Inked Ever After (13 page)

Oh Lord. “You’ve been bugging him, haven’t you?”

Her sister had the nerve to look outraged. “Of course not. I
may just have sent him some best-man speech samples.”

“Elle!”

“What? Just looking out for the guy.”

Tate thought she heard a chuckle coming from Kai.

She took in a long breath. “Elle, aside from Cole and Max,
Jack is James’s closest friend.”

“And I wonder why,” she said in a huff. “If the Bowen men
have one thing in spades, that’s charm. A totally foreign concept for Jack. He
has the charm and finesse of a Soviet tank on steroids.”

“I think he’s charming. In his own way.”

Elle didn’t seem too convinced, but didn’t comment. “What do
you know about him?”

“Not much. He doesn’t really talk with me either.” At first,
when James had enlisted him to watch over her when she had that stalker
problem, she’d been scared of Jack. She’d warmed up to him, and with him
charging in to save her and all, they had become friends, but their
relationship was more the silent kind.

He’d come to see her in the hospital a little after James
had walked out of her room—and out of her life.

“James?” she’d asked him, looking toward the door, hoping
against hope he was in the corridor.

Jack had shaken his head and come closer. “How you doing?”
he’d asked.

Tate’s throat had been burning so badly that she couldn’t
answer; she just latched on to him and wailed. He’d stiffened but hadn’t moved
away. She’d wetted his T-shirt for God only knew how long, giving him all her
pain and despair about everything—about the restaurant, about her brush with
death, but mostly about losing James, and he took all of it. Comforting her
without words, his rough hand gently holding the back of her head. He’d waited until
she’d run out of steam, and before the drugs kicked in again and she fell
asleep, she’d heard him say that everything would be okay. She didn’t remember
much but the fierceness in his eyes.

He’d been right. The next time she saw him had been after getting
back with James. He’d entered Rosita’s, lifted his chin to her, and granted her
one of those rare half smiles of his.

“James met him in the army. He was there for years after
James left and never behind a desk. Now I’m not sure what he does. Hell, I’m
not even sure he’s totally out of the service. He’s seldom in that biker bar of
his. Elle, you can’t play with Jack. I love him, he helped save my life, but
he’s dangerous. You don’t want to mess with him.”

Jack was the perfect guy to have at your back when Judgment
Day came rolling in. Or when Cylons invaded Earth. For hamburgers and a movie?
Not so much.

She’d once heard Max and Cole talking. Cole had been
bitching about the women in town bothering him, ’specially that bitch Rose,
when Max suggested he contact Jack to get Rose and her cronies snuffed. He’d
been joking, but still. Men like Jack lived by their own code of honor; they
had no problem with going outside the law and stomping all over social
conventions. Rough and tough didn’t even begin describing him.

Elle flipped her hair. “I don’t want to get involved with
him. I’m done with bad boys. I’m curious, that’s all.”

Tate studied her sister. She doubted very much Jack was like
anyone Elle had ever met. Those were wannabes. Jack was the real deal.

At that moment, the receptionist hollered for Kai, and he
put down the gun. “Just a second,” he answered, then turned to the girls. “I’ll
be right back.”

Tate watched as he stood to his massive height, muscles
rippling, his sharp features still tense with concentration. Kai had Japanese
blood in him and had beautiful midnight-black, almond-shaped eyes to go along
with his midnight-black hair that he kept cut in a short Mohawk. His arms were
both heavily tattooed, and ink also peeked from the neck of his shirt.

“Your husband-to-be has the best friends ever,” Elle
whispered as she moved the camera away from Tate and pointed it at the
retreating tattoo artist’s ass. “How on God’s green earth did you find him?”

“Paige,” she answered, praying to the skies Kai wouldn’t
turn around and catch them filming his ass.

Tate hadn’t been able to ask James the name of the artist
who inked him without raising suspicions, so she’d enlisted her gothic waitress
as her partner in crime, pretending she was interested in getting more tattoos.

