There Are No Saints (Sinners Duet #1)(48)

“More pleasurable for who?” I gasp.

“For both of us.”

He slips his hand down the front of my overalls.

I’m not wearing any underwear. I never did get around to washing my laundry.

His touch is gentler than I expected. I thought it would be as brutal as his kiss. Instead, it’s almost soothing . . .

His fingers slide over my pussy, searching, exploring. Testing . . .

He touches me here, there, waiting for a reaction. Seeing how I respond. When I lean against him, when my lips part, when I moan . . . he knows he found the right spot. He soaks his fingers inside me, then rubs me every place that feels the best . . .

The tattoo gun buzzes angrily against my ribs. It nips and bites, over and over, up and down, across the bone.

I hardly notice the pain. I’m leaned up against the wall, head tilted back, thighs parted. Letting Cole touch me wherever he wants.

He strokes my pussy like his own personal pet. He runs his fingers up and down my slit, sometimes plunging inside of me, sometimes rubbing circles around my clit.

All the while he’s drawing on my ribs, his left hand working separately from his right.

The pain enhances the pleasure, and the pleasure enhances the pain.

My skin is sweating, waves of sensation rolling over me.

I rock my hips against his hand.

I’m moaning. I don’t know how long I’ve been making that sound.

He’s found the spot right under my clit, the most sensitive bundle of nerves on my whole body. He’s stroking it with the ball of his thumb, over and over.

“Oh my god . . .” I moan. “Don’t stop . . .”

“Tell me you’re mine . . .” he hisses. “Tell me I can do whatever I want to you . . .”

I press my lips together, refusing to say it.

He bears down hard on the tattoo gun, biting into my flesh.

“Say it.”

I shake my head, eyes closed, mouth clamped shut.

He presses harder with the tattoo gun, and with his fingers under my clit. He strokes me hard, while drawing god knows what on my flesh.

“Say it, Mara. Tell me you belong to me . . .”

I want to say it.

I want to give in.

His hand is stroking, rubbing, exactly the way I like. Better than a man has ever managed before. Better than I can do it myself . . .

The pleasure is a need, a demand. An itch that HAS to be scratched . . .

“SAY IT,” he snarls.

“No fucking way,” I hiss back at him.

He finishes the tattoo with a vicious slash down the bone.

I shriek. Every muscle of my body tenses, including my thighs clamping hard together. That’s what makes me cum, as much as Cole’s fingers pressed against my clit. The orgasm is a blazing shock that rips through me from chest to groin, in one continuous loop.

I turn my head, biting hard on my own shoulder. Leaving a wreath of teeth marks.

My weight hangs from the cuffs, my body limp and wrung out.

I’m still twitching as the aftershocks spark through me.

Cole wipes the excess ink off my skin with the same green soap. The soap Logan uses.

“You didn’t hurt him, did you?” I demand.

“He’s not your concern,” Cole says, seizing my face once more. Forcing me to look at him. “You need to worry about what I think. What I want.”

I look into his eyes.

“What happens if I don’t?”

“Then next time I won’t be so forgiving.”

I laugh out loud, standing up straight now, rattling the cuffs.

“This is you being nice?”

Cole looks at me steadily.

“Yes, Mara,” he says quietly. “This is me being kind. Being merciful. You need to understand that—because if you try to crack me open, you won’t like what crawls out.”

He unlocks the cuffs. I rub my wrists, trying to bring sensation back into my hands. Then, slowly, I walk over to the full-length mirror hanging on the wall. I stand before it, turning slightly so I can see the tattoo that runs from just under my right breast all the way down to my hip bone.

He branded me. Put his mark on me forever.

And it’s beautiful. Truly fucking beautiful.

Cole is an artist in every sense of the word. The composition, the smooth flow of the lines, the way the flowers and leaves follow the curves of my breast, my ribs, my hip bone. Perfectly formed to my shape, undulating with every twist or bend of my body. As I move, the tattoo comes alive.

A wild garden. A riot of ferns, foliage, and flowers, between which my little snake peeks out.

“Jesus Christ,” I breathe. “You really are talented.”

Cole stands directly behind me.

He’s taller than me, and broader. I fit entirely inside his silhouette, so he forms a dark halo all around me. As if he’s already swallowed me whole, and I’m inside of him.

“Your turn,” he says.

I lock eyes with him in the mirror. “What do you mean?”

He holds up the tattoo gun silently.

“Are you serious?”

In response, he puts the gun in my hand and reaches over his own shoulder, grabbing a handful of his shirt and shucking it off over his head. He stands upright, throwing the shirt aside.

I stare at his naked torso.

In all my years of figure drawing, I’ve never seen a body like his.