by Nikki Sloane
I stared at the black plastic and foam that would protect my brain if my hands wandered and made Silas crash, which I had serious concerns about.
“You nervous about riding on a motorcycle?” His grin melted my underwear. “I promise I’ll go slow.”
No, that wasn’t what I wanted. Needles might turn my stomach inside-out, but a motorcycle was something I could handle. I pulled the helmet from his hands, headed toward the front door, and hoped he couldn’t hear the excitement that tinged my voice. “Let’s go.”
Chapter
FOUR
Silas’s motorcycle was all chrome and glossy black with a large front wheel. It was a throwback, cruiser style, but aggressive and reeked of testosterone. I tucked my head into the spare helmet as Silas straddled the bike and donned his. The throaty roar of the engine drowned out the jitters in my head about what was going to happen. His visor was up and the whites of his eyes stood out in the shadow, then his head ticked back, gesturing for me to get on.
Fuck, he didn’t have to tell me twice.
His shoulder was a rock as I steadied my hand on it, hoisting my leg over the bike and settling down on the tiny leather cushion. There wasn’t much room left for me, given his size, which meant I’d have to get close. Mmmm, no issue there.
Both of his hands were on the handlebars, and it was clear he was waiting. I slid my ass closer until my body was pressed against his, my breasts flattened against his broad back and my crotch fitted tight to him. Was this what it was like for teenage boys? To be so goddamn horny you could barely function?
I slipped my hands around his waist and felt his rib cage expand as he took a deep breath. A smile teased my lips at his reaction, which he couldn’t see.
His muffled voice rang out. “You ready?”
“Yeah.”
His hand came off the bike, cinched one of my arms tighter, and slapped his visor down. We jerked away from the curb and were off.
The anxiety-inducing tattoo process was barely a thought. Riding on the back of the bike with one hand hanging onto his belt and the other inside his jacket, splayed on his chest, was like eating dessert before dinner. Once we got going, the September air was chilly. The fitted t-shirt and jeans I had on only gave me some protection, and I curled closer to Silas.
It was more physical contact than I’d had with the opposite sex in weeks. It was made all the better when we came to a stop at a light and his calloused hand rested gently on top of mine.
“I should have given you my jacket,” he yelled over the engine. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” It wasn’t a lie. I was happily cold, burrowed against him. Was that his real intention, to ‘forget’ the jacket and force me to snuggle close? If so, I had no problem with it. I loved the excuse to touch him. Besides, his hand on mine made me warm inside.
Traffic wasn’t too bad, and true to his word, Silas didn’t drive recklessly or fast. I was in no hurry to get there or for the ride to be over. Was it the same for him?
Things got interesting when we stopped at a long light, and my hand slid to rest on top of his thigh. Beneath the denim, the muscle tightened. I couldn’t help it. My sex-starved body stole command from my brain, and my fingernails raked up his thigh, narrowly grazing just to side of his fly.
The groan was barely discernable. “Regan.” His helmet swung my direction. “What was that about?”
“I’m interested in you, but I’m too subtle to tell you outright.”
His shoulders lifted as if he chuckled. “Oh, yeah?” He shifted on the bike, adjusting. “Message received.”
The light flipped to green.
Arriving at the tattoo shop was a cold shower. Most of the lust for Silas washed away and was replaced with anxiety. My hands retreated from him as he shut off the bike and straightened in the seat, then pulled the helmet from his head.
I did the same and stared at the thick cord of neck before me. He turned to the side, giving me a view of his perfect profile, and the lingering desire flared.
“I can’t get off until you do,” he said.
He clearly hadn’t meant it sexually, but my dirty mind went there. “I hope that’s true,” I said.
There was a sharp intake of breath from him. Was I coming on strong? Yeah. But I didn’t fucking care. I was tired of not getting what I wanted. When I stepped off the bike, he peered at me, and time slowed to a halt.
Holy shit. Holy fuck.
The look of pure desire, of total want, the one I hadn’t seen from a man in months, was etched on every inch of Silas’s face. Lust . . . for me. My breath lodged in my chest as he rose up off the motorcycle until he loomed overhead.
