“Oh, God,” Smith groaned, rolling into my chest before pushing himself out of my arms entirely. “Did I just pass out?”
I scrambled to my feet and helped him up off the floor. He sat down on the edge of the chair, feet hanging over the side and stared down at his lap like someone had just kicked his dog.
“That’s so embarrassing,” he said.
“You’re far from the first person to get lightheaded during a tattoo,” I assured him, thinking I should have made him eat a better lunch?—
No.
Not my responsibility.
Not my problem.
Clearing my throat, I snapped off my gloves and replaced them with a clean pair, then I wet down a towel and took his wrist into my hand so I could clean his arm off. He grumbled something I couldn’t make sense of but let me clean him up and bandage him. We’d made it through the line work but not the shading. That would have to wait until another day, which was probably a better call anyway.
“Let me get you some orange juice.”
Before he could argue, I grabbed him a juice from the fridge, staring at the color returning to his face with every swallow. Smith was covered in an actual sheen of sweat by the time he emptied the carton, and I took it from him to toss it in the trash under my station.
“I’ll clean up while you regulate,” I told him, turning my attention to my work.
The monotony and the familiarity of setup and teardown was the only thing keeping me grounded in those moments becausethe vulnerability rolled off Smith in waves. I didn’t even need to look at him to feel his embarrassment, his nerves, his own disappointment. After I finished cleaning up, I sat back down on my stool and shrugged out of my hoodie, tossing it onto the seat beside Smith’s thigh. He swallowed hard and fingered the cuff of one of the arm holes before taking the whole thing and shrugging it over his head.
I definitely hadn’t been offering the hoodie to him, but if he was cold after the come down of his adrenaline crash, I….
I wanted him to be warm. So, I didn’t say anything.
“Are you feeling better now?” I asked, sliding the stool away from the chair so I could stretch out my legs. I didn’t miss the way Smith dragged his stare from my boots up to my thighs, so I assumed before he confirmed it that the answer to my question was yes.
“Will the embarrassment ever fade?” he asked with a self-deprecating chuckle.
“No one was here to see it but the two of us, and your secret’s safe with me.” I drew an X over my heart and Smith’s eyes tracked the movement like a hawk.
“I should pay you and go,” he muttered, standing slowly.
He tested his balance with his hands curled around the edge of the chair before righting himself fully and letting go. My hoodie hung off of him like he’d stolen it from a giant, and while I knew I was a lot taller than him, I didn’t realize just how different our sizes were until I saw how swamped Smith was in my clothes.
Well, in clothes that weren’t his.
Shit.
Shit.
I wanted my hoodie back, but his shoulders looked so breathtakingly narrow beneath the faded black fabric, the askfor its return died in the back of my throat right alongside the explanation of why he couldn’t take it with him.
“How much do I owe you for today?” he asked, snapping me back to the moment, into the reality that I was a tattooer and he was my client.
It didn’t matter he was the first person to spark even the slightest interest from my body in over three years. It would have been wrong to imply, to take advantage in any way.
“Six-fifty for today,” I said.
Smith fished out his walled and pulled out eight brand new hundred-dollar bills.
“Plus a tax,” he offered. “For passing out on your floor.”
“You passed out in my arms,” I corrected, biting the inside of my cheek and shoving his money into my pocket before I could say something else stupid.
“I did,” he agreed quietly. “I think my body temperature has regulated so let me get out of your hoodie and then I’ll be out of your hair.”
