Page 105 of Business Casual
“Charlie.”
I curl my hands around her hips and drop my forehead to hers. I shut my eyes tight. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.
She makes a low, amused sound. “I know you’re not apologizing for that orgasm you just gave me.”
“I shouldn’t have—”
“—been honest with me? Given me a stunning orgasm? Which one do you regret more?”
I think about it for a second. “Neither,” I finally sigh. I lean back and peer at her, trying to fix her lipstick with my fingers that aren’t wet with her, but I only make it worse. She slaps my hand away and I let it fall to my side.
“That wasn’t—I shouldn’t have—” I pause and take in a deep breath through my nose. “Let’s talk about this when you don’t have a shop full of people waiting to see you.”
She threads her fingers through mine. “Will you stay?”
“I don’t know if I should.”
The erection straining my pants, one reason. My foul mood, another.
“Stay, please.” She squeezes my hand. “I want you to.”
I study her face turned up toward mine.
Fuck.
I’d give this woman anything she asked for.
I take two steps back, still holding her hand. Her face falls, but I tug her with me. I extend my arm out with a stupid half bow, gesturing toward the door. I’m going to need to channel my inner showman if I hope to make it through the rest of the evening.
And I’m going to need ten minutes alone in this dark room.
“After you.” I pat her ass once as she walks past me to the door, a cute little hop in her step that shouldn’t make me smile but it does. I lean out of the doorway after her and whisper-yell, “But stop and fix your lipstick first.”
23
NOVA
I flip thesign on the door fromOPENtoCLOSED, turning and resting my back against the frame.
Tonight was incredible. Beyond my wildest expectations. I think part of me was afraid that the people who RSVP’d wouldn’t show, but they did. The studio was packed all night long. Evelyn showed me her phone right before she left. The feed of people who checked in to the Ink & Wild location was bursting with color. Pictures of tacos and tattoos and little cookies shaped like flowers.
I’ve been waiting for this feeling. Not quiteI made it, butI can fucking do it. I’ve been chasing milestone after milestone since I decided I wanted to open a studio and for the first time I feel…good. Happy. Settled.
Like I can do it.
Some of it is the culmination of months and months of hard work and some of it is the look on my family’s faces when they walked into the space tonight. Beckett’s huff of a laugh when I made him sit in the chair for a tiny tattoo, right next to that maple leaf I gave him over a decade ago. His quietProud of you, kiddowhen I wiped his new inked birch tree leaf down with a cold wipe.
But some of it is Charlie too. Charlie, who showed up at my house two days ago with some fresh fruit and a pumpkin and decided to rearrange half of my first floor. Charlie, who has chased away thebuzzing, anxious feeling with his own brand of distraction. Charlie, who always makes it safe and easy for me to ask for what I need.
Charlie, who drove me to a ferocious, mind-numbing orgasm with his fingers in my office and is now at the back of the studio with a giant trash bag, collecting plastic cups with my logo printed on the side. He stayed because I asked him to, even though I know he didn’t want to.
“You artist types are messy as hell,” he comments from the back of the shop. He mumbles something under his breath about Caleb and cookies and dumps a plate in with the rest of the trash. “I think I got almost everything.”
I circle around my station, collapsing on my stool. It rolls backward across the floor. “I didn’t ask you to stay so you could play custodian, you know.”
He drops the trash bag by the back hallway and walks closer. “Why did you ask me to stay?”
Because he was hurt earlier and trying to hide it. And I don’t like it when Charlie is hurt.
