I sent the request through the app like anyone else. No special treatment. No shortcuts. The day came and Jace dropped me off out front. I told him to wait. This was something I needed to do alone.
She looked up when I walked in.
That smile — fuck.
“Silas,” she said, like she remembered me.
“Rebecca.”
I clocked the shop out of habit. Noticed Izzy in the back, posted up at the computer, half-focused on whatever he was doing. I noted him and moved on. At the time, he didn’t matter.
She asked what I wanted.
“I emailed you the design.”
When she opened it, I saw the pause. The recognition.
It was her painting.
An indigenous warrior woman. Strong. Unbreakable. A crown of bones and thorns pressed into her hair, blood dripping from the petals like sacrifice. Power. Survival.
“I always thought someone would get this one eventually,” she said, almost to herself.
She sounded… pleased.
Izzy left not long after. Door shut. Lock clicked. And suddenly it was just us.
She had me lie face-down on the table, my back bare, exposed. The position alone did something to me — vulnerable, open, completely at her mercy. When her hands touched my skin for the first time, steadying herself before the needle met flesh, my body reacted instantly.
I groaned low before I could stop myself.
She leaned closer as she worked, her hips brushing the edge of the table, her forearm occasionally grazing my side. Every touch was deliberate. Professional. Intimate in a way that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with control.
And it drove me insane.
She talked while she worked. Asked questions. Tried to pull pieces of me out.
I gave her nothing.
Instead, I asked about her.
Herlife.
Her art.
How she got here.
She spoke with pride — about leaving New York, about building something of her own, about helping people who had nothing left. But beneath it, I heard it. The strain. The old pain that never quite leaves your voice once you’ve lived through enough.
She asked if I needed a break.
“No.”
She asked again later.
“No.”
The truth was simpler than anything I could say out loud.
