“Want to check out my room?” Austin offered up a much more attractive option. “Tyson is sleeping, so there won’t be any furry interruptions.”
Grinning, I stroked a finger down the tattoo on his arm that was his familiar’s resting place. “Hell yeah. Then later you can show me how to use your tattoo gun so you can pay up on our bet.”
Austin groaned painfully, but I silenced him with a long kiss.
“Fine,” he finally growled. “But you better not draw a cartoon dick, or there will be hell to pay.”
17
My foot tapped the floor impatiently while Austin explained to me again how his tattoo equipment worked.
“I get it, Aus.” I rolled my eyes and held up my wrist with the tiger lily tattoo. “Magical learning spell still active, remember?”
His lips pursed, and I was torn between wanting to flick him in the forehead again and wanting to kiss him. Damn, this new development was going to be confusing.
“Can you let me do it now?” I prompted, and he sighed heavily.
“Fine. I guess if you really fuck it up I can just erase it with magic.” His confidence in me was staggering. “All right, where is it going?”
I beamed. Silly, silly man. He had been so confident this far because he was already so covered in ink that one more little design would just get lost. But I had a better idea.
“Lie down,” I ordered, patting his bed, which we were sitting on the edge of. “On your front.”
Austin gave me a suspicious look but did as I asked, stretching out on the bed with his arms propped under his head, probably thinking I was putting it on his back.
Hopping up from where I had been sitting, I resituated myself to straddle the backs of his legs, then slipped my fingers under the waistband on his boxers to slide them down, exposing his totally uninked backside.
“Princess,” he growled. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Shush,” I replied, leaning over to his bedside table to grab the tattoo gun we had already prepared with black ink. “You lost our bet fair and square. Now just lie there and take it like a man.”
Finally I began to feel a bit of concern from him, and I snickered as I began the design I’d already mapped out in my head. We’d already established that I was no van Gogh, so Austin had used a washable marker to ink a small talent spell into my right hand which would give me enough artistic ability to pull off a half-decent tattoo.
Not that this needed Rembrandt-level artistry.
“Hey, Austin. Have you seen”—Caleb cut off as he opened the door and saw me straddling his half-naked brother and brandishing a tattoo gun—“Kit. Huh, guess it’s payback time, is it?”
“It sure is.” I grinned at him and winked. This had been his idea after all.
A wicked smile curved his lips as he sat against the headboard to watch.
“That’s a nice T-shirt you’re wearing, Kitty Kat,” the observant bastard commented, and I looked down at the vintage Guns N’ Roses concert T-shirt I had stolen from Austin’s drawer. It was long enough that it wasn’t totally obvious I had nothing else on. Not even underwear.
When I said he had done something magical to get them off me, he really had. Or maybe we just hadn’t looked hard enough before disappearing up here.
“Thanks,” I smirked back. “I think it really brings out my eyes.” I batted my lashes at him, and he gave me a knowing wink.
“Cal,” Austin muttered, “tell me what she’s drawing on my ass.”
Caleb leaned forward to peer at my half-completed design and snorted. “Nice one.”
“I thought so,” I preened, but neither one of us responded to Austin.
“Guys...” he groaned, and I slapped his other bare cheek.
“Just shut up so I can finish. We should probably go and clean up the kitchen too,” I pondered aloud while I continued on the tattoo. That magical learning spell was seriously coming in handy because my first attempt at a tattoo was turning out pretty damn great.
“All right, done,” I announced, wiping it off with a cloth and replacing the gun onto the bedside table.
Austin craned his neck to see, then slapped me on the leg so he could get up and look in the mirror. Caleb and I exchanged grins as Austin stood in front of his ensuite bathroom mirror for a really long time.
“Babe?” I called out in a sickly sweet and very sarcastic voice. “Do you love it?”
There were a few moments more of silence before he stalked back out of the bathroom to glare at the two of us, his underwear still pulled down under his seriously tight butt cheek.
“You were in on this too, huh?” he asked his twin, and Caleb snorted a laugh.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re on your own, Kitty Kat,” he chuckled, racing out of the room again and slamming the door behind him.
Austin levelled a glare on me, but I could already sense he wasn’t anywhere near as annoyed as I had aimed to make him.
“Property of Princess Kit?” he asked me, repeating the words now tattooed onto his ass. “With a little fox wearing a crown?”
“You wrote Austin in between my butterflies and didn’t think I noticed,” I retorted, and his eyebrows shot up with surprise. “I’d say we’re even now. Besides”—I smirked, grabbing him by the elastic waistband and pulling him down to me on the bed—“you are property of Princess Kit.”
Austin braced himself against the bed, his hands either side of me as he leaned in close enough to kiss. “I am no one’s property, baby girl. You’ll learn.”
He kissed me then, but I laughed against his mouth. If anyone would be learning... it’d be him.
When we eventually surfaced out from Austin’s room, I found the kitchen already cleaned up and a plate of fresh cinnamon-coffee cookies sitting on the table in front of the guys.
“Kitten, there you are,” River commented, looking up from where he’d been leaning over Wesley’s laptop screen. “Sit, please. We have something to discuss.”
“Uh, that doesn’t sound so good,” I muttered under my breath, pulling up a chair and tucking my leg up underneath me. Before coming into the kitchen, I’d ducked upstairs and dressed in my own clothes again, seeing as all of mine from earlier were still MIA.
“It’s... well, you’ll see.” River rolled his neck like he’d been craning over Wesley’s shoulder for too long already. “Go ahead, Wes.”
Glancing around the table, none of the other guys seemed remotely curious, other than Austin who clearly had as little clue what was going on as I did. Which made sense, as we’d been occupying each other all afternoon.
“Okay, so River and I have been doing a lot of reading and research and stuff into Omega Group and your dad,” he started, pushing his glasses up as they slipped forward. I smiled seeing him wearing them again. As much as I knew contacts were easier when we were constantly on the run or getting blown up or, well, making out, his glasses reminded me of when we’d first met.
“Yup, I know this.” I nodded my understanding.
“Right, well, one of my keyword searches of government databases brought up something that concerns you.” Wesley spun the computer around and pushed it across to me to read. A light frown pulled at my brows as I took the laptop and scanned the document in front of me.
“Oh,” I said when I finished and officially felt like my stomach was lodged in my throat. “I knew that doctor was up to no good.”
I pushed the computer away from me and dropped my face into my hands with a groan. Anxiety pooled in my belly like cold blood, and I was pretty sure I was getting a migraine... if that was even possible for Ban Dia.
“So, what I gather from that is that the psychotic little worm who took my blood then left me for dead at Gray’s hands is now conducting experiments on people using a serum made from my blood.” I waved a hand at the document on Wesley’s screen. No one spoke, but Wesley nodded. “So this is Dupree and the Blood Moon labs all over again?”
“Except,” Caleb pointed out as he munched on a coffee cookie. “This guy sounds like he’s succeeding. At least temporarily.”