Late the next afternoon, Zoe turned when the tattoo parlor door opened, setting off the bell that let her and the guys know that a customer was entering. When she saw Scars standing there, staring at her, all huge and muscular in a jean jacket and his cut, she started, blushed, dropped a stack of papers.
“Heeeeeyyyy, Zoe,” he said, still staring, drawing out the first word so that it sounded vaguely like a threat. She suddenly panicked that he was going to say something about the Friday night in his office, about his fingering her to orgasm on his desk, right there in front of the guys. She was pretty sure that he was pissed about her running out of the office, and she’d made one hell of an effort to avoid him all day – and now here he was, looking like he had plenty to say. “How you doing on this lovely day?”
“Good,” she whispered, picking up the invoices and order forms, planning her escape out the back door, through her office and the storage room. “You?”
“Mmmm-hmmm.”
She looked at him again, that sound instantly throwing her back to Friday night. She flushed, then stiffened her spine. If he was going to let the cat out of the bag, fine. He could just go ahead and stop messing around. She’d deal with it.
“So – can I help you?” she asked crisply. “You need something?”
“Actually, he’s here for me,” Arrow said, appearing at her side and pulling his long, black hair into a ponytail. “You ready, man?”
“He’s here –” Zoe was perplexed. “You mean – for a session?”
“Yep,” Scars said, wandering over and past her, like he barely knew her. Like he had no idea how she looked naked, or how she tasted, or what it felt like to have her bucking and begging under his touch. “I’m getting another tattoo.”
“Oh, right,” she muttered, not sure if she felt relieved or disappointed. “Well… I’ll let you guys get on with it, then.”
“Mmmm-hmmmm,” Scars said, the sound positively loaded with meaning; she felt his breath on her skin, and she silently cursed him. “See ya.”
Zoe fled to her office, looked at the laptop clock. Argh. Two more hours before she could leave. She thought that two hours in her office was just the perfect way to spend the rest of her work day.
Far, far better than going out there.
**
An hour later, Arrow knocked on the door jamb, and Zoe looked up.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” she responded, glancing at the clock again, knowing that his shift had just ended. “You done?”
“Not quite.”
“You need some overtime? Or you want to come in later tomorrow?”
“Normally, yeah, I’d be open to either. But I got to get to the dentist, Zee, and nobody else is here to finish Scars’ tat.”
Time seemed to slow to a crawl, then actually move backwards. “Ummmm. What?”
“He’s about twenty minutes from being done, and everyone’s gone.”
“What about Viking?” she said. “He had a client an hour ago, and no way he’s done already.”
“Yeah. The guy never showed, and Viking just left to run some errands with Rebel.”
“Saint?” she asked, just before she remembered that it was his half-day. “Oh, right. Damn.”
“So you’ll do it?” Arrow asked her. “Seriously, boss, it’s twenty minutes. Thirty, tops. You’ll get home to Keira on time, I swear to you.”
“And Scars can’t come back tomorrow?”
“Not really. He and Wolf are off tomorrow for a few days.”
“They are?” she said, alarmed. “Is something wrong?”
“Nah. Not really.” Arrow hesitated, because it was club business, really, and Zoe’s status wasn’t totally clear to him, for many reasons. “It’s – a memorial thing, kind of. They want to go and pay their respects to… someone.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, fully aware that he was being evasive, not liking it, but not really willing to push. “Ohhhh-kaaaay. So I guess Scars doesn’t want to wait to finish his tattoo until he gets back from this mystery trip?”
Arrow cocked his dark head at her, looking speculative. “Some reason why you don’t want to finish the ink, Zee?”
“No!” she blustered, blushing. “It’s just – I don’t like – well. Nothing. It’s fine. I’ll do it.”
“You sure?” Arrow teased her. “Maybe I’ll tell him you’re humming and hawing?”
“I’m not doing either of those things,” she said with great dignity. “Tell him that I’ll be right out.”
“I shall do that, Zee.” Arrow’s black eyes sparkled. “See you tomorrow.”
“You know it.”
Arrow left, and a minute later, Zoe heard the bell on the front door tinkle. Then silence.
Oh, God. I’m all alone here with him. Jesus Lord, give me strength. And please, please let his jeans still be on.
Or maybe not.
Gah.
Without stopping to consider why she was doing this, Zoe lunged at her purse, got out her small makeup bag. She opened her compact and dusted powder across her nose, put on a bit of blush, even used her lipstick. She gazed into her own eyes, and then lined them with a bit of gold pencil, liking how the color picked up the tiny gold flecks in her eyes, and her blonde curls.
