Chapter 29

Margot

OK, so I was down to thinking about him approximately ten times a day. It’d been a month since I’d last seen Cain in his kitchen, half-drunk and pretty much rejecting any chance of us being anything, as well as my need to own Get Ink’d all by my lonesome.

“Ten times a day isn’t so bad,” I muttered. “Just a kick in the gut every, shit, what’s that across twenty-four hours? One kick in the gut every two and a half hours or so. Not bad at all.”

Except it was total bullshit.

Thinking about Cain had become my obsession, and it sucked huge hairy balls. To put it in a super gross fashion.

I locked the screen of my tablet and sat back in my chair, holding in all my emotion, just as I’d done every day for the past month.

The shop had picked up business, but we still weren’t in the clear, and Cain’s insistence on owning part of Get Ink’d ate at me. Why did he want it if not to hold it over me? I’d always considered him to be reckless, but never mean.

“Boss?” Nat called, then knocked on my office door.

“Yeah, come in.”

The brass knob turned and her ruddy-cheeked face appeared, framed in aquamarine now. She’d dyed it last week. “There’s someone here to see you.”

“If it’s Kelly, you can tell her I’ve got Chap Stick for the ass-kissing session she’s about to enjoy,” I said, and offered my receptionist a smile.

Nat grinned back, clearly bubbling with glee. “It’s not her.”

“It’s not?”

“No.”

“Then who is it?”

“Me.” The door swung open further and Cain materialized—hair styled to one side, wearing a loose V-neck shirt, his tattoos crawling toward his throat as they always had, and his hazel eyes biting into me, chewing me up.

Oh god, what the fuck? Why is he here?

My gaze strayed lower and I gasped. “Your arm!” I jumped out of my seat. “Cain!”

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Nat said.

“Thanks, blue-haired girl,” Cain replied, then cracked that heart-breaking grin, the one I’d dreamed about for the past month and hated myself for it. “Nat.”

Wow, he’d never remembered her name before. He’d never given a fuck.

That means nothing.

Nat backed up, then turned and scuttled off, back to the front.

Cain stepped into the office, held the door with his good hand and nodded once. “Mind if I close this?”

“Go ahead,” I said.

He grunted, then swung it shut and crossed to the desk. He didn’t sit down, just stood there taking up all the air in the room and my lungs, stealing it away. He tucked his hand under the sling that held his arm in place and drew out what looked like a folded letter.

I shook my head. “Cain? What happened to your arm?”

“You did, technically,” he said, then dropped the papers on the desk. “I was in a car accident three days ago.”

“What?” Why had no one called me? Why hadn’t I been contacted? I—I wasn’t his next of kin, but I was his partner. Business partner. I hurried around the desk and to his side, took hold of his good arm without thinking and tried turning him.

It was like trying to shift a mountain. Finally, he gave way and faced me.

“Are you OK?” I asked, choking on emotion. “Cain, are you? I mean—I—Why didn’t you call?”

“I didn’t have my cell phone and the doctors seemed pissed when I used the receptionist’s phone. And I needed time.”

“Time for what?”

“To figure out what to say to you, Margot.”

I held the breath I no longer had.

“I don’t expect you to believe me, but I can show you that I’m serious,” he said. “When I crashed the other day, I blacked out, but just before I did I saw you in the shop. I saw you standing at the front desk like you always do, and I saw another man with you. And seeing that, Christ, if anything could kill me, that would.”

“What does that mean?” I managed.

“It means that I was an idiot,” he replied, that gaze like burnished gold now. “I lied to you when you came to see me. I don’t see you as a fuck or a fling. You’re the air I need to stay alive. You’ve filled up all the gaps in my soul, Margot.”

Tears pricked the corners of my eyes, and my nose stung.

He took my hand in his and pressed it to his stubbly cheek. “I love you,” he whispered. “I love you more than you’ll ever fucking know, but god, I’ll spend the rest of my time on this planet trying to show you how much that is.”

Tears broke over my lids and trickled down my cheeks. I sucked in a breath. “Cain, don’t play with me, please.”

“I would never,” he whispered. “Not like this.” He dragged me to his body, to that sweet musk and cologne, to the flavor of his lips and the taste of his love. He kissed my eyelashes, my cheeks, my nose, and finally, my lips.

The kiss nearly changed my anatomy. It twisted me inside out, turned everything I’d thought I’d know on its head.

“You burn me up,” he whispered against my lips. “You set me on fire. You’re everything I need. I don’t know what else to say to you, but that I need you in my life for the rest of my life because, Margot, I’m fucked without you.”

All the doubts and pain washed away and left us there, me in his arms, kissing, his tongue salty from the tears he’d kissed off my eyelids.

I shouldn’t have wanted this or have fallen in the first place, but I had.

Cain’s touch stoked flames in my soul I’d believed dead long ago. He’d transformed the embers into a roaring fire.

