Heather Rainier (2 page)

“And you’re well now?”

“In remission,” she corrected. Seth nodded in understanding. Over the years he’d met several cancer patients. “I’ve been watching life pass me by and I want my chance at it. I want to go for it, whatever ‘it’ is.” She adjusted the collar of her silky shirt and added, “But I need to be discreet about where the tattoo is placed, because of my job. My bosses are rather conservative.”

Seth hid his smile, deciding to test her a little. “So, you just want a small tattoo on your shoulder or your hip? Maybe throw caution to the wind, even if it’s only a tiny bit?”

She glanced away momentarily, but then a smoldering fire entered her eyes, causing his libido to take notice again. She might be unsure what getting a tattoo would be like but she wanted it anyway. This was what he wanted to see.

She shook her head. “I want to be discreet but I’m doing this. I want to know what you can do. Show me.” All traces of her uncertainty were gone.

Yes, ma’am.

Jayne was a conundrum to him. She had an air of fragility, yet he could see her determination reflected in her eyes. He wanted to spend time with her, beyond merely tattooing her.

Seth leaned on the reception counter that separated the waiting area from his workspace and stroked his bottom lip. He debated again about showing her the sketch, knowing he took the chance of offending her. Her gaze was riveted to his hands, and her blush deepened as she looked away. Her earlier words echoed in his mind.
I’m going for it.
In an instant his decision was made. She needed to see what he could do for her—if she dared.

He reached behind the counter for his sketchbook. From there it was up to her. “I have photographs in binders that I could show you, but…”

“But what?”

Seth leafed through the sketchbook until he found what he wanted. “I drew something the other night, with you in mind.” This felt a lot like showing her the inner workings of his mind and he paused for just a second, reconsidering. He glanced up and watched as she stepped forward and placed her hands flat on the counter. Anticipation was evident in her eyes as she stared at the sketchbook.

The design had come to him after he’d taken her home from the July 4
^th
celebration. Because he hadn’t been able to sleep, he’d sat up thinking about her, remembering the feel of her in his arms, and envisioning what her unblemished, ivory skin would look like if he was allowed free rein. He’d known as he drew it that it was fantasy because she’d never want a tattoo that big, not on her first try. She probably wouldn’t want to sit through the three or four sessions it would take to get it finished. Additionally, she’d have to be at least partially nude during the sessions.

The reality was that she’d be seeing it every day, and if she ever married, it needed to be pleasing to her husband too. Not every man would be interested in a woman with a tattoo that extensive.
I am, though! Doesn’t really matter. She’d never go for something this extensive.
Conversely, he didn’t want to think about any other man viewing his handiwork.

He located the design in the spiral-bound book and turned it so she could see.

Jayne’s lips formed a perfect
O
shape as she hooked the spiral with her index finger and gently drew the sketchbook to her. Seth’s heart sped to a gallop as she gazed at the sketch. Most of his sketches were utilitarian, part of the business, and designed to communicate with a customer. This drawing was much more intimate. She glanced at him, and her cheeks bloomed with bright color. The same rosy hue that had inspired the design. Now she knew he’d been thinking about her in the nude.
Dude, fantasizing. Be honest with yourself.

In the drawing, the whimsical climbing rose started on her rib cage, by her right breast, swept across her abdomen diagonally, stretching to her left hip and curling around the upper left thigh. The tips of the rose petals were brushed with the faintest hint of a rosy-peach pastel crayon. Graceful black swirls filled in around the roses and stems, and delicate script lettering wound throughout the design.

On the page, the tattoo was depicted from three different angles, and in one of them the shadowed
V
of her pussy, at least as he imagined it, was visible. He bit the inside of his cheek, knowing that he’d shown more detail than was absolutely necessary, then remembered that this had been a fantasy he’d drawn and not something he’d intended to propose to her.
Or is it?

His mind wandered again to what a tattoo session with her would be like. He’d tattooed hundreds…thousands of men and women in the time he’d been an artist, on parts of their bodies that might shock Jayne. None of them, even the beautiful standouts like Lily Cook, had affected him the way tattooing Jayne Sheridan with this design would.

It would be a painful exercise in self-denial.

In his travels while studying his craft, Seth had met all types of women, and Jayne was certainly atypical. Jayne was studious and quiet. The serious part of his nature liked that about her, that she didn’t fill their time with inane talk. There was something about her he couldn’t quite pinpoint that brought out his protective instincts. When he tattooed someone, he usually became absorbed in the art he was creating, but he had a feeling that with Jayne that would happen on a whole deeper level.

“Do you have a photograph of this already on someone?” she asked, her eyes hooded so he couldn’t sense her reaction.

Chewing his lower lip, Seth shook his head. “No. I just drew this the other night, after…”

She lifted the sketchbook from the counter and peered closely at it, and hope germinated in his heart.
She’s seriously considering it!

It would be perfect on you. Only on you.

“After what?”

“After I dropped you off. I haven’t done this design on anyone else.”
And if you want it, I won’t do it on anyone else.

Her finger lightly brushed the script lettering and she whispered, “James Whitcomb Riley?” Her soft smile told him that he’d made the right choice in adding the lines from Riley’s poem, “The Rose,” to the design.

He thought he detected a tremor in her hand, but she kept her eyes averted so her emotions were hard to read. He had the urge to reach out and tilt her chin up so he could look into them.

Seth nodded and quoted, “‘And I said: I will cull my own sweet rose—Some day I will claim as mine the priceless worth of the flower that knows no change, but a bloom divine—The bloom of a fadeless constancy that hides in the leaves in wait for me!’”

He stood rooted to the spot as she whispered the last few words with him. A rivulet of tension rippled up his spine, and his cock rose to full attention, reacting to her soft-spoken voice. Her acceptance of what he’d created made a cold, dark place in his heart crack open and let in a little light.

