Ada #2
“Then let’s get you back there,” he says, walking around the counter and moving right past me.
He leaves me with no choice but to follow, staring at that same broad back as I go.
The pain is a lot worse than I thought it would be, but what’s even harder to deal with is Levi’s gloved hands skimming my hip every few seconds as he adjusts his position to work on me.
He leans over my hip bone from his seat beside the padded table I’m lying on, his fingers pressing against my skin through latex as his tattoo gun buzzes on with every sweeping pass of the needle.
It makes me think of the last time his hands were on me—sans gloves.
It’s a night I’ve tried and failed not to think about in the last six months, but the memories are unfortunately front and center with Levi’s wide, gloved palms sweeping over my bare skin.
I try not to recall how his voice growled in my ear, how his body covered mine in a way that I’ve never felt before; I even try my best not to think of the after—how he held me close while I drifted off in a way that felt far too intimate for what was supposed to have just been a one-night stand.
But as it is…I can’t help but think about all of it.
I wince when he hits a particularly sensitive spot, my face scrunching up and my errant thoughts dispersing slightly just as he looks up to check on me. “You all right?”
“I’m okay,” I tell him, trying to grin and bear the pain. “A little sensitive.”
“Yeah,” he chuckles. “You picked a pretty spicy spot for your first.”
“I’m starting to realize that.”
He’s quiet for another moment, the only sound in his little room that same buzzing from his gun.
He clears his throat after a time, and when I glance down, our eyes meet for just a second.
I had almost forgotten just how intensely blue they are, and this close, under the brightness of the fluorescents, they almost seem to glow with the depth of their color.
“So, how do you know Grace?” he asks me, pulling me out of my own head.
“Oh, she’s my boss,” I tell him.
“You work at the gallery?”
“For years.”
“Hmm. That’s cool. I haven’t been in since I moved back.”
I swallow, the conversation moving naturally toward the burning questions sitting on my tongue and not allowing me to hold them in any longer.
“Yeah,” I tell him. “I was…surprised to see you.”
His lips purse. “I’m sure you were.”
“You’re angry with me,” I say bluntly.
He doesn’t raise his eyes from my skin. “Why would I be angry? It was just a hookup, right?”
And I don’t know why that statement stings so badly; it’s not incorrect, and it’s definitely what I was looking for when I propositioned him that night, but I can’t pretend that his casual brush-off doesn’t make me wince just a little.
I decide to try to steer the conversation away from us. “How long were you in New York?”
“Six years,” he says. “I moved there while I was apprenticing. I liked the shop so much that I stayed on for a long time.”
“Why did you move back?”
“Wanted to come back home,” he answers. “I had some…things happen that finally meant I could save enough to open my own place.”
He says it so cryptically that it has me curious as to what he means by that, but I know it’s not really any of my business.
“You own this place?”
“It’s my name on the sign, yeah.”
Levi Madden then.
It’s bananas that I could know his body so intimately and never have gotten his last name. What in the world was I thinking that night?
You were horny. That’s what.
I shiver slightly when his fingers brush against my skin as he adjusts, and he pauses again to look up at me. “Still good?”
“Yeah,” I assure him. “Still good.”
“You’re doing well,” he tells me. “Especially for your first.”
I manage to suppress another shiver at his praise; I know from experience that it’s just a byproduct of what we are, but that doesn’t make it any less potent.
There’s just a little something more to alphas and omegas that sets us apart from regular shifters; omegas have more frequent heat cycles, and alphas, being their supposed fated counterpart, are known to be larger and even sometimes more aggressive than a normal shifter man.
I can’t speak to the aggression part—he certainly never showed any during the short time I knew him—but Levi certainly is… large.
Not to mention what the praise does to my fevered brain, which is still desperately trying to stave off memories. Now more than ever, I can hear his raspy that’s a good girl like he’s whispering it in my ear right now, and it’s enough to have my muscles going taut, trying my best not to react.
I steal a glance at him while he works, my eyes passing over the strong shape of his pierced nose and the sharpness of his jaw that’s lined in a faint layer of stubble.
My hormone-addled brain remembers what that stubble feels like against my skin, but I shut those thoughts down quickly, almost regretting that I didn’t ask for another artist.
You can do this, I tell myself. People have one-night stands all the time.
Not that I have many frames of reference, considering Levi is the first I’ve had in years.
