Leave a Mark (17 page)

She turned away to her ink cart and felt her face heat when she heard the whir of silk on silk as he pulled open his tie. She busied herself setting up a fresh razor, her green soap, her alcohol wipes, and gauze. With her sterile scissors, she cut around the stencil and set it aside. Wren laid out two sterile grips, her liner and shader tips, and got her colors ready.

Knowing he’d be shirtless, Wren schooled a bored look on her features before she turned. She met his eyes first, and it would have helped if he’d looked back at her with that smug grin. Feeling pissy was a good defense, and his grin pissed her the hell off.

But the look he gave her was far from it. He lay back, watching her with a mix of wonder and… What was it? Hope? Whatever it was, it made her cheeks burn again. Wanting to press on, Wren picked up an alcohol swab.

“Where exactly do you want it?”

Without taking his eyes off hers, he touched the space about two fingers above his left nipple. She let herself glance down, and he was just as beautiful as she remembered. Lean… muscled. The dark triangle of chest hair again a carnal surprise.

Wren tried to keep her voice even, but it came out a little too high. “Bit facing in?”

Lee nodded, his fingers still over his heart. His eyes locked on hers.

She tore open the wrapper and drew out the alcohol-soaked square, and before she could let herself think too much about it, she moved his hand aside and pressed the square to his skin. His breath hitched.

“Cold,” he whispered.

“Sorry.” She refused to look back into his midnight-blue eyes, but she didn’t miss the moment when his nipples drew taut with her touch. She swabbed well beyond the boundaries where his tattoo would fall, and his skin puckered with gooseflesh.

After tossing the square into the wastebasket at her feet, Wren reached for the spray bottle of green soap and spritzed it over his chest.

“What’s that?” he asked, his voice soft.

Wren grabbed a paper towel and wiped up the excess soap. “It’s Tincture Green, a medical-grade soap. I’ll use it throughout the process." She surprised herself at how detached she managed to sound. It was a relief, given the fact that his body stretched out before her seemed to beckon her touch.

She picked up the disposable razor, but his skin was still raised with chills. She met his eyes then.

“Are you still cold?”

Lee tucked his right hand under his head, looking at her casually, but his cheeks flushed. “No.”

She ignored the tingle in her belly at his response and watched his skin instead. When the chills disappeared, she touched the razor to his flesh and dragged it across him in a careful swipe. At once, his chills returned. Wren stopped. Tattooing on razor-burn didn’t work.

“I can put the heater on or give you a clean towel to use as a blanket,” she offered.

The color in Lee’s cheeks deepened, but he smiled. “It’s not the temperature,” he whispered. “It’s you.”

Wren’s breath caught. She couldn’t stop it. And it took her longer than she liked to think of what to say.

“Well, I guess you’ll just have to wait until Rocky is free—”

“Nuh-uh. We’re doing this.” The whisper was gone, and determination shone in his eyes. “Just gimme a sec… Talk to me about something boring.”

“Something boring?” Wren felt her eyebrows lift.

“Yeah… like what did you have for breakfast today?”

Wren blinked. “Um… Greek yogurt and granola.”

Lee flashed a smile. “That’s not boring enough.”

“It’s not?” She was losing her footing with him; she could feel it. It would be so easy to smile back.

“Nah…” He shook his head, the look he wore now full of mischief. “…because now I’m picturing you in jammies eating yogurt and granola.”

“Please tell me I didn’t just hear that,” Rocky said, giving an obvious shudder as he dressed Dallas’s tattoo.

Even though she felt her face turn bright red, Wren regained her footing at once.

“You do see that I’m holding a blade, right?” Brandishing the razor, she gave him the evil eye.

Lee had the nerve to chuckle, but it worked. His chills were gone, and Wren finished shaving — as roughly as she could manage without actually breaking the skin. She squirted him again with green soap, rubbed it off, and picked up the stencil.

“Lie flat. I need to line this up so it’s perfectly level.”

Lee untucked his right arm and pressed himself flat against the table. She leaned over him and studied the contour of his pec before she angled the stencil and pressed it down on his chest. She ran her fingers over it and counted to twenty before she carefully peeled back the edges.

