She hated liars and secrets. Yet, that’s exactly what she’d been doing and keeping today. She’d done it for a much better reason than her mom had, but that didn’t make the lead weight in her stomach shrink.
“You shouldn’t leave your front door unlocked,” Sawyer said from her living room.
Startled, Penny jolted up and let out a pinched squeal before the owner of the voice registered in her brain. “You shouldn’t walk in without knocking.” She sank back into the cushion, taking in long, slow breaths with her eyes closed to get her heart rate back under control.
Sawyer joined her out on the balcony. He didn’t say anything to let her know he was there. He didn’t need to. An excited awareness prickled her skin despite the thick, sultry early evening heat, just as it did every time he came near. One sniff of the sandalwood cologne mixed with his signature personal scent and her nipples tightened into stiff peaks. Even as she fought to remember that he had a revolving door on his bedroom, the dampness grew between her legs. The man wasn’t just dangerous. He was fucking lethal to her better judgment.
“I need your help and I figured we could debrief at the same time,” Sawyer said.
She opened her eyes and was treated to the awe-inspiring sight of his delectable ass shown off to perfection in a pair of khaki shorts, and lost her ability to make sensical thoughts. “What do you need my help with?”
He reached around behind his head and tugged his T-shirt off and sitting down at the foot of her lounge chair. “It’s time for the bandage to come off and there’s no way I can put the ointment on myself. I’m good, but I’m not that flexible.”
She froze. For a moment all she could do was stare at the bandage crisscrossing his broad shoulders and going halfway down his muscular back. She’d patched him up like that after spending five hours tattooing his bare skin, but that was different than this. That was work, the creative process. He hadn’t been Sawyer, so much as he’d been her canvas for the day. Touching him like this? This would be something else entirely.
“Can’t you call one of your girls?” she asked.
“What’s wrong?” He looked over his shoulder at her and winked. “Scared you might melt at my feet if you touched me without your latex gloves?”
Yes. Her pulse went into overdrive and she had to really concentrate to keep her base instincts from overriding her brain and jumping at any excuse to touch him. “Your ego is out of control.”
He twisted so he half-faced her and held out the tube of Neosporin. “Please.”
She hesitated, butterflies doing Kamikaze dive-bomb missions in her stomach, before taking the ointment. “Fine, but I want to hear what you found out while I do this.”
Sawyer turned back around, presenting her with his back. “You got it. So the first person to come in was Staci—”
“Hold on,” she interrupted. “I’ve got to get some stuff.”
After a quick trip to the kitchen to gather anti-bacterial soap, a bowl of filtered lukewarm water and a paper towel, she laid everything on the side table, swung one leg over the lounge chair and sat down behind him.
“This part’s gonna hurt.” She scooted forward on the lounge chair, stopping when she was about six inches away, and then reached up for one corner of the bandage. He’d slept through the tattoo, but she’d never met anyone who didn’t at least flinch at this. Using her fingernail, she picked at the top right edge.
“Ready?” she asked.
His muscles tensed. “Always.”
Taking pity on him, she stripped away the bandage as quick as possible and gave him a second to recover before washing his healing tattoo with her wet hands. By the time she’d patted it dry with the paper towel, the puffy redness where the bandage had adhered had turned to a soft pink.
“So Staci cornered you first.” She picked up the ointment and opened the top, her lips twitching at the mental picture of her best friend putting the screws to Sawyer. “I’m not surprised.”
“She didn’t buy the boyfriend routine.”
Total non-shocker there. “Trust me, I know.” She giggled. “She was none to happy when I told her I’d explain everything later.” Between the two of them, it was hard to know who hated secrets more, but some things couldn’t be helped. Staci’s lack of belief in secrets meant she couldn’t keep one either, and this was one case where it couldn’t be avoided.
