Page 109 of Cross To Bear

This was my way of taking possession of our mate. She was mine, his, and if we did this, no one would ever question that. He didn’t get the needle part, but Maddie walking around with something that would make clear to other humans that she belonged to my sleuth? He could get behind that. But as we drew closer, we breathed in the heady smell of her.

Fear was sharp, acrid, making my nose wrinkle, but there was far more to her scent than that. Arousal was thick and sweet, just like honey, and anticipation gave that a crisp edge to it. I swallowed hard, fought to get my head back into the game and get started.

Mix ink. Prep the cart. Make sure I had plenty of disposable cloths to wipe the tattoo down. Water for Maddie. Shit, make that for me too; my mouth was bone dry. But when I was finally organised, I picked up the gun and looked down at her.

“This will hurt. There’s no way it won’t. If you need a break, say so. We don’t even need to get everything done today.” I grimaced as I looked at the design, realising free hand was probably not the best way to do this. “But I need to get the outline done. After that—”

“No.” Her gaze held mine, and I felt myself sinking down into it, into her. “Today, Bjorn. I don’t know about you, but I’m done waiting. I’m done—”

I couldn’t let her say anymore, not when she was telling me everything I wanted to hear. I sucked the words from her lips, swallowing them down before she could say another thing. I loved her. I fucking loved her so damn much, and I would never stop, and if she was ready to bear that, well, I was in. I pulled away slowly, pressing my forehead to hers.

“Me too, baby.” My sigh mingled with hers. “Me too.”

So when she lay back against the bench, I turned the gun on, the whine of the motor sending me straight into that strange headspace. Where the clock didn’t matter and neither did the outside world. Just her. Only her. I rubbed my free hand over her skin, trying to get her acclimatised to this and then went to start the first line.

I’d dreamed of this moment. The previous little tattoo, that was something else again, Maddie’s fantasy, not mine. I’d been too much in my head about what she wanted to really delve into this. That bone deep satisfaction that came from marking her skin. My art, my design, the symbolism of my sleuth, but most of all, my girl. I paused mid line, looking up at her, seeing the whites of her eyes and the rapid heave of her chest as she watched what happened, caught up in a swirl of anticipation.

“Breathe, Maddie. Just breathe.” I’d meant that as a gentle suggestion, but it came out as a sharp command, her lungs instantly sucking in air. “Slower, love.” She did just that, blinking, as if coming out a spell. “You breathe too fast and it’ll make you all dizzy.” I smiled. “I don’t want you passing out on my bench. I’ll catch you if you fall, but maybe we can avoid falling in the first place.”

“Bjorn…”

I loved the sound of my name on her lips, but never more than now. That faint thread of panic, it wasn’t a pleasant thing, but I knew exactly where we were, what was happening. People got so wound up in the anticipation of the pain, their minds going into riot as they realised what they were about to do. To willingly make themselves bleed, something the vast majority of us did our best to avoid, but not now.

“I’ve got you, Maddie. I’ve fucking got you. Your head is spinning because you’re freaking out, but you don’t need to. This isn’t about being brave, love. You don’t need to do a thing but trust me.” Her gaze locked with mine. “Trust me, OK?”

Maddie nodded sharply and then her lips twitched, a smile forming, right as her heart beat too damn fast. She’d see. Before this was done, she’d understand that I could get her over any obstacle. That certainty was what let me nod back, then turn back to the tattoo.

This was the perfect design for her, I quickly realised. A perfect design for a perfect girl. The twine of the flowers and their stalks followed the curves of her body, the soft, feminine blossoms almost as pretty as her. This was an entirely different design for me. Most of my stuff was all sharp edges, brutal looking stuff, for brutal men, but I had to rein myself back in, keep the lines light, slender, twisting around each other in sinuous twists, the shading all done in tiny little dots rather than large areas of grey and black, allowing her skin to shine through.

“So is this how you imagined it would go?” Her breathy voice jerked my attention to her, and I pulled the gun back. Her smile was a furtive one, there and gone again. “Is this as good as the fantasy?”

I rubbed her skin clean of blood and excess ink.

“Fantasies are perfect reflections of what’s going on in your head at the time,” I replied, tossing the wipe aside. “They’re not grounded in reality. What I dreamed of, it was perfect at the time for where my head was at. It was dirty, sexy, hot, because my cock was aching just like my heart was, for you, Maddie. But reality…”

I glanced around the room, reality feeling like it was intruding into a place I didn’t want it to go, but that was how this worked.

“It never lives up to the standard the fantasy sets.” Her little gasp had my focus shifting back to her. “And that’s a good thing. The fantasy was me inside my head, mentally masturbating over my idea of you, but this.” I smoothed my hand up the unmarked part of her arm. “This is you, real, living, breathing, bleeding, real. I choose the real woman over the dream, every fucking time. The fantasy was just a collection of my assumptions about you, some have been upheld, others disproved. But I’ll never regret learning the woman rather than just panting over the idea of her.”

“So you don’t want to fuck me against the tattoo bench afterwards?”

Her voice was a little squeak, but there was an edge to it I couldn’t ignore. My eyes searched her face, looking for clues as to what that might mean, but this wasn’t something I could work on assumptions about.

“What?”

“You don’t want to re-enact the whole fantasy?’

“Do you?” I set the gun down, turning to face her head on, needing to catch every single response. “Do you, Maddie?”

“It hurts.” She sobbed that out. “I think I know what hell the lot of you were in if this is how it felt and while I knew intellectually that it would, the reality…” Her breathing was coming in faster and faster again. “It hurts, Bjorn, and I can’t help but want to ease it.”

“So we’ll stop.”

I was already thinking about how we could do that. I could photograph the sketch I’d done on her skin. It was bloody hard to replicate something you’ve already drawn, but I could try for her.

“No.” She gripped my arm. “I just need… a distraction. Something to take my mind off, like last time.”

My dick was hard and aching in my jeans, but I was well used to ignoring it. Right now it felt like it was trying to punch its way free of my zipper, sure it was the answer. But I couldn’t fuck my girl, get her gasping from pleasure, not pain, and tattoo her arm. Which was when my eyes went back to the drawer. I set the gun down and went over to that drawer, pulled it open and took the last part of the fantasy out, returning to Maddie.

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