Standing back, she checked her work and nodded in approval. She passed him her hand mirror.

“Okay, make sure that’s what you want and where you want it,” she warned. “I’m going to let this dry for a few minutes, glove up, and get started. If you have any doubts, now’s the time to pull the plug.”

Lee held the mirror over himself and smiled at what he saw.

“No doubts.” He passed the mirror back to her, and she gave a shrug.

“Suit yourself.” Secretly, she was thrilled he wanted to go through with it. Of course, he didn’t need to know that. Wren turned back to her table, took an alcohol swab, and sterilized the handle and body of her green soap so she could grab it as needed once she’d donned her gloves.

Across from her, Rocky was helping Dallas off the table, and both turned her way with curious smiles. Wren scowled at her boss before pulling on a pair of gloves. She peeled open the grip, connected it to her rotary machine, and then opened her liner needles and loaded them. She flipped on the machine, the hum at least filling up some of the awkward silence in the studio. She tapped the foot pedal and did a quick ink check before turning back to Lee.

“Ready?”

His eyes were on the machine in her hand, but he cut them back to her. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”

Biting down on her smile, she applied the green soap again, dabbed the stencil lightly with a fresh paper towel, and angled her machine light over him. She tapped the foot pedal twice to set it on cruise, and she leaned in.

“Here goes,” she whispered, pulling his skin tight with her left hand and letting the tip touch down, biting into his flesh. Wren pulled back and looked up to check on him. Lee’s eyes were closed, his brows high on his forehead. “You okay?”

He drew in a deep breath and opened his eyes. The heat in them nearly knocked her back.

“Yes, Wren.” His voice, low and hoarse, hit the tingly spot in her belly, and she took a measured breath. On the exhale, she set the tip back to his skin, and a sound, low and short, came from his throat. She didn’t stop, and she didn’t take her eyes off the stencil.

People reacted differently to their first tattoo. She thought she’d seen it all. The Fainters. The Shriekers. The Laughers. The tough guys with the stoic looks. And the ones who felt a rush and rode it like a wave.

She’d never seen the look Lee wore — as though he were submitting himself to the sweetest torture.

Wren felt his look sear through her, fluttering up to her heart and spreading down into her womb. She shifted on her feet and threw her concentration into the lining.

The first drop of blood that bloomed on his skin seemed to yank at her heart. Blood had never bothered her before; it came with the territory, but Wren found she had to concentrate harder on pressing ahead after she saw it. So she did. Down along the shaft, around the bit of the key, carving out the notched cross, up along the bottom, and then around the decorative head. She paused only to dab up the excess ink and the occasional drop of blood. Each time she did, she’d glance up to find Lee watching her with unshaken focus.

When Wren tapped the pedal to stop the machine so she could swap out the liner for the shader, she noticed Rocky grab his keys.

“Where are you going?” she asked, hearing panic in her voice.

Rocky cocked a brow at her and gestured to the empty studio. “No customers. I’m running to the bank while I can.”

Wren tried to shoot lasers from her eyes, but they only served to make her boss laugh.

“Be good, you two,” he called over his shoulder as he pushed his way out the door.

She swallowed and turned back to her tray, avoiding Lee’s eyes even more now that they were alone. She opened the pack of shader needles, changed the pigment to the mustard, and put on a fresh pair of gloves.

“This will feel a little different,” she told him. “More needles, but less pain.”

“Okay.” His voice still sounded hoarse, but Wren ignored it, hit her pedal again, and got back to work.

She started at the bit of the skeleton key, the largest area of the design, but she swept the shader across carefully so she didn’t lose the sharpness of the cross. She’d just made her way around it when Lee’s hand was suddenly at her cheek.

“Wren.”

She pulled the machine back and jumped out of his touch. “Don’t move.” She met his eyes to scold him, but his pupils, so dark and wide, made her heart start racing and her mouth go dry.

“I want to touch you.”

Wren hid her shiver. “Well, you can’t. Put your hand down or leave.”

He dropped his hand, but he didn’t look any less determined. “Keep going.”

“Don’t move again,” she warned. “I do perfect work. I won’t let you fuck this up.”

A grin lifted the side of his mouth. “Yes, ma’am.”

