Page 16 of Devilish Ink

I frowned. “What does that mean?”

She shrugged. “It’s Welsh. It means homesick for a place that doesn’t exist anymore.”

“You know Welsh?”

“I spent a few months there.”

When I looked from the mirror to Ryleigh I found her just as lost as I had been in the tattoo. Her eyes shimmering like a well to fall into and never escape.

“Ireland’s not home. Not anymore. No matter…” she bit her lip, “how much I want it to be.”

Ryleigh hadn’t just given me a tattoo. She’d given me a wound.

I could feel its familiar throbbing, its never ceasing ache.

I had many such wounds.

And I’d been the reason for many more in others.

They were heavy to hold, to carry.

I wanted to carry it for her. I wanted to carry itallfor her.

But I couldn’t. Because she wasn’t mine to protect.

She belonged to my brother.

RY

Lee was dangerous. He saw too much.

He was the worst kind of threat. Because I hadn’t expected his attack to come in the form of gentle questions, of an encouraging smile that crinkled the corners of his wide eyes.

I’d let my guard down. He’d slipped past my armour.

Worse, I’d let him. I…wanted to.

I should have stopped his lines of questioning, but it’d been so long since I’d shared myself with someone.

Without realising it, my shields had fallen as easily as a dress from my shoulders. I was naked.

I could have just tattooed another roaring lion and made up some story about how it was my favourite animal at the Dublin Zoo when I went as a kid.

Or a skull behind a rose with the words,memento mori, “remember we must die”, and said that it was a mantra I kept to remind myself to live each day to the fullest or some other cliched shite like that.

Instead I’d just tattooed the longing of my heart onto him.

I could hear it beating there on his skin,inhis skin, as headmired his fresh ink in the mirror. He had a piece of my soul on him. Forever.

He was going to walk away with it. Take it with him. Leave me with a hole in mine.

And there was nothing I could do about it.

“It’s really important that we keep it clean as it heals,” I said, resorting to the well-rehearsed speech I gave every client when I was finished with their tattoo.

I’d fucked up. I’d given in to the temptation of Lee’s alluring green eyes. I’d opened myself up and I was bleeding out.

I needed to get him out of there. I needed to close the door on whatever this strange night was, whatever it meant.

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