“I’d be happy to check it out if you want to stop by the shop later.”

“I’ll think about it.” After a protracted silence I finally asked, “How long have you been a tattoo artist?”

“Close to six years. I started as a piercer when I was eighteen, but it wasn’t for me.”

“Why not?”

Hayden wiped his hands on a fresh cloth and tucked my hair behind my ear, tracing the shell as he did so. The ladder of helix rings clicked dully against each other. “You’d look good with an industrial,” he said softly. I shivered even though I suddenly felt hot.

He motioned to his face and poked at the viper bites with his tongue. “If they were all this kind of thing, it wouldn’t have been an issue.”

“What was the issue?”

“I’m afraid I’m not much of a sadist, and it takes a certain type of person to be able to stick a needle through a dick.”

Fortunately, I wasn’t holding anything breakable. “Okay. Right. I didn’t think about that.”

He laughed at my reaction. “I pierced for a few months before I started apprenticing to be a tattooist. For about a year and a half I had to do both. After a few years I built up a solid client base and a decent reputation in the business, and Chris and Jamie convinced me we should go out on our own.”

“So you opened Inked Armor?”

“We did. I was only twenty-one at the time, but it’s been four years and we’re still doing well.”

“You were so young.” I couldn’t imagine taking on that kind of responsibility at this point in my life.

He shrugged. “I’ve been on my own since I was eighteen, and it seemed like a smart thing to do. Anyway, I haven’t put a hole in anybody’s junk since we opened our shop.”

“So you’re not a fan of piercings from the neck down?” Heat climbed my chest toward my cheeks. I shouldn’t have asked that question, because all sorts of inappropriate images popped into my head.

“I didn’t say that.”

I opened my mouth, searching for words. None came.

“The ones from here down aren’t just decorative.” He ran his hand over his chest, down to his belt buckle.

“You’re not one for holding back, are you?”

He grinned. “It’s not really my style.”

I changed the subject. “So you like it? Being a tattoo artist?”

My curiosity was genuine, as was my long-standing interest in body art and art in general. It had played a significant role in my decision to pursue a master’s in sociology. It gave me a valid reason to focus on what most considered social deviance. After the crash I turned toward what I really loved—art and modification, delving deeper into subcultures and extreme factions. My advisor, whose school of thought was rather antiquated, seemed to have a difference of opinion on the direction my thesis proposal should take.

“I get to be an artist and not starve, so that’s a bonus. Some of the tattoos can be boring, standard shit, but the pieces I get to design? Those are the ones that make the job worth doing. I don’t think there’s anything quite as gratifying as creating art out of someone’s experiences. Well, some things are more gratifying.” He looked me over, his perusal blatant. “Are you hiding any ink under those clothes?”

“No,” I lied. I rooted around in a box to conceal my face lest he press for more information.

“I think you’d look good with my art on your body.” Judging from the rapacious gleam in his eye, his phrasing was purposeful. “Anyway, the offer stands. You should come by again when you have a chance, maybe stay longer than two minutes. I can show you my albums, and you can show me your idea for ink. Maybe I could work on you.”

“Okay, maybe.” I didn’t miss the dig at my boomerang visits, or that he’d noticed them in the first place.

“I’ll take maybe over no.”

I’d been working on a sketch for a long time; even before the crash I’d had several ideas for tattoos. Originally the piece had just been art, but it had changed in the past several months into a symbol of my loss. It would be rather revealing to hand something so personal over to Hayden.

“Did you design any of your own tattoos?”

“Most of them.” Hayden shoved the sleeve of his shirt up above his elbow and held his arm out toward me, the inside facing up.

There was an anatomically correct heart wrapped in thorny vines set close to the crease in his elbow. Blood ran down the vines in rivulets, dripping from the thorns. Budding flowers juxtaposed the darkness of the piece, tempering it. As the flowers moved away from the heart, the tiny blossoms became more vibrant and open. Hayden rotated his forearm, and on the other side, the same vines traveled from his wrist to his elbow, but they were thicker. The ones at his wrist were dry and cracking, the flowers dying, petals falling off, but as they closed in on his elbow the flowers exploded into life, pulled into a wave of water. The head of an orange-and-white fish peeked out from his sleeve, the rest of the design obscured.

I reached out to touch a length of vine on his forearm and hesitated, seeking permission. “May I?”

