Chapter Two #2
The scars were worse in full light. There were twisted burns, skin grafts that didn’t quite match, as if the whole left side of his face and neck were a battlefield that had healed but never forgiven. He stood there and let her look.
Riley didn’t flinch. Didn’t need to.
Instead she lifted her other hand and traced the ridge along his cheekbone with the lightest touch.
“The man’s got great cheekbones,” she murmured. “And flippy hair.”
A sound escaped him that was half laugh and half groan. “Girl, I don’t know what flippy hair means.”
“Means you’ve got hair a girl wants to run her fingers through.” She demonstrated, working by touch to thread her fingers gently through the dark strands at his temple. “Like this.”
Dan closed his eyes for a second, like the touch hurt him in the best way.
When he opened them again, something had shifted. The wariness was there, but underneath it was something that was hotter. Hungrier.
“I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Lock up behind me this time. My replacement will stay sitting on the lot outside. And just in case you’re wondering, I think you’re dangerous, Riley Monroe,” he rasped, stepping back and away. Out of reach.
She let her hands fall to her sides and smiled at him, keeping it small, knowing she looked wicked. “You have no idea.”
He didn’t kiss her. Not yet.
But the way he stared at her said it was on his mind.
And she was thinking about it too.
***
Dan
Dan stepped out of the tattoo shop into the cooling night air, the door jingling shut behind him like a period at the end of a sentence he wasn’t ready to finish.
The air hit him sharp and dry, carrying the faint smell of distant woodsmoke.
He paused on the cracked sidewalk, rolled his shoulders, and felt the familiar sway of leather and the low-grade ache that lived in his knees these days.
Nine thirty. He’d be back at nine thirty. He’d already decided that before he’d even said it out loud.
He tied the bandana over the lower half of his face out of pure habit, it was muscle memory from years of not wanting to be looked at, then ambled over to where Rocker was sitting on his bike, feet on the handlebars.
“I’ve got a couple of things left to do.
She’s got a client coming in a few minutes, but I think that’s the last one.
I should be back before she shuts the doors. ”
“You’re welcome, Raggedy Dan,” Rocker said, nodding imperiously. “I’m happy to take my leisure here in the nighttime air.”
“Thank you, asshole.”
He swung a leg over the bike, fired it up, and let the rumble settle into his bones. The vibration and sound of the pipes was better than any therapy session he’d ever sat through. He pointed the bike towards the clubhouse.
But his mind stayed right there in that cramped room.
Riley Monroe.
He could still feel the ghost of her gloved fingers on his knuckles, the way she’d cleaned the cut like it was no big deal, like his skin wasn’t a roadmap of everything in his life that had ever gone wrong.
Most women, or hell, most people would’ve hesitated.
Flinched. Looked away when they saw how deep the burns had gone, how the grafts never quite matched the surrounding skin.
She hadn’t. She’d met his eyes and kept talking, stayed moving, like his damage was just another thing to work around.
“Their loss.”
He’d heard bullshit lines before.
That wasn’t bullshit. Not an ounce of it.
His chest tightened at the memory of her voice.
It was smoky, sure, and a little rough around the edges like good whiskey left open too long.
And the way she’d gazed at the scars later, when he finally taken the bandana off all the way.
No pity. No revulsion. Just curiosity. Maybe even appreciation.
Like she saw the wreckage and thought, “yeah, that’s a story worth hearing. ”
He hadn’t let anyone touch his face since the hospital.
Not the nurses who’d tried to change his dressings, not the physical therapists who’d pushed him through pain he hadn’t thought he could survive, and surely not the handful of women who’d attempted to get close after he got home.
He’d kept the bandana on, turned the lights low, made sure everything and everyone was at arm’s length.
“Armor,” he’d told her. Habit, he reminded himself.
Truth was, it was both.
But tonight she’d reached out. So slow and careful, and her finger had traced the edge of a burn scar like it was art instead of ruin.
Her fingers had been warm, calloused in the same way his were but from holding tools and machines instead of weapons.
When she’d slid her hand into his hair and called it “flippy,” he’d damn near forgotten how to breathe.
He took a corner too fast, tires chirping, and forced himself to focus on the road. The last thing he needed was to lay the bike down because he was mooning over a tattoo artist with storm-gray eyes and a mouth that didn’t know how to quit.
Back inside the fence at the clubhouse, he killed the engine and sat there a minute, listening to the ticks of the cooling motor.
The place was quiet tonight. Hell, it wasn’t even late yet, but most of the brothers were either home with families or out raising hell somewhere else. Tinder had texted earlier.
*Was serious. We need to keep an eye on the girl. Horde’s not done licking their wounds.*
Dan had replied with a simple *On it.*
No need to explain that he’d been already planning to spend the night parked outside her shop if she insisted on sleeping in her own bed.
He pulled the bandana down again and scrubbed a hand over his face. The scars felt hot under his palm, like they remembered the fire. He wondered what she’d do if he showed up at nine thirty with the thing off completely. If she’d look at him like that. If she’d still let her fingers wander.
A low laugh escaped him sounding rough, rusty.
“Fuck,” he muttered to the empty parking lot.
He was in trouble.
Deep, redheaded, tattooed trouble.
And he wasn’t sure he minded.
He pulled up the bandana, climbed off the bike, and headed inside to grab a shower and change into something that didn’t smell like sweat and blood. Nine thirty would come fast, and he wanted to be clean when he walked back through her door.
He hoped she would see him. To really see him and not look away.
For the first time in years, the thought of someone staring at him didn’t make him want to disappear.
It made him want to stay.