Page 57 of Bombshell

“This is the perfect time,” Effie said with a grin as the vines on her back slipped out and snaked in between our bodies, one of them wrapping around my cock and giving it palpitating squeezes as she continued to tease me. “It’s been almost three months since he started working here and you’ve still got him in the shitty storage closet versus giving him his own room to work in.”

“He irritates me,” I muttered, reaching up to cup one of her breasts through the thin, slippery fabric of her dress.

Byrne had done little to win me over during his tenure as our resident body piercer. He was damned good at his job… and that was about it. He came to work every day, did his job, and then left as soon as the sign on the door was flipped to closed.

He didn’t want to talk to anyone but clients, he didn’t want to be friendly with anyone, and he sure as hell didn’t want to do any of the things that we at Monstrous Ink liked to do as a staff.

I’d come to think of everyone that worked at my shop as family, so it was getting on my nerves that Byrne wanted to work in it but didn’t want to have anything to do with us outside of it.

“Ambrose has been here for decades and he still irritates you,” Effie pointed out as she finally put me out of my misery and began to slowly slip down the length of my cock. Then she folded at the waist so that our faces were close together.

“Ambrose is different,” I said through clenched teeth as I felt the twist of her insides gripping me so tightly I nearly came just from the sensation alone.

“He’s not.” Effie pressed a few kisses along the line where my tentacles met my cheek. “But he likes you and Byrne doesn’t. You, Dallan Elder, can’t stand to not be liked by someone.”

My hands slid along her smooth thighs before I caught one of her vines before it could sneak in between our bodies to play with me and drive me even more insane. “Doesn’t everyone want to be liked?”

Effie huffed a laugh. “Not the way you want to be liked. If I wasn’t so sure of how you felt about me I’d be half-worried that you had a crush on the big kitty man.”

I jerked like she’d smacked me and shot her a half-hearted glare. “Do not even joke about that.”

For good measure, I lifted a hand and gave her ass a smack, making the both of us moan when Effie’s insides clenched tightly around me.

“Then stop being so stubborn and give him his own suite before he quits and we’re back to having no one to do piercings.”

Effie kissed me before I could argue any further, her hips starting to roll as she rode me with abandon, taking her pleasure and giving me mine until we both exploded.

She collapsed into my chest, her single heart beating a chorus right alongside mine as we tried to catch our breaths.

“Fine,” I managed when the lights finally cleared from my vision. “I’ll give him the room at the end of the hall but you have to tell Heath he’s going to have to share with Fiero a little longer.”

Effie just grinned. “I’m sure he won’t mind.”

I shot her a quelling look. “You need to stop trying to set those two up. It’s been six years, if something was going to happen it would have by now.”

“You don’t see what I see,” Effie said with a smile as she pushed herself up and gave me one last peck on the mouth before getting up to get ready for the day. “Besides, it took you and me fifty years to happen. I don’t think it will take even half as long for those two.”

I snorted at that. One thing about us supernatural creatures was that we did things slowly. Like three to five business centuries slowly.

Even though I wasn’t sure how old Fiero was, the man had refused to be interested in any kind of partner for as long as I’d known him.

He’d taken Heath under his wing when he’d found him on the side of the road six years ago with a mangled-but-healing bite wound on his neck and no place to go.

And while Effie was right that there was something going on between them, I was pretty sure it would take divine intervention in order for them to ever take the next step and even then I wasn’t sure if it would work.

“You’re heading to the mayor’s mansion today, right?” I asked, watching as Effie stepped into the walk-in closet we now shared to get dressed.

It wasn’t one of her lesson days, but she’d gotten a text from Odette late last night before we fell asleep that had her concerned.

“Yep, I’m going to check on Odette and should be back by lunchtime for our staff meeting. Don’t forget that you’ve got a vamp coming in this morning so you need to make sure Daphne turns on all of the black out spells I’ve enchanted on the windows.”

It was rare to get a vampire client during the day, but Henri almost preferred it. He claimed that a little bit of sunlight helped to burn the ink into his skin and make it last longer. I, however, was pretty sure that the French vampire was just batshit crazy.

But he paid top dollar for me to tattoo him, so we humored his little eccentricities.

Effie emerged from the closet in a flowy white sundress that was speckled with green flowers and a row of pearl buttons up the back.

“Button me up?” she asked, turning and holding up her hair so that I could start to fasten the dress.

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