The Billionaire's Ink Mistress: Billionaires in Bondage, Book 2 Page 13

  Back to work, back to Chicago, away from her.

  Get a grip. He watched her downshift, bringing the sleek car down to the inner city speed limits, mesmerized by the effortless way she controlled the car. As easily as she’d controlled him, pushing him through gear after gear, bringing him up, taking him down. I didn’t realize a manual transmission could be so sexy.

  They crossed the Mississippi River and turned too many times for him to keep track of the streets. He’d never find her shop again. It wasn’t a posh neighborhood, but the Craftsman-style houses and shops had character without the modern, blank look so many strip malls had. The neighborhood spoke of an older, genteel time that Donovan would probably eat up. He much preferred cozy over sleek and modern, while Jackson’s condominium was everything hard concrete, cold steel, and completely minimalist. Granted, he never spent much time at home. Maybe that was part of the reason why.

  She turned again and the streets narrowed, dark with overhanging trees. Lined with older-model cars, the neighborhood was obviously a step down from the hip, artsy streets, but not ghetto. Though it wouldn’t surprise him if windows got broken out if someone was foolish enough to leave valuables out in plain sight.

  “It might not look like much, but we do pretty well.” She slowed down, giving him time to study the front of the shop. The exterior was concrete blocks or maybe brick, which had been plastered over decades ago and painted white. It might have been a garage at one time, with one set of large metal doors, though the other set had been replaced with glass. Dreaming in Ink hung above the doors, written in soft neon lights. Several planters made an attractive garden and sitting area in the front, shared with the next-door shop, which also had two small patio tables set out. Most of the planters were empty this late in the season, but two held miniature cypress trees, decorated with white fairy lights.

  “I have an apartment above the shop that I share with Arlene.” She pulled down a side alley and parked in the back by a rusted staircase. As they went upstairs, the metal groaned and squeaked, but held. She unlocked the door and pushed it open, waving him ahead. “She’s still eating up the mansion on the lake, so we’ll have a couple of hours alone before you have to head to the airport. Arlene and I are both saving money and we enjoy each other’s company, so we don’t mind being roomies.”

  He stole a glance at her, trying to figure out what was wrong. She seemed brusque and distant, rattling off facts like when she’d bought the shop and how long she’d lived here. Finally, it dawned on him. She’s nervous.

  Diana crossed the living area and opened a door. A large yellow Labrador rushed out, excitedly wagging its tail and circling its owner, then heading toward him.

  Jackson braced himself for the dog to jump on him, but it just sniffed his hand and hopped around excitedly. Then he noticed the dog only had three legs.

  “This is Pixie. She was hit by a car and left to die alongside the road. Her previous owners didn’t want to pay for surgery to fix her leg, and by the time I found her and got her to the vet, they had to amputate. It doesn’t bother her though, as you can see.”

  Pixie ran into the room and came back out with a tennis ball in her mouth. No, two, he realized when the dog dropped them on the floor at his feet. He had no idea a dog could stuff that many balls in its mouth.

  “I’ve got a kennel out back. Let me take her out and I’ll show you around. Make yourself at home.”

  Once she was gone, he took a good look without worrying about making her more nervous or offending her. The living area was open to the eat-in kitchen. A loveseat and two oversized chairs sat in front of a TV, a flat screen but only modestly sized. The chairs looked extremely comfortable and broken in, but not worn and tired. The kitchen was outdated and the ancient gas stove could be original to the house. Old enough to be back in style. The cabinets had been hand-painted white, set off attractively by the soft yellow walls. Bright, cheerful and comfortably old and well used.