She turned her luminous blue-green eyes on him and her smile lit the room. “It’s perfect. I want it.”

* * * *

Jayne sat at the library checkout desk the day after her visit to Seth’s tattoo studio and pulled the photocopy from her purse. She recalled again his searing blue gaze when he’d made eye contact with her after showing her the design. As he’d read the lines of poetry to her, she’d felt like a magnet being drawn to steel.

He was like a Greek god with his intense features, the strong black slashes of his eyebrows, over eyes that seemed to see inside her, and kissable lips that were bracketed by a jet-black moustache and goatee. Her heart was moved once again as she gazed at the drawing after checking to make sure no one else would see.

It’s perfect!

Jayne fought the prickle of tears as she read the beautiful script again. The roses, in various stages of blooming, were delicate with just a hint of blush to their tips. She hadn’t been sure about a colorful design and knew this fit the bill perfectly. A secret thrill went through her at the thought of having Seth’s hands on her body in such an intimate way. That he was so intensely handsome, and yet seemed interested in a studious wallflower like her, blew her mind.

Since meeting Seth, her cousins, Grace Warner and Charity Connors, had filled her in on his status. Grace described him as a bit of loner, but had been hasty to clarify that he wasn’t antisocial. She’d also told Jayne about Seth’s part in helping to rescue Lily Cook, when she’d been abducted by her abusive ex-husband. If it hadn’t been for his quick thinking, Clay, Del, and local law enforcement might not have found her until it had been too late. “Hero material” had been the expression that Grace had used. Maybe that was one of the reasons Jayne trusted him with such an extensive tattoo design.

The scope of the tattoo was large enough to be intimidating but not so much that she was having second thoughts. This tattoo was just for her to enjoy. The part of the design that covered the expanse of her abdomen didn’t even concern her. She could never have children, so she wasn’t worried about the tattoo being harmed by pregnancy and stretch marks. And being a thirtysomething virgin confirmed that she might well be the only one, besides Seth, who ever even saw it.

As a library patron walked past the checkout desk, she folded the drawing and slid it back into her journal for safekeeping. Rowena Booker, the elderly assistant librarian, was on an errand, so Jayne was posted at the desk, eating her lunch while she worked on the story she’d begun writing the day she’d met Seth. It was old-fashioned to write by hand but Jayne didn’t mind. She drifted away into the storyline, the scratch of her pen on the paper the only sound in the otherwise quiet library.

…Riveted by his blue gaze, Alissa teetered on a precipice, on the verge of finally giving in. Stephan’s broad shoulders vibrated with tension beneath her grip as he waited for her answer. Dusk settled across the horizon outside her bedroom window, as storm clouds gathered in the distance. If she gave in to him, would he cherish her? Or would he be gone at the first hint of trouble on the ranch?

“Alissa, if you say yes, there’s no going back. You’ll be mine from this point forward. I keep what is mine. Are you sure?”

His deep voice was a sweet caress against her throat as he pressed the hot, hard ridge of his denim-covered cock against her trembling, untouched, but embarrassingly damp flesh. Instinctively, she could tell by his soft groan that the wait for her response was an agonizing one.

What about love?

She wanted more than just protection from her late father’s enemies. She wanted more than just help with the ranch.

As if sensing her hesitation, Stephan breathed slowly and withdrew his bodyweight from her pelvis, where he’d had her pinned to the bed. “Alissa, are you afraid? Honey, I wouldn’t hurt you for the world, but it may hurt this first time.” The sincerity in his blue eyes made her heart lurch with need for him.

“But you said—”

“I know what I said. You’ll be mine from this point forward. Mine to love and take care of, make love to.”

“You love me?”

“With every fiber of my being, honey. I want you forever, not just for tonight.”

With a hitched breath, she tugged clumsily at the button of his jeans. He sat up, kneeling in front of her, as she gazed hungrily at his handsome form. Black, curling hairs covered his chest and made a steadily narrowing trail down past his navel to the hard, thick length of his erection, which jutted out as he lowered the zipper on his fly.

Heat flushed Alissa’s cheekbones as she looked her fill at Stephan’s enormous cock for the first time. Would it fit? Even as she contemplated this, her untried flesh quivered with some heretofore unknown need for him.

In seconds he had his jeans and shirt off. Stephan’s smoldering blue gaze traveled up her naked body, searing her with his stare as much as he did with his flesh.

He settled within her arms. The sensual smile on his face was made rakish by his neatly trimmed moustache and goatee, which tickled as he brushed his lips against hers. His slow, sensuous kiss was echoed with the rhythm of his hips as he rocked against her mound. Her juices wet the hot, steely hardness of his member. She gasped as the blunt head of his cock brushed insistently at her virgin entrance.

Tilting his head, he deepened the kiss and lifted her thigh around his hip as he gripped her derriere with the other. His gaze met hers and he—

“You’re not going to believe this, Jayne!” Rowena whispered in a dramatic tone, practically in Jayne’s ear.

Jayne nearly came out of her skin. She dropped her pen, and fumbled the book, trying to close it as she adopted a nonchalant pose. Her body pulsed with arousal that brought a wave of heat to her cheeks. She’d never experienced making love for herself, but she was about ready to come all the same. She now had a good understanding of the term “cockblocked.”

“Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to surprise you.”

Jayne laid her hand over her journal on the desk. “It’s all right. What’s the matter?”

“Daisy just called and said that she’s in the emergency room with a broken ankle. She was changing a light bulb at home and fell off her stepladder. She can’t come for Kookie Kid’s Klub!”

Oh, crap!

Rowena continued in a more subdued tone, “The kids have already started arriving. What should we do?”