Page 18 of Illicit Illustration

“Are you okay?” she asked, and I blinked hard, trying to refocus and not let all the blood in my entire body rush straight to my aforementioned cock.

Hazel had been adorable when she answered the door all disheveled, but now I was forced to clench my fists as I took in what she was wearing—or not wearing—after her shower.

Her hair was down and damp, her face freshly washed showing off the freckles that covered her cheeks, but it was the tight sports bra and tiny athletic shorts that had me wanting to bite my fist.

Fucking hell. She was hot as fuck, and she genuinely didn’t know it.

“Yeah, uh…” I cleared my throat, shifting, so it wasn’t obvious that thinking about her with her lips around my dick while she was in the shower had gotten me worked up.

“How exactly do you want to do this?” she asked, avoiding eye contact as she crossed the room and sat down across from me on the coffee table. My eyes wanted to zero in on the way her shorts rode up even higher on her thighs, but I forced myself to make eye contact and keep it. Because if I kept succumbing to my baser urges, I’d have her splayed out on that table with my face between her thighs. Tongue lapping at her clit, her cries music to my fucking ears…

Shaking my head, I realized she was waiting for my response. “I think maybe someplace like a bed would be the best place to do this. The perspective would be better, and we can adjust the tripod to get the angle you need.”

Her teeth tugged on her lower lip as she contemplated that, her eyes darting toward her room and then at the door across the hallway where her studio was set up. Hudson and I had dismantled Charley’s old bed before we’d assembled Hazel’s desk, but I knew it might invade her personal space to suggest we do this onherbed.

“I’ve got a futon at the shop we can use if you don’t want to do it here.”

Her nose wrinkled. “Yeah, not sure I want to be thinking about your conquests the whole time.”

She had a point, and there were quite a few places over there that had been defiled over the last few years, but this was in one of the few places I hadn’t brought women to hook up.

“I was thinking about the one in the break room. There’s enough floor space to lay it flat and the lighting in there is even, so you wouldn’t have to worry about any weird shadows. No one will be in until late afternoon, so we wouldn’t run the risk of being interrupted.”

“You mean you don’t want your employees to catch you in the break room with your best friend’s little sister straddling your face?”

I honestly didn’t give a fuck. And most of my employees wouldn’t either. But I didn’t want anyone else seeing her like that, no matter however innocent our arrangement was.

Call me possessive.

Call me obsessed.

All I really wanted to be called washers.

“You think that would embarrass me?” I asked, brow lifted.

She met my stare, that rosy blush from earlier spreading across her cheeks again, but my girl had fire. “I think it’d take a lot to shake you, Reid, and I hope I’m around to see it when it happens.”

You already are my fierce little kitten. You don’t even know.

Ten minutes later, aftershe’d thrown on some sweats for protection from the crisp late January air and bundled up in her bright pink floral coat, I was unlocking the back door of the shop and holding it open for her.

She’d been to my shop a few times, but since I spent a lot of my time when I wasn’t working in the bar, it’d just been brief encounters at the reception desk in the front of the building. As she stepped further inside, her eyes darting around the wide-open area, I just followed while she studied my space. The building had once been a glassmaker’s shop, with tall ceilings and an entirewall of windows overlooking the snowcapped mountains in the distance.

It was part of what had drawn me to the property. That and the price, since it’d sat abandoned for years after the original owners left Sage Springs.

Purchasing the building had been an enormous risk, but since I’d done a lot of the renovations with help from friends and my uncle, I’d been able to keep the costs low. My mentor in Boulder had also come on as a silent partner, providing equipment that I’d finally paid off recently.

Since the closest tattoo shop was over 30 miles away on the far side of Butterfly Ridge, it’d filled a gap in the local economy, and I had a sizeable roster of clients.

Speaking of things to fill…

When I refocused my eyes, Hazel was bent over at the waist, studying the stencil book on the coffee table in the lounge next to the reception desk. A lot of the designs we used regularly—as I found college students didn’t always have discerning tastes in their body art—were in that book. I hadn’t drawn all of them, but most of them were designs I’d been perfecting for years.

I had a similar book in my office with all my custom work, along with client photos, and I suddenly had the urge to drag Hazel in to show her that one as well. To sit her down on the couch in there and start a custom sketch for her. As my eyes traced her bulky outfit, I imagined the curves underneath.

Although Charley’s threats of someone else tattooing Hazel’s pristine skin bothered me, I still wasn’t sure what she wanted… Did she want something delicate and flowy? A quote that spoke to her in a tiny script wrapping around her side? A sternum tattoo to drive me insane with temptation as my hands spent a lot of time right next to the breasts I ached to cup in my hands?

I didn’t have time to contemplate it further when Hazel stood abruptly and locked those expressive brown eyes on mine.

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