Luna had never really seen a grown man have a full out breakdown. Not like what was happening at the moment. And she hadn’t even started the tattoo. Not one single mark. Her gun buzzed uselessly in her hand and she shut it off and set it aside.

She stepped back and moved around the table so she could stare into the man’s face. The man with no name.

“Hey… are you okay?” She’d made a few guys cry in her time. Not that she had a heavy hand but some spots hurt. They hurt a lot. Some clients sat for ten hours at a time. Not only was it hell on her back and wrists, she knew for a fact that it hurt like a bitch to be on the other receiving end of that.

She reached out but she stopped when the panicked breathing grew worse. Her hand fell back uselessly to her side. The man’s eyes were strange, wild. The pupils were so large they nearly swallowed the blue iris. Sharp breaths, rapid and shallow, a brow soaked in sweat, eyes wild… it all looked like a classic panic attack.

“Here. Sit up. I’ll get you some juice or a sucker or something.”

The man actually obeyed. He sprung up into a sitting position faster than she would have thought possible, legs so far over the edge they grazed the floor.

Luna rummaged in the cupboard by her little desk where she kept bottles of water, juice crystals and suckers. She reserved the sugar stash for clients who went low while she was tattooing. There was nothing worse than a sobbing client or someone on the verge of passing out.

She grabbed a red sucker and mixed up some peach juice. Her gloves were still on and it made taking the cap off the water bottle nothing short of hell. She finally had everything ready and spun, completely unnerved.

The guy’s breathing wasn’t so shallow or rapid but his face still had the cagey, wild look, a look that wasn’t quite human.

“Here.” Luna extended the sucker. She knew she was utterly ridiculous. It was the last thing the guy needed.

Surprisingly, he reached out and took it. The water bottle too. He made short work of the cap, tipped the bottle back and drained the peach juice in one long gulp. He threw the bottle beside him, onto the table and unwrapped the sucker.

“Okay…” Luna whispered. “Are you going to make it? We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

The guy talked around the sucker, which made his words slightly slurred and strangely adorable. There was nothing like seeing a man who was so large he seemed to fill up the entire room. She was captivated by those lips. Lips that were fuller than any man should have the right to. Pink. A little chapped because he didn’t look like he gave a shit about dry skin, but still full and utterly kissable. Would they taste like the sugar from the juice or that sucker?

Fuck. Luna gave herself a mental shake. The guy was trouble. She knew that. She knew all about his kind and the last thing in the world she needed was a guy like him coming into her life like a wrecking ball and tearing down everything she’d worked so hard to build.

“Yah. Just start. I’ll be fine once you start.”

Great. Wasn’t that reassuring? She stammered out a response to cover the massive discomfort squeezing her own insides. “What’s the issue? Something is going on. I don’t like tattooing under pressure like that. It makes me worried… I… it’s going to hurt. The back isn’t exactly gentle. You know that right? I promise we can get through it though-”

“It’s not that,” the stranger said on a long, shaky inhale. “I’ll lay back down and just start. I’ll… deal. You don’t have to be worried about hurting me.”

Okay so how fucked up is this? Luna realized her hands were shaking. She stripped off her soiled gloves and threw them in the trash. While the guy settled himself back on the table she donned another pair of black gloves.

She settled back in as well, onto her rolling chair. She felt normal again when she picked up her tattoo gun. The buzzing settled her own nerves. Barely. Something is so not right about this. I don’t even know his name. She realized she could do something about that. Just ask. Even if he lied to her, it would be better than nothing.

Luna’s hand settled on heated skin, so hot it burned through the thickness of her gloves. She took a deep breath while he held his and started in on the first line. He didn’t move. Still didn’t breathe. Didn’t react. Whatever had been going on seemed to have passed.

She stared, for a second, at that broad back, the back she had found so damn sexy the day before. She’d spent a restless night unable to erase those images from her mind. She’d thought she was crazy, that she was making something out of nothing. She was wrong. Those improbably broad shoulders, rippling muscles and bronzed skin affected her the same way it had the day before.

What does he feel like? Better yet, what does he taste like? The urge to lower her face to his back and inhale his strong masculine scent was so great she barely managed to remain sitting upright. Fuck. Get a hold of yourself.

“So… what’s your name?” Luna asked shakily, because she needed to say something in order to stop herself from doing something completely unprofessional. She waited. Silence. She laid down a line before she paused to dip the gun in the little pot of black ink sitting on her side table.

The guy hesitated. She couldn’t see his face of course but there was a quick little indrawn breath, a gentle rasp barely audible over the buzz of the gun. She touched him as little as possible as she started in on another line.

“Jack.” The quietly uttered word echoed through the room.

“Jack.” Luna chewed on that. Yah. It seemed right. She believed him though she was surprised he’d been honest with her. “Well, Jack. How does that feel? Alright?”

“Yah,” he ground out. “I’ll live.”

So. A sense of humour. His voice was gruff but Luna didn’t miss the attempt at sarcasm that was supposed to be funny.

“Well, you just tell me if you need a break. I really want to put this outline on but we’re going to be here for a while. Probably half the night. If you need me to stop, just let me know and I’ll figure something out. Mark the stencil or something.”

“I won’t tell you to stop. Just do what you need to do.”

Luna nodded. He couldn’t see her but he would probably take her silence for assent. He didn’t seem like the kind of man who used many words.

She settled in for a long night, a backbreaking night after a full day of clients already. If she wasn’t getting paid triple for this, she wouldn’t have done it. She kept telling herself that. She clung to that because she needed to. Because any other reason didn’t deserve consideration. Because the fact that she might just have done the work for free, just to see him again, was absolutely not worth dwelling on.