King of Masters by Brynn Ford

CHAPTER 9

Stella

MURPHY'S SOFT LIPS and bristly beard sweep across my collarbone. “Tell me what this means.”

“My tattoo?”

He draws his fingers across the black ink just beneath my collarbone, painting my skin with the scent of my arousal. “Aye. Lost soul,” he reads.

“I’ve always felt like a lost soul.”

He watches me, softly stroking across my skin.

“It was my first tattoo,” I tell him, “which, believe it or not, I didn’t get until I was twenty-one.”

“Why did you get it?”

“It’s a whole story…”

“I want to hear it.” He tucks my hair behind my ear, and it gives me goosebumps. “Tell me while you give me a matching purple rose.”

I lower my leg from the chair and take a small step back, smoothing down my skirt. “Okay. Let me get things prepped.” Murphy gives me a wink and my heart beats frantically. “And stop being so charming.”

“Never,” he says with a smile. Turning on the chair, he leans back and casually lifts his legs onto the footrest.

I fan myself with my hand, sweaty and flustered, before I finally drag myself away to prep my materials. “Where do you want me to put it?”

“Are you talking about your arse or the tattoo?”

I flash him a grin. “The tattoo.”

He starts unbuttoning his shirt and I hold my breath to see the masterpiece that is this man’s chest—not just the tattoo he has there, but the sculpted, delicious muscle. He’s so beautiful that I have no problem momentarily defying my staunch feminism to reverse objectify the fuck out of him.

“Right here.” He points to a spot on his left pec. “Partially behind the skull and crown.”

“You mean right there…over your heart?”

“That’s the spot.”

Should I read into that?

My fluttering heart says yes.

I try to play it cool. “You know it doesn’t mean anything special. The rose, I mean.”

“It’s special to me.”

“It is?”

“You always turn to your left when you take off your panties on camera for me.” His eyes drink me in. “That purple rose on your perfectly curved hip is the first thing I see when you strip yourself bare for me. It’s an image I want to keep close at heart.”

I think I must be blushing because my cheeks are warm. I don’t know the last time I felt so flattered by a man.

“And purple is my favorite color,” he adds with a cheeky grin.

I let out a satisfied sigh. “Murphy O’Shea, you might just be the most fascinating man I’ve ever met.”

An oddly comfortable silence falls between us as I sketch out a similar version of the rose on my hip. I print it out, place the template on his chest, let him verify it’s where he wants it, and pick up my tattoo machine to get right to work.

“You’d probably have an easier time if you straddled my lap, sweetheart.”

Fuck me.

“Well, I was waiting for the invitation.” I set down my machine and climb onto his lap, straddling his hips and sitting back on his thighs. I reach over and drag my rolling tray closer to have access to my supplies. When I grab my machine and settle comfortably to begin, I feel the electricity of our connection spark between us, and I actually flinch at the shock of it.

We share a look and a mutual sigh, relief at our proximity after all this time apart. I can feel how he wants me—his cock half-hard between my legs. I’m aware that I might leave a wet spot on his pants, but I rather like the idea of claiming him that way. I give a little wiggle of my hips before sinking into stillness.

I wouldn’t dare do this with any other client. I’m probably pushing it to do it with him, but fuck, he makes me forget my ethics—which I know is dangerous, but the way I feel about him draws out something within me so beyond the scope of human awareness that it makes the morally gray feel comfortable.

He puts his hands on my hips and strokes up and down my sides as I settle into a quiet rhythm. The art always lulls me into calmness, the hum of the machine working to soothe my nerves like white noise and meditation. But the stirring in my core from being pressed so closely to him creates a heavenly contrast of serenity and sensation. A few minutes pass beautifully before he speaks again.

“Now tell me about lost soul.”

“Oh. Hmm. Well, I was raised by a single mom…didn’t know my dad until I was twenty. I actually still haven’t met him, and I doubt I ever will. When my mom was in college, she studied abroad in Athens for a semester. She met my father, a local, while she was there, and I guess they just clicked with each other for a while. She always said it was a whirlwind romance that she’d never forget.

“Long story short, he knocked her up. I guess it was kind of a big deal for him that they’d hooked up at all because his family was pretty conservative…didn’t go for the whole sex before marriage thing. Anyway, she told him she was pregnant, he spooked, and they never saw each other again. She came back to New York and dropped out of college a year before she would’ve graduated.”

