“How do you figure?” Bryan asked.
“That exchanged seemed a little one-sided, don’t you think?”
I slid myself down his throbbing cock, making a groan leave his lips. I leaned forward and pressed my lips against his cheek while his entire body trembled against mine. My body was humming for him, begging me to move as I stayed seated in his lap. His hands came up and gripped my hips, his fingertips burying themselves into the growing excess of my body.
“Make love to me, Bryan McBride,” I said.
“With pleasure,” he said.
Chapter 3
Bryan
I wanted to stop by Drew's tattoo shop to check on him and see how he was doing. He and Anna had drifted apart since the two of them had tried to get their new lives off the ground. Between Anna trying to get her legal aid services business up and running and Drew working on promoting his tattoo shop, they didn't have a lot of time to spend with one another. They had eventually broken things off, and I hated that I hadn’t been around to be there for him. It had all taken place while we were still in the middle of Hailey's European art tour, and I wanted to check on my friend and make sure he was doing okay.
From the moment I pulled up, I could tell his business was booming. There were cars looking for parking spaces, and there was a line out the door. I smiled as I parked my car, resolving myself to walk three blocks to get to the tattoo parlor.
I was already proud of my friend and former business partner before I even entered the establishment.
I expected the back up of people to be because Drew was the only inker. The last time we had talked about his business, he’d had no intentions of hiring anyone else. He didn't want to deal with a staff or payroll or anything like that. He just wanted to be a small, individual business he could flourish and run on his own. But that was not what I found when I walked inside. I pushed through people to find the door that separated the waiting room from the individual tattoo rooms, and I shoved myself through it. People were complaining as I scooted past them, but I tried not to let it get to me. If I was waiting in this line and saw some random guy pushing through, I’d be pissed too.
And I was surprised to see more than one inker. In fact, three other tattoo rooms were taken up by people who weren't Drew.
“Drew! Where the hell are you?”
“Bryan? That you?” he asked.
I watched him pop his head out of a room before a smile crossed his face.
“Oh, shit! Dude! You’re back! Get your ass back here. I’m almost done.”
“What the hell’s all this?” I asked. “What happened to just you running the place?”
“It’s been a happy mess since you’ve been gone,” Drew said, grinning. “Word spread like wildfire, and I had to hire people just to keep up with the demand. I still get the most requests, but get this. All these guys are artists.”
“Isn’t the term tattoo artist?” I asked.
“No, dude. Actual artists. Like Mikey over there. He’s got a degree in the shit. And Ace? Doesn’t say a fucking word but can do three-dimensional tattoos like you wouldn’t believe. And Gracie all the way in the back has that minimalistic shit going on.”
“Sounds like you’ve got yourself a wonderful staff,” I said.
“Yeah, and we’re raking in the money.”
The smile on Drew's face and the satisfaction in his voice were unlike anything I had ever seen. In all the years I’d worked with him at the construction company we built from the ground up, I had never seen him like this. I had never heard that kind of h
appiness and satisfaction in his voice. It warmed my heart to see my best friend so happy, and as he cleaned up his client, I stood back and watched him work.
“I can’t thank you enough for all you did to help me with this,” Drew said.
“You helped me start a fucking company. It was the least I could do,” I said. “Plus, all the support you gave me when Hailey and I were struggling? All in repayment.”
“You don’t have to repay me for any of that. You were there for me when Anna and I split.”
“Not like I should’ve been,” I said.
“You were supporting your woman on her art tour, dude! Get off it already. You ran up your phone bill taking my calls. I don’t even wanna know how much that cost, man.”
“How are you doing?” I asked. “I mean, with everything.”