Page 95 of Moth to a Flame

“Good girl.” Our attention is fixed on his cock. On the R first. On wiping the blood off him. On writing an S. “Good fucking girl. Look at you. At what you do to me. How yours I am. Fuck, I love that.”

When we’re done, he turns the machine off.

“I’ll sterilize it later.” I’ve never seen Landon smile like this. Teeth and all. The way it reaches his eyes. “You’re up, little lamb.”

Everything happens so fast from there. He tucks himself in, then manhandles me to a lying down position, kneels before me, and sterilizes my scar. He rubs the pad with the alcohol along the large X the laser couldn’t remove.

The mark I loathed and cried over for so many nights.

Tears rise and I blink them away. I will no longer cry for my past. It’s not worth it.

I smile instead, stroke my lover’s arm, and remain focused on my present and future.

“Are you going to tell me what I’m getting?”

“Me.” His whisper is a whip. His smile turns into a maniacal, sexy as fuck grin. “You’re getting me. Always.”

“Always.”

The buzzing starts again. I’m drawn to his strong hand gripping the tattoo machine. To the veins cording his forearm. His special, twisted kind of love emanates from him to me.

He writes words in his elegant handwriting, sentences that start at one end of a line and end in the center. I’ve never been inked before. I’m shocked at how turned on I am by it.

I’m wet and moaning. For long minutes that feel like forever, I fist the sheets so I won’t arch my back. So I won’t slide lower to Landon.

Maybe it’s his hand on my stomach that makes me this needy. How he touches me so I won’t move. Maybe it’s the delicious pain that my mind has learned to turn into pleasure.

Or maybe it’s the four declarations that Landon writes on my flesh.

My wife.

My property.

My good girl.

Mine.

Not once do I tell him to stop. Not once do I ask him what the fuck he’s doing. Even when he pauses every so often to wipe off the blood.

I will be his wife. I am his property, good girl, his.

I’d be lying if I said otherwise.

Landon doesn’t like it when I lie.

“Thank you.” I’ve only ever been high on painkillers after—never mind. Anyway, that’s what it feels like. High and delirium and happy.

So ridiculously happy.

“I’m not done, little one.”

Since he’s put the tattoo machine on the bed beside me, I’m confused. My tongue is too heavy to ask what more is there, so I watch him.

He unscrews the black nail polish bottle we share, painting the pad of his left thumb with a healthy coat.

“Your new ink says you’re mine.”

Wetness presses to my skin, right there where one line crosses the other. The nail polish. It’s cold when he lowers his face to my stomach and blows on it.

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