Page 47 of The Woman Left Behind

“Ouch!”

The disgruntled sound made them all laugh. Even Voodoo was smiling, and that was saying something.

“Not too much longer,” the unseen Hilda said in a soothing voice.

Several of the guys checked the time. “About an hour,” Crutch said. “Has to be small.”

“About quarter sized,” Hilda reported cheerfully. “But more ornate than you’re thinking.”

“Tiny,” Trapper grumbled.

“My choice, remember,” Babe growled. Her raspy voice went all the way to Levi’s groin and he shifted uncomfortably, rubbed his eyes. Maybe this wouldn’t take much longer; he was rooting for averysmall tat, so they could all leave. They were all winding down. As he had the thought, Boom rolled his shoulders and stretched.

“Tiny’s good,” he rumbled. “The sooner this is finished, the sooner we can all go home and get some sleep.”

“That was my original idea,” Babe said. She was sounding more and more grumpy. “But no, the two wiseasses out there had to come up with the tattoo idea and the rest of you thought, yeah, let’s get me inked and keep us all from getting some sleep. Now I’m the one in pain and bleeding, and all of you can damn well sit your asses there until this is finished!”

They sat. The “almost finished” still took longer than they’d anticipated. Then they listened to Hilda telling Babe how to care for the new ink, what to put on it, how long to baby it, things some of the guys had never heard before—either that or they’d been too drunk to either pay attention or remember. Levi had a couple of ink jobs himself; one he’d been sober while getting, the other he hadn’t. He liked the drunk one best. Maybe one day he and Babe could compare their ink—

Shit.

Couldn’t happen, at least not in the foreseeable future. He kept tripping himself up. Normally his self-control was better than this. He’d let himself kiss her, and that was his fault, not hers. Since then he’d relived every moment of how she’d tasted, how she’d responded, the sounds she made as she came. He wanted that again, every moment of it, but he wanted it with them both naked and his dick deep inside her. He wanted her, smart mouth and all.

Double shit.

He had to stop thinking about her.He was the team leader, and the cooperation and unity of the team was on his shoulders. This was on him, and he had to step up. Babe was now part of that team and would be for the foreseeable future. Letting sex and what he wanted even enter the equation was letting the team down, and he had to stop himself cold. Right now.

“I’d like to hang around for the finish, but I still need to get some work done,” he said abruptly. They would know what he meant, but Hilda wouldn’t. “Nothing else going on today, guys, and I mean it.” He gave both Jelly and Crutch the evil eye. “Boom.”

“Got it.” With those two words Boom acknowledged he was on top of things, and Levi escaped out into the morning cold.

He was gone.

Jina felt Levi’s absence as if a fire had gone out. Just knowing he was there had been both warmth and irritant, making her restless deep inside. How twisted was it that having him close made her feel both alive and furious? She wanted to ignore him, turn the page, focus forward, but just hearing his voice hit her hard.

Acknowledging that her own thinking was convoluted made her even angrier. She wanted things to be clear-cut, and they weren’t.

Why had he even showed up today? He’d been on his way to headquarters. He—

He’d come to protect her.

The knowledge shot through her, and she forgot all about the sharp stinging sensation of the ink gun.

She could have used him to nix the idea at the airport, but now that she was here she was okay with the cool little tat she was getting. Rapport with the team was important, important enough for her to go along with this and rag at them for it. Levi knew that, too, but he’d still stopped what he was doing to come here and give her backup if she needed it, if the guys had been railroading her—not that Hilda would have done the tat if she’d thought there was anything like coercion going on, but none of them had known that when they chose this shop.

For all his dislike of having her on his team, time and again Levi had stepped up: when she’d fallen off the climbing rope and he’d caught her, when he’d intervened with the boot issue, when he’d babied her through the parachute training—and, yeah, now that she had some distance from it, she could see how he’d done more to help her than he’d had to do. Maybe he’d have done the same with a male trainee, but she kind of doubted it. One tandem jump, maybe, but not three. He’d safeguarded her from outside forces while she was getting drunk. He’d gone out of his way today to be here if she needed him.

Her heart squeezed and quick tears flooded her eyes.

She might be in love with the son of a bitch.

The thought was devastating.

She didn’t want to love him. Lusting for him was okay. Lust was temporary, maybe acted on, likely ignored. Love under these circumstances was a recipe for a lot of pain. Maybe she could fight this nonsense down or it would go away on its own, because if you didn’t feed something it died, right? She wanted this feeling to die. She didn’t want to care what he did or where he was. She didn’t want to get blindsided out of the blue by moments like this. The sick feeling in her stomach said that wasn’t likely to happen, or at least not any time soon.

The good thing was she was lying on her stomach, so Hilda couldn’t see the tears. Even if she had, she’d probably seen a lot of tears in the eyes of those under her ink gun.

Hilda finished with the immediate aftercare and bandage, and Jina sat up. The stinging in the middle of her back had already mostly stopped. Focusing forward, Jina put Levi away in the back of her mind and instead kind of savored the realization that she, Jina Modell, had a tattoo. She’d always been so vanilla, stuck in the middle, nothing unusual or outstanding, that getting a tattoo made her feel daring even if it hadn’t been her idea. Besides, her little tattoo was cool, different,andpretty; she’d hit the trifecta with it.

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