“Come on.” His deep voice was quiet, but strong. “This won’t take that long. Then I can give you a ride . . . back.”
It dripped with innuendo and had me grinning.
The exterior of the tattoo shop mimicked a retro pump station. Hand lettering in the windows boasted ink and piercings, and the OPEN neon sign glowed in the building’s late afternoon shadows. Silas held the door for me and I went through.
The large room was partitioned off with half walls. Like Silas’s bike, it was mostly black and chrome, but here there were a few red accents. Open velvet curtains, the shade of blood, hung from the ceiling, and I assumed they would allow each tattoo bay privacy when needed.
“We’re at the back, on the left,” Silas said.
The place was mostly empty. An artist who seemed to be covered with tattoos worked on a woman’s calf, and the needle hummed quietly. It could just be heard over the rock music playing in the background. The artist nodded to Silas, but didn’t stop his work.
Cold dread lined my stomach, and I marched toward my doom at the back of the space. A black chair waited there and looked like a modified version of what you’d find at a dentist’s office. My feet refused to move. My stop was so abrupt, Silas slammed into me and almost knocked me over.
“Whoa, you okay?” His large hand clamped on my bicep, steadying me as much as he was himself.
“I don’t think I can do this.” The chair, the buzzing from two stalls over . . . the word nope looped over and over again in my head.
The hand on my arm was surprisingly firm. “Sure you can.”
His eyes were pale blue, almost a silver color, and I was too disoriented by them to realize he was guiding me into the stall until the backs of my knees hit the side of the chair.
And his hand was still on me, his palm touching the bare skin where the sleeve of my t-shirt stopped. Goddamnit. The hair on my arm lifted in goosebumps. I fractured in two. Nerves made me want to bolt, desire made me want to stay. Then his hand was gone.
Rings rattled on the line as Silas drew the wraparound curtain closed. The overhead lights were still bright, but it felt secluded. Intimate. When we were completely hidden, his hands rested on his hips.
“You’ll have to take off your shirt.” His voice sounded different. Tight.
I swallowed thickly. I’d known this was coming. I’d hoped the tattoo artist wasn’t too skeevy, but now I almost wished for it. Skeevy I could handle. My discomfort at a leering look could distract from my discomfort while ink was layered into my skin.
Fuck it. I would not let fear rule me, and besides—other than the scar, I didn’t have anything to be ashamed of. I worked hard at the gym to keep both my athleticism and aesthetics up to par for my job. My fingers grabbed the hem of my t-shirt and stretched it overhead, then folded it and tossed it on the side table.
I’d worn a simple black bra for the occasion. His gaze traveled the curves of my chest, and quickly shifted away like he wanted to be a gentleman.
“Have a seat,” he mumbled, turning his attention to a cabinet. It creaked as he opened it and began pulling out supplies. My heart beat in my throat when I slid into the chair, and the vinyl was cold against my bare skin. The anticipation was agony. Every subtle noise from him as he prepared was louder than gunfire in my ears.
I watched Silas
dig the drawing out of his back pocket, examine it, and uncap a marker. He sketched on a piece of transfer paper until he seemed satisfied, then resumed his other prep.
“How bad is it going to hurt?” I asked.
“I’m sure less than whatever made the scar.”
I clenched my teeth. “Yeah, but I didn’t make the decision to get that.”
Black latex gloves were snapped on, and I dug my fingernails into the armrests of the chair. Don’t run, or this will be worse. If I ran, every time I’d see the scar, I’d be remind of two failures. I closed my eyes tightly and drew in a deep breath.
“Regan.”
My eyelids fluttered open to stare up at him. He had a sponge in one hand and used the other to gently urge my bra strap out of the way. I wished the latex wasn’t between his fingers and my skin.
“Now is when I give my standard lecture about tattoos being expensive, difficult, and painful to remove.” The cold sponge swiped over my shoulder. “More painful than getting the tattoo in the first place, they say.”
