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.
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.
Letting herself get close to one of the warriors from the Order--particularly one whose investigation had brought him to her doorstep in the first place--was a mistake she refused to make.
Pivoting away from him, she began cleaning up her station. “You’ll want to remove the bandages after a couple of hours. I can give you some ointment to use for the next few days, but the way your kind heals, I doubt you’ll need it.”
“My kind,” he murmured from behind her.
She shot him an arch glance over her shoulder. “I don’t suppose I have to remind you to stay out of the sun.”
He was staring at her, and he didn’t look pleased. “You’re dismissing me. Always so eager to get rid of me. I have to wonder why that is.”
She shrugged. “You asked for a tattoo and I gave you one. So, unless there’s anything else--”
“There is, Nova.” He held her in a piercing, narrowed stare. “What are you afraid I’m going to find out? You and I both know the man who came in here last night didn’t leave the way you explained it to me.”
Anxious now, she pushed her hands into her pockets and faced the Breed warrior. “If you want to accuse me of something, do it.”
He exhaled a sharp breath. “I’m not ready to say you had something to do with his death, but I know you’re not telling me the truth. What do you know about the others?”
Confusion bled into her dread. “What others?”
“The six other men pulled out of the Thames in the past week, Nova.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” And she didn’t. But he wasn’t baiting her, that much she knew, just from the unflinching seriousness of his expression. “Why would you think I know anything about anyone else?”
“Because all of the men--including the one who came here last night--had a similar mark on the backs of their right hands.” He took out his comm unit and brought a photo up on the display. “This tattoo, Nova.”