Page 153 of Devilish Ink

With an arched eyebrow, I said to Liam in a low whisper, “We aren’t having sex, are we?”

Liam just laughed and shrugged his red flannel shirt from his muscular shoulders.

I narrowed my eyes and glanced back over my shoulder at the now empty stairs.“You know, that doesn’t really answer my question.”

I looked up at the high ceiling as if I could see through it. Were six pairs of ears pressed to the vintage rug in Mason and Rachel’s bedroom? Were they giggling together, all crammed into the bathroom with the clawfoot tub?

“Arewe having sex?” I asked once more, this time with desire taking the place of confusion, my voice sinking into the depths of lust.

Bare chested, Liam arranged himself on my tattoo chair. He picked up the gun, which was lying on the silver tray atop myworkstation and opened my fingers to place it against my palm.

“Tattoo,” he said, grinning at me.

“So tattoo isn’t code for a crazy new sex position.”

Liam chuckled. “Not today.”

I huffed in pretend (or mostly pretend) disappointment.

“Fine,” I grumbled, drawing out the word like a petulant teenager.

Liam smirked and slipped his hand under the neckline of my shirt to pinch my nipple.

“Now you’re just being mean,” I said, pointing the tattoo gun at his throat, much the same way I had the first night we’d met.

Liam took my wrist in both hands and tugged the tip of the needle down to his heart. It was the only space on his chest left without a tattoo.

For a moment or two, I stared at the place where the needle pressed lightly, my artwork surrounding the empty place like water rushing into a sinkhole.

Liam’s chest rose and fell steadily. There was no hitch in his breathing. No racing of his pulse.

At night I traced the lines of the tattoos I’d given him. My life across his body. But it had always been there. That untouched expanse. That unacknowledged absence. That missing piece.

When I looked up at Liam, he was waiting for me, the response to a question I hadn’t even yet asked right there on his tongue.

“I’m sure.”

I drew in a long inhale. I didn’t have the strength inside of me to keep my breath from shaking.

“I—” I shook my head. “I don’t know what to put there.”

Liam’s smile was reassuring.

“That’s alright,” he said softly, tucking a strand of dark hair back behind my ear. “I do.”

He wanted my name in a gentle curve and Cahira’s name tocomplete the infinity sign. I kissed him when he was finished describing the design. When our lips touched, heat against heat, I saw how I wanted it to look perfectly behind my closed eyelids.

I didn’t even need to sketch it out first. I would go right in with ink. We would go right into it no matter what, for better or worse, permanence, eternity.

I laughed to hide the prickle of tears as I pulled back to begin my work.

Neither of us needed to say much as I tattooed him. Everything between us was communicated by the needle: pain and beauty, blood and ink, forever and forever.

“It’s perfect,” Liam said into the mirror I held out for him afterwards. He steadied my shaking hand with his and whispered to me, “You’re perfect.”

Liam cleared his throat. “Well, I guess it’s time to pay up then.”

I laughed and dismissed him with a wave of my hand. “Right, right. Very funny.”

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