Page 60 of Virgin Skin

Chapter 20

MILO

For two days Pistonand I manage to play it cool at work. It helps that Jag keeps his mouth shut for a change and everyone’s schedule is busy enough that we don’t end up alone again after closing. Of course, that doesn’t mean we’re not alone at home. Except Piston is back to avoidance. Plenty of space between us on the couch, hands to himself… I fucking hate it.

One bright spot is that I’ve moved things around at the front counter, so I have the perfect angle to stare at Piston while he works and pretend I’m justreallyinterested in filing all the digital consent forms. The man is stupidly gorgeous two hundred percent of the time, but there’s just something about the intense look he gets on his face when he’s focusing on a tattoo that manages to make him impossibly even hotter.

“Ooh what’s that?” Jag’s voice startles me out of my daze. I jump an inch out of my seat and clutch my chest dramatically.

“Jesus, are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

He cackles and nudges me aside to get a better look at the folder I have open on the computer.

“Just saving some inspiration for my first tattoo.” The folder currently contains forty-two different images downloaded from Google, ranging from cool sketches of fantasy creatures to nature scene sleeves on actual people and all the random things in between. I figured I would save a bunch of ideas and then narrow it down from there. I just haven’t quite gotten around to the narrowing down part yet. It’s a work in progress.

“I like this one,” Jag declares, enlarging one I saved from Instagram—a pin-up style tattoo of a bawdy sailor with a tattoo of an anchor on his bare ass.

“It’s in my top five.” I grin at him.

“I fucking love virgins,” he says, clicking through the images one by one.

My skin prickles, and I bristle before I realize he meanstattoovirgins. What was the phrase Piston used?Virgin skin. My cheeks heat remembering the purr in his deep voice when he said it, and I glance in his direction again. His brow is furrowed, and he looks like he’s completely focused on the tattoo he’s working on, but something about the tilt of his head makes me think he’s listening in on our conversation.

“Can I do it?” Jag asks, bookmarking a couple of the other images I’m assuming are his favorites. I roll my eyes when he opens Google again and searches for drawings of puppies, saving one to the folder that admittedly kind of looks like me, with floppy, dark fur and its tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth in a dopey grin.

“What?”

“Your first tattoo.”

I flounder, my mouth opening and closing while my brain struggles to come up with a response other than ‘no.’ But what if he asks why? Out of the corner of my eye, I see Piston freeze in the middle of a needle stroke. Heislistening in. I bite the insideof my cheek to keep from smiling and bump Jag’s hand off the mouse so I can close the folder.

“Maybe,” I lie. “I haven’t decided what I want yet, so once I do, I’ll see whose style fits best.”

“That’s fair.” He ruffles my already messy hair and flashes me a cheeky grin. “You never forget your first, so it’s best not to rush it, Puppy.”

I wheeze out a laugh, turning it into a fake cough so I have an excuse to turn away from him to hide my burning face. Jag saunters away after that and I get back to work, and by ‘work’ I mean fiddling around on the computer and drooling over Piston.

“Hey, kid.” Hero leans over the desk at the end of the day while everyone else is still cleaning up. “How about that drink?”

“Oh, yeah, that sounds great.” I catch myself wiggling just a little with excitement and force myself to hold still. The last thing I need is to feed into the Puppy nickname Jag is so committed to.

The roads are clear and dry enough that the guys all pulled their bikes back out today, apparently not quite ready to pack them away for the winter yet. I grab my coat and the motorcycle helmet Piston ‘loaned’ me—he thinks I don’t know he went out and bought it, it’s adorable—and follow Hero out the back door.

We head down the street to Wooley’s, the same bar where I met Piston that first night. It feels like it was ages ago rather than just a few weeks. It seems like Hero knows just about everyone, waving or nodding at guys as we make our way up to snag a couple of stools at the bar.

He orders a beer, and I get a rum and Coke. It’s not the first time we’ve spent time one-on-one, but my knee bounces while we wait for our drinks, and I subtly wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans anyway. I don’t know why the fuck I’m so nervous around him still. He’s been awesome, getting me this job, the car, arranging for me to stay with Piston. He could have turnedme away when I showed up at Ink Slingers and dropped this bomb on him, but instead he just rolled with it.

A lump forms in my throat and I laugh to clear it. He looks over and cocks his head. I wave my hand and clear my throat, then figure, fuck it, opening up is what this is all about, right?

“I just… I really want to thank you for being so cool since I showed up. I didn’t know what to expect and part of me thought it was kind of fucking insane to just drop into someone’s life like this…” I clear my throat again and greedily reach for my drink as soon as the bartender, Sawyer, sets it down in front of me. I gulp down a few swallows, then wipe the back of my hand over my mouth, my knee bouncing even quicker as I try to finish my bumbling thank-you speech. “Anyway, it’s just meant a lot.”

I notice his leg bouncing too, his foot resting on the rung of the barstool, his fingers twitching against the sticky bar top. Seeing the little signs of his nerves make mine feel less silly, and it loosens the knot in my chest. I let out a breath and take one more big drink.

“Ah, shit, kid, just because we’re drinking doesn’t mean we have to get all mushy.”

I laugh and nod. “Fair enough.”

“I’m glad though. I don’t know the first thing about being a dad, so I’m happy to hear I’m not fucking it up royally. Truth be told, it’s probably a good thing you came here now as an adult. I definitely would have found a way to screw you up if I’d had you during your formative years.”

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