She leaned in again. “And stop teasing me,” she snapped. She had to pull back the shader when he laughed, and it was easier to scowl at him this time.

“I won’t tease you,” he agreed.

She touched the shader against his skin again.

“But I will talk to you.”

Wren just rolled her eyes and kept working.

“I’ve wanted to be alone in a room with you for weeks.”

Oh my God.
Her bones threatened to melt. “Stop. Please,” she hissed, but she didn’t pull the shader away. The sooner she finished, the sooner she’d be free. “You said you wouldn’t tease.”

“I’m
not
teasing, Wren.”

She sighed. Her best course of action would be to say nothing, just keep working. Little by little, she filled in the shaft of the key.

“I want your phone number.”

“Fine. I’ll give it to you,” she snapped. “Just shut the fuck up already.”

Lee’s chest shook with his laughter, and she pulled away just before mustard pigment crossed over black liner.

“Goddammit. Be still!”

He still laughed, and she glared at him, unamused.

“You do realize tattoos are permanent, right?”

“I can’t help it.” He sucked in a breath and shook his head. “You’re so damn funny.”

“Yes. Clearly. You laugh at me all the time.”

His laughter choked off, and his eyes widened. “Wren, I’m not laughing
at you.
You make me laugh. It’s not the same thing.”

It was too much attention. She shook her head and bent over him again.

“Whatever it is, stop until I’m done with this.”

She finished filling in the mustard, and she switched out her colors for the platinum.

“Almost there,” she muttered, leaning in one last time.

“You’re amazing,” he whispered. “I don’t know anyone like you.”

Without looking up from the tat, she rolled her eyes. “You
don’t
know me.”

“So let me get to know you,” he said gently.

If he knew me,
she thought,
he wouldn’t be in such hurry.

“What was that for?” he asked.

Wren frowned but didn’t stop working. “What was what for?”

“That sigh.”

“I didn’t sigh,” she protested.

“Yes, you did.”

She ignored him. The shading was almost finished. And as soon as Studio Ink closed, she was going straight to Agave and ordering the sixteen-ounce Top Shelf Margarita.

“When I saw you this morning, you said you were helping a friend,” he said, and she could hear in his voice that he was leading up to a question.

She glanced up at him and back at her work before he could continue.

“Were you giving her a ride to a meeting or were you helping to admit her?”

Wren pulled the shader back, but her heart started to pound against her chest. “What does it matter?”

Lee gazed back at her with the gentlest expression. “It doesn’t. But when I saw you — by the trees at the courthouse — you looked upset.” He paused, and his eyes searched her face in a way she didn’t like.

She looked back at the tattoo, even though it was completely finished.

Wren couldn’t let herself go back to that memory. Not in front of him. Not in front of anyone, so she told him about Curtis instead.

“I was helping a friend. He’s starting a thirty-day inpatient program.”

“You talked him into going.” It wasn’t a question. “See? I already know you’re a good person.”

Wren put the shader down and turned off the machine. “It wasn’t like that,” she muttered, and thrust the mirror back into his hands. “You’re done.”

Lee held the mirror in front of him. “Oh my God… that is so cool,” he said in awe. He sat up on the table, still checking it out. “It looks so
real.”

He reached his hand up to touch it, and she batted it away. “No touching. It needs to stay sterile for a little while.”

She traded out her gloves a third time and gave the tattoo a final coat of green soap. It did look good. It looked great. The shading marks matched the original key perfectly.

Wren cut him a four-by-six piece of gauze and settled it gently over the fresh tattoo. “I’m going to tape this down, and you need to leave it on for at least twelve hours.”

Lee smiled. “Perfect. I have a twelve-hour shift at the hospital in a little while.”

She ignored him. “It’ll be sore for a few days. And later, it’ll itch. Do. Not. Scratch. It. When you take the bandage off, you should treat it with a topical antibiotic twice a day for three days.” Then she got in his face. “If one of your patients has a staph infection, you keep it the hell away from my tattoo.”

His eyes sparkled. “Yes, ma’am.”

Again, she ignored him while she taped down his dressing. And, now that he sat up higher than she stood, Wren also had to ignore how his body loomed above hers. How his scent of sagebrush and soap was stronger now that he was upright.