out, asshole.”
Pav scowled, knowing they were talking about him. He hated that his jealousy was that obvious, but what could he do? This was all new territory for him, and he didn’t know how to handle it. He figured not killing the man doing the tattoo was a win for him, right?
And for them.
It was good for them, too.
“Nice to meet you, Pav,” Dirk said before he headed for the door of the private room in the shop. “I suppose.”
“You can say it wasn’t,” Pav muttered in reply, “everyone else does.”
“Yeah …”
Viktoria was giving him another one of those looks as the guy left the private room. She’d called her friend to see if he was working late and was up for doing a tattoo. Apparently, Dirk lived in the apartment above his studio—he owned the whole building. He didn’t mind coming down and opening up to do a quick tattoo for her.
“You can stop glaring,” she whispered to him, climbing off the bed and inching closer to him with every word. “He’s an old friend—his father taught me how to tattoo, actually. He used to do work for my father.”
Pav chewed on those words. “Oh?”
“Mmhmm.”
Her hands came to land on his thighs, and those pretty fingernails of hers dug into his skin through his jeans as she leaned in close. Her nose grazed his, and those ice-blue eyes of hers locked with his. He couldn’t help but let his hands trail up her outer thighs.
Smooth skin.
Satiny warmth.
“Do you want to see what I got now?” she asked.
Pav arched a brow. The tattooist had mentioned no spelling errors, even if it was jokingly, so he assumed the tattoo would be a word. “Maybe.”
She hadn’t told him what she was getting. Other than that small cursive B on her middle finger, and the eight-pointed stars under her breasts, she didn’t have any other ink. He’d been a little surprised when she’d said that was what she wanted to go do tonight, especially considering those stars of hers had been ink forced upon her by her father after … the attack. It hadn’t been a good experience for her, and thus, she’d not wanted more.
He figured this night meant more to her than she was saying. She was stepping way out of her comfort zone and doing things she wanted to do simply because she wanted to do them. It didn’t matter that it terrified her, she still wanted to do it.
Learning to love the fear, he knew.
She was ruling it.
Not the other way around.
“Let me see, babe.”
She pressed a fast, fleeting kiss to his lips that made him want to drag her in for more, but he restrained himself. It was a miracle. The second she stood back to let him get a peek at the black ink on her inner thigh, he felt the smile already growing on his lips.
He did that often with her.
Smiling.
It was a knife—maybe three inches long, and without a lot of details. A bit of shading made the blade look real and sharp. But what struck him the most was how much that knife looked like the ones he carried constantly. There was nothing else to the tattoo—just the knife, and the way it laid against her skin.
Like he’d done to her once.
He reached out and let his fingers drift around the ink, but not directly on it. He knew better than to touch it. It still made him feel some crazy kind of way—worse than the jealousy, but stronger than anything else he’d ever experienced.
In a way, staring at it, he felt like it was her way of saying …
“Mine,” he murmured.
Viktoria laughed. “Maybe.”
“No maybe about it.”
He knew it.
So did she.
She did this, after all.
If she didn’t want to say it yet, then fine. He’d wait. He felt like he’d already waited his whole life for her, anyway. What was a little while longer?
“Mmm, are we going back to the hotel tonight or in the morning?”
“Morning,” he replied.
She nodded. “Where are we staying, then?”
“I know a place.”
“Do you?”
“I’ll explain when we get there.”
“Okay.”
15.
“WHAT IS this place?” Viktoria asked as they climbed the stairs.
Pav’s fingers tightened around hers as he replied, “A loft.”
“Who lives here?”
He shrugged.
Viktoria laughed. “What was that?”
“What?”
“The shrug you just did. What, you don’t know who lives here?”
He tipped his head to the side like he was considering her words but continued to pull her up the stairs with him, all at the same time. It seemed like he was familiar with