Full Contact (Redemption #3)(25)
At seven p.m., Christos finally calls it quits to head out to a gig. Rose leaves with him, and I go to the café to grab some snacks to keep Duncan and me going for the next few hours.
By the time I return, we have three fighters in the fancy glass-and-leather waiting area and Ray is standing beside my chair.
I scowl at Duncan, who is making an appointment for Homicide Hank, and he shrugs. “He said he had you booked for the rest of the evening.”
“He doesn’t,” I murmur through gritted teeth. “And I don’t want to see him.”
He lifts an eyebrow. “Look at him. I wasn’t about to tell a guy like that to get lost. I’m an artist. I need my fingers unbroken.”
With a huff, I hand him his food, and brace myself for more humiliation. But as I near the chair, humiliation is not what I feel. Instead, my body heats, my knees tremble, and my mind flies back to the moment we kissed in the alley and the searing pleasure of his touch.
Hot and intense, his eyes bore into me as I make my way to my station. But this time, I know where he stands, and it isn’t anywhere near me.
“Hi.” I fold my arms and lean against the counter, feigning a nonchalance I don’t feel in the least. “Long time no see.”
He draws in a deep breath and stares at me, drinking me in as if I quenched a thirst in his soul. “Sia.” My name is a soft whisper on his sensual lips. “Jesus. Those boots—”
“Are made for walking. Which is what I was about to do. I didn’t think you’d be back.”
“Neither did I.”
After waiting a few fruitless moments for him to elaborate, I say, “I heard you missed your fight yesterday. Didn’t think it would ever happen.”
“Had to clean up a mess. Sort myself out.”
Puzzled, I frown. “Cryptic. My favorite type of explanation.”
“It was what it was.”
A smile tugs at my lips. “Even more cryptic. But then, that’s you.”
Ray laughs, easing the tension between us, and then his smile fades. “You weren’t at the fight.” A statement, not a question.
I give a casual shrug although I am already falling under his spell. Arousal floods through my veins, and my voice drops to an unintentional breathy whisper. “I had stuff to do.”
He tucks a wayward strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers leaving a delicious prickle behind, awakening the memory of his hand in my hair, the caress of his fingers, the pressure of his hand around my neck. Pleasure ripples down my spine. If this isn’t sexual chemistry, I don’t know what is. But how can I be so attracted to the kind of man I’ve been so careful to avoid? And why is he touching me after he walked away?
“You never missed a fight before.” His voice, deep, dark, and smooth, rumbles over me even as nausea grips my stomach. He noticed me at the fights. Does he know I was there to see him?
My hands clench and unclench by my sides. We stare at each other for so long, tension crackles between us, and I fully expect my cheeks to burst into flame. Finally, coward that I am, I break.
“Duncan said you wanted your ink. I won’t have time to do the whole piece, but I could do the outline.”
He nods and drops his hand. “Unless you got any other artists here who’ve been targeted by a street gang. Not keen on being interrupted again.”
Although he doesn’t smile when he speaks, his dry humor makes me laugh. “You think a street gang would dare set foot in Redemption? You guys would tear them to shreds.”
Ray grunts in assent and slides into the chair. “Damn right we would.”
He grips the bottom of his shirt to tug it off, and I beat a hasty retreat to the staff room, decorated in warm beiges and browns, with the excuse of needing to collect my equipment from the autoclave, but more to calm my nerves. For the last week, I’d resigned myself to never seeing him again, decided it was for the best. But now he’s back, and as hot as ever, and I’m just as ready to throw myself at him as I was before he left me in the alley. I have no shame. How can I still want him after he made it clear he’s not interested? How do normal people handle this kind of rejection? But, of course, they don’t have to handle it because slightly kinky sex doesn’t make them scream in panic and chase men away.
Ray is stripped to the waist when I return. Ignoring Duncan’s appreciative raised eyebrow at the hunk of manly perfection in my chair, I go through the process of washing and sterilizing his chest and shoulder, and applying the stencil. Then I prepare the tattoo machine, placing ink in the ink caps and removing the needles and tubes from the sterile pouches. This time, I manage to keep cool. He’s just an ordinary client. I’ll do his ink, he’ll pay his money, and then maybe I’ll see him once or twice around the gym before we return to Slim’s shop. There are no unintended squirts with the disinfectant, no imagined electricity between us. I am the epitome of a professional artist.
At least, on the outside.
Duncan plays an eclectic mix of indie pop and rock, and I manage to put aside all lustful thoughts of Ray and concentrate on the line work. My first day on the job, Slim told me art is sex. I wondered, if that were true, what it meant when I locked my real art away.
After Duncan finishes up with his last client and leaves for the night, I steel myself to look up, and almost burn under the heat of Ray’s gaze. “You want me to change the music? Not everyone likes Duncan’s indie pop mix.”