Total pages in book: 24
Estimated words: 23578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 118(@200wpm)___ 94(@250wpm)___ 79(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 23578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 118(@200wpm)___ 94(@250wpm)___ 79(@300wpm)
“Distract me,” she says as I trace the stem of the lily.
I need a little distraction too. I can’t stop thinking of this girl naked.
“Tell me about yourself,” I say.
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
She chuckles. “I just graduated from University.”
“Congratulations,” I say, already so proud of her. I knew my girl would be a smart one. “What was it like?”
She tells me all about her time at Gonzaga University in Spokane and how she’s unsure of where to go and what to do now that it’s over. Her family is in Florida, but she’s not sure if she wants to go back.
“You’re not going back home, are you?” I ask, the desperation clear in my voice. I can handle having her ninety minutes away—as horrible as that would be—but on the other side of the country in Florida? I couldn’t… I’d have to go with her. I’d follow her anywhere.
“I don’t think so,” she says. “My parents are divorced and they’re both settled in now. My mom got an apartment with my stepdad, and my father has a younger wife and two new kids. I love them all, but a house with toddlers in it isn’t the place for me anymore.”
“I think you should move here,” I say.
She laughs. “Move into the tattoo shop?”
“In with me.”
She shakes her head and laughs. “Are all bear shifters this crazy?”
“When they meet their mate, yeah.”
She looks over her shoulder at me and I get lost in those gorgeous brown eyes. She’s stunning. She’s mesmerizing. I can’t handle it.
How am I ever supposed to get anything done with her around?
“I need to know a little bit more about you before I agree to that,” she says with a grin. “Tell me about your life. Those were your siblings?”
I tell her all about Magnus and Victoria and our life in Montana. About our parents, building our cabins, opening the tattoo shop, and anything else she wants to know.
I don’t think I’ve ever talked this much in my whole life, but I keep going like an open book, telling her anything she wants to know.
“How did all three of you get into tattooing?” she asks.
“My mom is an artist,” I tell her. “She’s always painting and drawing and working on her art, so we were always around art supplies growing up. We all got pretty good.”
“Did she do tattoos as well?”
“No,” I say, grinning when I recall the memory. “Magnus bought an old tattoo machine at a yard sale when he was a teenager and brought it home. We thought it was the coolest thing and we learned how to use it, tattooing on pig carcasses, fruit, fake skin, our legs, our friends, anything really. Victoria is six years younger than me—she’s twenty-one now—so she was always trying to hang out with us. She was watching the whole time and when we finally let her have a turn, we were shocked to find out that she was the best one out of the three of us.”
“I can picture you as a kid,” she says, smiling at the image in her head. “I can’t wait to see some pictures.”
I open my drawer and grab an old photo I have laying around in there. It’s Victoria’s sixth birthday and she’s smiling wide in front of her cake—looking adorable with her two front teeth missing. Magnus and me are in the back. Magnus is giving her bunny ears with his two fingers and I’m scooping my finger into the icing of the cake. It’s one of our favorites.
“So cute,” she says, smiling at the photo. She has a million questions about my parents and what they’re like. They moved to Switzerland so my mom could paint the mountains and my father’s grizzly bear could roam in them. I haven’t visited them yet, but they seem really happy.
“Whose idea was it to open up the shop?” she asks as I finish one petal and start on another one.
“That was Magnus. He’s always been the go-getter. The man with the plan.”
I talk about how it’s been so hard for me without her and she just listens quietly. She doesn’t freak out or get scared or tell me this is moving too fast. She takes my free hand and holds it as I talk. I take a breath of relief, knowing those days of intense longing and pain are finally over. She’s here now. I can just sit back and relax for once.
The hours fly by and before I know it, I’m done. I put my tattoo gun down and then wipe her skin with green soap to get rid of the stencil and any excess ink.
“Are you done?” she asks, perking up in the chair.
“Go check it out,” I tell her. “Tell me what you think.”
She rushes over to the mirror and turns, looking over her shoulder at the new work of art on her body. Her lip quivers and her eyes fill with tears when she sees it.