He pulled back then turned and lifted the papers he’d dropped on the desk and gave them to me. “You don’t have to say anything back yet,” he rumbled and handed the papers to me. “I just wanted you to see that I was serious.”

I paged through it and choked out sounds that were hardly human. “Are you—Cain?”

“Yeah, it’s yours. The whole shop. I’m pulling out. You’re one hundred percent owner of Get Ink’d the minute you sign these papers. But I’ll be here to help you financially, should you ever need it. All the decisions will be yours. I won’t interfere at all.”

“Cain.”

“On one condition.” He lifted a finger and pressed it to my forehead. “You let me stay on as one of your tattoo artists. I’d really like to be around, not to interfere, but just to, fuck it, express myself or whatever.”

I laughed. The sound was dry in my ears. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“I did. I only held out on you with this because I didn’t want to lose what I had of you. Margot, I want every single piece of you, but not like this.” He tapped the top of the page. “Like this instead.” He kissed me again, and I barely clung to the pages of the contract. Heck, I barely clung to my sanity.

Cain finished the kiss by sucking on my bottom lip. “What do you say?”

“What do I say?” God, there were too many words streaking through my mind, and the fact that there was weight to his gaze, like any one of them could crush him to dust, this big strong man, made me tear up all over again.

It’d been him all along. All the fucking time. Since I was a kid, I’d been infatuated with Cain in one way or the other. Losing him once had been horrible. Twice, unbearable. I wouldn’t lose him again.

And if I had to deal with smashed cameras and fights and base jumping to be with him, then so be it. I loved him for who he was, and he loved me for the same reason.

“I wasn’t ready then, but I’m ready for you now, Cain. I love you. I think I’ve always loved you on some level. I was frozen until you came along, just stuck in one spot and—” I gulped, then raised the contract. I pinched it at the corners, then tore it in two.

“The fuck?” Cain blinked at me.

“I want to own it with you,” I whispered. “You’re part of the family, Foster. You’re my family, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let you walk out of this partnership that easily.”

“You make my head spin.”

“Ditto,” I whispered.

He kissed me again, and this time the papers dropped from my fingertips and scattered to the floor.

“Make love to me,” I whispered. “Please.”

Cain walked me up against the wall, kissed me harder than he had before. He stripped me of my jeans, but not my shirt, and I did the same for him, avoiding his sore arm. His dick rested against my abdomen, thick and hard, wanting.

He lifted my leg, and I hooked it around his waist, exposing my wetness to him, my need.

“I love you,” he said softly, then kissed me again, and entered me in one swift thrust, scraping his thick tip against my flesh. It was already too good, too full. It’d been a month since I’d seen him and longer since he’d made love to me in this very office.

Since he’d laid me down right on my desk.

“I love you more,” I whispered.

He devoured my lips, my tongue, and I gave everything willingly.

For the first time, I didn’t hold back at all. I didn’t keep a corner of my emotions to myself. I let it all spill out for him to see.

Cain increased the pace, and every one of my breaths became a moan.

He angled himself so that the base of his dick rode against my clit, each stroke driving me closer to my climax along with him.

I kept my gaze fixed on his. We weren’t fucking, we were connecting for real and for good. He was mine, and I was his, and nothing would change that now.

“Close,” he grunted, thrusting harder, deeper. “Fuck, Margot, I dreamed about you. About this.”

“Me too,” I managed. “Every night.”

“You come for me this last month?”

It wasn’t something I was particularly proud of—or it hadn’t been. “Yes,” I whispered. “Almost every night. I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

“I missed you. Christ, you’re so fucking tight. Holy shit.”

His pace was frenetic now, and I lost my mind, couldn’t think or see straight with him owning me like this. I held onto his shoulders for leverage and raised my hips.

The orgasm shattered me into a million pieces, and each one of them was marked with his name.

“Fuuuck,” Cain growled. “Coming. Coming for you, Margot. My Margot.”

My Margot.

He pulsed inside me, filling me up with his cum, claiming me as his for once and for all. His thrusts slowed, and he groaned one last time then rested his forehead against mine, kissed my nose. Slowly, he pulled out of me, and we both gasped.

“Wow,” he whispered. “Come here.” He tugged me against his side, one-armed. He kissed my eyelashes again. “You’re never leaving again.”

“I didn’t leave, you did,” I whispered back.

“Then I’m never leaving again,” he replied and glanced around the room. “But things will have to change in here, Margot.”

I stared at him, wide-eyed. Oh god, would he make me regret my decision to rip up that contract? Surely not. “What do you mean?”

“Well, we need to get a sofa so we can at least lie down after we fuck in your office.”

I threw back my head and laughed, the same unbridled laugh Cain had thrown at me months ago in front of the shop, with glass separating us.

“Now, who’s the crazy one?” he asked, and kissed me again.

If I was crazy, then he was too.

But it wasn’t craziness, really, it was love. And with that we’d change everything. From now on and forever after that.