Page 109 of Leading Conviction
“I never noticed it before. This is stunning work. Why would you cover it?”
“The sun fades ink,” he explained, his voice hoarse with emotion. “I didn’t want my memory to fade with it.”
“Your memory…” She finally took in the image as a whole and sucked in a breath. “It’smypainting.”
The landscape took over the entire top half of his body. From his wrists, up his arms, over his pecs, abs, and muscular back, every inch of him was the perfect tapestry of the sunrise she’d painted for him years ago.
“This is from the morning you told me—”
“I love you.”
I love you.
Not “loved.”Love.
Her pulse stuttered in her chest at his use of present tense. She met his sincere gaze with watery eyes before drifting down to study her painting etched in his skin.
His body itself was already a work of art, his sculpted muscles made for easy, defined lines with a brush. Even now, his skin acted as a tinted canvas, making the understated colors seem more alive than anything she could’ve ever painted.
“I always color tone my canvas before I paint. It adds richness that a regular canvas base could never match. And this…dios mio, this is breathtaking, Hawkins. Is it new?”
“I found an experienced tattoo artist in Atlanta during training. I still had a picture on my phone so he was able to finish the tattoo before the team permanently left base and I had to get rid of my personal effects. When we got out of MF7, I called him up again. He still had the picture of my tattoo back when it was fresh and I’ve been getting regular touch-ups ever since. I never wanted to forget.”
“‘I could go a thousand nights and never forget your sunrise…’” she quietly repeated the words he’d promised when he’d given her the new paint materials.
The sunrise was painted in deep, warm reds and oranges across his chest. A perfect, hazy yellow orange blossomed on his left pec as it crested over the Blue Ridge, right where the dove flew across the sun. On his abdominals, dark greens and blues blended with his natural tone, completing the masterpiece that made the foggy pine tree-covered mountains. The rolling hills and valleys continued to flow gently across the rock-hard muscles in his lower back.
Her fingers traced every line of the morning she cherished above all others, forever inked in his skin, forever a part of him. He shivered under her perusal, but she was so lost in feeling the artwork that she didn’t stop until her fingertips drifted back up to the dove flying over his heart.
“I thought you left it behind,” she murmured finally.
“Never,” he whispered fiercely. “I couldn’t bear to part with it.” He flattened her hand over his heart. “Our sunrises will always be here, where you are.”
Her own heart clenched at his declaration. His gaze held hers before he threaded his fingers in her hair and tugged her up for a kiss. She matched his passion stroke for stroke with her tongue against his. When she nipped him lightly, the kiss turned desperate with need.
It was so tempting to pause and take everything in, to capture the feeling of time stopping while the world kept turning. She felt the sensation every time she watched a sunrise, ever since that first one imprinted on her heart just as effectively as the ink imprinted on his skin.
But she couldn’t wait. She couldn’t hold back with this man anymore, not in any sense, and she didn’t want to.
Hannah tugged at the waist of his jeans. He quickly unclasped the button and shucked them along with his boxer briefs, shoes, and socks to the floor, leaving him for her view.
Her mouth watered at the sight of his Adonis belt pointing to his length as it bobbed toward his navel.
“Lie down,” she ordered. “I need to taste you.”
CHAPTERTHIRTY-SIX
Hawk felt a mischievous grin lift his lips as he obliged. They both knew he was usually in charge in the bedroom, but if she needed to take the reins again for this moment, he was more than happy to give them over.
He lay back against his pillow and propped his head on his hands, anticipation thrumming his veins as he had every intention of watching her.
She placed her slender hands on his pecs and slid them down his chest slowly, sending tingles over every single dip and curve as her fingertips left his muscles. When she got to theVbelow his abs, she lightly followed both lines with her fingernails, ending at the base of his cock. She circled it with her fingers and her eyes kept his gaze as she spat on the head, already weeping with precum. Shocks of pleasure rippled down his spine as she used both palms to spread it from the top down. She kept her gorgeous sweet-tea-brown eyes on his and opened her mouth wide to accept him.
As soon as her velvet tongue laved over his cock, heneededto touch her. His abs tightened as he did a light sit-up to thread his fingers through her hair, helping her bob up and down. Her satin-soft muscle curved around his head before sliding down the underside. Both of her hands followed her lips—her wet, viselike grip already bringing him to the edge of coming.
“Fuck, dove.” He had so much he wanted to say but those two words were all he could mutter through gritted teeth. His hips jumped underneath her and she moved one hand to his thigh to keep her balance as she put her entire sexy body into sucking his cock.
Unable to stop himself, his eyes rolled back in his head at the sparks ricocheting through him. Without sight, the sensations were overwhelming as her wet, plump lips slid up and down his hard length. When she hollowed her cheeks, the soft muscles were like pillows, and as she relaxed her throat to take him deeper, a thunderbolt of pleasure shot up from the base of his shaft, threatening to combust from the tip. She swallowed his head down, making him curse.