“Good choice. This guy is extremely talented. Very capable
hands,” Elle added, turning the camera back to Tate and wiggling her eyebrows.
“I bet he’s extremely resourceful with them too.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

Elle didn’t answer, just grinned and moved to film behind
Tate. “Now that we are alone, tell me, why are you getting the tattoo on the
small of your back? Is it so you won’t be able to see it?”

Tate flamed. “Hmmm, not exactly.”

Elle’s voice was laced with amusement. “What? Spill it.”

“I want James to be able to see it from his favorite
position,” she whispered.

Elle snickered. “Well, Sis, if you want him to spend more
time behind you, maybe you should get inked with an unsolvable Sudoku as an
incentive. So that he can hold his concentration longer.”

“A Sudoku on the top of my ass is crass. And he doesn’t need
any incentive. Besides, James is very intelligent. He can solve any Sudoku out
there without breaking a sweat.”

Elle broke into laughter. “You’re cracking me up, Sis. Are
you sure you aren’t getting ink poisoning? Because you’re sillier than usual.”

Her sister was having way too much fun at her expense.

Ignoring Elle, Tate tried taking a peek at her back to check
the tattoo. “How’s it looking? We’ve been at it for hours.”

“Honestly? It looks amazing. Let me show you.” Elle stopped
the camera, pressed some buttons, and then handed it to Tate.

She stared at the picture, totally stunned. “Wow.” It almost
looked 3-D. “James is going to love this.”

“‘Love this’? He’s going to flip.”

Tate studied the screen. Yes. Her man was going to
absolutely flip.

* * * *

James drove his truck out of the short-term airport parking
and headed toward Alden. He was supposed to have arrived home later in the
night, but he’d managed to get a seat on an earlier flight, and damn if he
wasn’t glad about it. El Paso was a fucking hot place, especially in August.
The business meeting had gone very well; it had taken several days to tour the
facilities and assess the situation, but he was fairly sure they’d secured a
new client. Now, however, he was tired and irritated, and he wanted nothing
more than to get home to Tate, who’d been very keen on him going to visit this
client in the first place—almost pushing him out the door.

If it weren’t for the fact that she’d been doing much better
before his trip, agreeing to talk about the wedding and not freaking out so
much, he would have thought she was sending him to El Paso so she could walk
out on him and disappear. Not that it would do her any good; he’d find her
wherever she went and drag her back—blackmail, threats, sex…whatever it took.
Tate was his, and she wasn’t going anywhere.

But she’d improved dramatically, and he hadn’t even had to
push her. After that first time in the truck, when she had dropped all
pretenses and turned to him for comfort, she’d made it a nightly habit to come
to him. Talking about whatever was worrying her. Sometimes just reminiscing
about things from the past, or discussing stuff from their everyday life.

The day after coming back from Cape John, he’d been sitting
on the deck drinking a nightcap when she’d come over and wrapped herself around
him.

After a while she’d stood up and tugged his hand. “Let’s go
to the shower, baby.”

“You want to shower with me?” he’d asked.

She’d nodded, and his heart had taken a tumble. James loved
having sex in the shower, but since the whole wedding freak-out, Tate had been
insisting on taking showers alone. Even locked herself in several times,
thinking the water would drown the sounds of her crying. It hadn’t, and sick
and tired of it, he’d actually broken into the bathroom once, some days before
their trip to Cape John, and fucked her hard against the wall.

“No more fucking locks, hear me?” he’d all but growled, his
voice still ragged and short of breath. She’d nodded.

They hadn’t talked about that afterward, but she hadn’t
locked herself in anymore. He hadn’t barged in again either. That was a bridge
she’d have to mend all by herself. And she did.

“I’m sorry, James,” she’d whispered while she led him to the
bathroom. “Locking myself in and locking you out will never happen again.”
Before he could say anything, she was naked on her knees in the shower and was
taking him to heaven with her mouth.

Yeah, life was sweet.

They were also getting a five-tier chili-chocolate cake,
much to the dismay of the clerk at the bakery, who had called him several
times, asking, no, begging him to get his bride to see reason. And repeating
again and again that the cake was going to be totally nonrefundable.

Like he fucking cared. All that mattered was that his
woman’s last walls were crumbling.

