Hands dried, she held up the stencil by the corners, her nerves aflutter. Hadn’t every day since the day she’d met him led to this?
Whatever you gave him made him look at things differently, made him want to get better.
Laz’s words came back to her from the night they fled the Cuban restaurant. Jay had worn his partial outline for three years. How did he envision the finished design? He didn’t know about the sketchbook, unless he’d snooped in her messenger bag while she slept. What if it disappointed him? Or worse, what if the completion didn’t give him the catharsis she knew he anticipated?
Deep breath. The forge of fire and steel was destined to exist on his back. She just needed to go slow, not screw it up. They had twenty-four hours until the Kansas City show. Plenty of time to help him uncover what he’d hid for so long.
Another lungful of air. She lowered the stencil behind her and walked to the bedroom, her gait jittery, her heart more so.
He sat on the edge of the bed, palms flat on his thighs. “It’s time.” He addressed Nathan and Tony, who stood in the sitting area outside the bedroom, but his gaze was on her.
The bedroom door clicked closed followed by another click of the outer exit.
Jay had demanded total privacy for the remainder of the night. Because their suite was a fraction of the size of the one in New York, it made it easier to convince the protective team to guard from the hallway. In reality, they were only one room away.
She placed the stencil on the desk and moved toward him until her knees brushed his bent ones. “Ready?”
“For three years.” He removed his shirt, tossed it behind him, eyes on her, overflowing with emotion. Was he as anxious as her? Was he having second thoughts?
Her need to touch him, to connect to him, roiled inside her and spread to her fingertips. Her equilibrium wobbled. “We’ll go slowly. Stop me when you need to. If you change your mind, if the memories come—”
“Charlee.” He rose a breath away and rested his hands on her waist. “I want this.” Dipping his head, he opened his mouth and swept his tongue over hers. Pushing past her parted lips, he licked and nipped, sensuously, lovingly, restoring her balance.
She pulled back, breathless. My, how their roles had flipped. The last time she aimed a needle at him, she’d taken the lead, controlled the outcome. “Do you want to see the stencil before I start?” Nervousness cramped her gut.
He turned, lay across the foot of the bed, face down, one arm hanging over the end. “I want you to stop deliberating and finish what you started.” Impatience sharpened his tone, but the gold in his eyes glimmered with amusement.
“Good. I don’t need a stencil anyway since I’m just doing a big ol’ sheet of black.” She diluted a paper towel with Dettol antiseptic and swiped long strokes from shoulder to shoulder.
“Since you inked the first outline freehand, I’m confident you could make even a black square look like art. Can’t wait to see what you do with a stencil.” He turned his head away, and the muscles in his back loosened under the rub of the towel.
It had been a huge risk inking him without a stencil the night she met him, but she’d had little choice in her sneaky offense to defy his wishes.
She squirted a dollop of stencil gel at the top of his spine. “Here come my hands.” She waited for his deep breath and eventually let out her own when his tension never came.
With hesitant fingertips, she spread the gel over the nearest cluster of scars. His back rose and fell with steady breaths, his trigger quiet.
She worked the gel lower, and his skin took on a tougher, more wrinkled texture across a horizontal line from armpit to armpit. Was his back curved and chest tucked in when the burns were inflicted? The bubbles weren’t raised enough to be noticeable, but the discoloration made them impossible to miss. A motley of reds blended into browns and pinks. The damage covered his upper back from just below his neck to under his armpits.
Once the gel covered the areas to be inked, she positioned the stencil on his back and adjusted the ohms on the machine. “You know, I don’t know your full name.”
He twisted his neck to face her, cheek resting on the mattress, eyelids heavy. “James Kristopher Mayard.”
“James? Really?” She removed the stencil and blew on his back.
The arm he dangled off the bed shifted and his hand curled around the back of her bare calf. “I changed it to Jay when I started The Burn.”
She tested the machine with a few pulses of the needle. Jay. Laz. Rio. Wil. “All your proportioned names would make charming tattoos. You could wear each other’s names in a matching design.” A smile tugged her lips as she touched the machine to his skin and began the first stroke.
He chuckled. “I love those guys, but not that much.”
She followed the stenciled lines, dwelling on three-lettered names. One in particular tried to scorch her mood. She would not allow Roy to taint this moment. “What are their real names?”