Page 33 of Shadow Secrets
She shrugged. “I can’t recommend the spot until I see the options.” She gestured again. When he didn’t move, she froze. “Sorry, is that off limits?”
“Sort of,” he admitted, then thought of a decent argument. “If it’s on my back, I won’t be able to see it unless I look in the mirror.”
Her eyes studied his face for a long moment, and it was as if she was looking into his soul. “You don’t like to look in the mirror, do you?”
He rubbed a hand over his face. She was too perceptive.
She gently pinched his cheek. “With this pretty face, I figured you’d admire yourself for at least an hour every day.”
Her tone was teasing again. He tried to play along. “It’s hard not to.”
She rolled her eyes. “If you want the ink visible to you but overt, the inner forearm is a good spot.” She tapped the skin where she’d traced the lynx. “If you want it to be more private, the chest or upper thigh are good places. You can still see them without everyone else seeing them, too.”
Her hand patted each corresponding spot, making him tense. She touched people, left ink on their skin, every day. It was natural for her, but it wasn’t for him. Outside of training with his SPS teammates, no one touched him. Her touch did things to him. Things he didn’t want her to see.
He looked toward the sketchbook and pens stacked on the nightstand. The book they’d stoken from Vivi was on top. “Do you have a design in mind? Mine was rough.”
She rose, excitement evident as she crossed the floor to grab the tools of her art. “I do, in fact.”
The redirection had worked, giving him a heartbeat to regain a measure of composure, but her shorts were too short, causing his already active imagination to take another turn into dangerous territory.
He tried to shut it down. It didn’t work.
For six years, he’d kept everyone at arm’s length. The team. His family. Every woman who’d tried to reach the man behind the medal. He’d turned isolation into a discipline, refined it the way he’d refined every other skill—through repetition, through commitment.
As Sutton turned with her hands full and smiled at him, his heart did a funny skip. She returned to plop down facing him. She’d already walked through every wall he’d built, not by force or with charm. By being the one person in the world who carried the same wound and refused to let it make her smaller. She was stubborn, sharp, damaged in ways that mirrored his own.
Her knee brushed his leg and her voice became animated as she picked a blue pen and started sketching. “You want it to mimic fluidity and grace, not just vigilance. Your sketch was good, but we can improve it.”
And she did. The way the pen moved, the way her whole face lit up as she talked about embodying so much in one single animal, fascinated him.
For the first time in all these years, he’d let someone inside his personal perimeter. The realization landed in his chest like a fist.
When she was done, a huge smile had spread across her face. She held up the sketchbook, showing him the design. “What do you think?”
I think I’m falling for you. He swallowed the words, focused on the drawing rather than her animated face. “It’s…perfect.”
The smile grew wider. She turned the notebook back around and studied her artwork. “It captures you in a very unique way, I think.”
He couldn’t disagree.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sutton
She’d seen Sebastian react now multiple times—pulling her inside the farmhouse, clearing her apartment, getting her to the compound—but she’d never seen him run an operation before.
Those had been improvisations, an operator’s training kicking in when the world went sideways. This was different.
This was Sebastian Whitaker in command mode, standing at the head of the briefing table with a map of St. Patrick’s Hospital spread across the surface, assigning positions like a general deploying troops.
He’d been up since before dawn. She’d woken to find his blanket folded neatly against the wall, the room empty. She dressed and found Jasper outside her door instead of Sebastian, who told her he was in the conference room planning the hospital visit. She got coffee and took it there, finding him with Garrett, CB, and Mack. Mack was cleaning a rifle scope beside an open gun case. The sight of it made her stomach clench.
Claire was on speaker as Sebastian laid out the groundwork for the visit Sutton had insisted on.
He was doing this for her. Because she’d told him she wanted to see Dom, and instead of outright dismissing it, he’d turned it into a mission.
For a moment, she felt guilty. Worried, even. While her apartment had been searched, no one had materialized to try to harm her. They hadn’t gone after Dom; he’d just had the unfortunate timing of walking in on them.
