“I figured you were talking about the teenage drug kingpin thing Colin’s got going on at FHS, not the literal mafia.”
Royal rolls us onto our sides, and the blanket slips off. He looks down at our bodies pressed together, then hooks his big hand around the back of my thigh, drawing my knee up around his hip. He slides his hand up my thigh before palming my ass. “This is a lot of ink,” he says. “How long did it take you to get all this?”
“About three months,” I say, propping myself on my elbow to admire my tats. “He did it in his spare time, since I wasn’t paying him. So he just did a few inches at a time.”
“He was being paid a lot more than this is worth,” Royal grumbles, thumbing my hip crease.
“Are you jealous?” I tease, letting him look at the tattoo that stretches all the way up one side of my body. I’m completely relaxed with him, allowing him to look at me and touch me in a way that would have scared me a month ago. I’m comfortable with him, at least in these moments, completely at ease though I’m naked and vulnerable. And fuck, that is not a good thing at all.
“I’m jealous as hell,” Royal says, squeezing my hip. “When I think about someone else touching you, I want to murder him. Even if he’d only given you the tattoo, I’d want to murder him. Knowing you fucked him all those days…”
“Not every day,” I say, rolling my eyes. “And it was only a couple months.”
“How many times did you fuck him?” Royal growls.
“It’s not like I counted,” I say, laughing at his ridiculousness. If he knew half of what I felt for him, he’d know there was no comparing it to Mav. But of course I can’t tell him that.
“Take a guess,” Royal commands.
“I honestly don’t know. I was fifteen when he started inking, probably sixteen when we hooked up. It was a long time ago. We hung out for a few months, and in the two years since then, we hung out a few dozen times.”
“You’re eighteen?”
“In a month.”
“So, exactly how many times did you hook up?” he presses.
I’m too frustrated to hold out, so I just guess. “We hung out… Maybe a hundred times? And probably only had sex a quarter of those times.”
“Hung out? What does that mean? You sucked his dick?”
I shrug. “Something like that.”
“You sucked his dick a hundred times?” Royal asks, his face darkening with fury.
“Oh, come on,” I say. “I bet you’ve had your dick sucked a hundred times. And probably by a different girl every time.”
“You want me to feel bad for putting my dick in a few mouths?”
“No,” I say. “I don’t want you to feel bad. I want you to stop giving me shit when you don’t hold yourself to the same rules. Double standards aren’t cool anymore. Hadn’t you heard?”
“Guess I missed the memo,” he mutters. He leans down to kiss me. “I know I’m not supposed to care, but I do. I’m a selfish bastard. I want to be the only one who knows what you feel like and look like and taste like.”
“Ditto,” I say. “But we’re not kids. So we’ll have to be satisfied to be the only ones who get to feel and see and taste each other now.”
He groans and pulls my leg tighter around his hips. “You better stop or I’m going to want to go again.”
“What about your ink?” I ask, running my fingertips over his warm skin, tracing the line of his sister’s face.
“I didn’t pay for it with blowjobs,” he says sourly.
I run my fingers up the inside of his bicep, where his olive skin is silky soft. “How come you don’t have one of the swan tattoos that your brothers have?”
“Why would I?”
I give him a look. “I know you’re one of the Midnight Swans.”
He looks slightly annoyed, then lays back on the blanket. “No one tells me what to put on my body.”