  Her taste in art was eclectic. Bright red, yellow and blue country-style decorations brightened the kitchen. Mostly sunflowers and chickens, of all things. Maybe that was her roommate’s taste? Diana didn’t seem like a chicken person, though the sunflowers he could buy. The living room only boasted one large canvas opposite the entryway, but it was interesting, drawing him closer to study it. It wasn’t framed or numbered, so it hadn’t come from a gallery, but it had a professional look. Dark clouds built on the horizon, deep purple and midnight blue, with light shining from behind them, as if the setting sun was casting shadows onto the canvas. Lavender and red streaked through the clouds. Trees and grass were brighter at the edge of the painting, the green of spring, slowly changing to darker, muted colors. In the distance, trees turned orange and red, as if fall was slowly swallowing them as the sun set. On the horizon, someone stood at the edge of the forest.

  He leaned closer, trying to make out what the figure was doing. A woman, he thought, with the suggestion of curves and long hair. It looked like she was running away, peeking over her shoulder at him. Afraid? He couldn’t tell. The light should have illuminated her face, but the trees cast shadows over her features. The trees parted in front of her, suggesting a path through the forest.

  The door opened and shut, and he drew back from the painting self-consciously. He’d been studying it so hard he’d almost been able to feel the brush marks on his nose.

  Diana came up behind him, leaning against his back and loosely wrapping her arms around his waist. “What do you think?”

  “It’s interesting. Is she running away from something? Or leading the way into the forest?”

  “Neither. Both. Honestly, I wasn’t sure which I intended, and it was a long time ago.”

  “It’s yours?” Surprised, he studied the painting again. It looked as good as any painting he’d ever seen on display in Chicago or New York. “Do you have a gallery somewhere?”

  She laughed and squeezed him in a gentle hug. “Hardly. Ink is my art now, but when I was in high school, I mostly painted. This was my senior project.”

  “Wow. You’re really good. It’s evocative. I feel drawn to it, as if it’s a great puzzle I have to figure out. Even before I knew it was yours.”

  She nibbled on his earlobe. “And now?”

  “Now I’m wondering if I could smuggle it onto the plane so I can hang it in my office so I can look at it all day.”

  Pulling back, she laughed but it sounded a little forced. “It’s not the kind of art to hang in a penthouse office building. Come on, let me give you the grand tour, though it won’t take long. Let’s start with the shop.”

  He followed her down a different set of stairs to the first floor. Instead of going to the front room with the glass, she ducked to the left and started with the other rooms. The space still had that mechanic’s vibe with concrete floors and touches of chrome in the warehouse-style fixtures. The walls were large ribbed metal plates.

  “We have four artists here full-time, including myself and Arlene. Each has their own chair and client list. On the walls, you can see samples of our most favorite designs. We don’t do anything out of a book. It’s all custom work, so it can take a couple of weeks or longer to finalize a design before we start.”

  Flipping on lights as they went, she showed him the other artists’ rooms. “Arlene specializes in lettering and scroll work. No one can beat her lines. She did all of the phrases on my body. She also does a lot of really beautiful old-school designs, like pinup girls, mermaids, stuff like that. She’s a big hit with our male clientele.”

  In the next room, the walls were covered with sugar skulls. “As you can probably guess, Carlos did all my skulls. I love how vibrant he can make his colors. They really stand out. Gorgeous stuff.”

  “I thought all of your tattoos were your own art, your own work. It just didn’t dawn on me that it’d be really hard to tattoo yourself, let alone places you couldn’t poss
ibly reach like your back.”

  Glancing back at him over her shoulder, she winked. “It is all my work. I design it. I work with the artist until it’s exactly what I want. We talk through color and lines, background and shading, everything. Only then do they start. But yeah, it’s hard to lay the ink myself, though I have done a couple.”

  “Really?”

  “Funny, it hurts more when I do it myself. This is Kandi’s room.”

  The walls were painted black and the artwork was dark and violent; crows, skulls and swords seemed to be her favorites. “Wow. Pretty Goth for such an un-Goth name.”

  “Wait until you meet her. She’s blonde and perky as hell, but man, can she lay down some of the most gloriously dark and twisted ink. Gives me chills watching her work sometimes. Last but not least, this room’s mine.”

