And there was something else about the phoenix that snagged his attention now.

“What the--” Mathias had to look again to make certain of what he was seeing.

Nestled within the breast of the rising phoenix was a mark that was no tattoo at all. The small red crescent moon and teardrop symbol was unmistakable.

A birthmark only a rare class of female bore somewhere on her body. “You’re a Breedmate.”

Nova blinked, the first time he’d noticed her composure slip since he arrived. “Does it matter if I am?”

Hell yes, it mattered. To him, at least. He got up from the chair on a low curse.  “You know what you are, and yet you choose to live among humans instead of the Breed?”

“That’s right.”

“It’s a risky choice. Especially when you choose to live here, among people like the drunk who came in here last night and tried to hurt you.”

“I never told you that.”

Mathias held her troubled stare. “You didn’t have to. I can sense something violent happened in this shop. Even if I couldn’t sense it, I’d know something more than what you described took place.” He moved closer to her, then. Swept some of her black-and-blue hair away from her eyes when she made no move to do so. “Looking out for people who need my help is my job, Nova. I’ve spent the better part of my life taking monsters off the street--Breed and human alike.”

She scoffed lightly and drew away from him, shoving her hands into the pockets of her black jeans. “A regular Galahad, is that it? White horse and a gleaming sword?”

He ignored her jab. She wasn’t the first woman to accuse him of having a hero complex. Usually the charge accompanied the angry tears of a neglected lover who didn’t want to believe him that his job, and the duty it demanded, came first. Above everything else.

With Nova, he knew her doubt in him was coming from someplace deeper. A place of real pain. A place of dark secrets that still had the power to haunt her.

“If you’re in trouble, Nova, I can help you. If you’ll let me.”

“I don’t need your help.” Her reply was swift, automatic. Defensive. “I do just fine looking out for myself.”

At that same moment, light footsteps sounded from a stairwell near the back of the shop. A red-haired boy came halfway down in bed-rumpled sweatpants and nothing else. His chest was scrawny, marred with old scars from abuse he must have suffered at a very young age.

“What’s goin’ on, Nova?” The kid’s sleepy expression tensed when he saw Mathias standing in the studio. “Who’s that?”

“It’s okay, Eddie,” Nova interjected quickly. Her voice was warm, all of her chill seeming to be reserved for Mathias. “He’s just a...client. And he’ll be leaving soon. Go on back to bed now. Everything’s all right.”

When the boy was gone, Mathias glanced at her. “Brother?”

“Close enough. Oz took him in last year when he found Eddie eating out of Dumpsters, living on the street by himself in the middle of winter. Now Eddie lives upstairs with Ozzy.”

“You live with them too?” Mathias asked.

She gave a faint shake of her head, the sharp cut of her dark, two-toned hair swishing against her delicate cheek. “I have my own place on the floor above them. Ozzy rented it out to me once I turned seventeen.”

“You’ve been with Ozzy for a while, then.”

“Yeah, I have.”

When she didn’t volunteer anything more, Mathias studied her, looking for cracks in her tough exterior. “He seems very protective of you. Does he know about your mark--and what that makes you?”

“He knows everything about me.”

“He cares for you.”

She nodded. “He does. And I care for him too.” She looked at him in silence for a long moment, as if debating how much of herself she needed to reveal in order to satisfy his curiosity. When she finally spoke, her voice was softer than ever. “Not that it’s any of your business, but Oz is family to me. Eddie too. They’re the only true family I’ve got.”

Mathias sensed it was the most honest thing she’d told him all night.

“Look,” she said abruptly, “if you want to talk, then talk. But make it quick. My last client of the night is due in any minute now.” She thought for a moment, and her fine black brows furrowed. “He’s late, in fact.”

Mathias knew good and well the guy wasn’t going to show anytime tonight. He shrugged. “So, I’ll stay until he arrives.”

“No, you won’t,” she said. “I’m still on the clock, and I’ve got plenty of work to do before I close up. You’ve got ten minutes.”

“Are you this unaccommodating with all of your clients?”

She leveled an impatient look on him. “You’re not my client.”

“And if I was?”

She laughed. A real laugh, unrestrained and genuine.

“Why is that funny?”

“You’re hardly the type to want a tattoo.”

He shrugged. “It will be my first.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that,” she said, her blue eyes lit with humor.

Mathias liked her eyes. He liked her laugh, and he had the fleeting awareness that he was enjoying her company more than he ought to. “What would you suggest?”

She cocked her head at him. “You don’t even know what you want?”

“It doesn’t matter. Surprise me.”

“Surprise you?” Her pretty face scrunched up, incredulous. “It’s permanent, you know.”

“So, come up with something I won’t regret for the next hundred years.”

The ghost of a smile played along the curve of her mouth. Damn, she had a fantastic mouth. Mathias’s groin tightened as he watched her chew her lip in contemplation. “Anything I want? Anywhere I decide to put it?”

Her choice of words only made his desire flare even hotter. “Anything. Anywhere. I’m in your hands completely.”

He held her sky blue eyes, knowing full well that there were secrets in their pale depths. Dark secrets that he was still determined to uncover.

“Can I trust you, Nova?”

She stared at him for a long moment. “I guess you’ll have to wait to find out. Take off your shirt.”

CHAPTER 4

Had she lost her bloody mind?

She must have, because that was the only explanation for how she’d found herself perched on her stool a couple of hours later, putting the finishing touches on a freehand tattoo she’d inked onto Mathias Rowan’s back.

His powerfully muscled, utterly distracting back.

Nova hadn’t wanted to notice how firm and strong he felt under her gloved fingertips. She hadn’t wanted to acknowledge the warmth of his naked skin, or the beauty of his Breed dermaglyphs--elaborate skin markings that made all of her work pale by comparison.

She could have gone with a smaller design, placed somewhere less intimate, less time-consuming. God knew, she would have, if she’d been thinking clearly at all.

But talking with him had put an image in her head that wouldn’t let go. When he took off his shirt and she saw the twin flourishes of glyphson his shoulder blades, she knew she’d found the perfect placement.

And she had to admit, she took more than a little satisfaction in the thought of inking the tattoo on the persistent male’s spine, instead of somewhere with fewer nerve endings just under the skin.

Given how long the work had taken, she was also thankful that she hadn’t spent the whole time under his intense, unsettling gaze. Lying face-down, comfortably relaxed on the reclined work chair, made him almost seem like any other client.

Not that she’d ever had one of the Breed under her iron.

And not that any of the human clientele coming in and out of Ozzy’s over the years had ever made her so keenly aware of herself as a woman the way Mathias Rowan did.

Dangerous thinking.

She had learned a long time ago how monstrous his kind could be. Even the ones you trusted the most.

Especially them, because they held the power to hurt you the deepest. To violate everything you believed in, everything you were.