Her eyes widened.
“And a butterfly tattoo,” Camden added excitedly.
Her gaze bounced around us.
“Well, okay then. Let me show you back.”
I was feeling faint as Ari pushed me forward. “Help!” I called out…to no one.
The guys all had the nerve to snicker at me.
“Wearehelping, Rookie.” Lincoln grinned as we made it to a back room. “You aren’t going to chicken out on us, are you?”
I stared at the equipment laid neatly on a table and gulped imagining that anywhere near my dick.
“For the Circle,” I muttered to myself.
And then suddenly, all of them had shot glasses in their hand and they were toasting. “For the Circle!”
Fuck. This was really happening.
* * *
“Is this some kind of weird sex thing?” the tattoo artist asked as I went to pull my dick awkwardly out of my pants.
“Alcohol. I need more alcohol,” I said loudly, looking around for help. Lincoln, Ari, Camden, and Walker were watching a replay of Game seven on ESPN and not paying attention—-despite the fact that this situation was all their fault.
“You’re not supposed to be drunk when you do this, man,” the artist complained, keeping his gaze averted from my dick. “Fuck, maybe I need alcohol too. I did not think there would be this many dicks in this job.”
“You’re not allowed to drink!” I squealed, my voice at least three octaves higher than usual in my panic.
“Yeah, you’re right,” the artist grumbled, nodding his head at what should have been already obvious.
I glanced around. Was this a joke? Like, were there hidden cameras focused on me right now, and any minute they were going to pop out and say “Surprise!” or something like that?
“But is it?” he pressed.
I glanced down at him. I’d obviously been around a lot of tattoo artists in my life—my skin was practically made of ink at this point. But I decidedly liked this particular artist the least.
“Is it what?” I snapped, wanting to yank the tattoo gun from his hands and throw it at the wall. Tattoo guns should not be this close to dicks. I’d tried to tell the guys this over and over again.
How the fuck had I ended up here?
Oh right, obsessive, crazy love. That was how I’d gotten here. And the four worst friends on Earth.
He started cleaning the area, and I wanted to curl up in a ball.
“A sex thing. Like are y’all…all together?” He glanced at the guys. “Which one of them is Monroe?”
I barked out a crazy-sounding laugh that almost turned into a wail when the gun touched my skin, the edges of my vision going dark.
Look, as a fucking NHL hockey player, I was tough. I’d had teeth knocked out of my head, multiple bones broken, and I’d once skated an entire game with a broken kneecap in college.
But having a needle on your cock was on a whole other level.
“No, this is not a sex thing,” I finally muttered, once I was convinced I was not going to pass out.
“Hmm,” he answered, clearly not convinced as he stared hard at my dick as he worked.