Aiden
I dropped back into the chair, not quite having forgiven myself for coming over here in the first place.
“The blackout bar on my wrist could probably use—”
“You don’t need anything touched up.” She gave my chest and arms a quick scan as she took up her stool. “Saturation’s solid. Lines are clean.”
“Okay.” I shifted against the vinyl. “If we’re not finishing the Cup and you’re not fixing anything, why am I half naked again?”
“Shush.”
“Did you just shush me?”
“Are you really going to make me repeat myself?” The look she gave me did more than the question to inform me of my position. This was her domain, and her say was the last one.
Kinda reminded me of the team’s hierarchy, but this case was way hotter.
I dragged two fingers across my lips to mime zipping them shut. Curiosity already clawed at me, though. If I were being honest, this woman was starting to intrigue the hell out of me.
Sage turned to her tray and began mixing ink, movements precise without overthinking anything. She worked like she trusted her hands more than anything else in the room. I knew that feeling well.
“Eyes up,” she said without looking at me. “No looking until I’m finished.”
“I don’t get to see what you’re doing to permanently scar my body?”
“I just need you to trust me.”
I was only half amused. Couldn’t figure out if the other half was excited or terrified. “I was taught never to trust strangers.”
She scoffed. “The rule is trust no one except your dentist, your vet, and your tattoo artist.”
“I don’t have any pets,” I said, biting back a laugh.
“Red flag number one.”
“Oh, yeah? How many do you have?”
She pivoted toward me, and her gaze traveled over my chest with focus that had nothing to do with flirting and everything to do with assessment. My brain, unfortunately, didn’t care about the distinction. Her eyes on me at all seemed to do something low in my gut.
“You’ve met my colleagues,” she said. “They’re all the feral I can handle at this point in my life.”
Her fingers pressed along my ribs, testing placement. I obeyed her ‘no looking’ rule, and fixed my eyes on a water stain on the ceiling. The thin latex barrier did nothing to dull the warmth from her fingers. My skin registered each point of contact, heat trailing in her wake.
Then she tapped a spot on my ribs. “Here. This is perfect.”
I glanced down on instinct, and her hand shot up to angle my chin away. “I said no looking.”
“So you don’t need me to confirm placement?”
“I need you to sit still, and say nothing.”
I shut up.
The cool swipe of antiseptic raised goose bumps along my side as she cleaned the area. I’d sat through enough of these to know the routine: Prep. Stencil. Adjust. But there was something different about being under her hands. There was usually random conversation, background music, the drone of other clients getting work done around me. Purple Rose after hours felt more intimate than any other tattoo I’d gotten before.
She placed the stencil, leaned back with a squint and then leaned in again to adjust it by a fraction. A few seconds later, her machine started up. First contact shot through me like it always did—pressure good, pain the same.
Still staring at the ceiling, I said, “This better not be a dick and balls.”