He set down the sponge and picked up a razor, skimming the blade lightly over the surface of my skin, being as gentle as possible over the raised, uneven scar. The sponge wiped again, cleaning the surface, and my skin tingled as it dried.
Silas retrieved the design he’d redrawn in marker. The transfer paper was set against my scar, and the sponge swiped once more. He peeled the paper down, revealing his guide.
“Be sure you want this,” he said, his gaze on the art. “Be sure you’re going to wake up in five years and still want this.”
Five years. It was almost impossible to think that far ahead, given my job, but I felt more certain about this than anything else.
“I’m sure.”
His blue eyes flicked back to mine, and his expression was . . . pleased?
“But I might cry like a little bitch,” I whispered, nervous.
His laugh was warm. “I doubt it. Usually it’s the big guys who whine. Women? Their threshold’s higher, or they’re better at coping, because I don’t get complaints.”
“Of course you don’t. You’re fucking hot.”
Silas’s movements slowed as he opened the needle from the packaging.
“Sorry,” I said. “Nervous ‘me’ gets really honest.”
“Can’t say I mind.” When he finally seemed ready, he pulled a stool out from under the cabinet and sat, rolling up to me with the needle in hand, the cord trailing behind. A gloved hand braced itself on my shoulder, his forearm resting between my breasts. He was so comfortable getting close. Silas’s face was only a breath away from mine.
Could he feel the tremble in my body? Just the proximity of the needle made my skin want to crawl away.
“Ready?”
“No,” I said. “Just do it.”
Chapter
FIVE
Silas pushed the button and the buzzing began. Every muscle in my body tensed. Oh God, oh God . . .
“Relax,” he whispered. “Deep breaths.”
I took them through my clenched teeth. Sharp pain etched into me, like a fingernail scraping my skin off. Then, another. And another. I stared at him, watching every stroke of the needle and the concentration that creased his forehead.
I sipped air in a hiss as he got deeper into the scar. It hurt. I bit down on my lip, trying not to show it. Pain, like fear, was weakness. It was a lifetime of endless scratches, each burning just a tiny bit more than the last, until I was about to break. I couldn’t do it anymore—
Silas wiped a towel over the skin, giving me a temporary reprieve, just long enough to regroup. “I’d like to lodge a complaint,” I said.
He almost looked amused. “I thought you said I was too hot for complaints.”
“With that needle you’re just all right.”
He smiled softly. I held my breath as he went back for more.
“You need to keep breathing.” His voice was soothing. “When you’re tense it hurts more. And seeing you in pain subconsciously makes me want to rush.”
He paused the needle and his gaze connected with mine. Whatever he was thinking about, I could tell instantly I wasn’t going to like it.
“You could try talking. It’ll keep you from holding your breath.”
I blinked, annoyed that he’d stopped. I just wanted this uncomfortable process over. “Talking,” I said. “About what?”
“You could tell me about the bad memory.”
The sexy fucker wasn’t playing fair. I broke his gaze and stared at the floor.
“C’mon.” He squeezed my shoulder tenderly. “You’re letting me help you change the memory. I’d kind of like to know what it was.”
I didn’t talk about it. Not with my family, or my handler Shane, and never with Matt. I’d only said what I needed to, what I thought the psych evaluator wanted to hear, to get me cleared for field work again.
I was getting tired of people pushing me, but I’d always been stubborn. Shane had asked me to talk about it with someone; it didn’t seem like it mattered who. Confiding in a stranger had more appeal than someone I knew. Silas’s judgement could only last as long as I wanted to remain around him.
Wasn’t I here because I wanted to let go?
When I sighed, the blue eyes clouded with doubt. “Hey,” his voice was low, “I get you don’t want to talk about it, and it’s none of my fucking business—”
“I got shot.”
His lips pressed together for a moment. It didn’t seem like this was news to him, he must have suspected it was a gunshot wound. “Ex-husband?”
It was interesting that he immediately jumped to domestic violence, but that was the most likely assumption. “No, we weren’t married.”
