Page 122 of Nash
His mouth twitches. Both corners. "I'm already enchanted."
"That was smooth. That was dangerously smooth. I need you to understand that you just said something smooth. The smooth thing combined with your face, the beer, and the way your hands are on my waist right now is creating a situation that my newly magical body is having strong opinions about."
"What kind of opinions?"
"The kind that involve my bed, my enchanted hands, and approximately zero clothing." I hold up my fingers and wiggle them. "These are weapons now, Nash. Weapons of mass seduction. The Department of Supernatural Homeland Security should be monitoring me. I'm a threat to national stability."
He laughs. Head tipping back, throat exposed. I feel it in my ribs.
"I'm serious," I say. "I'm a menace. An enchanted menace. You're dating a woman whose hands are classified as supernatural weapons. Whose boss is a witch and whose coworker lives in a basement eating ham sandwiches at four in the morning. This is your life now. Welcome to it."
"I've been in it for a while."
"You've been in the preview. This is the main event." I press my mouth to the corner of his jaw. "Take me to bed, Nashville. Let me show you what these hands can do when they know what they are."
He stands, lifting me with him. I'm wrapped around him, legs at his waist, arms at his neck, and I can feel him hard beneath me. He adjusts his grip on my thighs, and the shift slides me against his cock. The groan that comes out of me presses into his neck.
"Ruby."
"Mm."
"Your hands have always known what they are."
I wrap my arms tighter around his neck, press my mouth to his ear, and sing, off-key, directly into his eardrum. "I put a spell on you, and now you're mine."
His groan echoes down the hallway.
Chapter 28
Nash
Rubylocksthefrontdoor of Amaranth, flips the sign to closed, and turns to me with the expression that means she's planned something I don't know about yet.
"I need you to do something for me," she says.
"What?"
"I need you to sit in my chair."
I lean against the wall. Arms crossed. "Why?"
"Because I'm going to tattoo you." She says it fast, her hands already moving toward her station. "I've been working on a design. It's finished. It's for you. After what Frankie told me yesterday about my hands, I need the first piece I do knowing what they are to be on you."
Her eyes are bright. Her voice is steady, but her hands are shaking. She's not bossing me. She's asking. The ask just came out wrapped in Ruby.
I push off the wall and sit in her chair. The leather is warm. Ruby rolls her stool beside me, close enough that her knee presses against my thigh, and the contact sends heat up my leg.
"What are you tattooing?" I ask.
"Give me your arm first. Please."
I give her my left forearm. She turns it palm-up, and her fingers trace the skin, mapping the surface. My pulse picks up under her fingertips. She follows the veins with her index finger, moving past the existing ink on my sleeve, searching.
"Here." Her fingertip presses the inside of my forearm, three inches below the elbow crease, the bare strip of skin between two pieces that never connected. "This gap has been driving me crazy for weeks. The linework on either side flows into this spot, but nothing ties them together." She traces the gap. "This is where the pulse runs closest to the surface. This is where your heartbeat lives. It's the perfect bridge between the two pieces."
"What's the design?"
She pulls out her phone. Opens a voice memo. The waveform fills the screen, a steady, rhythmic pattern.