  They’d worked back to the front of the shop, the side with all the glass.

  “I always feel like it’s pretentious to have my space in the front on display like this, but then Arlene tells me I’m an idiot, because it’s my shop. I built this place up from Bob’s Car Shop to what it is today, so I’d better have the front office.”

  He moved closer to the back wall where samples of her work were hung. Picture after picture of ink. Some black, some colorful, some gray. Some had lettering and nothing else. Some were of a very specific style, like the Celtic knot, but others just seemed like a snapshot taken out of a moment in time. So real and beautiful, he couldn’t believe it was just ink on someone’s skin. He knew next to nothing about the art of tattooing, so he tried to find something that tied all her samples together. “What makes your art famous enough to have four full-time artists? That’s a decent sized shop, isn’t it?”

  “Famous?” She scoffed, looking outside the front glass so she didn’t see his reaction. “I’m hardly famous. We’re getting by and slowly growing, but nothing to brag about.”

  He stepped back so he could see all of the samples at the same time. The quality of her art was apparent, but there was something else, something elusive, like the puzzle of the painting upstairs. There was an aspect to Diana displayed here on the wall that he had to understand if they were ever going to be more than the occasional date.

  He switched gears from looking at it as art, to thinking about how he’d tackle a large case. All of these snapshots were witness statements and court documents. There had to be a commonality that would give him the edge. Something that would swing the ruling in his direction.

  But he had to take in all her work, including the ones on her body. He hadn’t had leisure time to learn each tattoo yet, but she had words on both wrists. Dream. Forever.

  “Dreaming in Ink,” he whispered, slowly turning to look at her. “Your specialty is dreams. Making dreams come true.”

  “I dream in ink.” Her voice was hoarse and she didn’t turn to look at him. “It’s a dream that they’re longing to get out, to make real. A visual reminder everyday of where they’ve been or what they’re trying to build. It just makes me feel uncomfortable sometimes to lay it all out here under glass in the front of the shop, even if that’s exactly what I’m doing each time I take on a client. I’m exposing their dreams on their skin for anyone to see.”

  “And your dreams too.”

  Her mouth quirked and she turned to look at him. The afternoon sunlight made her hair glow like fiery rubies. “Yeah, Mr. Smarty-Pants Lawyer. Their dream becomes my dream, tangling up with my own hopes and fears and desires, until it becomes a living part of me on their skin too.”

  If every design on her body was hers, and they represented dreams… Keeping his voice light, he took her hand and tugged her toward the stairs back upstairs. “Then I guess it’s time you show me every single beautiful tattoo on that glorious body of yours.”

  Because I want to know every single inch of you.

  Diana let him lead the way back upstairs and down the short hall toward the bedrooms. She wasn’t nervous any longer to invite the billionaire attorney into her humble abode. Maybe it was shock. She’d never had someone get to the heart of her art so quickly. She certainly hadn’t expected it from him, the slick smooth-talking rich guy without a single tattoo to mar his marvelous skin. How could he know how much it meant to her? She’d assumed a guy like him would shun people with tats. If someone was covered in tats in public, most people assumed they were Goths, into heavy rock and drugs. Maybe even ex-cons. “Nice” people didn’t have tats, except for maybe a cute little tramp stamp or innocuous butterfly on an ankle.

  But he got it. Without her even having to explain a thing.

  He paused in the hallway before three doors, one on either side and one directly in front of them.

  “My room—” she pointed to the left, “—bathroom, Arlene’s room.”

  He glanced back at her and frowned. “We could have stayed the rest of the day and dined on Donovan’s fancy chef’s creations.”

  She tightened her fingers around his, a subtle message that he could come closer. If he wanted. “Why would I want that when I could dine on you?”

  He wanted, evidently, because he pressed against her, wrapping his arms around her waist. “I’ve got two hours before I have to leave for the airport. I thought I’d use that precious time to kiss every single tat you have and listen to your story about each one. Would that be all right with you?”

