“Most of them.” Hayden shoved the sleeve of his shirt up above his elbow and held his arm out toward me, the inside facing up.
There was an anatomically correct heart wrapped in thorny vines set close to the crease in his elbow. Blood ran down the vines in rivulets, dripping from the thorns. Budding flowers juxtaposed the darkness of the piece, tempering it. As the flowers moved away from the heart, the tiny blossoms became more vibrant and open. Hayden rotated his forearm, and on the other side, the same vines traveled from his wrist to his elbow, but they were thicker. The ones at his wrist were dry and cracking, the flowers dying, petals falling off, but as they closed in on his elbow the flowers exploded into life, pulled into a wave of water. The head of an orange-and-white fish peeked out from his sleeve, the rest of the design obscured.
I reached out to touch a length of vine on his forearm and hesitated, seeking permission. “May I?”
“You asking to feel me up?”
“Um—”
“Sorry, you’re easy to rile, it’s hard to resist. Be my guest.”
He rested his arm on his knee, palm up, hand relaxed and open. He didn’t look all that sorry with the way he was smiling, but I was too curious, and he was willing. The muscles in his arm flexed when I traced the vines leading to the heart. The inside of his forearm seemed a sensitive place to tattoo. Wherever there was color, the skin was slightly raised, not by much, but enough that I could feel the dimension of the design.
“This must have taken a long time. Did it hurt a lot?”
“Pain is relative, isn’t it?”
I gave him a quizzical look.
“These—” He skimmed my ear. “They hurt, right?”
“Sure, but not much.” Disappointment followed when he dropped his hand.
“But there’s still gratification in the pain, yeah?”
I nodded, even if I couldn’t be sure how much I agreed with that statement. Hayden must have picked up on my uncertainty.
“Any kind of modification, whether it’s to alter physical features, like cosmetic surgery, or to decorate, like piercings and tattoos, cause some degree of discomfort. But that’s the point, isn’t it? It’s cathartic because it’s the promise of change in some form or another. My tattoos give the memory related to the art a place to exist outside of my head, on my body. At least that’s my interpretation, but not everyone feels the same way I do.”
Expelling pain by giving in to it held quite the allure. The reasons I wanted to put my own art on my skin were difficult to reconcile. I swiped at an inked droplet of blood, almost expecting to feel the wetness against my fingertip.
“It looks so real.”
“Jamie’s an amazing artist.”
“Lisa’s boyfriend?”
Hayden nodded.
On the occasions I’d dropped by Inked Armor he’d always been with a client, but I’d seen him and Lisa leave together many times.
“So he did this?” I asked.
“Most of my tattoos were done by either Jamie or Chris.”
“You designed them and they put them on you?”
“Yeah. Or we collaborated. The only one I didn’t design was this one.” He pulled up the sleeve on his other arm. It was covered in a black pattern I couldn’t decipher.
“How far does it go?”
“All the way up my arm and over half my torso.”
“What is it?”
“If you come to the shop, maybe I’ll show you.”
The idea of Hayden shirtless was like a shot of fire through my veins. I didn’t hesitate this time. “Okay.”
“That’s better than a maybe.”
He was openly flirting. As apprehensive as he made me, part of me enjoyed the nervous anticipation and the warmth under my skin. The heavy strains of a rock anthem came from Hayden’s pants, and he dug in his pocket. He looked annoyed as he checked his phone. Instead of answering the call, he silenced it.
A minute later Cassie appeared at the top of the stairs. The call he avoided had been Lisa; his client had arrived and she was still waiting for her latte.
“Duty calls.” Hayden hefted the box filled with keepables under his arm. “I’ll go through the rest another time. You’ll stop by the shop?”
“Sure.” I wasn’t sure at all. Talking to Hayden had only served to ratchet up my infatuation with him; indulging in his presence wasn’t likely to make that dissipate.
He gave me a look but dropped it. “Thanks for keeping me company.”
“No problem.”
In an unexpectedly tender gesture, he leaned down and kissed my cheek, those steel rings piercing his bottom lip treacherously close to the corner of my mouth.