“You asking to feel me up?”

“Um—”

“Sorry, you’re easy to rile, it’s hard to resist. Be my guest.”

He rested his arm on his knee, palm up, hand relaxed and open. He didn’t look all that sorry with the way he was smiling, but I was too curious, and he was willing. The muscles in his arm flexed when I traced the vines leading to the heart. The inside of his forearm seemed a sensitive place to tattoo. Wherever there was color, the skin was slightly raised, not by much, but enough that I could feel the dimension of the design.

“This must have taken a long time. Did it hurt a lot?”

“Pain is relative, isn’t it?”

I gave him a quizzical look.

“These—” He skimmed my ear. “They hurt, right?”

“Sure, but not much.” Disappointment followed when he dropped his hand.

“But there’s still gratification in the pain, yeah?”

I nodded, even if I couldn’t be sure how much I agreed with that statement. Hayden must have picked up on my uncertainty.

“Any kind of modification, whether it’s to alter physical features, like cosmetic surgery, or to decorate, like piercings and tattoos, cause some degree of discomfort. But that’s the point, isn’t it? It’s cathartic because it’s the promise of change in some form or another. My tattoos give the memory related to the art a place to exist outside of my head, on my body. At least that’s my interpretation, but not everyone feels the same way I do.”

Expelling pain by giving in to it held quite the allure. The reasons I wanted to put my own art on my skin were difficult to reconcile. I swiped at an inked droplet of blood, almost expecting to feel the wetness against my fingertip.

“It looks so real.”

“Jamie’s an amazing artist.”

“Lisa’s boyfriend?”

Hayden nodded.

On the occasions I’d dropped by Inked Armor he’d always been with a client, but I’d seen him and Lisa leave together many times.

“So he did this?” I asked.

“Most of my tattoos were done by either Jamie or Chris.”

“You designed them and they put them on you?”

“Yeah. Or we collaborated. The only one I didn’t design was this one.” He pulled up the sleeve on his other arm. It was covered in a black pattern I couldn’t decipher.

“How far does it go?”

“All the way up my arm and over half my torso.”

“What is it?”

“If you come to the shop, maybe I’ll show you.”

The idea of Hayden shirtless was like a shot of fire through my veins. I didn’t hesitate this time. “Okay.”

“That’s better than a maybe.”

He was openly flirting. As apprehensive as he made me, part of me enjoyed the nervous anticipation and the warmth under my skin. The heavy strains of a rock anthem came from Hayden’s pants, and he dug in his pocket. He looked annoyed as he checked his phone. Instead of answering the call, he silenced it.

A minute later Cassie appeared at the top of the stairs. The call he avoided had been Lisa; his client had arrived and she was still waiting for her latte.

“Duty calls.” Hayden hefted the box filled with keepables under his arm. “I’ll go through the rest another time. You’ll stop by the shop?”

“Sure.” I wasn’t sure at all. Talking to Hayden had only served to ratchet up my infatuation with him; indulging in his presence wasn’t likely to make that dissipate.

He gave me a look but dropped it. “Thanks for keeping me company.”

“No problem.”

In an unexpectedly tender gesture, he leaned down and kissed my cheek, those steel rings piercing his bottom lip treacherously close to the corner of my mouth.

I stood there long after he left, my fingers pressed to the spot where his lips had been. Warmth radiated out with the echo of sensation, moving down until it settled low in my stomach. I felt suddenly vulnerable as the vortex of emotion that followed threatened to lift me up and take me away. I hadn’t expected him to do that. At all.

If I’d been stronger, I would have left him to sort through things on his own. But I didn’t, and now I had this memory of his lips on my skin. As innocent as it might have been, it brought with it unexpected feelings. I hadn’t felt anything close to lust in almost a year. That one simple gesture of affection had awoken the dormant desire I’d been fighting since the first time he came into Serendipity.

Hayden was the opposite of everything I’d ever known. He defied convention at every turn, and it made him that much more of a weakness. He was not only inordinately gorgeous but intelligent and passionate as well. Beyond the hard exterior, the brash comments and flirtation, a sensitive side lurked. But, like me, he was closed off; his tattoos formed his walls. I knew all about walls. I had built my own. With him I wanted to let them down, if only just a little. It was a dangerous thing to contemplate because in doing so they could very well crumble completely.