Too much
.

She avoided analysis with thoughts of what she had to do. She needed to collect her kit from Derrick’s and change clothes. She needed to show Derrick the demon images she’d stolen from Tyra’s memory then stop by the shelter to tattoo Teresa. And after that, visit other artists to see if any of them recognized the art the Harlequin Rapist wore.

“Once more and then I need to leave,” she said.

“Once more won’t be enough.”

“It’ll have to be. I’ve got promises to keep.”

So do I
, Cathal thought, unwelcome reality crowding in, the firm resolve in her voice tightening his chest with a reminder of the last conversation he’d had with his father. “Make one of your promises that you’ll eat breakfast with me this morning.”

“Where?”

The lack of an immediate yes was like sandpaper over nerve endings. Since grade school he’d had members of the opposite sex fantasize about playing house with him and being Mrs. Cathal Dunne.

He rubbed a stubble-rough cheek against her neck, finding raw pleasure in the way it abraded her skin, leaving a mark. Not here, he realized. He didn’t want his father and uncle seeing her in his home, a place they knew he rarely brought women. He didn’t want a new round of law enforcement agencies taking an interest in him.

Not at his father’s house, or Denis’s, either. That close to Brianna and he couldn’t be certain what they’d do.

“We’ll go out,” he said, wanting Etaín’s compliance, needing it for
her sake as well as his own. He cupped her breast, taking possession of a nipple as the palm of the other hand glided over her clit, his fingers slowly fucking in and out of her.

“Why go anywhere?”

“Because I can’t be in two places at once. My uncle is going through a difficult time and my father is worried. I said I’d meet them for breakfast. I want you to go with me.”

She tensed rather than purr with pleasure at the invitation. “What I said last night in your office still holds.”

Don’t get serious about
me.

Aggravation, frustration both bit into him with sharp teeth. In that instant he knew where he’d take her. Aesirs.

“Just breakfast, Etaín.” He pressed his fingers deeper, curving them and finding the spot that had her back arching and a moan escaping.

Her hand covered his as if she’d lock him inside her, but she was no match for his strength. He pulled from her channel, eliciting a whimper of protest.

“Give me what I want and I’ll give you what you want.” She shivered at his taking possession of her clit. “Say yes to breakfast.”

“Yes.”

He slipped his fingers inside her once again, finding her even wetter.

Capturing her earlobe, he sucked. Loving the way each pull of his lips caused her to clamp down on his fingers.

“Get on your hands and knees for me. Let me see you that way.”

She went, thighs open and vulva exposed, nearly making him come with the sight of swollen folds and glistening slit.

He rose behind her, hands cupping her hips as he entered in a single thrust, lodging hard and deep.

His eyes closed at the sensation of wet heat and tight woman. A shudder of ecstasy went through him, silencing any voice other than the one urging him to stay lost in her forever.

He wanted to make it last. Tried to do it with short thrusts. Then
longer ones. Pulling out so only his cock head remained inside her before pushing all the way in again in a slow slide.

A sheen of sweat coated his skin. He labored for breath. Fighting himself. Fighting her. Self-denial ending with her cry of release and taking his control with it, leaving only primal emotion and a relentless pistoning to orgasm.

They collapsed onto the mattress with him curled around her, his cock still lodged in the heated paradise of her body. He rubbed his cheek against her neck, her shoulders, following the rough abrasion with the press of lips and caress of tongue.

He loved her taste, her scent, the softness of her skin. Loved how she fit against him as if—

He blocked the thought but a shadow of it remained. Tightening his arms on her he made a promise to himself. If she agreed to help his family, he’d ensure any drawings she did of Brianna’s rapists were destroyed. There would be
no
physical evidence linking her to his uncle and father’s actions.

Reluctantly he left her body and the bed, padding naked to where their clothes were piled on a chair. He retrieved his phone, calling his father.

“Let’s meet at Aesirs in an hour and a half.”

“You’re bringing her?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll call Denis.”

He put the phone down, lust rippling through him at the sight of Etaín’s Mona Lisa smile.

“Eamon won’t care I’ve been with you. If anything, it’ll turn him on to see us together and imagine how we spent the night.”

Cathal turned away, hiding the reactive snarl that came with a resurgence of anger and possessiveness. “We better hustle if we’re going to swing by your place. I assume you don’t want to wear what you had on last night.”

He heard her rise from the bed. “I need to retrieve my tattoo
kit from Derrick’s apartment. It’s in Corona Heights. I’ve got a change of clothes there.”

Footsteps and he felt her behind him. His buttocks clenched as she touched her lips to his shoulder. He started to harden again as her arms slipped around his waist. “We can shower here before going to Derrick’s. I like being in the water with you.”

He told himself he should peel her arms away and reject her overture. Put some distance between them until he could get his head straight.

He couldn’t make himself do it. Not with her skin touching his, not when all he could think about was the Mona Lisa smile and her mention of Eamon.

E
amon prowled the estate, the emotions responsible for his lack of sleep the night before still churning inside him.

Irritation that she hadn’t come to him.

Relief that he knew where she was.

Sexual frustration as he imagined what she might be doing with Cathal.

He turned a corner and found Rhys approaching.

“Niall Dunne has called Aesirs to ensure a table for four will be available for breakfast. He and his brother are to be joined on the terrace by Cathal and a guest.”

“Etaín?”

“It’s a reasonable assumption. She’s still with him at his home.”

Eamon laughed. Did Cathal think bringing her straight to Aesirs from his bed would change anything? Post an off-limits sign and put a collar around her neck with a leash attached? If so, then Cathal would soon be on the receiving end of a lesson in frustration.

Amusement at the prospect of it lightened Eamon’s mood considerably though not enough for him to forget his own recent lesson,
thanks to Etaín, on the cost of ignorance. In all the years Niall and Denis Dunne had enjoyed a meal at Aesirs, they’d never sat on the terrace when accompanied by a woman.

“I believe it’s time to find out the reason for the Dunnes’ sudden interest in my future consort.”