Being in El Paso had been very hard, but they’d spoken by
phone several times throughout the day and always before going to bed. Some
months ago, during a business trip to Minnesota, they’d again tried their hand
at phone sex. This time, while he was in El Paso, they’d graduated to
video-chat sex, which had been mind-blowing. He wasn’t sure how she’d
positioned the laptop webcam in the bed, but he got a first-class view of that
tight little pussy of hers open and flushed and dripping while she fucked
herself with one of the dildos she’d gotten from the pleasure party. A glass
one. Fucking sexy. It had been his idea, but like always when it concerned
Tate, it got out of control, and soon he was fighting to breathe and roughly
working his stiff cock with his fist, wishing he was with her. He’d managed to
hold off until she came, but when she’d asked him to let go for her, he’d
exploded all over himself like a fucking teenager.

Immersed in those thoughts, he reached Alden in no time.

He called for Tate as he closed the front door of their
home, but the music was so damn loud he could hardly hear himself. He headed for
the living room, a sweet, foreign smell prickling his nose, and stopped at the
entrance. What the fuck? The whole place was full of candles—the floor, the
furniture, everywhere, and Tate was on her knees, half-naked, her back to him,
lighting the ones around the fireplace.

He cleared his throat. “Am I interrupting something?”

Her back stiffened. “Damn, damn, damn!” she cursed under her
breath as she scrambled to her feet and turned around. “You were
not
supposed to see this. You were
supposed to get home much later.”

Duh, no shit. His house stunk of strawberry-scented candles,
and his woman was on her knees, wearing nothing but an old T-shirt of his, and
she was pissed that he’d come back too early.

James braced his legs apart and crossed his arms over his
chest. “What’s going on, Tate?”

“This is not what it looks like,” she said.

“I surely hope not, princess. Is anyone going to come out of
the bathroom?”

She looked aghast, then irate. “What? Of course not! No one
is coming out of the bathroom. How can you even think that? I would never cheat
on you, James. I would never do that to you.”

“I know,” he said with a soft smile, loving how outraged she
seemed. Tate would never cheat on him. He was certain of it. And that was good,
because he’d walked away from Elaine fairly easily and without touching her
lover, but he wouldn’t be able to do that with Tate. She belonged to him and
he’d annihilate any son of a bitch who would even try to come between them.
“What’s with the candles? Are you planning to torch our place to collect
insurance money?”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not torching the house. This is
for you. To welcome you. But I’m not ready yet. I wanted it to be a surprise. I
wanted to do my hair—my face. Why didn’t you warn me you were coming earlier?”

“Honestly? It didn’t even occur to me. I was just a couple
of hours before schedule.” And as far as he was concerned, she didn’t need to
do anything to herself—she looked fantastic. Her long brown hair was all over
her, just the way he liked it. And her face was devoid of makeup, her silver
eyes big and expressive, her mouth, now set in a pout, damn sexy.

She yanked at the T-shirt she was wearing and muttered, “I
had special lingerie for the occasion.”

James could not have stopped smirking if he wanted to. “I love
your lingerie, princess, but you know I’m a sure thing, right?” Besides, her
wearing his T-shirt was as sexy as anything from Victoria’s Secret.

Her pout deepened; her arms crossed over her chest.

“Now come here and give me a kiss, gorgeous.”

She was pissed but came to him right away. When he circled
her waist with his arm and drew her against him, she flinched.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” she replied while trying to disentangle
herself from him.

No fucking way. Whatever the hell had her flinching, he
wasn’t letting her go back to hiding from him. James spun her around and yanked
up the hem of the shirt unceremoniously.

The breath he was drawing froze in his lungs.

There, spanning all of her lower back, was his tattoo
sleeve. The same green dragon, the same flowers. The fire too. The Japanese
warrior and the blade on the lower side. It was an exact replica, down to the
last detail.

His brain went off-line.

“I didn’t want you to see it like this,” she said, slapping
his hands and moving away from him. He was so stunned she didn’t have trouble
doing that. “You’re messing up my plans. I wanted to feed you, entice you into
making love to me, and then show you.”