After the stunt he’d pulled, he was also worried about Jess. Because after he’d dropped her curvy little ass on the bed—trying like hell not to put a visual to the fucking incredible physical sensations he had from carrying her naked body up the stairs, she’d never come back down.
She hadn’t said a word or made a sound, either. And combined with the chaos roaring through Ike’s body, her silence was driving him stark-raving mad.
Man-up, Ike. You created this problem. Fucking fix it.
He walked to the bottom of the steps. “Jess?” No answer. “Jess, I’m coming up.” Nothing. He frowned, but then he was in motion, his boots thudding against the treads as he made his way to the loft.
The sight that greeted him sucker-punched him right in the heart.
Jess was curled into a little ball on her side, her hands tucked under her face. She’d folded the blanket over her, but it had slid down, leaving her shoulder and breasts exposed.
God, she was fucking beautiful.
Maybe it made him a pervert, but Ike was drawn to the bed. He crouched down beside it, his gaze drinking Jess in. Her skin was a work of art. Her right arm had a swirling watercolor rainbow and waterfall running the whole length of it, flowers and fish woven in. Her shoulder and biceps had an ornate Mexican calavera skull, the detail done in reds and golds and dark blues. Ike remembered every one of the after-hours sessions they’d spent together doing these pieces, Jess telling him one colorful story after another. The time with her had made it simultaneously easier and harder to go home to his empty apartment—easier because her liveliness and passion filled up some of the dark, lonely places inside him; harder because he never felt more empty and alone in his apartment than after spending a night with Jess talking his ear off. Smiling at him. Teasing him. Making him want.
On her other arm, Ike could just make out the black and dark-green leaves surrounding the wide-open faces of a half-dozen bright-pink roses. She’d already had part of that sleeve done when Ike first met her, but he’d expanded it for her over the years.
His gaze skimmed over her chest, where a constellation of different sized dark-blue and black nautical stars spilled over her right collarbone, down her chest, between the curves of her breasts, to finally end in a sweeping flourish on the right side of her ribs. She was fascinating and alluring to look at, and that was saying absolutely nothing about the little silver hoops piercing through her nipples. Jesus.
Ike reached across Jess and pulled up the blanket, covering her.
What was even more fascinating, though, was her face. Usually so animated, colorful, and just fucking alive with emotion, she looked peaceful and oddly young sleeping, her face bare of makeup. And it made him feel even more protective of her.
With gentle fingers, he pushed a wave of black and red hair off her face—and was surprised to feel how warm her cheek felt. He pressed his fingers to her forehead and found her warm there, too. Someday he’d get around to installing air conditioning in this old place, but he spent so much more of his time in Baltimore that he hadn’t made it a priority.
Sighing, Ike made his way back downstairs. At least she hadn’t come back down because she was avoiding him. And now that he thought about it, he was fucking tired, too. Jess had called him around four in the morning and he’d made it to her apartment on the second floor of an old row house within twenty minutes. After he’d gotten her out of that little shit hole of a crawl space and held her in his arms to prove to himself he hadn’t lost her, they’d packed a bag, gone back to his apartment so he could pack and grab some extra firepower, and made their way to the remaining part of the Hard Ink building in time for the team’s morning brief about their investigation.
He kicked off his boots and stretched out on the couch, intent on catching a little shut-eye himself. Except the minute his eyes closed, a movie started playing on the back of his lids. The terrified and embarrassed look on Jess’s face during that morning brief when she saw the projected image of a tattoo worn by one of their enemies—and she realized she’d slept with someone wearing a tat just like that a few days before.
His eyes blinked open again and his gaze settled on the ceiling’s exposed wooden beams.
Given the way Ike had always felt about Jess, he didn’t love hearing about her sexual exploits—which were many and often colorful. Not because he disapproved, but because he wished he could be the one making her come, making her shake, making her scream his name. Otherwise, he didn’t get a fucking say in who Jess gave her love or her body to, and he knew it.
But Ike did get to be pissed that someone had apparently picked her up for the express purpose of using her for information about Nick and Jeremy, and then came back days later, after attacking and destroying part of Hard Ink, to tie up loose ends. As if Jess was just so much disposable trash.