Or I’ll get Dakota to put them in an album. She likes to scrapbook when she gets high.

Composing myself, I edge past him, reaching for the clipboard. “Unless you want to lie out here on the floor. You need to fill out this paperwork, and then I need a copy of your ID.”

He stares at it. “What’s this for?”

“It’s a legal requirement. I can’t put a needle to your skin until you’ve signed. You can fill it out while I finish getting the room ready.” Ned was always strict about filling out the required paperwork. The threat of losing his license was enough to scare him and, while I was working here, to scare me into following his lead.

“Right,” he mutters. “I forgot about that.” I lead him into the back room, watching quietly as his gaze scans the black walls—covered in dusty square outlines where Ned’s portfolio of the weirdest tattoos that he’d ever done used to hang—then the cases of ink that I haven’t decided whether to take home for my own use or sell with the store, and the leather table, laid out flat and covered in plastic wrap, my tools and supplies set on the tray beside it. “The room looks ready to me.”

It’s been ready for him for over two hours. What I need to do is get me ready. “So you said this isn’t your first time?”

The corner of his mouth curls. Setting the clipboard down on top of a box, he reaches over his head and peels off his T-shirt to reveal a canvas of skin and hard muscles and a few scars, along with a sizable tattoo covering his left shoulder.

All nerves temporarily forgotten, I automatically step forward to study its quality and design. “Where’d you get this?”

“San Diego.”

“When?” It looks to be a few years old, at least. And well done, which is good. He probably did his research on that artist, like he did with me. It tells me he’s no idiot.

“Awhile ago.”

I roll my eyes. Not the most talkative guy when it comes to personal questions, I guess. “What is this? A . . .” The helicopter covers the ball of his shoulder. Five men in black dangle from ropes below it. This has to be military, and I’m guessing it has meaning for him. “Were you in the army?”

Cool eyes peer down at me, but he doesn’t answer.

I take that as yes, he was, and no, he doesn’t want to talk about it. It doesn’t really matter to me, but it helps me understand him a little more. His quiet, somewhat rigid demeanor, his lack of reaction, his readiness to help me, willingness to go toe-to-toe with a biker. He’s a soldier—or was—minus the brush cut and “ma’am” at the end of every sentence. Or maybe that was just the Texan Marine I picked up one night in San Diego.

“So, about your design . . .”

He reaches into his back pocket and slips out the folded piece of paper, handing it to me again. I can’t help but frown with disdain. Instead of taking it, I grab the sheet I tore out from my sketchbook, waiting on a side table. “I was thinking something like this would look better on you.”

He stares at the sketch I pulled together while watching the waves come in off Ocean Beach this morning, after I’d emptied my soul and mind onto a shitty old brick wall in the Mission District. It’s a risky design and one he may not want on his body. I know that even as I mentally cross my fingers and hope that he’ll say yes, because I really don’t want to ruin his beautiful torso with something as generic and common as what he has suggested.

He stares at the sketch for so long that I start to fidget and backpedal. “You don’t have to go with this. I just thought—”

“It’s incredible.” He shifts his gaze to me, and a flicker of warmth burns in those cold irises of his. “When did you do this?”

I stifle the grin that wants to slip out. He thinks it’s incredible. “This morning. I had some time to kill.”

He looks at me like he knows something I don’t. “I want this one.”

I swallow, the intensity of his gaze and his presence seeming to suck all the air out of the room. “And the size. You want it . . .”

“I’m sure you have an opinion.” He watches me intently.

I rarely give a damn about anyone or what they do with their lives, but I always have an opinion when it comes to body art. And this one, especially, I want to be flawless. “I think we should start it here”—I reach up to tap his skin, my fingertip just a curl away from a solid pectoral muscle—“and end down here, with the bottom of the scythe cutting into your bone right here.” My other hand slides across the base of his waist, at that delicious spot where his abdominal muscles meet his pelvic bone, forming the one side of a V that disappears below his belt.

My hand is trembling.

My fucking hand—the hand of a tattoo artist about to leave a giant, permanent marking on this perfect canvas—is trembling. And he must be able to see it. If I were him, I’d throw my shirt on and head out that door and never look back.

His fingers, the skin hot and dry and ridged with history, seize mine, squeezing them under his thumb. My hand looks childish next to his.

I open my mouth, ready to fire off excuses for the shakiness—need for caffeine, though the remnants of a Starbucks Venti is sitting on a box next to us; too cold, though the AC is shut off and it’s suddenly stifling in here—when he says, “How about a little farther back, like here?” He shifts my hand an inch over.

“That will work, too.” He releases my hand, and I exhale with relief. “This is going to take seven hours in black, more if you want color. That would put us at”—I glance at my phone—“ten tonight. Are you sure you can handle it? It takes a lot out of people, and the rib cage is especially sensitive.”

“I can handle it. Can you handle it?”

I snort. “Yeah, I can handle it.”

“I figured you could.” He nods toward the front. “Then go and make that transfer so we can get started.”

Normally I’d bristle, having someone tell me what to do. But right now getting away from him and his bare chest and the masculinity that radiates from him sounds like a smart plan. So I bolt to the front of the shop, both elated that he’s going with my design and uncomfortable with how easily he’s been able to slide under my skin, with nothing more than a look.

The computer is the only thing I haven’t packed up, and that’s solely because I knew I’d need to make a transfer for Sebastian. After tonight, I’ll have to move it to the house, just in case these painters are stupid enough to take a coffee break and leave the place wide open and unattended. This isn’t the kind of area you can do that in without coming back to find yourself cleaned out.

Letting the scanner warm up, I study my design with a smile.

She’s lethal but sexy, quiet but strong.

I’d like to think that she’s a little bit like me.

TWELVE

SEBASTIAN

She’s doing her best to hide that she’s attracted to me. If I hadn’t just witnessed her hand shaking as it grazed my hip, and the slight flush of her cheeks when she realized it, I might not have believed it. She’s good at hiding her emotions.

Just like I am.

I smile. Aren’t the two of us a pair.

I peek around the corner to see her back to me, her left boot tapping to the beat of the music as she studies her sketch. Now I know what she was doing on the beach this morning. It’s impressive that she could work so quickly, after no sleep, and produce such an exquisite piece of artwork. As foreboding as the sketch is, I can see elements of her surroundings in it—the reaper’s cloak curling at the ends like crashing waves, the crows dipping and diving from above like the seagulls had.

That she would actually have the nerve to redesign my tattoo—with a female reaper, no less—surprised me.

Ivy has surprised me twice, actually. The first time was the uncanny resemblance to me that she sketched out on the wall with nothing more than two brief encounters. I should be concerned that my face—and therefore evidence of my presence in San Francisco—exists.