Page 154 of Creatures that Breathe

Our first kiss. “I wish I could remember.”

Darkness shudders in his gaze, and warmth folds around me, indecent and lazy, an old friend welcoming me home.

“I’d do it again, you know.” I make certain to show my unwavering conviction. “I’d give myself up for you, for the guard.” He’s already expressed his opinion on the matter—refusal, denial, forbidding, begging.

I chase a swallow down his throat.

His eyes fixate on my tattoos, each one harboring a story, a memory.

“Tattoos,” he’d said that first morning, smoothing out the rumpled notebook page covered with sketches. Waves and names, scales, a house. I’d blacked out from the pain of the memories. Atlas was there when I woke, grasping my hand tightly, a comforting anchor while Cross watched, vibrating, at the far end of the room, hair wild, eyes terrified, Lev’s hand on his shoulder. The walls had been coated in thick, black shadow.

Cross insists upon them. Tattoos of anything I remember, and anything I never want to forget. The rest, the soft memories, the parts of me that aren’t life and death, he keeps in a journal. Written in a code of his own design, its only key tattooed around my wrist. At night, when I don’t want to go to bed alone, he sits beside me in a chair, knee brushing the comforter, and writes for me.

“You were wearing a bright pink coat,” he says. “and I’m a bastard because even when I close my eyes, I still see what you wore under it.”

“Maybe it’s similar to what I’m wearing underneath this?” I trail my fingers across his chest, wiggle my hips in my short shiny skirt. “I kept picturing the glazed look on your face when I got dressed today.”

He didn’t disappoint.

His head drops into the curve of my neck, nose skimming the pulse throbbing there. He inhales, groans like I’ve stabbed him. “You are my sweetest torture. Please, Leni. For every time I wasn’t, please allow me to be a gentleman.”

Doesn’t he understand that he’s been too much of a gentleman? “Come on. I heard about a place. Let me take you somewhere for once.”

His lip curls at the corner. “You heard about a place?”

“Yes. I hear about a lot of things.”

He chuckles. “Why, my love, does this feel like a trap?”

Because it most certainly is.

42

Cross

alone with her

A wad of cash, an indolent threat, and a quick pulse of my gift clears Ake’s Tattoos for the night, complete with locks on doors, curtains pulled and carte blanche approval from Ake’s owner herself.

Lounging in the polished leather tattoo chair, Leni’s at home, hands easing down the padded armrests, frosty eyes sticking to me. Perfection. Clad in a silver two-piece outfit of straps and fantasy, with my Blackguard leather draped over her shoulders, she’s ruined me.

Her body is a mosaic of memories and pain. Black swirling over her skin. Half her time she spends in and out of needles and bandages. She does the tattoos herself, talking while she works, associating words with the pain,

Needles and dyes and stencils scatter a metal rolling tray at her fingertips. She pokes at a fresh cotton ball and smiles up at me.

I stand in the doorway, encased in dimming purple neon, boots firmly planted on the rubber mat to keep from getting close. Being near her means touching her. Touching her inevitably leads to kissing and kissing her—I grit my teeth.

Not ready.

Before I was her last resort, and a lucky, indulgent scoundrel.

I’m not anymore. Now, I want her to kiss me because she likes me. Not because I’m the best option or because I’ll cause the least bloodshed. I want her to choose me like I would choose her out of a million.

To do that, she needs to understand who she is, realize that she can have anyone in the world, and then and only then, Gods willing, pick me as her partner.

“What’ll it be today?” I ask, pressing my shoulder into the wall. The shop smells like cleaner and weed, and a drop of sweet.

She traces the skull and crossbones stitches in the seat of the chair, right between her legs. “Isn’t this place cute?” she asks, all innocent. “It’s private and extremely exclusive.”

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