“You did that yourself?” I said, unbelieving. No way this pampered rich girl had actual talent.
Her jawline flexed like she was grinding her teeth. “Yes.”
“No one helped you?”
Her eyes flashed as they lifted to mine. “No. Now if you’re done asking questions, I’d really like to get this placed and send you on your merry way to go piss someone else—” She cut herself off, forcing a smile that looked painful. “I mean, let you get on with the rest of your night.”
I grinned, unable to help myself. “But I’m having so much fun here with you.”
She ignored the goading comment, lifting the paper back to my arm, and I realized the cuts would allow it to contour better around my muscles.
“I think it should sit here,” she said, leaning back to inspect her placement.
“Fine,” I said. I had no plans to get an actual tattoo, so it didn’t matter where she put it. This was all just a ruse so I could get close enough to get a good read on her, learn which buttons I would need to push to get her to do what I wanted. Lucky for me, the woman seemed to be made of buttons.
“I’m gonna go through all the steps, like if I was about to tattoo you,” she said. “That way, we should get the best fit.”
I bet it’ll fit real good,came an unbidden thought, my gaze dropping straight between her spread legs. Those goddamn shorts had ridden up, lean muscles on display beneath the fishnets. My online stalking had revealed a lot of things about Stella, including that she’d been a ballerina when she was younger. She still had the body for it, almost rail-thin. Her movements were graceful, too, hands all but floating through the air as she turned to grab a clean pair of nitrile gloves from her cart.
The motion pressed her thigh against my arm.
A slight pressure came from my crotch.
Now?my dick asked.
Absolutely not, I told it. Stella was so close that there was no way she’d miss the trouser trout forming if I lost control of myself. Goddamn sweatpants. I should have taken the time to pull my jeans back on post-workout, but I’d been in such a rush to get here that I’d dressed at Mach speed.
She turned back my way, wetting my upper arm with a soapy solution and then wiping it dry. My gaze dropped to the seemingly random tattoos dotting her pale skin. I spotted an anchor, a dancing skeleton, the lunar cycle, and a snake wrapped around her forearm. It shouldn’t have worked, but the way they were placed, paired with the spacing between them, made it look more eclectic than arbitrary, like she’d planned them out with care.
She swapped the soap for a razor and started dry-shaving my arm.
I lifted my gaze to her face, watching her brows draw together with concentration, the way her eyes followed the motion of the razor. She had beautiful eyes. Light brown with honey tones running through them.
A strand of hair had come loose from her braid, and it brushed against my arm as she leaned close. I clenched my jaw and tried to think of absolutely anything else but the feel of her warm breath on my skin. Once she was done, she spun away to set down the razor and pick up a bottle of hand sanitizer, giving me a brief respite in which to beg my nether regions to behave. And then she was back, leaning in as she wiped my arm down for a second time. She smelled good. Like incense. The kind they burned in hippie stores to cover the reek of the devil’s lettuce from the break area out back.
One more half turn brought Stella’s leg back in contact with my arm, and something in me finally snapped. I unclenched my fist and brushed my fingers over the inside of her ankle.
She froze.
So did I.
What the fuck was I doing?
And why couldn’t I seem to stop myself?
Slowly, she pivoted away, her expression unreadable, and it clicked. She was too calm, too collected, too flawless. Like that almost-kiss hadn’t happened. Like it was that forgettable. LikeIwas that forgettable. Meanwhile, here I was begging the chub in my pants not to go full flagpole. It made me want to drag her down to my level. Undo her. Ruin her. Grab her by the shirt and haul her forward so I could smear that perfect lipstick all over her face with my mouth.
Something ugly was crawling up the back of my throat, demanding to be let out. This was a sickness I’d been fighting my whole life, the need to prove that I was good enough, that I was worthy. And what better way to do that than by fucking a spoiled brat in the shop her parents paid for? She was always going to hate me for what I had done to her brother, and for what I planned to do to her and everyone else she’d ever cared about, so what did it matter if I added one more sin to my list of crimes?
If I was going to be the villain in her story, I might as well earnthe title, right?
Plus, it wasn’t like Stella was some innocent nobody. She was a villain herself in someone else’s story, and that was a large part of why I’d chosen her. It was easier to hate her knowing what she’d done, knowing that the protection of her wealth and privilege had kept her from paying for her crimes.
“See you tomorrow!” her grizzled coworker called before the chiming door announced his departure.
Alone at last.
This time I wrapped my whole hand around Stella’s ankle.