  “Yes,” she breathed against his lips. “No Priestess, no submissive. Just you and me.”

  “Yeah.” He tightened his arms and pulled her up against him. “I’d carry you to your bed but since you’re so damned tall you’ll just have to settle for me waltzing you in there.”

  True to his word, he pushed open the door and whirled her around and around. Laughing, she fell back on the bed. “At least I remembered to make the bed before I left.”

  “Do you honestly think I give a damn whether your bed is made or not? I sleep on a leather sofa most nights. An unmade, messy bed would be nirvana. Especially if you were lying in it looking at me like that.”

  She blinked away whatever emotion he saw, trying not to let too much show through. He was getting so close, so fast. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d brought a man up here. She certainly hadn’t had a man study her canvas like it was some kind of priceless artifact.

  No. That’s how he’s looking at me now.

  Holding her gaze, he stripped out of his clothes in record time, hardly giving her a chance to caress him with her eyes. Kneeling on the mattress, he picked up her foot, untied her tennis shoe, and slipped it off with her sock. Then he did the same with her other foot. He cradled both feet against his thigh, rubbing his fingers over her skin. Maybe he was a metrosexual man unafraid to get manicures and pedicures, because he sure knew how to massage a foot. He dug his thumbs into her soles with just the right amount of pressure. Muscle by muscle, she relaxed into the mattress, letting tension bleed away that she hadn’t even realized she carried.

  “You’re always in control,” he said in a low voice, easing his fingers up to her ankles. “Always taking care of everyone else. Let me take care of you for a change.”

  He found the black widow spider just above her anklebone and rubbed his lips back and forth across it. “Why’d you get a spider?”

  “When I first bought this place, the apartments up here hadn’t been used in years. I cleaned the place up and brought in a bed, thought I’d sleep here until I got everything else ready to go. Save a little money, you know? But the very first night I slept here, a spider bit me right in that spot. Pissed me the hell off, so I had Arlene give me a big mean spider in the same spot. The joke is that she’ll scare the other spiders away. Of course, Arlene now claims the black widow scares off all the men too because they’re afraid I’ll eat them.”

  Sitting back up on his knees, he grinned at her lewdly and turned his attention to her jeans zipper. “Are you going to eat me? I r
ather thought I might eat you instead.”

  She lifted her hips and helped wriggle the jeans down her thighs so he could strip them off. “Oooh, now you’re the big bad wolf?”

  Leaning down over her panties, he growled and snapped his teeth playfully, but then he turned his attention to her sweater. “Not yet, I have more tattoos to kiss. Let’s just get everything off now so I can see the full masterpiece at once.”

  Sitting up, she unhooked her bra and tossed it over the side. She lay back and lifted her hips to push her panties down so he could strip them off. For several long moments, he just looked at her, from her toes to her head and back down, lingering on each design. It was simply wondrous to lie there in the afternoon sun on her bed and bask in his attention like a greedy cat.

  He trailed his fingers up her hip and along her rib cage. “Are you cold?”

  “No.” She shivered and her nipples were rock hard, aching, but not from the chill in the air.

  “This one,” he whispered, leaning down to kiss the sugar skull on her ribs and abdomen. “Why did you get it?”

  “To honor my mother’s family. They’re originally from Mexico. When I was growing up, we didn’t have much, but we always had calaveras for the Day of the Dead to honor her family. Most of the time we made our own, until she wasn’t able to any longer. I still have the last one she made saved in a box. I used it as the basis for this design.”

  He kissed the tattoo, nibbling softly with his lips as if he could taste the sugar. “Is your mother still alive?”

  She took a deep breath and let it out. “Yes, but she’s in a nursing home. She has Alzheimer’s. Most of the time, she doesn’t remember who I am.”

  He laid his cheek against her, his fingers gently stroking over her stomach. “Oh, Diana, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for this exploration to be painful for you.”