“Liam,” I growl, my voice low with warning.
Clancy sets down a cartridge. “That does add a layer.”
“It adds nothing,” I say, “because there’s nothing to add it to. She’s my employee. End of story.”
The shop is quiet for a second, and then Knight’s pencil stops. He doesn’t look up right away—just sits there, tapping the eraser against his pad, and when he does look up, his voice is different. No razzing in it. “Look. If you really like her, find out if she likes you.”
“Knight—”
“Look at me and Daisy.” He sets the pencil down. “No one would have ever thought we could make it. I was so sure I’d fuck it up that I almost walked away twice, and both times I couldn’t sleep for a week because the thought of not being with her made me physically sick.” He picks the pencil back up, turning it between his fingers. “She’s the fucking love of my life. I can’t imagine not waking up with her in my arms. And if I’d let all the reasons it was complicated stop me, I’d still be drawing alone at midnight and being a lonely, grumpy man.”
“That’s different,” I say.
“Is it?” Knight asks and goes back to his sketch.
Complicated. Complicated is how many years I have on Clarissa, the fact she’s my employee, the shop I run. I can’t let Waylon down by fucking this place up with a bad rep.
But the pastor’s not complicated. The pastor means I am fucked, in every sense except the one I actually want.
CHAPTER 4
CLARISSA
I’m at the front desk with the intake forms when Carmine comes out of his office and leans on the counter next to me.
His forearm lands six inches from mine. He’s wearing a button-down shirt, but the sleeves are rolled up above his elbows, and once again I’m teased with a tattoo that I’ve never seen in full. When I’m in bed at night, I touch myself and fantasize about seeing Carmine naked, examining his tattoos and listening to him tell me the stories behind them, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned here, it’s that there is always a story behind a tattoo.
He’s looking at my arm, where it’s resting on the desk. I’m wearing a sleeveless blouse, and I feel naked under his gaze.
“You’d take ink well,” his voice is low, like what he’s saying is for me alone. “Good tone. It’d hold clean lines.”
His hand comes up. He picks up my forearm—just lifts it, easy, like it’s already his—and turns it palm-up in his grip. His fingers wrap around my wrist. The pad of his thumb presses on the inside, right over the vein, and holds.
I hold my breath.
He slowly drags his thumb up from the vein line. The callus on the pad catches my skin in tiny pulls, and the goosebumps break out ahead of him, chasing up my forearm faster than his thumb is moving. My fingers curl in his grip. I can’t stop them. My nails press into my palm, and I feel that too, sharp and small, and my thighs are pressing together under the desk and my heart has moved into my throat and is beating there so hard I’m sure he can see it. My brain is telling me to pull back, say something professional, put a stop to this—and the rest of me is aching to climb onto his lap and ride him.
“Right here.” His thumb stops at the soft inside of my elbow. He taps the spot lightly, and his fingers tighten just slightly around my wrist. “Whatever you wanted. It’d sit perfect.”
I look at his hand on my arm. At the ink on his fingers against my bare skin. My mouth goes dry as I look at his inked fingers resting gently at the crease of my elbow.
He looks up, and his dark eyes meet mine. My heart is pounding inside my chest, and there’s no way he doesn’t feel the frantic, wild pace of my pulse under his fingertips.
His thumb traces back down—slower this time, barely moving, and my skin is on fire under the path he’s drawing.
“Virgin skin,” he says, and his voice has dropped into something that isn’t professional anymore. “No ink. No scars.” His thumb reaches my wrist and circles the bone there, one slow pass. “Be a shame to waste it.”
“Well, just a virgin, period,” I say, instantly regretting it. How the heck did I just blurt that out? One moment it feels like he’s seducing me, and the next I’m telling him the most personalthing about me. And now that he knows, why on earth would he want someone inexperienced like me?
His hand is still on my arm. His mouth has closed and his eyes are on mine and every part of him has gone still.
“I meant—” My voice squeaks, and I know my face is burning with a blush that I feel spreading down my neck and onto my chest. “Obviously. I meant—”
I need to stop talking, but all I manage is to pull my arm back. His fingers open, and my skin goes cold where his hand was, the air filling the space where his hand was.
I stand up from the desk. “I’m going to get an iced coffee.”
I grab my purse and rush through the door onto the sidewalk.