“Why do you say you won’t ever meet him? Did she keep him a secret from you?”

“It wasn’t a secret; I just never asked. She did the best she could raising me on her own. It was just the two of us until…” I trail off, feeling an ache throb across my forehead from the serious turn this conversation has taken.

“Until what? Tell me. I want to know.”

I glance up briefly to meet his eyes, then focus intently on my work. “When I was nineteen, about seven years ago, she was driving out of town to meet this guy she met online. They’d been chatting for about a year and she was really excited to meet him. I didn’t know she was going, otherwise, I would’ve insisted on going with her. You can’t be too careful these days, you know. Anyway, she got hit by a drunk driver on the way there…died on impact.”

His hands curl around my waist, holding me with heavy palms, authoritatively drawing comfort in the way his touch anchors me.

“When she died, I was the same age that she was when she had me.” He sucks in a breath through his teeth when I move across a particularly sensitive part of his flesh. “Sorry. You okay?”

His thumbs circle over my flesh and I look up to catch his nod. “I’m fine. Go on.”

I continue working. “Losing her really fucked me up for a while, you know? I was on my own, with no support, without the only person who was ever really there for me. I went through a slew of bad relationships with a bunch of assholes and kind of hit rock bottom for a while. I started digging into ancestry stuff online and I managed to track my dad down, but when I reached out to him, he just wasn’t interested in talking to me. He was married and had a whole family. He didn’t want anyone finding out about his youthful indiscretion.

“By the time I’d finally managed to get in contact with him, I’d completely lost myself. I was trying to make sense of who I was and who I wanted to be. I felt so confused, so lost, so alone. I was trying to find something I could cling to that made me feel grounded in some way. My mom was dead, and I couldn’t get her back. My dad didn’t want to know me, and I felt rejected. I was rejected.

“I’d sort of developed this negative mantra in my head. I told myself over and over that I was a lost soul because really, I was. I was completely lost. And at some point, I decided I needed to own that. I decided I wanted to wear it on my body. I don’t know, I guess I thought that maybe one day some other lost soul would see it, recognize me, and we wouldn’t be lost anymore.”

I pause to shift, wriggling a little over his hips before settling again. “It was my first tattoo, and it did so much more for me emotionally than I ever expected it could. As soon as it was on my body, I felt different. I felt stronger. It was like taking all my heartache and confusion, and then acknowledging and accepting it. I intended it to mark me, to identify me for what I felt I was, but instead, it became something more like a badge of honor. I was a lost soul, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t find myself again.

“It was so empowering that tattoo artistry became a calling. It dragged me in and didn’t let me go. Three months later, I started an apprenticeship with the artist who did this tattoo and it’s all I’ve been doing ever since. I worked crazy hours, became obsessed with it, saved every penny I earned, and was finally able to open this shop a little over a year ago.”

I’m suddenly aware of just how much I’ve been talking. This always happens with him on the phone. He makes me feel open; he makes me feel brave enough to be vulnerable.

I have a fleeting thought that maybe he’s the other lost soul I was hoping would find me someday. Except, I know that’s not true because he’s got his shit together. He has his bad days, but he knows who he is, he knows his purpose, he has his family. And that kind of magical soulmate thinking will only lead me to heartache when this is all over.

I don’t want this to end.

I don’t ever want him to leave.

I pause and look up at Murphy to see him grinning at me, wrinkles framing the corners of his hypnotizing eyes.

I draw in a breath. “Cora and Josh are the only other people who know all that. I don’t usually talk about it. There must be something about you that makes me want to share all my dark secrets.” I smile at him.

“You know you’re making everything so much harder than it has to be.” I see the humor glint in his expression and know he’s not speaking literally.

“How so?”

“I like you a little bit more every time you talk.”

“Does that mean you’re not just in this for the pussy?”

“And then you go and open your beautiful, smart mouth, and say something crass like that—”

“And that makes you like me even more?”

“Impossibly more, sweetheart.”

I watch his transcendent eyes for a beat before I turn off the machine and lean against him, placing my free hand on his shoulder to steady myself as I press my lips to his. I let him lead this kiss and he keeps it gentle, soft, slow, and sensual. When it breaks, we just smile and I feel something resembling peace…maybe even hope.

“So, I told you mine. Are you going to tell me yours?” I ask.

