Page 220 of Joker

She bites her lip. That alone is enough to make my blood heat. Then she says, “I have something to show you.”

Well. That’s not helping. Not when she says it in that voice. Not when she’s standing there in fitted jeans and one of my old black shirts that hangs off one shoulder just enough to remind me I’m a man with priorities and very little patience.

I glance past her automatically toward the yard to make sure Lexi’s still with the kids and Amy and Casey and approximately ten adults. She is. Good.

Then I look back at Raven. “Show me.”

That slow smile comes back.

She turns just enough to lean one hip against the wall, then hooks her fingers into the waistband of her jeans and tugs the denim down on one side.

Not far. Just enough. And then my brain stops working.

For one dead second, I actually think I imagined it. Because there, inked into the curve of her hip, dark and clean and permanent in a way that hits me right in the fucking throat, is a property patch.

Mine.

My name worked into it.

Joker.

On her. On her skin. On the body I’ve kissed and held and loved and woken up beside so many nights now that I still haven’t fully adjusted to the fact that I get to keep doing it.

For a second, I don’t move. I don’t think I breathe. I just stare at it, my whole body going absolutely still in the kind of way that means something hit too deep for immediate reaction.

Raven’s smile softens the tiniest bit. “I got it earlier,” she says quietly. “The girls took me.”

I drag my eyes up to hers.

She looks almost nervous now, which makes no sense because she should know by now there’s nothing she could do short of stabbing me that I wouldn’t eventually find a way to forgive if she looked at me with those eyes.

Still, I understand it. Because this isn’t small.

This isn’t just ink. This is a claim. A choice. A declaration. A promise cut into skin and offered up like something sacred.

That’s my patch. My woman. My name on her body because she wanted it there, because she chose it, because some part of her wanted the whole damn world to know exactly where she stands when it comes to me. My chest gets so tight it actually hurts.

“Travis?” she asks softly.

That’s what breaks the freeze. The sound of my real name in her mouth, out here but still somehow private because it’s her and because she says it low enough that the whole moment stays ours.

I move. Fast. One second she’s leaning against the wall watching me like she’s not sure if I’m stunned or furious or about to combust, and the next I’m in front of her with both hands on her face and my mouth on hers hard enough to make her little gasp disappear between us.

Every emotion I’ve got slams into me at once. Pride. Want. Love. Possession. Gratitude so brutal it almost feels like grief for all the years I didn’t know this kind of happiness existed.

I kiss her like I don’t know how to do anything else with what she just handed me. Like the patch on her skin means exactly what it does. Like the life we built is real enough to mark. Like I’m never, ever getting over the fact that she chose me this completely.

Her hands slide up into my hair immediately, her body arching into mine with that same willing heat that still floors me every time.

When I finally pull back, it’s only far enough to look at her. My thumbs drag over her cheeks. Her jaw. The place below her ear where her pulse jumps like it’s trying to beat straight through skin. “Angel.”

That’s all I get out at first. Because apparently somebody hit me in the head harder than I thought and words are now optional.

Her eyes shine in the low light. “You hate it?” she asks, and the fact that she can even say that with a straight face almost makes me laugh.

Instead I just stare at her like she’s out of her mind. “Hate it.”

Her mouth twitches. “That sounds judgey.”