Page 64 of Cross To Bear

All of these were fine, good things, but her hand grabbed mine, the latex squeaking as she squeezed it.

“Just do it, please. It’s only small and it’s somewhere no one will see. If I hate it, I can get it removed.”

She heard my sucked in breath, caught the way my whole body stiffened. Maddie was offering me exactly what I’d always fantasised about.

But she couldn’t know that.

“This is what you really wanted.” She peered openly at me now. “Not brunch with mimosas and almond croissants. This.”

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re asking for,” I growled between my clenched teeth.

“No?” Dear fucking god, the wild look in her eyes made the bear and the man fucking crazy. “Well, why don’t you show me?”

Chapter 37

What the fuck was I doing?

Just like last night, the fifth or sixth time Crash and Hawk had taken me to the brink of orgasm, but not let me tip over, I felt out of control and slightly delirious. Not the right mindset for getting a tattoo, right? I didn’t care. My life felt so damn regimented sometimes, constrained and boxed in, and it was like I’d discovered a crack I could work open and step out into…

Freedom, that’s what I wanted.

So when he pulled back, shoving his very impressively pierced dick in his pants before zipping up, for a second I felt a pang of fear. I was right out here on a ledge and I needed him to… He snapped off the gloves he was wearing, those naked hands somehow shocking right now, but when he grabbed another pair of gloves and pulled them on, I settled back against the bench.

“Is this what you thought about when you were tattooing groupies?” I asked, as he jerked the little cart of supplies closer.

“You really don’t want to know what the fuck I think about when I’m not focussed at work,” he growled, shaking his head and then peering critically at the design.

“Why?” Jesus, what the fuck had happened to me? Where had mild mannered Maddie gone and who was this bitch? “What do you think about?”

His gloved hand slapped down on my knee, pinning my leg in place.

“Are you a fucking mind reader or just some demon summoned to torment me?” He stared at my knee as if it personally offended him, only the slow sweep of his thumb reassuring me. Then those eyes flicked up to meet mine. “Exactly how much do you want to know?”

“Everything.” I said that without thought.

“And that won’t have you running out the door?” He glanced back at his now closed studio. “I’ve had plenty of runners in here, and if you… I can’t have that, Maddie. I can’t.”

“I won’t run.”

It was like the Devil was riding me, asking questions I’d never have dared give voice to, disturbing sleeping dogs that were better off lying as they were.

“Promise?” Bjorn was warm, kind, a bit intense, but it was like I saw someone else right now. A dark stranger whose eyes bored through me, down to my very soul. I nodded quickly. “I need your words, Maddie.”

“I promise.”

What was I agreeing too? What the hell was I doing? For once I didn’t know and that was exhilarating. What was the point of hanging out with hot biker dudes if you didn’t run a little wild sometimes? I knew I could never do this with anyone else, because of one thing that had me going very still.

I trusted them.

Trusted Crash and Hawk not to leave me hanging last night, nor to have me making a public disgrace of myself. I trusted Razor to take me to Bjorn, even though I didn’t know why. And I trusted Bjorn now as he rolled away, pulling off his gloves again and dumping them into the bin, before pulling a small key from his pocket and using it to unlock a drawer.

Whatever was in there, it was precious. I could see that in the way he gazed at the contents, then pulled out a box before locking the rest away. Cellophane wrapping was ripped off and batteries were produced and slotted into…

A sex toy?

An incredulous laugh was right there, ready to explode from my lips as I saw the strange butterfly looking thing.

“I need you to be really bloody quiet now if you want me to get this out.” He was deadly serious right now. “If you want to tap out, tell me, but… I thought about this over and over. Sometimes this fantasy was all I could focus on when you were…” He forced himself to forge on. “When you were with my brother. I bought this.” The little purple silicone wings flapped a little as he hefted it in the air. “I did that because… in my mind, if I collected all the elements of the fantasy, somehow it’d summon you.”

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