She smiled at herself, frowned at the stiffness, tried again. Then she shook her head, annoyed at herself for caring how she looked to damn Scars Innis, and threw the makeup back into her purse. She got to her feet, went into the main work area.
“Hi,” she started, then stopped dead in her tracks at the sight greeting her. “Uhhh…”
He was lying on his back on Arrow’s client table. Shirtless. His arms bent at the elbows, his hands under his head, cradling it like a pillow. The position made those incredible arms bulge with muscle and tendon; his shoulders were huge and hard. His broad, tattooed chest was rising and lowering with every breath, and she licked her lips as she remembered running her tongue over that strong collarbone. Her eyes followed the line of hair down his body to the groove of muscle just above his belted waist, loving the ‘v’ that disappeared into his jeans.
God help her. The man was nothing but gorgeous. Sex on legs. Hot as hell.
And she was nothing but dead meat.
Scars turned his head to look at her, and those blue eyes flashed. “Hi.”
“Ahem,” she replied. “So – what are we doing?”
He smiled. Slow. Hot. “What do you want to do, baby?”
She flushed – yet again! – and spun to find some gloves. “I mean, what’s this new tattoo that I’m finishing?”
“Here.” Scars patted his right shoulder, and she approached warily, then walked around the table to get a better view. “Nothing too dramatic, as you can see.”
She furrowed her brow at his massive upper arm. “Uh… so it’s not a new tattoo? It’s an addition to an existing one? The sun and garden one?”
“Yep.”
“Alright.” She squinted a bit, trying to recall the tattoo that night in the back room, knowing that it had changed, but struggling to see how. “What – what’s different, exactly?”
“The number here is new,” Scars said, tracing the Roman numeral for ‘twenty-three’ in black ink. Zoe looked more closely, saw that the tree was scattered with the numbers from ‘one’ all the way to ‘twenty-three’ now, and she wondered what they signified. “And Arrow added a new sunburst here.” He pointed at the bottom of the Aztec sun.
“Oh, right. OK.” Zoe nodded. “What else do you want added, then?”
“A rose encased in ice,” he said. “Next to the sun… right here.”
“A rose in ice,” she repeated. “OK, coming right up. Relax.”
He nodded, settled back into position, and Zoe thought of a large jungle cat in repose. Huge and dangerous and maybe a bit sleepy in the sun, but able to go from drowsy kitten to killer beast in seconds.
You got this, girl. Skin and ink, just skin and ink. Come on, now.
She checked the ink bottles that Arrow had placed on the glass work table, saw red, green, white, black, and grey. He’d also brought out a few fresh needles, and lots of wipes and antiseptic and disinfectant. She checked the tattoo gun, saw that it was ready, and adjusted the light a bit.
“OK,” she said, switching the ink from yellow to black, and putting in a new needle, just to feel like she was starting from scratch. “Here we go. How big?”
“The same size as the Roman numerals.”
“Gotcha.”
Zoe fired up the gun, pumped the foot switch a few times, and leaned over Scars, mightily ignoring how great he smelled. Over the next twenty-five minutes, she focused on nothing but the tiny patch of skin that she was inking, on every individual rose petal and leaf, on every crack in the ice that she added for depth.
She most definitely did not notice the sinewy curves of his muscles under her fingers, or the way that his incredible chest rose and fell with every breath, or his tight, hard abs that had jumped under her kisses, or the smattering of dark hair that trailed down his chest and stomach and disappeared into his well-worn jeans.
No. She saw none of that.
Yeah, right.
She worked quietly and efficiently, but not too quickly. Despite her anger at being put in this position, and her eagerness in wanting to shift his hot ass off the table ASAP, she found that she actually really cared about making this tiny tattoo beautiful. She pictured the flower as something delicate, with an inner strength and light, that protected it from the icy cold, even as it was trapped by it. She wanted the rose to have grace and power, to have confidence in its own vulnerability.
She finished, moved the light a bit more to check a petal or two, then smiled.
“What do you think?” she asked, pulling off her gloves. “Is it OK?”
Scars didn’t answer, so she glanced up.
“Scars?”
He was staring at her, just staring like he’d never seen her before. Startled, she jumped a bit.
“What’s wrong? You don’t like it?”
“I love it,” he responded, his voice lower than usual. “It’s… it’s incredible. It’s got such a… what? A light, maybe. A quiet glow. Strength and fragility. It’s waiting for spring to set it free.”
“Good.” She smiled, rolled her chair backwards and away a few feet. “That’s what I was going for.”
He nodded, swung his feet over the side of the table to face her, and suddenly, she saw his scars under the bright work light. She blinked as she saw them – really saw them – for the first time.