Assembling the words was difficult, but he said nothing. His shoulders lifted with a breath. My hand wrapped around his thick wrist, which rested on my chest.
“If I’m going to keep talking, you have to keep working.”
He nodded. The needle dug back in, but at least my focus was elsewhere, struggling to pick out what parts of the story I should tell. The pain was more uncomfortable rather than acute now.
“His name was Paul. I was young, and naïve—” which was true, “—and fell in love.” Which was not true.
Not exactly.
My feelings for Paul had been confusing. He’d been my point of entry into the separatist cell, which I’d wormed my way into acting as his girlfriend. I’d played him, compiling evidence against his family until we had enough to arrest.
I spoke over the hum of Silas’s work. “I was too stupid to see he was into some shit, and way over his head, before it was too late.” Couldn’t the same have been said of me? I inhaled deeply and blew it out, mediating my breathing. “He came from a family that was anti-government, but I didn’t know how far Paul was willing to follow them until I caught him putting together pipe bombs.”
That was definitely true.
The forearm beneath my hand tensed and Silas froze. “What?”
“I went straight to the authorities.” Not really a lie, I just left out that I was part of the authorities. “But I thought he was a good guy, whose family had twisted him into this person he wasn’t.”
I couldn’t feel the scratches anymore. It was cold in the bay, and numbness took over as I thought about the morning in Paul’s garage.
“I was so fucking stupid,” I admitted, “but I cared about him. I told him what I’d done, and my betrayal . . .” My heart slammed in my chest. “He lost it. You gotta understand, there’s a whole ‘you’ll never take me alive’ mentality with these people. Getting caught and going to prison is more of a failure than dying.”
The expression on Silas’s face was hard to interpret as the hand he used to steady himself smoothed down across my skin, fingers trailing. All the way until his palm was pressed over my rapidly beating heart, just at the swell of my breast. The action was disorienting and exciting, and it created a warm spot in the numbness.
“I fought
him for the gun.” I’d been so sure there wasn’t anything stowed in the garage, and like everything else, I’d been wrong. “I don’t know if he was aiming for my heart and missed, or if he’d meant for me to live.”
The pads of Silas’s fingers moved subtly, triggering a shiver from me. It got me to push through the end.
“After he’d shot me, Paul put the gun to his head and . . . he was gone.”
Silas jolted. I left out the part where Paul had been crying and cursing me for making him fall in love with a narc bitch, but hearing that I’d witnessed Paul’s suicide made the color drain from Silas’s face.
“Fuck.” He pressed down subtly, like he wanted to strengthen the connection. “Fuck, Regan.” Concern flooded his silver eyes.
I’d grown bitter about people looking at me like I was pitiful. Yeah, I’d fucked up. I’d begged Paul not to do it. So not seeing pity, but instead concern from a near stranger, did something unexpected. The angry response I usually had was nowhere to be found. All I wanted was to reassure him I was okay and to make him feel comfortable. I’d spent so much time undercover, worried about my own ass, it was foreign and wonderful to think about someone else’s feelings for once.
“It was rough.” My voice was unsteady. “I got through it. I want to put it behind me.” My fingers brushed up the length of his forearm until my hand was set on top of his. “Thank you . . . for helping.”
He held my gaze for an impossibly long moment. God, I’d been fucking lucky. If I had walked into a random tattoo shop, I wouldn’t have had any of this. Silas hadn’t just created the perfect art, he’d given me the best experience possible. Nudged me into the chair, coaxed the story from me.
When he wiped the towel over the tender skin, it wasn’t as if he’d simply wiped the memory away, but he dulled the sting somehow. His art would always be there to remind me of a better memory than the one beneath.
“No, thank you,” he said.
“For what?”
Silas’s skilled hand resumed passing ink into my skin. “For telling me. For wearing my art on your body.”
More warmth rushed through me, spreading like lava. “You’re welcome.” The emotional swing left me not knowing up from down. I swallowed thickly, needing to move to a topic that was safe. “Tell me about you. Did you always want to be an artist?”