Page 20 of The Heart Breaker

But she’s still standing there with her chin tipped up like she’s already decided whatever I say doesn’t matter. And I know exactly how this goes either way. If I turn her down, she’ll mouth off about it, find someone else, and somehow it’ll still piss me off. If I say yes, I’m handing her an in. Letting her get exactly what she wants. Letting her under my skin again.

There’s no winning with Aurora. There never has been.

I let out a slow breath and jerk my head toward the back. “Come on.”

“Now?” Her brows pull together. “Aren’t you closed?”

I look back at her over my shoulder. “Do you want the tattoo or not?”

Her mouth presses into a line and she follows me down the hall to my room. I shove the door open, step inside, and hold out my hand.

“Phone.”

She takes her sweet ass time sitting down before handing me her phone. I take it to my desk, drop onto my stool, grab my tablet, and start sketching it out.

Fuck. I was so ready to go home. This shit will take hours, but at least I’ll be done with it—done with her.

What happened at the club was a fluke. Having her grinding on me like that scrambled my head for a second, that’s all. It doesn’t change who she is. Doesn’t change what she did.

And having my hands on her thighs won’t magically change that we can’t stand each other.

She stays quiet while I work, which somehow gets under my skin more than if she were talking. I can feel her there anyway, looking at the framed designs on the walls, at the stacks of sketchbooks on the shelf, at all the shit I’d rather she not touch.

Once I’ve got the design down, I resize it, run the stencil through the printer, and pull on a pair of gloves before I turn around.

She’s looking up at the designs on the wall, one leg crossed over the other.

“Need to see your thigh,” I say, dropping to my chair.

Her eyes flick to the stencil in my hand, then back to me, and she shifts forward to the edge of the chair, her thighs parting, and when I roll my stool in, they end up brushing either side of my legs.

She slides her fingers down her thighs as she lifts her skirt slowly, inch by inch. My eyes catch for half a second on the blue cotton of her panties before I drag them back to the stencil.

She leans back and braces her hands on either side of the seat while I line the paper up against her skin. I set one hand on her leg to angle it properly, my thumb firm against the inside of her thigh, my fingers spread along the outside to keep her steady.

Her pulse jumps under my thumb and I try my hardest to ignore it, biting down harder on my gum.

“Don’t move,” I murmur.

She doesn’t answer, but I can feel the weight of her attention on me, crawling along my shoulders.

At the club, it had been easy enough to blame the reaction on everything else. The crowd. The music. The way the whole place felt turned up too high. In here, there’s none of that. No bass. No noise. Just the sound of my gum grinding between my teeth and her breathing way too close.

I snap out of it and glance back at the reference. The flower she wants starts high on the thigh and curves up toward the hip bone. It has to follow the line of her muscle or it’ll look wrong every time she moves.

“It’s gonna take at least three hours,” I tell her. “Probably closer to four once I get into the shading.”

“I can handle it.”

I scoff and shake my head. “You’re inkless. You have no clue what you can handle.”

Her eyes narrow. “I’ve dealt with you for four years. I’m pretty sure I can survive a little needle.”

I arch a brow and shrug. “Suit yourself.”

I shift her leg slightly to check the curve, sliding my hand a little higher so I can picture how the petals will sit against her body.

Her breath catches when my hand practically cups her ass, and my focus splinters. Before I can stop it, I’m right back in that club, with her on my lap, the music hammering through my head and my body betraying me all over again.