Swallowing, I suddenly felt like I was about to begin a much bigger venture than just taking off a man’s shirt. I started at the bottom and had no idea I would be unleashing a masterpiece with each button. A slightly crude if not fascinating masterpiece.
His torso was covered in black and white tattoos, from a Madonna and child on his stomach to a dagger weaving through his collarbone from shoulder to shoulder. A cross on one of his pecs, and a rose on the other. A domed church on his side. A lighthouse on his right arm.
It was the manacle on one of his wrists that really brought it home.
He’d been to prison.
A Russian prison.
I traced the US dollar bills on his shoulder and wondered if he knew, while getting this tattoo, that he would end up here, thirty-one-thousand feet in the air, on a United States government airplane.
His abs tensed as I ran a hand down them.
“Will you tell me what they mean?” I asked.
“No.” The word was hard.
I trailed my fingers over him, knowing these symbols sometimes meant the wearer had done terrible things to earn them, yet somehow, I was still fascinated by every one of them. Maybe because I already knew he was far from a choir boy.
“Tell me what one means.”
“No.”
I couldn’t stop touching him. Not only because he was hands-down the sexiest man I’d ever seen, but because he was the most fascinating. A cold-mannered professional on the outside, and a dirty-playing criminal below the surface.
I wrapped my hand around the manacle tattoo on his wrist. “This one. Tell me what this one means and then I’ll let you do whatever you want to me.”
“Whatever is a strong word.”
The way he said it, slightly threatening, sent a shiver through me.
“I’m aware.”
“I’ll humor you, but only because we have two hours of this flight left, and I’d prefer to spend it fucking you. Not because I’m opening up to you. Understood?”
Asshole.
I sighed. “And here I thought I was getting closer and closer to a proposal.”
“It symbolizes a prison sentence of five years.”
Five years?
I had so many questions, but I kept them to myself. I knew if I made a big deal about what he shared with me, it would just make him more resolved not to tell me more.
I did a quick math problem in my head. I’d known this man for eight years. It had to have taken him years before that to build a reputation significant enough to hold the position he did now. He was, what, thirty-three? He’d had to have been young when he went to jail. Early teens, maybe?
God, Russia was barbaric.
I trailed a finger down his cheek, horrified to think about what he’d gone through in prison with this face. He read my thoughts again.
He grabbed my wrist in a vise, his voice harsh. “I don’t n
eed your pity. I held my own in prison. I was already bigger than most men at fourteen. Not to mention, colder, thanks to—” He cut himself off.
Thanks to who?
My attention caught on something. I dropped my gaze to his grip on me, to the elastic band on his wrist.