Free Love and Tattoos by Lissa Matthews

have not been that way with you tonight.”
    “ Not since you had to get naked. And what do you mean by Joe always keeps cookies in his desk drawer? I’ve never seen them.”
    “ I know. They’re behind the hanging files. He about killed me the first time I found them.”
    “ What if he ate them all?”
    Annie shook her head. “ He never does that. He always makes sure there’s a full package.”
    “ Okay.” Brax wagged his finger in her face, but pulled it back when she made to bite it. “If we get in trouble for it…”
    “ I know. I know. I’ll blame it on you.” She barely made it out of swatting range.
    Sh e had her shirt and panties back on and he had his pants on and for some reason they hadn’t left. He hadn’t pushed about taking her to his place and she hadn’t invited him to hers. It was fun in the tattoo shop in the middle of the night. It was familiar, but not. It was like being somewhere they shouldn’t be, but not for any reason she could think of.
    He knelt on the floor at her feet, with two metal files; one that looked like a pick, and one that looked like it had a flat blade at the end. She wasn’t paying as much attention to the illegal activity of lock picking as she was to the man committing the act. She stared to her heart’s content at his body. “Did Joe do the wings on your shoulders?” she asked, tracing the edges with her fingertips. He was warm to the touch and small freckles dotted his skin.
    One wing was white, spread over his right shoulder. The other was black with red tips, spread over his left shoulder. Annie had admired them all night, since he first took his shirt off, she’d just been distracted by other pieces of his ink, other parts of him.
    His hands stilled and he lowered his head to let her explore. Ink stood out and he had so much of it. He wasn’t afraid to be who he was. He never had been. His bosses told him to keep his tattoos covered, her bosses never had that chance. She never let her guard down long enough for them to see her. Maybe that had been a good thing. Maybe not.
    “ They’re beautiful. Who designed them?”
    “ I did. Joe did the ink.”
    Annie opened her palm over the black wing and spread her fingers, the ends just touching the edge of the red tips. Her hand looked small and fragile against the dark shading. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
    “ I hadn’t either. Angel’s wings didn’t seem to fit me. I looked through hundreds of drawings and images and photos of other tattoos. When I couldn’t find what I wanted, I drew it. Took me several weeks to get it right. Good, and evil.”
    “ Which side were you listening to tonight?”
    “ Both.”
    “ They were in agreement?”
    Brax looked up and captured her g aze. “The good side said go with my heart. The evil side said go with my baser instincts. I did both.”
    If she could ’ve melted into the floor, she would have. Brax would be her undoing before the sun rose. “Cookies,” she said. “My evil side is saying cookies.”
    Brax shook his head. “ My evil side is saying forget the cookies and eat the girl.”
    “ After cookies,” she promised.
    “ After cookies,” he grudgingly repeated.
    “ Does it feel weird to you?” The question came out of nowhere, one she hadn’t realized she’d planned to ask. But as she eased herself onto the surface of Brax’s desk, she wanted an answer.
    “ Does what feel weird? That I feel like an idiot for thinking your art was all stifled and shit?”
    Her heart ached. She hadn’t meant that at all and she regretted, not for the first time, the way she’d lashed out at him. “No, I —”
    “ Ah-ha!” he exclaimed. Metal clicked and slid against metal and soon Brax had the drawer open. “Well, I’ll be damned. That sneaky son of a bitch.” The package of iced oatmeal cookies appeared and Annie grinned.
    “ Told ya.”
    Brax pulled the packaging open, joined her on his desk, and offered her the first cookie. “Yes, you