Three Dirty Secrets (Blindfold Club #4) (6 page)

“Regan.”

My eyelids fluttered open to stare up at him. He had a sponge in one hand and used the other to gently urge my bra strap out of the way. I wished the latex wasn’t between his fingers and my skin.

“Now is when I give my standard lecture about tattoos being expensive, difficult, and painful to remove.” The cold sponge swiped over my shoulder. “More painful than getting the tattoo in the first place, they say.”

He set down the sponge and picked up a razor, skimming the blade lightly over the surface of my skin, being as gentle as possible over the raised, uneven scar. The sponge wiped again, cleaning the surface, and my skin tingled as it dried.

Silas retrieved the design he’d redrawn in marker. The transfer paper was set against my scar, and the sponge swiped once more. He peeled the paper down, revealing his guide.

“Be sure you want this,” he said, his gaze on the art. “Be sure you’re going to wake up in five years and still want this.”

Five years. It was almost impossible to think that far ahead, given my job, but I felt more certain about this than anything else.

“I’m sure.”

His blue eyes flicked back to mine, and his expression was . . . pleased?

“But I might cry like a little bitch,” I whispered, nervous.

His laugh was warm. “I doubt it. Usually it’s the big guys who whine. Women? Their threshold’s higher, or they’re better at coping, because I don’t get complaints.”

“Of course you don’t. You’re fucking hot.”

Silas’s movements slowed as he opened the needle from the packaging.

“Sorry,” I said. “Nervous ‘me’ gets really honest.”

“Can’t say I mind.” When he finally seemed ready, he pulled a stool out from under the cabinet and sat, rolling up to me with the needle in hand, the cord trailing behind. A gloved hand braced itself on my shoulder, his forearm resting between my breasts. He was so comfortable getting close. Silas’s face was only a breath away from mine.

Could he feel the tremble in my body? Just the proximity of the needle made my skin want to crawl away.

“Ready?”

“No,” I said. “Just do it.”

Chapter

FIVE

Silas pushed the button and the buzzing began. Every muscle in my body tensed.
Oh God, oh God 
. . .

“Relax,” he whispered. “Deep breaths.”

I took them through my clenched teeth. Sharp pain etched into me, like a fingernail scraping my skin off. Then, another. And another. I stared at him, watching every stroke of the needle and the concentration that creased his forehead.

I sipped air in a hiss as he got deeper into the scar. It hurt. I bit down on my lip, trying not to show it. Pain, like fear, was weakness. It was a lifetime of endless scratches, each burning just a tiny bit more than the last, until I was about to break. I couldn’t do it anymore—

Silas wiped a towel over the skin, giving me a temporary reprieve, just long enough to regroup. “I’d like to lodge a complaint,” I said.

He almost looked amused. “I thought you said I was too hot for complaints.”

“With that needle you’re just all right.”

He smiled softly. I held my breath as he went back for more.

“You need to keep breathing.” His voice was soothing. “When you’re tense it hurts more. And seeing you in pain subconsciously makes me want to rush.”

He paused the needle and his gaze connected with mine. Whatever he was thinking about, I could tell instantly I wasn’t going to like it.

“You could try talking. It’ll keep you from holding your breath.”

I blinked, annoyed that he’d stopped. I just wanted this uncomfortable process over. “Talking,” I said. “About what?”

“You could tell me about the bad memory.”

The sexy fucker wasn’t playing fair. I broke his gaze and stared at the floor.

“C’mon.” He squeezed my shoulder tenderly. “You’re letting me help you change the memory. I’d kind of like to know what it was.”

I didn’t talk about it. Not with my family, or my handler Shane, and never with Matt. I’d only said what I needed to, what I thought the psych evaluator wanted to hear, to get me cleared for field work again.

I was getting tired of people pushing me, but I’d always been stubborn. Shane had asked me to talk about it with someone; it didn’t seem like it mattered who. Confiding in a stranger had more appeal than someone I knew. Silas’s judgement could only last as long as I wanted to remain around him.

Wasn’t I here because I wanted to let go?

When I sighed, the blue eyes clouded with doubt. “Hey,” his voice was low, “I get you don’t want to talk about it, and it’s none of my fucking business—”

“I got shot.”

His lips pressed together for a moment. It didn’t seem like this was news to him, he must have suspected it was a gunshot wound. “Ex-husband?”

It was interesting that he immediately jumped to domestic violence, but that was the most likely assumption. “No, we weren’t married.”

Assembling the words was difficult, but he said nothing. His shoulders lifted with a breath. My hand wrapped around his thick wrist, which rested on my chest.

“If I’m going to keep talking, you have to keep working.”

He nodded. The needle dug back in, but at least my focus was elsewhere, struggling to pick out what parts of the story I should tell. The pain was more uncomfortable rather than acute now.

“His name was Paul. I was young, and naïve—” which was true,
“
—and fell in love.” Which was not true.

Not exactly.

My feelings for Paul had been confusing. He’d been my point of entry into the separatist cell, which I’d wormed my way into acting as his girlfriend. I’d played him, compiling evidence against his family until we had enough to arrest.

I spoke over the hum of Silas’s work. “I was too stupid to see he was into some shit, and way over his head, before it was too late.” Couldn’t the same have been said of me? I inhaled deeply and blew it out, mediating my breathing. “He came from a family that was anti-government, but I didn’t know how far Paul was willing to follow them until I caught him putting together pipe bombs.”

That was definitely true.

The forearm beneath my hand tensed and Silas froze. “What?”

“I went straight to the authorities.” Not really a lie, I just left out that I was part of the authorities. “But I thought he was a good guy, whose family had twisted him into this person he wasn’t.”

