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.
To destroy you.
“Anything wrong, Nova?” Mathias’s deep voice drew her out of the dark spiral of her thoughts. “You didn’t fall asleep at the wheel back there, did you?”
“No. Just wrapping up.”
She tried to sound casual, cool. But her throat was dry and her hands were trembling.
She didn’t like to trek back to her past. It was something she deliberately avoided, wounds that had scarred over but still had the power to shred her apart if she stopped to recall them.
Just the thought of what she had endured put a knot of cold terror in her belly. Bile burned in the back of her throat, her ears filled with the sounds of a young girl’s screams.
Her screams.
“I’m almost finished,” she murmured, willing the tremor out of her fingers as she placed the tattoo machine over Mathias’s skin again. She completed the last of the coloring, subtle shadow and shading to bring realism to the piece.
When it was done, she blotted the design clean, then began dressing it. Mathias’s Breed skin was already healing on its own, but she still stripped off her gloves and reached for ointment and bandages.
As she applied the first one, he lifted his head, bulky shoulders rising off the table. “Aren’t you going to let me see it before you cover it up?”
She pushed him back down. “I thought you wanted to be surprised.”
He exhaled a low chuckle. “Probably not one of my more prudent decisions, all things considered.”
“It was a first.” She put the last couple of bandages over the fresh ink, carefully patting them into place. “If you ask me, only an idiot or a lunatic would let an unknown artist go freestyle on them for two full hours.”
He grunted. “So, which one do you think I am?”
Nova smiled in spite of herself. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“Maybe I’m just an excellent judge of character.” With that, he rose all the way up and pivoted around to a seated position on the edge of the chair.
Good lord, it was distracting to watch him move. He was muscular and long-limbed, powerful arms and thick shoulders framing a sculpted chest and ripped abdomen.
Mathias leaned forward slightly, elbows braced on his knees. The look he gave her sent her pulse skittering in her veins. “Maybe we both need to trust each other a little bit here, Nova. What do you say?”
Those penetrating eyes she had avoided all the while she was working on him now bore into her with the intensity of twin lasers. Heat seared her, and she couldn’t dismiss it as anything other than what it was.
Curiosity.
Awareness.
Desire.
How long since she’d felt any of that? God, had she ever--really ever--felt such an immediate, undeniable pull toward a man?
She didn’t dare let it take hold of her now.
Not with him.
It would be a mistake she couldn’t undo.