Page 3 of Protected By the Mountain Man

And I’d never felt more alive.

Dylan, meanwhile, had gone full-on slack jawed on me. I wondered if I’d need to punch him in the arm to pull him out of it.

“You could paint stardust around my nipple,” I said, pointing to it.

“Tattoo your nipple?” he asked.

The words sounded forced, like his throat was tight. Was I doing that to him?

“Is that painful?” I asked.

Yeah, the whole stardust thing was silly. I had no interest in expanding the tattoo. Really, I just wanted this man to run his fingers across my breasts. And the rest of my body.

“I’ll tell you what,” Dylan said. “Why don’t we get started on the fairy and if you want more..?”

I wanted more. So much more. But I simply nodded. He was all business, and I was disappointed about it...until that needle touched my skin.

“Holy heck!” I yelled. “That hurts.”

He withdrew the needle and stared at me. “Do you want me to stop?”

I shook my head and gritted my teeth. I was tough. I could take this. Plus, it was worth it. What were a few minutes of pain compared to a lifetime of enjoying this beautiful pink fairy on my chest?

But it was more than a few minutes. It was a full hour. That gave us plenty of time to get to know each other.

Unfortunately, that meant fibbing a little on my end—withholding some details. I told him I grew up in Kentucky. It was totally true, but I left out the part where I spent some holidays and part of each summer right here in Rosewood Ridge.

Dylan clearly didn’t remember me as the teenage girl he’d met numerous times. I stopped visiting my dad around the age of fourteen. I was on the cheerleading squad, and spending time with my friends was just more important to me at that time than my dad.

But my father paid for most of my college and offered to let me come stay with him after I graduated. As graduation drew closer, his offer to stay with him in the mountains until I got established was too good to pass up. Plus, Rosewood Ridge Elementary needed teachers badly enough that I got in on a waiver, giving me extra time to get my licensing.

“What do you think?”

I’d been so caught up in our conversation, I hadn’t noticed Dylan had finished the tattoo at some point. He’d grabbed a handheld mirror from the counter behind him and was holding it up to my breast.

At first, I had a hard time getting past the fact that I’d been sitting here topless in front of this stranger. What had I been thinking? There were my nipples, fully visible to anyone who stepped into that doorway. Most importantly, this hunky tattoo artist had been only inches from them for more than an hour.

Then I shifted my attention to the reason he was holding the mirror up in the first place, and a big smile broke out over my face. “Perfect,” I said, gritting my teeth at the waves of pain still shooting through my body.

He set the mirror down and reached for the cloth he’d been using to wipe up blood as he worked. It grossed me out at first, but I’d gotten used to it. All of it. The pain, the buzz of the needle, and the blood as he worked to clean up the area.

As my gaze naturally drifted to his face, I couldn’t help but notice something out of the corner of my eye. His jeans were slightly baggy, but there was a definite bulge behind that zipper. The biggest bulge I’d ever seen.

“Do you normally get turned on while you’re tattooing someone?” I asked.

His movements stopped abruptly, and he looked up at me, eyes wide open, as if he really hadn’t expected me to notice that. Certainly, he hadn’t expected me to call it out.

“Only when the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen walks in and whips off her shirt and bra,” he said. “And then I get to touch that woman’s breasts for a full hour.”

As though he hadn’t said anything out of the ordinary, he went back to cleaning me up. I was suddenly transfixed by his movements, wondering what it might be like if he tossed that cloth aside and touched my breasts for real. My mind drifted to naughty thoughts, imagining myself unbuttoning his pants, pulling down that zipper, and stroking him until he came.

I’d never done anything like that. Sure, I’d kissed boys, despite the rules in our private college. But I made it clear I could go no further than kissing. I’d never wanted to until now.

“It’s helping,” I said, and his movements froze again.

He looked at me. “What?”

“I was just fantasizing about doing things to you,” I said. “It turned me on, and now it doesn’t seem to hurt as much. Or maybe it just takes my mind off the pain.”

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