Lover Mine by J.R. Ward Read Free Book Online Page B

turned her head to the side so he could kiss her. Which he did.
    You stupid fuck, Blay thought to himself. You stupid motherfucker.
    The guy knows precisely who he’s doing . . . and who he’s not.
    Shaking his head, he muttered, “John, you mind if I go have a cigarette outside?”
    When John shook his head, Blay got to his feet and put the clothes on the seat. To the tattoo guy he said, “I just flip the lock?”
    “Yup, and you can leave it open if you’re just outside the door.”
    “Thanks, man.”
    “No prob.”
    Blay walked away from the buzz of the tattoo gun and the symphony of groans behind that curtain, slipping out of the shop and leaning against the building right next to the entrance. Palming up a flat pack of Dunhill reds, he withdrew a cigarette, put it between his lips, and lit the thing with his black lighter.
    The first drag was heaven. Always the best out of all that followed.
    As he exhaled, he hated that he read into things, saw connections that weren’t there, misinterpreted actions and stares and casual touches.
    Pathetic, really.
    Qhuinn hadn’t been looking up as he’d been getting blown to meet Blay’s eyes. He’d been checking on John Matthew. And he’d spun that woman around and taken her from behind because that was how he liked it.
    Fuckin’ A . . . hope didn’t so much spring eternal as it drowned out common sense and self-preservation.
    Inhaling hard, he was so tangled in his own thoughts that he failed to notice the shadow at the head of the alley across the street. Unaware he was being watched, he smoked along, the chilly spring night eating up the puffs that rose from his lips.
    The realization that he couldn’t keep going like this anymore was a deep freeze that went right into his bones.

FOUR
    “Okay, I think we’re done.”
    John felt a last dragging pull across his shoulder and then the Otattoo gun went silent. Sitting up from the rest he’d been curled against for the last two hours, he stretched his arms over his head and pulled his torso back into shape.
    “Gimme a sec and I’ll clean you up.”
    As the human male sprayed some paper towels with antibacterial wash, John settled his weight on his spine once again, and let the tingling hum from the needle’s work reverberate through his whole body.
    In the lull, an odd memory came to him, one he hadn’t thought of for years. It was from his days of living at Our Lady’s orphanage, back when he hadn’t known what he truly was.
    One of the church’s benefactors had been a rich man who owned a big house on the shores of Saranac Lake. Every summer, the orphans had been invited to go up for a day and play on his football- field-size lawn and go for rides on his beautiful wooden boat and eat sandwiches and watermelon.
    John had always gotten a sunburn. No matter how much goo they slathered on him, his skin had always burned to a crisp—until they finally relegated him to staying in the shade on the porch. Forced to wait things out on the sidelines, he’d watched the other boys and girls do their thing, listening to the laughter roll across the bright green grass, having his food brought to him and eating alone, playing witness instead of being a part of it.
    Funny, his back felt now as his skin had then: tight and prickly, especially as the tattoo artist hit the raw spots with the wet cloth and made circles over the fresh ink.
    Man, John could remember dreading that annual ordeal at the lake. He’d wanted so badly to be with the others . . . although if he was honest, that had been less about what they were doing, and more because he was desperate simply to fit in. For fuck’s sake, they could have been chewing on glass shards and bleeding down the front of their shirts and he still would have been all sign-me-up.
    Those six hours on that porch with nothing but a comic book or maybe a fallen bird’s nest to inspect and reinspect had seemed as long as months. Too much time to think and yearn. He’d always hoped