Page 47 of Claimed By the Damned

She nodded in understanding. “Anything I can do to help?”

He grinned. “You can fuck me. That might help. We haven’t tested that theory out yet.”

“Not happening. You still need your rest. You shouldn’t even be out of bed.”

She looked back over the city, and she should have known better than to turn her back on a predator because, before she knew it, his strong arms were snatching her up. He yanked her back and plopped her into his lap. She started to protest, but he situated her so that she was straddling him, and he buried his face into the side of her neck. “I’m not fragile. If I want to fuck my mate, I’ll do it.”

The sigh she gave rustled a few strands of his hair. “I never said you were fragile. And I’m sorry if I’m being a bit overbearing, I just…” She rested her head against his shoulder. “I’ve never been so scared in my life. You mean so much to me, you know.”

He ran his fingers up and down her back. “It’ll take a lot to put me down.”

“Could have fooled me,” she mumbled, tracing her fingers against the tattoos on his chest.

He kissed the top of her head. “It’s over. It’s done with. It won’t happen again, not as long as we are mates. No going back, I swear it.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

They were quiet for a moment, both lost in their own thoughts while he rubbed circles on her back and she traced his tattoos. He was the one to break the silence as he asked, “Do you know what that means?”

“What?” She lifted her head a little.

“The tattoo you’re tracing. Do you know what it means?”

She shook her head. “No. Do they all have meaning?”

“Only pussies get tattoos without some sort of meaning.”

She leaned back to get a full view of the ink she’d been giving attention to. It was of a few roses. “So, what does it mean?”

“I got it the day after I killed my father.”

The lack of sorrow and regret caused her eyes to widen a little. “You killed your father?”

He nodded once. “It was the only way to be free,” he said truthfully. “Like yours, he would have chased me to the ends of the earth. But the roses, they represent the place where I buried him. I wanted him to rest in the afterlife somewhere ‘pretty,’ something with a view, so I found a patch of wildflowers in the forest and buried him underneath them. He may have been a complete asshole, but I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t, even in death.”

She continued to trace the petals, unable to bring herself to speak. She had more in common with this broken soul than she realized.

“Do you have any tattoos hiding on you?” he asked.

Her laugh was soft and quiet. “You’ve seen every inch of me. You know I don’t.”

For a heartbeat, he said nothing. “We definitely need to rectify that.” He lifted her up, slung her over his shoulder, and carried her back into the apartment.

“Wait, what?” she squeaked. “How do you plan on doing that? You promised we’d only go to the patio!”

“Calm down,” he grunted as she slapped his ass. “We aren’t leaving this precious apartment.”

She was confused enough to stop from pummeling the back of his thighs. “Then how exactly do you expect me to get a tattoo? Besides, shouldn’t I have time to think about what I’d want permanently etched onto my body?”

She wasn’t going to lie; she was beginning to freak out a little.

Not so gently, he sat her down on his bed and pointed to the front of the mattress. “Lie down.”

“Hang on! Aren’t we going to talk about this?”

He rummaged around in his closet, but he paused, looked over his shoulder, and lifted an eyebrow at her. “No. Lie the fuck down.”

She glanced at the door, wondering how far she could get before he caught her. She wasn’t sure she liked the glint in his eye. “Knox,” she began carefully.

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