“Just lie back and try to get comfortable,” I told him. He sank back against the padded back rest, and I could feel his eyes tracking my every movement as I wiped down the stencil once more. “I’ll start without ink, just so you can make sure you’re up for it.”
“There’s no need for that,” he said in a scolding tone, giving me a look I knew all too well. “Just do it.”
“As you wish,” I sighed, dipping the liner into the first well of gray ink I’d mixed together. The moment the needle touched his skin, he sucked in a breath and held it for long enough I was starting to feel lightheaded.
“Just breathe normally,” I told him, starting the outline of the compass first. “In through your nose, out through your mouth.”
“I know how to breathe,” he huffed. I expected him to fuss, but if he was talking, he was breathing, and I didn’t need him fainting on me.
“You’re doing good,” I said, since the more a client whined about being coached, the more they actually needed it. To his credit, he hadn’t flinched or made a peep, despite the chest being a pretty damn sensitive place, especially for a first tattoo. If he was anyone else, I would have tried to convince him to go with the bicep or something else a little more beginner-friendly, but I knew I had to pick my battles with him.
Before long, I could feel him actually relax. His breathing settled into a steady rhythm, accented by the continual buzzing of the tattoo machine and the soft rock station playing quietly in the background.
“I wouldn't have pegged you for an oldies fan,” he said absently.
I smiled, keeping my eyes on the linework. At least my professional instincts were helping me push my alpha instincts to the back, but it was harder than I wanted to admit. “There’s a lot about me you probably wouldn’t have guessed.”
“Oh, really?” he asked in a wry tone. “Such as?”
“Let’s see,” I said, pausing to consider it. “I went to art school. There’s one.”
“Seriously? Where?”
“Stannon U. About a year after Ryan and I opened up the shop,” I answered.
“But you already had a job. Why bother going back to school?” he asked.
So he’d acknowledge it as a job now. That was progress. I wasn’t sure why I even cared what some spoiled omega who’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth thought in the first place.
“I reached a point where I felt like I needed to be pushed if I was going to grow as an artist, and they had a program that worked with my schedule, so I went for it,” I explained.
“Huh.”
I glanced up for a second to see him watching me with a strange look on his face. “Why do you sound so surprised?”
He shrugged his other shoulder. “That’s just a lot to go through without it being necessary.”
“Hold still,” I said, pressing the fingertips of my other hand against his chest. “And when it comes to what you’re passionate about, I don’t think anything is unnecessary. No matter how long you’ve been doing something, there’s always room to learn and improve.”
“Fair enough.” He fell silent again for a good half an hour, and while the linework was coming a lot faster than I had expected, I found myself wishing I was slower. I usually felt the need to fill the awkward pauses with most clients, for their comfort more than mine, but it wasn’t like that with him. His silence was companionable, and it wasn’t just because we tended to get into it when he was talking.
I liked to think I was pretty tuned in to people’s energy, and when it came to omegas, it was more than just some vague spiritual sense. Heat wasn’t the only time pheromones indicated a shift in mood. Most omegas had a fear scent, too, sometimes pain, so when the faint, pleasant scent of flowers teased my nostrils, I assumed it was just something else.
Then it happened. The switch flipped, and I felt my own body shift in its response whether I wanted it to or not, leaving the answer unmistakable.
He was in heat.
2
Shan
The moment I realized what was happening was the same moment his eyes met mine, and there was no question. He knew.
My heart was hammering like a drum, and humiliation surged through me along with adrenaline and all the other damned hormones and pheromones concocted just to make my life as miserable as possible.
Of all the fucking times to go into heat, it had to be now?
No…somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew, no matter how little I wanted to admit it, that this wasn’t just some coincidence. I didn’t just happen to go into heat weeks early at the worst possible time.
I was in heat because of what was happening.
Because of him.
For a few moments that felt like forever, our gazes were locked, and we were both speechless. The only sounds in the room were my heartbeat and the buzzing of that damn gun.
From the moment I had felt the needle on my skin, I’d known this was a mistake. Not because of the pain. I had a damn high tolerance for that, and this wasn’t nearly as bad as all the procedures I’d endured during a brief but taxing childhood illness. The more time that had elapsed, the less the sting bothered me, and eventually, my mind had learned to tune it out to a degree.
Of far more concern was the other things the pain stirred up.
James had been a problematic element to my life ever since his brother had waltzed into Kellan’s life and, by extension, mine. He wasn’t anything like the alphas I had dated over the years, or anything I ever would have gone for on paper.
Sure, he was tall and muscular. Huge, really, even for an alpha. And yeah, he had shaggy dark hair that suited his chiseled face, and brown eyes that threatened to swallow a person’s soul if they looked for too long. Then there was that crooked grin of his, and the fact that all that damn ink somehow looked far more cohesive when wrapped around his muscular form than it would have on anyone else.
Still, he was nothing like my ex. Nothing like any of them. Nothing at all like the put-together, debonair alpha I had always imagined myself settling down with one day. The effect he had on me whenever he walked into a room was nothing like I’d ever experienced, either.
What the hell was wrong with me?
I was as vanilla as they came. Sure, I got a little wild in bed every now and then and enjoyed the thrill of being bitten just hard enough not to break the skin and leave a mating mark, but who didn’t? I didn’t have a pain kink or anything of the sort. So why did it get harder to keep from squirming every second that passed under the relentless force of his needles, and not for the reasons it should have been?
For the last few minutes, I’d been contemplating how I was going to make my exit without humiliating myself, or worse, making him think I couldn’t handle the pain. Hell, I’d rather just come out and admit it was turning me on before I let him think I was weak.
Why it mattered what he thought was another matter entirely, but I could only deal with one problem at a time.
Right now, my biggest one was staring me right in the face.
“You’re in heat.”
He said it so matter-of-factly, his voice rough and rumbling in a way that made my traitorous body shiver.
Heat surged into my cheeks, but the heat between my thighs was far more concerning. The moment he lifted the needle off my skin, I sat up and took in a much-needed breath.