Inked in Lies (The Fallen Men 5)

Normally, I was naked, or at the very most, in provocative clothes because Nova’s brand was freedom.

Free of social mores like puritanism, asceticism, and conservatism.

And I was his muse, his Flower Child.

So I embodied those too.

Nova arched a brow at me as he cleaned his station. “Just had my mouth on your pussy lickin’ up your cum like the honey it is. Now you’re gonna be shy?”

Flames licked up my neck and cheeks, but somehow, I affected a casual shrug. “Can you blame me? This is…this is new territory for us.”

He stared at me for a second, mouth tight, eyes considering, then he moved toward me, not stopping until we were toe to toe. I was so much shorter than him, he had to duck to take my chin in his fingers and tip it up to his face.

“Is it?” he asked quietly. “Feels right in the way art feels right to me. Like I was made to do this.”

My heart burned in my chest. I gritted my teeth against the intensity of the hope threatening to raze it to ash.

“Don’t lie to me,” I begged softly.

“Thinkin’ I might’ve been lyin’ to myself for a long fuckin’ time,” he argued. “Thinkin’ I got a taste now for sea salt and flowers that I won’t be able to kick anytime soon.”

“So what, you want to keep sleeping together? Won’t that ruin our friendship?”

“No,” Nova confirmed, jaw clamped shut. “Won’t let it.”

“I don’t mind ruining our friendship,” I half-joked. “I want to be lovers more.”

“We’re friends first,” Nova said in a voice that brooked no argument.

And it was good, necessary, to hear that. I needed the reminder to ground me when I would float away on this dream. Because he wanted me, it seemed, but that didn’t mean he’d stay.

In the history of my life, no one ever had.

“But you want me,” I ventured slowly, needing to hear him say it because even after everything that had happened, I still couldn’t believe it.

Nova grinned his roguish grin. “Yeah, babe. You make me smile, and you make me horny as hell. It’s a potent fuckin’ cocktail.”

I laughed, a little louder and longer than I should have because I was giddy with relief and joy.

“So we’re doing this. This…friends with benefits thing.”

“No, Li,” Nova corrected. “You know how I feel about labels. Don’t gotta put one on us, not when we’re so many things I’ve never been able to find the words for. We both know life’s short, we only got one day at a time, the moment we’re livin’ right now. I’m tellin’ you, this minute and the next as far as I care to see, I want this with you.” He hauled me tight against his body, my hips pinned to his with the arm banded at my back, my feet dangling off the floor so we were eye to eye. “Give me a shot. Let me make up for all the times I shoulda kissed you and didn’t.”

I blinked against the urge to swoon hard and nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

And when he kissed me, he was smiling, and that smile lasted as I kissed him back, our teeth clicking, our laughter leaking through our joined mouths.

It might have been even better than our first kiss, and our second, because it was us just like he’d said this was.

Dangerous and alive and so fun it almost hurt.

Nova set me down and gave my ass a firm slap. “Now, get that sweet ass into the studio.”

* * *

* * *

I’d posed for Nova a thousand times over, but this, naked except for a thong that read ‘Sex & Candy’, lights hot on my skin as I bent backward to showcase the tattoos spilling down my entire left side, was utterly different.

I was a bit of an exhibitionist, so I’d always enjoyed modeling for the shop, and a small part of me had even loved touching myself on camera when Irina had blackmailed me into it.

But this was infinitely better.

Because my audience of one was the only person I’d ever wanted to bend, twist, and break open for at their command.

“Arch your back,” he demanded, voice frayed with lust as he dropped into a squat to capture the right angle. “Show me the lush curve of that ass.”

I twisted and popped my hip so the light caught the spray of pink and purple edged peonies on my hip.

We were in the studio Nova’d built into the back of the shop, a long room filled with rows of windows on three sides and a mirror on the fourth. It was a light box, perfect for the photos he liked to take of me for Photogram, and I was learning, for himself.

“Gonna tack these up in my station,” he husked out as he moved closer to run the palm of his rough, padded hand over the curve of my waist before adjusting the angle of it. “Gonna stare at them, bear the strain of my hard dick in my jeans when I do, knowin’ my Flower Child gets off on her art as much as I do.”