Page 54 of The Deeper Game
“This will be so glorious,” he said, running his hand over my upper arm. “You must stop trying to control the group,” he said again.
“Why?” I looked over, straight into his eyes. “Because that’syourjob? To control the group?”
He looked at me from under dusky lashes. Just that look and I knew I was right. “Are you ready or not?”
“Not that I’m saying I don’t want whatever tattoo everybody else gets, but haven’t you ever heard of the power of positive thinking? What about that?”
He caressed my arm, admiring his work some more. “How about I take thefucking-gpower of positive thinking and crush it into a little ball with my vengeance?”
“There you go, that’s the spirit.”
He got suddenly serious. “This is important to me, Isis.”
“A tattoo is forever,” I said.
“Precisely,” he said softly. “Precisely.” There was something about the wistful way he said it that put my intuition on red alert. Somethingmorewas going on here—what, exactly, I didn’t know. Was he still worried about my quitting?
“Of course I’m with you,” I said. “But just because I’m dedicated one hundred percent to you doesn’t mean I’ve lost my ability to form my own opinions on things like tattoos.”
He whipped out a scarf and tied my arm to the slats of the chair back it hung over.
“What are you doing?”
He stood and walked around to the back of the chair I sat on and tapped the top of my head. “Other arm.”
I looked up. What was he up to? He waited. “Fine,” I said. I put out my non-tattoo arm and he took it and tied it to the back of the chair. “I already saidyeson the tattoo. What more do you want?”
He said nothing more, but he wanted something more. What?
He came around to the front of me and straddled my lap, squishing my legs onto the hard, wooden chair. His dark hair brushed his brows. Odin was devilishly handsome, especially when he was being devilish. He toyed with my tank top strap, just a little bit dangerous, a little bit off the rails.
“You don’t have to tie me up for a tattoo. How can you even work on my arm like this?”
“Maybe I like you like this, goddess,” he said softly, letting his fingers drop to my hardened nipples. “Helpless.”
Wellllll…maybe I liked it, too.
He rolled a nipple gently between his fingers, sending ripples of pleasure through me. I watched his beautiful eyes, attempting to maintain my calm even as warmth intensified in my core. I was sure something was up, and I needed to know what it was and not be distracted by sex. What was he not saying about the tattoo?
“High emotions always make you so much more sensitive,” he whispered. “As does immobility.”
I really was immobile with him heavy on me like that. He flicked the nipple, and it was all I could do to not gasp with pleasure. He said, “I’m going to give you this tattoo of hate and vengeance, and then maybe I’ll fuck you.”
“Every girl’s dream date,” I said.
He kissed down my neck to my collarbone.
“My question is, where does it end?” I added.
He fingered the underside of one breast, lifting it and suckling it through the fabric of my tank top, creating an exciting roughness on my nipple. “Where do you think it ends?”
My voice went husky, but I would not be swayed. “Nowhere, that’s where. The three of you were screwed by your own people, I get it. But an agency can’t suddenly be horrified at its own mistakes and cry and beg for mercy, right? You can never feel satisfaction of vengeance from anorganization. It’s stupid to try.”
He pulled away and traced my lips with his fingers. “Stupid and smart has nothing to do with it. I wish you could hear that. I wish you could be with us in that.”
He invaded my mouth with a kiss, just because he could. Letting me know he’d take me how he wanted.
It was a mad turn-on.
