Page 63 of Billionaire Bad Boy Daddy

Five Years Earlier...

Rex watched in awe as the ink penetrated Isabella’s skin. She didn’t even flinch. Tattoo artists almost always refuse to do a rib tat for a first-timer, but Isabella was adamant she could handle it. She didn’t even want to watch Rex get the tattoo first. She went in, guns blazing, ready to go.

And damn could she handle it. No one had ever been sexier in Rex’s eyes.

“Alright, hop off and let me know what you think,” the artist said, a guy tatted from stem to stern with big silver gauges in his ears.

Isabella rolled off the table and went to the mirror to admire the image on her ribs. A sketch outline of willowy ocotillo, flowering at the top. She smiled. “I love it.”

“Me too,” Rex said, breathless.

She flipped around and grinned. “Your turn.”

Rex was not nearly as graceful. He’d gotten tattoos before. A couple on his arms, ankle, back and thigh.

Never ribs.

He definitely would have been squirming and crying uncle if it was his first.

But Isabella was there to hold his hand through the whole ordeal.

When he was finished up, they admired the matching tattoos side by side in the mirror. Something to unite them on their last night together. Something to have forever since they couldn’t have each other.

It was Isabella’s idea to make their affair memorable by establishing the ending as true. No contact, no saving phone numbers, no pictures.

Just the ink they shared on their bodies.

“I’m glad I could take your virginity,” Rex teased in her ear.

“You wish, Redford,” she replied, before planting a kiss to his lips.

Once they were bandaged, they left the parlor behind and drove out to their spot in the desert. One last time. One more night.

Isabella’s heart had been heavy since she woke up that morning. Not only was it Rex’s last day in town, but she had a shift at the hospital so she couldn’t even spend every moment with him. She had to settle for meeting late in the night, getting their tattoos, and a last tryst in the desert.

“We’ll have to take it easy, probably,” Isabella said, examining the bandage.

Rex snorted. “Tell me you’ve never gotten a tattoo without telling me you’ve never gotten a tattoo.”

Isabella blushed. “It’s literally my job to –“

“I know, baby, I know,” Rex said, pushing his face into the side of her head and kissing her jaw. “You worry for nothing, though. It will heal. Plus, I’ve had way worse.”

“Oh?”

Rex leaned back on the blanket, lengthening his body out all the way so his feet were off the edge. “Let’s just say never get a tattoo in a basement from a guy named Grady. He learned that shit in prison.”

“You did that?”

He shrugged.

“You’re crazy.”

“That’s the least crazy thing I’ve done, Isabella.”

She picked up her plastic cup of wine. Cheap wine that was going to give her a horrible headache in the morning. She didn’t care. It was a celebration tonight.

One last time.

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