Opal heard the sound before she registered what it was.
The buzz dug into her skin—the high-pitched whine of a needle penetrating flesh.
A tattoo machine.
Every muscle in her body locked down so fast it tore the breath out of her lungs. Her spine went rigid and her shoulders straightened as if giant hands clamped down on them. For half a heartbeat, she was no longer standing in the hallway outside the basement of a military base.
She was eight years old again, bare feet planted on stained concrete. The air was thick with smoke and sweat and something metallic she’d never been able to name.
The memory cleared, and she focused on the man holding the machine responsible for the sound—Sinner.
He leaned over Sophie, muscles and tendons roping his forearms. One boot braced against the leg of the table, the rest of his body stayed rock-solid as he pulled a line of ink through her skin.
Control radiated off him the way heat came off steel. He looked as comfortable holding the tattoo gun as she imagined he would a high-powered rifle.
His brown hair had tumbled loose from whatever discipline he used to keep it tamed, the strands slipping across his forehead. It gave him a rougher edge than she’d seen before—less SEAL, more rogue. The kind of man who didn’t ask permission because he didn’t need it.
He marked Sophie’s skin in clean, deliberate lines, every movement sure.
She dragged her gaze away, irritated with herself for noticing any of it, and slammed the door on her reaction.
She took the last step forward and entered the room.
The place was lit with a golden glow, not the flickering fluorescents she recalled from the MC clubhouse of herchildhood. Strings of twinkle lights softened all the hard lines, and a bar along one side of the room was neat and tidy instead of thrown together.
In the middle of the room, the guys gathered around a gaming table, their laughter warm—not the scary sounds in her childhood memory.
No one was shouting. No one was drunk, and there wasn’t any sense that the night would end in violence.
But the drone of the tattoo machine carried another memory into her mind. She was small again, pressed into the corner of the clubhouse, knees pulled tight to her chest. A biker straddled a chair, his back a canvas of muscles and old scars. The needle bit into him as smoke from his cigarette curled toward the ceiling. Men laughed too loud. Two guys argued. A pistol sat on a table like it belonged there.
She remembered the night her mother found her huddled in that corner and scooped her up, whispering to her about staying quiet.
Where was her mother now?
“Opal.”
The room full of bikers in her mind faded, and the place the ladies referred to as “the casino” came into focus.
Sinner picked up his head and looked at her. His deep brown eyes came into focus.
Sophie waved for her to come over.
As she drifted toward the corner, Sinner lowered his gaze to his work again, and the noise of the needles resumed.
Sophie lay stretched on the table with Con hovering near her, holding her hand as Sinner inked her perfect skin. His hand was steady, as if he’d done this a thousand times.
Because obviously he had. This wasn’t a party trick. He had a skill that he took seriously.
She stepped closer before she meant to. “Is this even legal?”
Sinner didn’t look up. “It’s a government base.”
She watched the needle trace a precise line—freehand. The man was free-handing his art.
“Is it sanitary?” she managed to ask around her tongue that was thickening just by watching the man.
Maybe her years of living rough, first as an MC kid, then as a slum rat, had twisted her idea of what a hot guy looked like.
