Steel Lust Read Free

past.
    She and Jamie had hit it off back when he’d tattooed her in
Chicago. The man was sexy as hell, so she’d propositioned him. He’d declined so
gracefully she thought he should write a book on how to turn a woman down. He’d
come across as genuinely sorry about turning her down without leaving her
hoping he’d change his mind, and he hadn’t made her feel like an idiot for
asking either.
    They’d talked a lot about art while he’d been tattooing her,
and he’d been interested in her photography as well, so they’d stayed in touch.
Now she had a job opportunity she was excited about and what she hoped were
going to be several new subjects for her next book.
    And the new and improved Leonardo was a million times
sexier, even if he didn’t remember meeting her or her assistant. And why would
he? In the year and a half that had passed since then he’d probably been
through dozens, if not hundreds, of women.
    Although…he didn’t seem like the same man she’d met before.
Back then his hair had been buzzed short and he’d had a long, scraggly goatee
along with the hollow-eyed, pasty-skinned look of a seriously heavy partier.
    This Leonardo was so drastically changed she’d thought she
was seeing a different man when she walked through the shop’s doors and saw him
behind the counter. Her reaction to him—to sitting next to him, breathing his
scent and catching him stealing glances at her with those eyes—was a hundred
times more powerful as a result.
    She wanted to climb into his lap and bury her fingers in his
shoulder-length, pale gold waves. She wanted to watch his ocean-blue eyes
darken to the color of a stormy sea as she wrapped herself around him and
whispered his name in his ear.
    Leonardo.
    It practically begged to be spoken in her mother’s thick
Spanish accent.
    Lee-oh-NAR-doh.
    God, it was delicious. He was delicious.
    He smelled vaguely of clean wool and campfire and drank the
coffee shop’s darkest brew black. There were wide silver rings on the middle
finger of his left hand and one each on the first and third fingers of his
right. Thick, stainless steel hoops pierced the conchae of his ears and circled
through half-inch-wide gauges in his earlobes.
    And she was just about dying to find out if he was also
tattooed under that heavy cable-knit, torso-hugging black sweater and dark
jeans he was wearing. He’d pushed up his sleeves earlier, but she didn’t see
anything but the gold dust of his arm hair and a sprinkling of caramel-colored
freckles on his forearms. Freckles she was dying to taste.
    She had to have at least ten years on him, but what did that
mean these days? It wasn’t as though she was in the market for a husband. She’d
resigned herself to never being married, or even finding someone who wanted to
commit to her, years ago, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t have a little fun.
    When he did finally join the conversation, he was not at all
what she remembered about the man she’d met in Chicago. Back then he’d been the
larger-than-life rock-and-roll frontman on stage and all cock and swagger off.
The man sitting next to her now was soft-spoken with a clear, deep voice and a
quiet calm that was making her toes curl.
    “I’m working on a book about significant tattoos, as a
matter of fact,” she said, tuning back into the conversation in time to catch
Leni’s question about whether she was planning another book or not. “My genius
webmaster sister talked me into it after she discovered the Ink page on my
website gets ten times the hits of any other page. That includes the Wedding
page, which gets an insane number of visitors every day.”
    “You’d find a gold mine just hanging around the shop talking
to the people who work there.” Leni said, her eyes shifting to Leo.
    Now they were talking. He was tattooed under there
somewhere.
    “And their significant others,” Leonardo added, returning
Leni’s pointed look.
    “I like where this is going,” Joy said,