Page 96 of Diary from an Inked Throne

The buzz of Dax’s tattoo gun filled the room.

And then Rivera’s screams of pain as Dax started outlining the huge tattoo on the man’s virgin skin.

I shoved a sock in the officer’s mouth. “First thing you should know about getting a tattoo? The spine hurts the worst.”

30

NYAH

Dear Diary,

I accidentally told an entire hockey team I had four orgasms. It was actually five.

“You pick some strange places to hold business meetings.”

“It’s just efficient. I need to be at practice later. Having a meeting here beforehand saved me going to two different locations.” Luca held the rink door open.

I passed in front of him. The cold blast of air, now a familiar part of my days, hit me in the face, and I shivered, closing my jacket tighter across my chest.

Luca noticed and pulled off his Saint View Vipers owner jacket, draping it around my shoulders.

I shook my head, trying to push it back at him. “You’ll freeze in just your shirt.”

“I’d rather that than you freeze.”

I eyed him. “You’re being suspiciously nice.”

He led the way down to the players’ locker room. “Don’t say I can’t be romantic.”

I snorted. “Is this your idea of romance? Giving me the jacket that’s been kicking around the trunk of your car, and taking me to a hockey rink locker room that smells questionable at best, condemnable at worst?”

He reached back for my hand, and I smiled to myself as I took it.

But then he added, “I thought you liked the smell of sweaty men surrounding you? You didn’t seem to mind it so much when it was me, Dax, and Lynx. In fact, I have it on good authority you enjoyed that so much you came four times—”

I slapped his arm, hard, because he definitely wasn’t being quiet, and anyone could have heard him advertising to the entire world how much I had enjoyed being in a four-way sandwich just the night before.

We stepped inside the locker room and froze.

Bruno, Viktor, and a few of Luca’s other guys were all sitting there.

Judging by the way they all fought back laughter, they’d heard every word.

Hot embarrassment crawled up my neck, and my gut instinct was to glare at Luca and threaten to murder him. But Luca didn’t seem bothered at all. It occurred to me that if these guys currently sniggering had been involved in a foursome with three women, they wouldn’t be walking into this room feeling embarrassed about it the next morning.

They’d be walking in bragging.

I lifted my chin. “It was five times actually.”

The laughter exploded in the room, no one able to hold it back any longer. Bruno and Viktor both reached-out fists for me to bump, amusement in their smiles.

I winked at them and took a seat on a bench in the corner. Despite Luca saying we were late, none of the players were due in for another twenty minutes, so it was just Luca’s guys, all of them in suits, all of them looking to Luca, standing at the front of the room.

Luca waited for someone to say something, but the laughter that had been plentiful a moment before quickly faded as each of the guys glanced at one another. Clearly, something had happened, and yet none of them wanted to be the ones to say it.

A slow, sick feeling swirled in my stomach.

I suspected Luca was feeling it too.