“I just have to do the shading,” Levi says. “Then you’ll be done.”
“Oh, that was fast.”
“Yeah, it was a pretty straightforward piece.”
This conversation is the most he’s said to me since I met him out front; he was quiet while he worked up a stencil and even quieter when he put it on me—and I’m suddenly grateful for that fact, because his deep voice…
does things to me. It did that night at the bar too.
Hell, everything about him does things to me.
Did, I correct myself.
I blame the fact that the night we shared was so incomprehensibly good that I’m still so affected by Levi’s commanding presence, sneaking glances every so often at his dark, unruly hair or the black and gray artwork littering his arms as he works.
God, get a grip, Ada.
“So why the easel?” he asks, distracting me once more.
“Oh. Well. I’ve always loved art, ever since I was a kid.”
“Do you paint?”
A laugh bubbles out of me. “Unfortunately, no. I can’t even draw. I studied art history.”
“What do you love about art?”
My nose wrinkles as I consider that. “I guess I like how subjective it is. How it can be something different for everyone. Something that makes me happy might make someone else sad, you know?”
“And you like the idea of making someone sad?”
I lift my head to find the barest hint of a smile at his mouth, realizing he’s teasing me. I frown at him. “No. You know what I mean.”
“I do, yeah,” he chuckles.
“Do you draw?” I ask. “I know a lot of tattoo artists do their own pieces.”
He peeks up at me with those big blue eyes of his, quiet for a moment before he finally says, “I dabble.”
“Well, your stuff is probably loads better than anything I could do.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Like a toddler with crayons.”
His laugh is a little fuller then. “Tragic.”
“Very,” I agree. There’s a beat of silence in the air, and I find myself not wanting to let the conversation die, so I ask, “Do you like tattooing?”
“I do,” he tells me. “I like the idea of my art walking around out there for everyone to see.”
“That’s kind of poetic,” I say with a chuckle.
His brow lifts. “I don’t seem like the poetic type to you?”
“Are you kidding?” I outright laugh. “With the ink and the piercings and the dark, broody thing you have going on? I wouldn’t be surprised if you had sonnets hidden somewhere on your person at this very second.”
“Limericks, actually.”
He says it so seriously that it has me lifting my neck to peer down at him. “Limericks?”
“I’m partial to them.”
“Bullshit,” I say, calling him out. “Give me a limerick right now.”
“Hmm.” He pauses his tattooing. “Oh. I’ve got the perfect one for you.” Clearing his throat, he says, “There once was an artist named Saint, who swallowed a palette of paint. All shades of the spectrum flowed out of his rectum, with a colorful lack of restraint.”
I can’t help it, I burst out laughing. “Please tell me you did not just make that up.”
“Nah, I read it on Reddit somewhere,” he tells me with a grin.
“I would be very concerned if that just came out of your brain, I won’t lie.”
“You obviously don’t appreciate fine art too much,” he says with mock indignance.
I roll my eyes. “Clearly.”
And it should make me more comfortable, this easy conversation we’re having, but all it does is remind me of all the reasons I liked him when I met him six months ago. He’s so open and honest and downright appealing that it makes it hard not to like him.
He swipes a wet paper towel over my stinging skin, making me shudder. “So, who is your favorite artist?”
“Classical or modern-day?”
“Mm, let’s say modern-day.”
“Well, we’ve done several exhibitions for Erik Johansson; I love his work. Then there’s Diego Perez—he’s brilliant. Oh, and Annie Meyer, and Giorgina Barone…Oh! But my absolute favorite is this newcomer I discovered last year out of New York, actually. Finn Adler?”
Levi goes still, looking up at me with a brief expression of shock.
I blink back at him. “What?”
“Nothing,” he says quickly. “I’ve heard of him, actually.”
“Yeah?”
“I saw his stuff. Back in New York.”
“That’s amazing,” I say in awe. “I actually caught his last group exhibition he did six months ago. It’s why I was…”
Levi looks up at me when I trail off, and he can no doubt see the way my cheeks flush as I inadvertently bring the conversation back around to that night.
“Why you were in New York?” he finishes for me.
I nod slowly. “Yeah.”
“I never asked,” he murmurs. “That night.”
“We were kind of…distracted.”
“And it’s not like I had a lot of time…after,” he says with a cross look my way.
I heave out a sigh. “Look, I’m really sorry that I left without saying anything.”
“But you still won’t tell me why you did?”