Squeezing the tube, she got enough ointment on the tip of her finger to apply to his tattoo. The talking made it easier, but she was still going to have to touch him—and not jump his bones. Setting her shoulders, she mentally put on her big girl panties—the ones with the deadbolt-locked chastity belt—and smoothed a dollop of ointment across one of the scales. The warmth of his skin seeped into the ointment, making it easy to spread with a light touch.
“Your apprentices, Dozer, Savannah and Kip, and the other tattoo artists all stopped in,” Sawyer continued, his voice a little more strained than before. “Everyone found a way to get around to the whole boyfriend thing.”
She softened her touch as she spread ointment down Lady Justice on his spine. “Which one do you think it is?” she asked, as she watched his back muscles tighten and twitch under her fingers. It was like viewing one of those visual light shows or the fountain show at the Bellagio in Las Vegas—so utterly fascinating that she didn’t want to look away. If he decided to give up the badge and become a stripper, he’d make a killing at bachelorette parties.
“I don’t think it’s any of them,” he said.
It took a second for his words to filter through the six mile-thick fog of lust blockading her brain. Then, like a nuclear-powered fog light, his words cut through everything and snapped her right back to reality.
“What?” She stood up, grabbed the paper towel and wiped off the remaining ointment from her finger. “It has to be one of them.”
“Not based on the way they talked about you and Daring Ink.” Sawyer’s gaze followed her as she paced the balcony, a look she didn’t recognize softening the lines around his eyes. “You may not be aware of it, but you have quite the protective fan club—for the most part.”
“Who?” Dozer complained the most about the hours, but otherwise was a really good-natured guy who’d never met a shade of black he didn’t want to wear.
“The skinny kid. He was hitting on Staci when I came into the studio.”
Her steps faltered. “Chase? He’s our mascot. He just likes to hang around.”
And get in the way, but no one seemed to mind much. He was kind of like a lost puppy they’d started feeding and now he spent several days a week at the studio.
Sawyer stood, blocking her pacing path. “He’s the only one who didn’t come in and threaten to cut my balls off if I hurt you.”
Unable to move forward, she halted inches from him. “They didn’t say that.” Gaze ensnared by the happy trail zipping down from his belly button to disappear behind his waistband, she fisted her hands to stop herself from reaching out to trace it.
“They did—a lot.” He twisted one of her errant hairs around his finger and pushed it back, the pad of his thumb grazing the shell of her ear. “They’re not the most creative bunch when it comes to threats, but they made up for it with sincerity.”
Her breath hitched. She pulled up the memory of the women’s satisfied moans coming through her bedroom wall and the rhythmic thuds of his headboard hitting the drywall. But instead of pissing her off, the recollection made her curious. Just what did he do to them to make them scream and would she like it? Her body gave a thigh-quivering yes. Still, she hesitated, buying time with a defense of Daring Ink’s adopted mascot.
“It doesn’t make sense,” she said, her voice breathy. “Chase tried out for an apprenticeship once, but the skill level just isn’t there yet. I told him to keep practicing. Now, he stops by a lot and watches everyone work so he can get better. He’s a good kid, just a little lost.”
Sawyer closed the small distance between them, a dangerous hunger rolling off of him so intense and hot that her panties combusted. As if he could smell the singed cotton in the air, his nostrils flared slightly and he inhaled.
“Sounds like motive, opportunity and means to me,” he said as he dropped a hand to her hip and toyed with the belt loop on her jeans. “He wants to prove himself, he’s there all the time so he has access, and he is at least a peripheral part of the Miami tattooing scene. You left your portfolio in your office at the studio like we’d planned?”
She nodded, the tingling sensation working its way south from her hip to the juncture of her thighs overwhelming her ability to do more than lick her lips in anticipation.
“So we watch the GPS tracker I embedded in it and see what happens.” His thumb brushed against the sliver of exposed skin above her waistband. “How late is the studio open tonight?”
Answer. She had to answer with words. Who knew that could be so hard? “Until midnight,” she said, her voice soft and breathy. “Saturdays are our busiest nights.”