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“Why?”
The look I see, the severity darkening his blue eyes, makes me cringe and nearly rip my own head off of my neck twisting away from it.
“Cedar,” he starts in that stupid deep tone that does shit to me I don’t fucking like as I step away from him and start to round the chair in the middle of my setup, like having something between us will stop him.
It doesn’t.
Fin’s fingers pinch my elbow and spin me around until my hands are slamming into his solid chest and I can’t help the way my brain registers the rings beneath his shirt.
His heavy gaze is locked on mine, his free hand easing its way beneath the hair that curtains my face to cup the nape of my neck as his thumb plays gently over my tingling jaw.
“Tell me who did this to you.”
Being wrapped up in him like this … his focus on me, and only me … has my heart racing out of my chest and my stomach flipping with want.
Except, that voice in the back of my head is screaming to run.
To panic, or to melt.
These are the real questions.
“Sweetness.”
Instead of either, all I do is stare at his handsome fucking face with enough piercings that should’ve hurt to stop at the last one and a yellowish tinge to his right cheek.
My chest contracts, releases, tensing back up again like I’m on the most dangerous roller coaster of my life and while there’s so much of me that’s better than I used to be, all I hear is the sound of my ex’s voice echoing in the back of my head the longer that Fin stands here and touches me.
So he’s coming to rescue you now?
I trusted that boy that I’d thought was a man to hold my young, naïve heart. To be my first damn near everything. I trusted him not to break my spirit when I showed him those intimate parts of myself, and that’s exactly what he did.
“I can’t.” The words are off my parting lips as my breath rushes out of me and I push Fin away so hard I end up spinning myself. “I have … I have clients waiting.”
Sucking in a breath, I square my shoulders and rush to my toolbox to fiddle with shit that doesn’t really need fiddling with. My hands begin to twitch. My heart contracts with the dismissal, the knowledge that Fin is going to walk out of here again with an attitude that I don’t know I’ll ever be able to face. All of it has my stomach twisting all over itself.
I can’t. Not again.
“Yo. She’s ready for the next one.” I whip around with a deep set to my brow and waves in my gut to see Fin standing with the makeshift door flap held back and nodding to a guy half his size that walks in.
What the fuck is he doing?
I just stare for a moment, somewhat in shock, before I snag gloves from the box to busy my trembling hands and try to focus on the grinning dude that settles in my chair.
Anything except the second elephant that just entered the room.
“I’ll take the demon head, please.”
“Pants stay on, bro,” Fin half growls as he lets the canvas fall back to shut out the rest of the pulsing venue and stalks over to the corner he took station in when he first showed up.
“No worries.” The guy nods, way too enthusiastically as he pulls up the sleeve of his tee and points to the underside of his arm. “I was thinking right here.”
I tightly nod and get to work prepping the area and my equipment as the guy settles all the way back in the chair with a raised arm I’m glad to be able to focus on.
Instead of whatever the hell is going on behind my ribcage.
Meanwhile, the sound of a straw forcing its way through a plastic lid has me glancing over my shoulder and finding Fin standing with the Styrofoam cup dwarfed by his hand and the plastic tube pinched between his lips.
He would look almost innocent, like a child with a fresh Slurpee on a sizzling summer day, if it weren’t for the ink coloring his tanned skin clear up to his chin and the rings through various parts of his face.