God, they must have been born out of such pain. Agonizing pain. From the first night they’d met and she’d shaken his hand, Zoe had been totally confident and sure that they were burns, but suddenly, she wanted to hear from Scars how he’d been so damaged by fire… what… twenty years ago? Maybe a bit more? He’d have been a teenager, surely? Her eyes traveled up the raised, scarred roads of hell that he carried with him, up and across his chest, down both arms to his hands, then back up to his face.
Scars had seen her expression change and sharpen, seen where she was looking, and he’d sat very still. She moved her eyes to meet his now, and that’s when she caught herself. She muttered an apology, started to push the rolling chair back a bit.
Scars grabbed her hand. “Hey. It’s OK. You can ask.”
“No. Oh, no, Scars. It’s private. It’s none of my business.”
“It was a car accident,” he said softly. “I was nineteen.”
She gasped, horrified, stood up. She came closer to him, close enough that her thighs were touching the fronts of his knees. “The car caught fire?”
“It was on fire, with me inside.” Scars paused, wondering if now was the time to tell her about his parents, decided to go ahead. “I was trying to –”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice gentle, and he paused, a bit taken aback at the interruption, and this side of Zoe that seemed to appear without warning, without rhyme or reason. “You must have been in so much pain, for such a long time.”
“Actually, the pain was bad for only a couple of weeks,” he said, rushing to reassure her. “And off and on, depending on the drugs. Really, Zoe… I was mostly numb after the first two days. Nerve damage, you know.”
She nodded, and then, before he quite knew what was about to happen, she reached out. He held his breath, absolutely unable to believe that she was voluntarily touching him. There was nothing sexual about any of this, but he didn’t care. Having her hands on him at all, in any capacity, and for any reason, made him indescribably happy.
She traced the scars on his chest, on his arm, on his hand. Then she worked her way back up his body, to his face. She put her fingertips on his cheek, lightly resting them on the really bad scar on his face, the big one that started just under his right eye and extended down past his cheekbone. She stopped, held his gaze. Just held it. Her fingers on his face, his heart in her hand, they looked at each other.
They sat and breathed, in the space that they’d created and were holding together. Time stood still and they saw each other. For the first time that she could remember, Zoe wanted to see a man; she also wanted to be seen.
When she kissed him, it was the most natural thing in the world, in that space and time. It was impossible to not kiss him, to not want to be close to him. In a way, she was maybe kissing all that hurt and pain that his nineteen-year-old self had been through, trying to assuage it and offer him some comfort. In another way, she was very much kissing the man that he’d become, this tough, uncompromising, complicated man that she was equal parts afraid of and drawn to.
The fear was silenced for now, though; all she felt was the attraction.
And the dark, molten, desperate need. Both hers and his.
It was all rising between them, so big and overwhelming. Bigger than her hesitation, and excuses, and logic. It was bigger than her past, in some ways, and much, much bigger than the tiny voice whispering caution into her ear.
It was so overwhelming that it washed away her determination to not do this again, to never ever again let this man into her body, to not even once more give in to her need. But she was betrayed by her neediness and weakness – or was it that she finally trusted her strength? She pulled away, just a bit, rested her forehead against his.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, looping her arms around his neck, carefully avoiding the fresh tattoos. “For Friday night. I – I freaked out. I didn’t want Wolf to see what we’d just… well. You know. What we’d done.”
“Are you ashamed to be seen with me, Zoe?” He held his breath, praying hard that he was wrong about this. “Ashamed of what we did?”
“No,” she said, startled. “No, Scars. That’s not it, I swear.”
“Then what was it that made you run out of there? The truth now, baby.”
“The truth.” She sighed heavily, and he held her closer. “OK, well…the truth is that I’m not really sure about… well. You.”
“What? What about me?” He stroked her cheek. “Don’t you get it, Zoe? All you need to know about me is that you’ve got me, hook, line, and sinker. You belong with me. We belong together.”
“See, that’s the thing, though. We don’t.”
“OK, what? We don’t what?”
“I can’t belong to anyone, not ever. I don’t want to belong to anyone. Least of all you.”
“Least of all me?” he said, the anger is his voice clear. “What the fuck, Zoe? What does that mean?”
“It means that I don’t belong to anyone now, Scars, and I don’t ever want to in the future. It’s not safe, being that dependent on someone, being that open and vulnerable. I’m not yours, not even close, and the fact that you keep sort of… I don’t know… bullshitting that I’m special to you when I’m not, it makes me run screaming.”
“Hey,” he said, outraged, but she cut him off.
