Page 59 of The Devil's Playground

I won’t be gone long. I make sure to lock up my place, typing a quick text to Cross as I head back out to my car. He said he planned on having a drink or two at the Playground before he headed back to his place, but I let him know as we were leaving that he’d better be sober for the next hour. Now I shoot him a message that I’m on my way back and to be ready for me.

He’s in the same small studio when I let myself into the back offices, playing a game on his phone. He holds up a finger when I enter, muttering, “I almost got this level done.”

Two seconds later, he snaps a ‘fuck’ under his breath before tossing his phone to the side, then grabbing a pair of gloves.

I raise my eyebrows at him. “Lost?”

“I’ll beat it next time. I got your message.” Gesturing at the tray set-up, he shows he has the tattoo gun ready, new ink poured out, and the outline all prepped for me. “I’m ready when you are.”

I remove my jacket, tossing it over the chair. Then, daring him to say something, I flick open the button on my pants and pull the zipper down just enough to reveal my groin. I purposely went commando once I decided to do this so there’s a patch of skin and a few stray pubes greeting him.

Cross just grabs the numbing cream from the tray. “You want this, sunshine?”

“Fuck you.”

The artist laughs. “Just checking. You seemed so put-out that I didn’t give you the stuff when you got your devil tat done. Believe me, the needle digging into your dick is gonna hurt a lot more than your ribs.”

He should know. Despite being buds with him for almost fifteen years, I’ve never seen Cross naked, but rumors run that he’s almost completely covered from the neck down. Well, except for his hands, which are unmarked, and a spot on his chest next to his trademark cross that gave him his nickname.

“Don’t put that tattoo gun anywhere near my junk. That belongs to Nic now.” I tap the spot near my pubic bone. “Right here. Give me the seahorse right here.”

“You got it, Rolls.”

And when he finishes coloring it about forty minutes later, I have only my second tattoo ever.

It’s a piece for Nicolette Williams, and my way of showing the world that I’m her property.

Hopefully, this makes this lovesick idiot one step closer to being just hers.

TWENTY-ONE

TEARS

NICOLETTE

Inever thought a seahorse tattoo would make me cry.

Kieran hated tears. He would tell me that it was a waste of time, that I couldn’t manipulate him by crying. I never was a big crier or anything, but one of the things he ‘trained’ me out of was tearing up at the slightest inconvenience. Of course, that meant I refused to shed a tear when the hypocritical bastard decided he wanted me to.

Now, though? I think of the seahorse and my heart aches—in a good way.

It’s not even the cover-up by my boob that Cross did for me. I love it, and it’s such a relief to know that, for the first time in years, I don’t have Kieran’s handiwork on me. It’s a piece of art I chose, from the style to the colors, and it doesn’t matter that it’s a silly tattoo without any ‘real’ reason behind it other than I’ve always kind of liked seahorses. To me, it represents my freedom. That last tether to my abuser that I finally cut loose.

But when Royce drops me off at my house the next morning at my request and stays, insisting that he didn’t have anything other to do than spend the day with me, he waited until he’d checked on the healing process of my tattoo before showing off his.

I didn’t even realize that, after I passed out in his bed the night before, he went back to see Cross. He promised that I was locked up tight, that there was no way Kieran would reach me; after the long discussion I had with Ava earlier about what exactly it meant to belong to a Sinner, I believed him. His tattoo is smaller than mine—his is about the size of a half-dollar, while mine needed to be closer to a tennis ball to completely cover up Kieran’s dragonfly—so he wasn’t gone long. By the time I woke up the next morning, he was lying in his oversized bed with me.

Hell, considering his bed is fucking huge, with black satin sheets that seem to suit my lover, if I woke up and didn’t sense him next to me, I might’ve even though he was just on the other side.

Nope. In another sweet gesture that is so typically Royce McIntyre, he got a matching tattoo. I didn’t ask him to. I blubbering like an idiot when I saw it, and kinda freaked him out, but what else could I do? I went from being marked by a man I want to forget to sharing a tattoo with one I don’t think I’ll ever be able to.

Do I think this is it? That he’s my forever? I hope so, but I haven’t been that naive since the first time Kieran fingered me under the table while Mom and Dave were talking about who knows what. There’s no denying that Royce has this ‘savior’ thing going. I thought that before I discovered he was the Sinner who was there when Heather Valiant was shot. Learning the truth about that tragedy only confirms it for me.

If Royce is looking for someone to rescue, he can’t do any better than me. It’s like I was tailor-made for him. I see it. Odds are he does, too, even if he won’t admit it.

Do I believe that he cares for me? Since I’m head over heels for him, yeah. He’s attracted to me, we get along great, and we have a lot of fun together. Whether it’s resuming our ongoing banter about who Christine should have chosen in Phantom, teaching each other how to cook—and that’s going as well as you’d think—or licking chocolate off of each other after another baking disaster, I can see myself spending forever with this man.

The question is: can he see himself spending forever with me?

---