Page 96 of Fly Boy
“I was thinking…” I peek at Wyatt, my cheeks flaming.
Amber laughs. “I get it. You want it to be a surprise. Listen, there is nothing sexier than revealing a new tattoo or piercing for your significant other. The first time I showed Devyn my clit piercing…” She bites on her fist. “Best sex I’ve ever had.”
“Amber, TMI, dude,” Wyatt chastises, shaking his head, but I notice the small smile on his lips.
She points a finger at him. “Don’t you act all innocent and prudish, Mr.Prince Albert.”
It’s stupid how quickly jealousy burns into my flesh. The knowledge that Amber knows he has it gnaws away at something deep inside my stomach. I must let out a strangled choke or something because she bumps her shoulder with mine.
“Don’t worry, when he got that done, I was just an apprentice. I did not go anywhere near his dick. But I was there when Brian did it.” She looks at Wyatt, her eyebrows pinched as she thinks. “Your brother was there too, right?”
He nods. “Yeah, it was a dumb dare we’d set when we were younger.”
They continue ribbing each other, and I stand there like a deer caught in headlights. This place is where Wyatt’s in his element, most comfortable, with people he’s gotten to know over the years because of their love of tattoos. Seeing this side of him only makes me want to see more, to see what he’s like around friends…family…
“Ready?” Amber asks, putting a clipboard under her arm, then gesturing for me to follow her to a side room.
“Wait a sec,” Wyatt says, crossing the space and trailing his knuckles down my cheek. I lean into his touch as he checks for the millionth time today. “Pippa, are you sure you want one?”
“She’s a big girl, Wyatt,” Amber grumbles from behind me, and I laugh, reaching up to kiss him.
“I’ll see you when I’m done.”
Amber wiggles her fingers as she closes the door and points toward the chair. “Okay, Pippa. What do you do for a living?”
“Are you trying to make me feel less nervous?” I ask as I prop on the edge of the black leather seat, my sweaty palms tucked between my legs.
“Nah, I’m nosy like that,” she replies, holding out the clipboard and tapping the top. “Give this a quick read and sign the bottom. It’s a standard consent form.”
My eyes scan the document, initialing the correct places before signing the bottom. Amber grins as she glances over it, tucking it behind her and grabbing a pair of gloves. She snaps them on and shuffles her stool forward.
“So, what do you have in mind?”
“I’m a figure skater,” I tell her, shifting farther back on the chair, trying to get comfy. “So I was thinking of a skate somewhere on my hip?” I pick at a piece of invisible lint on my pant leg. “It’s stupid. Maybe I should get something else, something less cliché. I sort of like the idea of the tattoo meaning something to me… Like how each of Wyatt’s…”
I trail off, my painfully obvious inexperience with tattoos making the hairs on the back of my neck prickle as Amber smiles knowingly.
“I love how every single one that man has on his body serves a purpose.”
“Me too,” I whisper, thinking about the ones he has and the many others I’ve still to discover.
Before I lose the nerve, I pull out my cell, holding it in my hand, my mind instantly going to the only photo saved in my favorites album.
Amber eyes it expectantly, cocking her head, and nods toward it. “What’s your idea?”
Pushing the awkward feeling aside, I unlock my phone and bring up the image. “It’s my mom before she died. She loved doing that move.”
Amber takes my cell, zooming in and out, nodding thoughtfully. “I love it. It’s sentimental and relates to you.” She reaches back and grabs her iPad, sticking out her tongue as she sketches, every now and then referring back to the photo. “Okay,what about something like this? It’s fine line, won’t hurt that much, and recovery time shouldn’t be too long either.”
She turns the iPad around to show me the small and elegant one-line illustration of a figure skater in a Biellmann spin. “That’s beautiful.”
“Great,” she beams, taking back the tablet and pressing on the screen. A printer in the corner roars to life, and she rolls back, grabbing the stencil and holding it up. “Lie back, and we’ll get started.”
Two weeks later, and I still haven’t shown Wyatt my tattoo. It’s not that I don’t want him to see it. It’s that I want it to be healed and pretty. His are stunning that my little lined skater is nothing in comparison, but I still want him to like it.
But with my wanting to wait, that’s also meant we’ve gone two weeks without sex. Which, sure, isn’tthatlong, but when my man looks so damn good all the time and the fact that we only get one night a week together, it’s like a lifetime.
Only, I don’t mind as much as I thought I would. Sex with Wyatt is great, but spending time with him, learning about him, laughing together, waking up in his arms…I’ve fallen deeper. He’s let me in more, telling me about his talk with his stepmom, that he’s called his dad since then too, that he’s considering going to the hospital to see Fiona.