“ It – it makes me wonder what the game is, you know? Like you’re setting me up with lying promises, and I’m wondering when the other shoe is going to drop, and when you’re going to move on to the next stupid whore. I mean – the sex stuff is great, and the chemistry is off the charts. OK? I’ll give you all of that, hands-down, and if we just kept it like that, maybe I could hack it. But you don’t mean it when you say anything beyond how hot you think I am.” She took a deep breath. “Especially when you try to claim ownership of some kind. That’s the biggest lie of all – that’s the one thing that I know you don’t mean. You can’t mean it.”
“Stop saying that you don’t belong with me,” he growled at her. “That you don’t belong to me.”
“I don’t belong with you.” Zoe tried to mount some kind of coherent defense, though she was fully aware that it was way too little, and far, far too late. Damn that space that they’d created; damn her own need for him. “I don’t want to belong to you.”
“Liar.” His voice and eyes were both uncompromising. “You want to be mine… you want it to happen as bad as I do.”
“Scars…” She shook her head, and his name came out as a sob. A tear slid down her cheek, and she turned away, humiliated to be so weak in front of him.
Right away, his face and stance changed. On a less-hard man, it’d all look like softening, but Scars never looked sweetly-soft, not even when he was being gentle. Instead, the change somehow made him look more dangerous. Harder. Angrier.
The truth was that Zoe’s sudden lowering of her guard this evening had shown him and made him understand – for the first time – her clear distress at being made vulnerable with a man. And that made him fucking furious, because he knew now what that probably meant, what had quite possibly happened. How he’d missed it before, he had no idea, but he saw it now, and it couldn’t be unseen.
All he wanted to do was to kill whoever had scared and hurt her this much. He didn’t care who they were, where they were – he’d hunt them down, and make sure there was nothing left of them. She was his, and that made her safety and peace-of-mind his job, and to hell with any goddamn consequences.
“Don’t cry, beautiful,” he said roughly. “Just don’t, OK? It fucking tears me apart when I see that.”
Zoe took a deep breath, fighting for calm, but calm was just about the last thing that she felt. Why did this keep happening with him? How the hell had this man gotten so far, and so deep, under her skin? And why did she keep coming back for more, knowing who and what he was?
Is this more than just physical chemistry? Holy God, is this more than anything I’ve ever had before, with anyone?
Scars saw the confusion all over her face, saw the fear in her eyes, and he found himself wondering, yet again, what she was hiding behind that gorgeous mask.
“Zoe. Look at me. Right now.”
As a final, desperate act of defense and defiance, she shut her eyes.
“No.” So, so impossibly gently, Scars kissed her eyelids. “Look at me, baby.”
“I – I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because.” Her voice broke as the truth escaped from her without warning. “If I do, then I’ll crack wide open. You’ll see me, Scars, and then I’ll just – I’ll tell you everything.”
“And would that be so bad?” Scars traced the curve of her lips, knowing that he’d already seen her in ways that she had no idea that she’d given away. When she came under his fingers, his mouth, his cock, she gave herself so completely. He’d told her the other night in his office that he’d seen her soul shining in those green depths, and that hadn’t been a lie. “Letting me know you? See you?”
“Yes.” Zoe shuddered at his tender touch, halfway lost again already. “It would be the worst thing I can think of.”
“Why?” he said, baffled. “Why the hell do you think this?”
Zoe shook her head again, regaining control now. Enough of this bullshit; just enough. She’d been tap-dancing around it with this man for weeks now, blowing hot and then cold, running to him and having mind-blowing orgasms, then shutting down, and running away. What she was doing was immature, and pathetic, and unfair – to both of them. Time to come clean, to just lay it on the line. Sure enough, he’d leave her alone as soon as he heard the truth.
She opened her eyes, and he saw that the armor was back up now. The heart-wrenching flashes of hurt, fear and fragility that he’d seen in those astonishing eyes were long gone, and all that remained was Zoe’s usual cool, icy reserve.
My rose has returned to her little ice cage. She’s encased herself and made herself untouchable, again.
Hurt and angry at her retreat, he wanted to keep her here until she saw that he wasn’t going to hurt her, fucking not ever. He also wanted to scoop her up into his arms, take her home, and hold her until she felt safe enough to tell him anything and everything. But her next words kicked him in the balls and ripped his heart out.
“What I’ve been trying to tell you is that I can’t trust you, Scars,” she said quietly. “I can’t count on you.”
“You can’t –”
“No.” Her tone was final, closed. “I can’t.”
He paused for a few seconds, swallowing his slowly-building-hurt. “Why are you saying this to me, Zoe? What have I ever done to make you think that you can’t trust me, or count on me?”
“It’s not what you’ve done. It’s who you are.”
“And who am I?”