I couldn’t feel the scratches anymore. It was cold in the bay, and numbness took over as I thought about the morning in Paul’s garage.

“I was so fucking stupid,” I admitted, “but I
cared
about him. I told him what I’d done, and my betrayal . . .” My heart slammed in my chest. “He lost it. You gotta understand, there’s a whole ‘you’ll never take me alive’ mentality with these people. Getting caught and going to prison is more of a failure than dying.”

The expression on Silas’s face was hard to interpret as the hand he used to steady himself smoothed down across my skin, fingers trailing. All the way until his palm was pressed over my rapidly beating heart, just at the swell of my breast. The action was disorienting and exciting, and it created a warm spot in the numbness.

“I fought him for the gun.” I’d been so sure there wasn’t anything stowed in the garage, and like everything else, I’d been wrong. “I don’t know if he was aiming for my heart and missed, or if he’d meant for me to live.”

The pads of Silas’s fingers moved subtly, triggering a shiver from me. It got me to push through the end.

“After he’d shot me, Paul put the gun to his head and . . . he was gone.”

Silas jolted. I left out the part where Paul had been crying and cursing me for making him fall in love with a narc bitch, but hearing that I’d witnessed Paul’s suicide made the color drain from Silas’s face.

“Fuck.” He pressed down subtly, like he wanted to strengthen the connection. “
Fuck
, Regan.” Concern flooded his silver eyes.

I’d grown bitter about people looking at me like I was pitiful. Yeah, I’d fucked up. I’d begged Paul not to do it. So not seeing pity, but instead concern from a near stranger, did something unexpected. The angry response I usually had was nowhere to be found. All I wanted was to reassure him I was okay and to make him feel comfortable. I’d spent so much time undercover, worried about my own ass, it was foreign and wonderful to think about someone else’s feelings for once.

“It was rough.” My voice was unsteady. “I got through it. I want to put it behind me.” My fingers brushed up the length of his forearm until my hand was set on top of his. “Thank you . . . for helping.”

He held my gaze for an impossibly long moment. God, I’d been fucking lucky. If I had walked into a random tattoo shop, I wouldn’t have had any of this. Silas hadn’t just created the perfect art, he’d given me the best experience possible. Nudged me into the chair, coaxed the story from me.

When he wiped the towel over the tender skin, it wasn’t as if he’d simply wiped the memory away, but he dulled the sting somehow. His art would always be there to remind me of a better memory than the one beneath.

“No, thank you,” he said.

“For what?”

Silas’s skilled hand resumed passing ink into my skin. “For telling me. For wearing my art on your body.”

More warmth rushed through me, spreading like lava. “You’re welcome.” The emotional swing left me not knowing up from down. I swallowed thickly, needing to move to a topic that was safe. “Tell me about you. Did you always want to be an artist?”

For a long moment there was only the buzz of the machine. “Yeah.”

That was all he was going to answer with, after what I’d shared? I opened my mouth to protest—

“I did an apprenticeship at a tattoo place out in the suburbs and took construction jobs when the work was slow. I started doing freelance photography about five years ago, and that helped me save up to lease gallery space.”

“And it’s going well for you? You said you don’t do tattoos anymore.”

“Only for favors.” His tone was . . . coy.

“What kind of favor does Joseph owe you?”

A strange look developed in his eyes. The faintest hint of amusement? “Not Joseph. You’ll owe me the favor.”

I drew in a breath to push the irritation back, but it was barely contained. I didn’t like owing people. “The kind of favor where I pay you in cash as soon as we’re done?”

“Nope.”

“I’m not fucking you.” Wait a minute, no need to send mixed signals. “I mean, not in exchange for tattoo work.”

“But you’ll fuck me in exchange for something else?”

His grin was impossibly wide and the irritation turned inward. Well, I painted myself into that corner, didn’t I? No point dancing around it. “Yeah. The exchange is you get to have sex with me and I get to have a hard dick.”

Silas’s grin froze. It looked like his brain stopped working—everything behind his eyes was blank.

I pushed forward, goading him. “Are you up for that transaction?”

“Yeah, sure am.” He answered quickly, like he didn’t want to miss out on a limited time opportunity.

“Great. Then finish your art so you can take me back to your place and we can . . . transact.”

His tone was playful. “You don’t beat around the bush.”

“When I see something I want, I take it.”

“Yeah?” His needle dug in, reminding me where we were. Everything in my focus had gone blurry except for him. “I’m the same,” he said. “It’s why I wasn’t about to let you bail on getting in my chair.”

Good God, he needed to hurry up. Fucking him in this tattoo shop, a curtain the only thing keeping us out of sight, sounded more appealing each passing second. My gaze followed the needle as it traveled over my uneven skin, and I silently urged him to finish.

“So, what’s the favor?” I asked.

“I’m hosting a show at my gallery next Tuesday for a new artist. Come with me.”

I turned my head away and sighed. “Like a date?” It made this hard to be a one-time thing if I went out with him
after
the sex.

“Could be.” His voice was strange, as if the thought had only just occurred to him. “After the showing, I want your help photographing the pieces.”

“My help,” I said, dubious. “How would I do that?”

“You’d display it. Model beside it.”

My focus snapped back to him. “I’d do what?”

“You’re a beautiful woman, and his artwork is predominantly green. Your red hair is the perfect complement to it—”

I was currently undercover. Too risky. “No thanks.”

“—and I’d like to shoot nudes.”

Was he fucking with me? I searched his expression, but he looked entirely serious.

“It’d be tasteful and sexy, I promise,” Silas continued. “I won’t show your face, and I can Photoshop out the tat. No one will know it’s you, except for us.”