Marked by Garrett Leigh Page A

come home with, I was still keyed up.
    Ash leaned forward to run a razor over my shoulder, and I couldn’t resist pulling him into my lap. He scowled, but I ignored his face and watched him stretch to retrieve a bottle of rubbing alcohol. He was pretty flexible when he put his mind to it, something I’d only recently discovered, and the exposed sliver of his tight stomach was totally hot.
    He came upright again with a gentle grace. He cleaned my skin, and with a rueful smirk slid out of my grasp and returned to his damn box. Impatiently, I drummed my fingers on my knee. It had been a few years since I’d had any new ink, but it was something Ash did every day. He was surprisingly anal about his work, so I knew he probably had a routine to get through.
    “Why today?” I asked suddenly. “I saw you this morning and you never mentioned it.”
    “It just seemed like a good day,” Ash said vaguely. “You’re off tomorrow, right?”
    I nodded slowly; his reasoning made sense. “Is that why you came to meet me?”
    He finally glanced up from the box. “What? Oh, no… well, not really. I had to go the… shit, what’s it called, the post office?” I nodded and he returned his attention to his equipment. “Yeah, I had to go to the post office to pick a package up. I don’t like the white ink Ted uses, so I got a different one for you.”
    To cover my surprise at him actually shopping, I said the first asinine thing that came into my head. “White ink?”
    Ash sighed patiently. “I told you I was going to use white ink on the smaller stars.”
    “Why did you get it sent to the post office?”
    “I couldn’t remember your zip code.”
    Fair enough. Everyday tasks seemed to confuse him sometimes; little things I took for granted were completely alien to him. I put it down to spending his teenage years on the streets, but it still made my heart clench when his life seemed more difficult than it needed to be. I mean, who taught you that shit when you were all alone in the world?
    Ash stood and pulled the coffee table closer to the couch. “I came to get you because I figured I’d give you a chance to change your mind.”
    Fascinated, I watched as he began to apply the stencils he’d drawn to my skin. Apart from observing some obsessive sketching and some fleeting glances through the tattoo shop window, I’d never really seen him work. “Why would I change my mind?”
    “You’ve never seen any of my stuff on skin. How do you know I’m any good?”
    “That’s not true,” I countered. “I see your wrist every damn day.”
    “That’s not the same,” he said. “That’s a shitty example of my work. I did that in Philly before I’d learned how to do it properly.”
    I rolled my eyes. The wizard he’d tattooed on himself was one of the most amazing pieces of ink I’d ever seen. Pretty much everywhere we went together, someone would comment on it—a waitress, a barman… even my mom. I wasn’t blind—I’d seen the scars beneath it—but that didn’t take away from its beauty. “Shut up,” I said shortly. “You need your fucking eyes examined.”
    Ash snorted, but said no more on the subject. When he finished applying his stencils, he pulled a mirror from his box of tricks to give me a preview. Seeing the design on paper had nothing on the thrill of seeing it on my skin. He’d taken the blurred, faded old stars and turned them into something incredible.
    “Wow,” I said. “I like that.”
    “You do?” he said nervously. “It’s not too big?”
    “No way,” I said. “It’s just right. Will it take you long to do it?”
    “No, there’s not much shading work, so probably only an hour or so.”
    I grinned at him and swooped in to give him a quick kiss. “Better get started, then, huh?”
     
     
    T WENTY minutes later, I was in serious trouble… or at least I would have been if Ash had been tattooing me any place other than the couch in my own home. It had been a long time since I’d last