“A Road Devil. An MC member.” Her green eyes were sharp. “A guy who thinks of women as possessions, and club property, and easy fucks in a back room. A guy who has a shady-as-hell past as Kirk Jensen’s lap dog and best buddy, and I’d lay money, a guy who’s killed people. A guy that I don’t want around any small child, and most especially not mine. ”
“OK, stop right there.” Now he was seriously pissed. “How the fuck can you have me so wrong?”
She shrugged, struggling to stay nonchalant. Not so damn easy to do when held tight against this man’s hard body, but she was determined to give it her best shot. “I don’t think I do have you wrong.”
“Oh, you sure as hell do.” He took a deep breath, tightened his grip, and launched right on in. “First up, baby? I don’t think of women as possessions, or brainless things, or holes to fuck. I’d never insult you like that, and you’re a real piece of work to think you can insult me like that. Second, yeah, I have a shady past setting up deals for the financial stability of the club, and yeah, I’ve sure as fuck killed people. Just like every other man in this place – including Wolf, Saint, Cole. If you want to know the circumstances, I’m happy to tell you, and then I think you’ll agree that – in every single damn case – it was kill or be killed.”
Zoe looked away from those burning eyes, hating the treacherous little burst of hope that jumped up in her chest. Oh, God, a part of her wanted to believe that Scars was actually a decent guy. Dammit.
“Finally – and this is the big one, so you listen good and close – I’d never do anything to hurt Keira, and you’d better get that straight in your goddamned head right this minute. Of all the things that you’ve said to me, accused me of, flung in my face, that is – by fucking far – the absolute worst. For you to think for one damn second that I’d ever put her in danger, or lay a finger on her in violence, or… I don’t know…even shout at her or scare her, that’s the lowest thing that you could ever say to me. You’re way out of line, Zoe, and you owe me an apology for that, if for nothing else.”
“I…”
“Actually, you know what?” He shoved her away from him now, got to his feet. “Forget it. For real, this time.” He retrieved his shirt and cut, threw them both over his head and on his body in record time. “I know we’ve had our squabbles and arguments, and then we both kinda cool off, and talk, and hot talk turns to kissing and then we’re all over each other. At least, until you decide that I’m an asshole once again, and then you throw shit in my face, and run away and leave me wondering what the hell I did wrong this time. Then you develop fucking amnesia, and come one back and kiss me, and then we just go into a whole new damn cycle.”
“Scars…”
“I’m done,” he said abruptly. “I’m sick of it. You’ve clearly made up your mind about me, though God knows why, because I’ve been nothing but decent to you. I don’t know what you’re holding against me, but I’m truly disappointed that you haven’t had the fucking guts to just come out and tell me. Let me explain or defend myself, and if I couldn’t do that, I’d at least know what the issue was.” He turned, and his back was huge and furious. “Instead, you’ve chosen the coward’s way. You attack and run, and never ever tell me what I did. Well, you wanted me to leave you alone, and this time, you got your wish. Dragging Keira into it – that was the line that I never thought you’d cross, and you did. ”
“Please…”
“No.”
And when she watched him walk out this door, this time, she knew that he was gone. That she’d really made sure that he was gone.
And unlike the other times that she’d driven him away, she didn’t even try to justify her behavior with the reasons she’d been holding close and tight for the past six years. Her reasons were crap, she saw now, they were utter crap, and they were nothing but excuses for her to run scared.
Zoe remembered something that she’d had to read back in high school English lit class, an absolutely torturous book with endless individual stories written in Ye Olde English. There was a dragon in one of the tales, and the dragon clutched its grievance and rage to its chest, and chewed on its maw, night and day, getting sicker and more twisted with each passing year. It stubbornly held onto its resentment and harmed itself – and never once did the dragon think to just express what its goddamn problem was. To set itself free from its own misery, using its own voice.
For six years, Zoe had been chewing on her maw, clutching the events of that night to her breast in a death grip – and not once had she talked to Scars about any of it, told him how it had colored and tainted her views on him.
Scars was right. She was a coward.
Worse, she was a coward who’d punished a man for things that had literally nothing to do with him.
Scars hadn’t been in the bar back room that night six years ago. He’d been in the MC, of course, been one of their ilk, but they’d never even laid eyes on each other back then. And if Zoe were being honest with herself, she knew that if Scars had stumbled upon that whole awful, terrifying scene, he’d have stopped his fellow MC members.
Yes, he would have. He’d have protected her, a total stranger. He’d have roared at them to get off her, and he’d have covered her with clothes off his own body. He’d have chosen decency over brotherhood. Just like Wolf did.
Wolf. I need to talk to Wolf. It’s time.