“I don’t—”
He cut me off. “—want a small one. I know. But we don’t know how you’ll react to the ink. Some people have problems with red, and there’s fire in your design. If you react to it on a small scale, you’ll need to take an antihistamine. If you have a serious reaction, we might need to modify the color scheme. We also have to find out what your pain threshold is.”
He raised a finger to prevent me from interrupting. My capacity for physical pain was high. A tattoo would be nothing compared to what I’d experienced, but I remained silent, unwilling to share that information with him yet.
“If you let me do a test run, I’ll have a frame of reference. Then I’ll know whether you can handle a four-hour session. More importantly, I want to see how quickly you heal. Most multi-session tattoos require a minimum of two weeks’ recovery time between appointments. A test run will help determine whether we can work with that time frame. Above all else, it goes against my personal ethics to put a full back tattoo on a girl who doesn’t even have something small hidden under her clothes.” He grinned, looking too pleased for my liking, as if he’d won the argument already.
“I wasn’t completely honest with you about this being my first tattoo.”
“Excuse me?” His grin vanished, and a flash of anger hardened his features. I couldn’t understand why my admission would elicit such a reaction. It should have had the opposite effect.
“I have a small tattoo,” I admitted.
“Where?”
“On my hip, but it wasn’t professionally done.” I rushed to explain. “I got it a few years ago, for my eighteenth birthday.” He’d gone eerily still. It made me nervous.
“I’d like to see it.” He rolled his chair back, putting space between us.
“Right here?” I looked around the studio. There were customers in the shop, and the tattoo sat pretty low on my hip.
“Would you prefer privacy?” I couldn’t understand how he managed to make something that should have come off as a reasonable offer for discretion sound so sensual.
“That might be best.”
Unmoving, he stared at me for a protracted moment before he led me to one of the private rooms and closed the door. “Let’s take a look then.”
I could feel the flush in my cheeks as I popped the button on my pants and lowered the zipper. I flipped over the waistband, thankful I’d had the foresight to wear nice underwear. My bra matched, but that was beside the point. It wasn’t like he would get a chance to see it. I pushed my underwear out of the way, but the tiny black heart remained covered. Embarrassed, I shimmied my jeans down farther, finally exposing the old, poorly done tattoo.
Hayden crouched in front of me, putting him at eye level with the tattoo. He inspected it closely, and I became aware of just how low it sat. Maybe Connor’s anger had had less to do with the tattoo and more to do with the placement.
“Who the hell did this?” He ran his thumb over the faded ink, frowning.
The tattoo had hurt when I’d had it done, but now Hayden’s touch made me conscious of a different kind of ache centered between my thighs. It grew with the prolonged sweep of his thumb, back and forth. He looked up at me, waiting. Right. He’d asked a question.
“A friend of mine. It was stupid, really. He did it in his basement.”
“He what?” Now he sounded livid.
“It’s not that big of a deal,” I replied. His hair kept falling in his eyes and he kept blowing it out of the way, puffing out gusts of air. Every time he did, it would flop back in place, covering his left eye. I ran my fingers through the disobedient strands. It was soft. I wanted to do it again.
One of Hayden’s hands was on my hip, holding me steady, while the other was still touching my tattoo. He froze. I dropped my hand, and his hair flipped forward in rebellion.
“Sorry.”
He unfurled out of his crouch with a fierce expression. “Don’t apologize for touching me.”
Hayden was close, invasively so. There was so much raw heat occupying the space around him that it was hard to breathe. I felt enveloped by him. He was always so tightly wound, buzzing with pent-up energy. I imagined when he let it out it was a sight to behold.
“Sorry.”
He gave me a look.
“For apologizing. It won’t happen again.” I bit the inside of my lip to stop from smiling.
We stared at each other, some strange shift taking place. I wasn’t sure what was happening between us, but it felt like whatever our tentative friendship was transforming into, the process wasn’t reversible. Like a chemical reaction, there was no going back once the catalyst had been added.
“I can fix this. I can cover it up.” His thumb moved over the tattoo again, reminding me how close it truly was to places I shouldn’t be fantasizing about Hayden touching.