“Hmm?”

I place my palm against the center of his chest, over the tattoo of the crowned skull held between skeleton hands, one of which is now partially obscured by the half-drawn rose. “Your tattoo.”

“Have you ever heard of a Claddagh ring?”

“No.”

“It’s a ring worn by some lovers in Ireland. Traditionally, it’s a heart at the center held by two hands, and the crown sits on top of the heart. It represents love, loyalty, and friendship.”

I pull back a little to look at his chest and trace one finger over the lines. “I see the hands and I see the crown…”

He inhales and exhales deeply, his eyes fluttering shut for a beat at my touch. Seeing the way he reacts to me spreads warmth across my belly.

“The hands represent friendship,” he tells me. “The crown is loyalty.”

“But this…” I draw my finger around the outlines of the skull in the center of his chest. “Why a skull and not a heart?”

“It’s a family symbol.”

“Your family’s symbol is a skull?”

He grabs my hand, halts my tracing finger, and holds it over his heart. “O’Sheas love passionately. Our devotion is bone deep and remains even in death. That kind of love requires a stronger symbol than a simple heart.”

My heart flutters. “That’s morbidly romantic.”

He grins, his eyes flickering across my features. “It is. The tattoo serves to remind me of what’s most important when the daily challenges of our business threaten to make me forget. Love, loyalty, and friendship.”

Much like the purple rose I drew over his heart, my affection for him blooms, flowering in my lost soul. I can feel how easy it would be to fall for him.

I breathe out slowly, letting my fingers creep over his chest. “I still can’t believe you’re here. Why are you here?”

He reaches up to touch my cheek, his thumb rubbing over my skin. “I needed to know if this is real.”

I swallow a dry lump in my throat, hesitant to ask. “And…what did you find out?”

A cheeky grin slips across his cheeks. “I’ll tell you in the morning.”

I smack his chest. “Stop it. Tell me now.”

“What do you think I found out, Stella?”

“Do you want to know what I found out?”

He slips his hand around to grip the back of my neck, his hold possessive, yet gentle. “Of course, I do.”

I press my palm to the center of his chest, looking down at his tattoo, and I feel his breath stutter in his lungs, his fingers curling around the side of my neck. “Murphy, this is all real for me. Frighteningly real.”

“Look at me.” I lift my eyes and suck in a sharp breath at the way his meet mine. His palm squeezes and he pulls my head down to his until the tips of our noses touch. “You’re right, sweetheart. It’s frighteningly real.”

My eyes fall shut as the warmth of his breath kisses my lips. “I already miss you.”

“Eyes on mine.” His voice is soft, a commanding whisper that I’m compelled to obey. “I know there’s an ocean between us, but I will always answer when you call.”

I lay my forehead against his. “Any time?”

“Any time.”

“It’s not the same over the phone.”

“I know it’s not.” He sighs. “I’m not going to lie to you and tell you things will ever be different than this for us.”

“Different than separation, lonely phone calls, and a visit once every couple of months?” I smile sadly.

“I can’t even promise you every couple of months, Stella. My work is…unpredictable.”

“Just for argument’s sake, if I lived closer to where you work, would it be any different?”

“I’d like to think it would be, but there are things about my family that you don’t know. Things I can’t ever tell you. Things that make this vastly more complicated than I can ever explain to you.”

“Try me.”

“I can’t tell you what I can’t tell you.”

“Why can’t you?”

“Because I can’t.”

His hand drops from my cheek, trailing over my shoulder, and down my arm. His grip on my waist tightens. I can see the way his shoulders tense at the conversation. He sits up, taking the machine from my hand, and setting it on the tray. He plays it off, trying to distract me by kissing my cheek, trailing down my jawline, nuzzling my neck. I wrap my hands around him and hold him against me because I don’t want to let him go…even if it means using our physical chemistry to emotionally distract ourselves from the gravity of his unwillingness to tell me more.

“Can you at least tell me that I’ll see you again? Tell me that you won’t leave and never come back.”

He sits back again to look up at me. “You’ll see me again, sweetheart. I can at least promise you that. I’d miss the taste of you too much if I never returned.”

He pulls me down, running his tongue across his lips before they fall against mine. I sigh into his kiss, quickly seeking his tongue, and letting him devour me, letting hope and sadness fill me for the uncertainty of a future with another lost soul.