His skin is so smooth and warm. Supple. I can feel the reaction in every muscle I touch. It incites a corresponding squeeze in my stomach.

I’m so caught up in these sensations, in this moment, that I find myself asking about his tattoo in order to prolong the pleasure of the skin-against-skin contact.

“What does it mean?” I ask, tracing the angry-looking letters that span the top of his back from shoulder to shoulder. At first glance, I thought it was just some sort of tribal tattoo. It looked a little like a twist of teeth or claws. But on closer inspection, I can see that there are letters intricately woven into the wicked-looking spikes.

“It’s Latin. Pugnare superesse. Vivere pugna. Fight to survive. Fight to live.”

Makes sense for a fighter, I suppose. It doesn’t register that the words might have a deeper meaning until I more closely examine his skin.

When the cream is rubbed in thoroughly, I make myself pull my hands away. Holding back a sigh, I reach for a dish of makeup, swirl a small brush through it and lean in to attack a scar that runs around his shoulder blade in a semicircle. It’s an odd shape, but I don’t ask any questions. For all I know, he had some sort of surgery that he doesn’t want to talk about. It’s as I’m applying coverage to the pale pink line that I begin to notice other things that I was too distracted to notice before, when I was rubbing my hands over Rogan’s flesh and asking about his tattoo.

There are three long white gashes that run down his back. Not like claws, but at different places, like something scratched or cut him in separate lashes. On his lower back are five small dots in an orderly pattern that’s a little bigger than the size of my palm. And on his right side, just below his ribs, are two perfectly round scars about the size of a pencil eraser. I can’t imagine what the other marks are, but these two look suspiciously like cigarette burns. Old ones.

Fight to survive. Fight to live.

What has he had to survive? What has he had to fight for?

As I’m working, my mind is running a mile a minute. Unfortunately, my hands are nowhere near keeping up. In fact, I’m rubbing my index finger over the tiny dots when Rogan speaks, causing me to jump guiltily.

“I bet you weren’t expecting to have to work this hard for your money today, were you?” I glance up at his profile. One side of his mouth is quirked, but there’s no humor anywhere else on his face. He’s covering up. I know that for a fact. I recognize it because I’ve been doing it for years.

“I would expect nothing less from a man who fights for a living,” I reply softly, letting him off the hook. I would want someone to do the same for me if the situation were reversed. Some scars can’t be talked about for fear of opening the old wound and bleeding to death. I know that for a fact, too.

A grunt is the only reply I get from him. As I set about camouflaging more quickly rather than so rudely examining this enigmatic man’s body, I can’t curb the sense of sadness that fills me. Or the sense of connection.

For all his cute winks and sexy grins, for all his charisma and devil-may-care comments, this man has a past. A violent past. And something tells me that it has nothing to do with fighting for money and everything to do with fighting for his life. Despite the attraction that I feel toward him, Rogan just became more dangerous to me than ever before. Now I can relate to him on a deeper level, a purely emotional level. I can relate to a violent past. And the desire to escape it. Now we share something important. Now it will be even harder to fight him.

When I’m finished patching up his back, making it so that the world doesn’t see what’s been done to him, I tell him quietly, “You can sit up now.”

I back up as Rogan swings his long legs around and pushes himself into a sitting position, muscles flexing everywhere as he moves. As always, I’m aware of his beauty, but now, as perverse as it sounds, he’s even more appealing to me. He seems real and fallible and maybe a little bit broken. He hides it well, of course, but now I know. And I can’t unknow.

I avoid his eyes as I treat his chest to the same consideration that I gave his back, only with slightly less attention to detail since the camera shots will be focused mainly on his back. I’m fully aware of his mossy gaze on me as I squirt more cream into my hand and rub my palms together. He watches me as I reach for his pecs. He watches me as I let my fingers trail up to his collarbones, across his shoulders, over his bulging deltoids. I make my way back to his midline and then down his abdomen. It’s when the ridges of muscle tense under my hands as I near his waistband that my own stomach begins to react. Warmth blossoms in my core, turning my insides to hot, twitchy mush.

“Careful,” he whispers, drawing my eyes away from his torso.

His pupils are wide and there’s heat in his gaze, but it’s subdued this time. Vulnerable almost.

Ignoring his warning, I respond as though I didn’t hear him. “I—I won’t have to highlight your abs. They’re already defined well enough for the camera,” I say, clinging to thoughts of work to diffuse the tension. Not that it’s effective.

Rogan’s eyes narrow on me just before fire of a different kind appears inside the luminous emerald of his irises. So fast I gasp in surprise, his fingers flick out and snap around my wrists like iron cuffs, stilling my movements. “Don’t feel sorry for me.”

I’m stunned. “Wh-what?”

“I don’t want your pity,” he growls.

Although he shocked me with his quick movement, I calm immediately, understanding his reaction. Being pitied is an awful sensation. “I don’t pity you. I—I just . . .” I don’t know how to tell him that I feel closer to him now than I did last night when he was kissing me. And even if I could, I wouldn’t. He doesn’t need to know that. He never needs to know that. “I get it.”

His eyes search mine. For what, I don’t know. But he must find it because his expression relaxes back into the subdued mask he was wearing earlier.

“Aren’t you going to ask me about them?”

I don’t have to inquire what “them” he means. He’s referring to the scars. “No.”

“Most people don’t notice, but those who have assume they’re the result of my fights. Like you did at first.” He pauses, scrutinizing me like he can see right into my soul. “But you don’t now, do you?”

Reluctantly, I shake my head.

Before he can say anything more, a shadow darkens the door behind him. I glance up just as one of the techs announces that she’s here for Rogan. “Stage Four is ready.”

“Just a sec,” I reply, avoiding Rogan’s eyes as I quickly dab some makeup on two more round places that dot his ribs just under his left pectoral. Except for the one around his shoulder blade, these scars, just like all the others, are so pale they’re barely noticeable. And I’m sure Rogan likes it that way. And I envy his body’s ability to naturally conceal things that might otherwise cause him discomfort. My body saw no such need to help me out. What’s wrong with me is impossible to miss if I don’t take measures to hide it.

When I finish, I steal a glance back up at Rogan’s face. He’s watching me again, only this time with an odd expression marring his otherwise perfect visage. When he leans close to me, he does it quickly as he stands so that I have little chance to move away. His lips graze the shell of my ear as he speaks. “Whatever I did last night, I’m sorry.”

And with that, he swipes up his shirt and follows the tech right out my door.

SIXTEEN

Rogan

“Cut! Let’s try this again. Right from ‘You wanted it.’”