“Uh, yeah, it went all right.” I continued to check out my lineup of clients, unsure how to broach the subject. When I closed the book, Lisa was still hovering near me. “What’s up?” I asked, suddenly nervous.

“All you can say is ‘all right’? What happened last night?”

“She let me in. We talked and stuff.” I pulled my first client’s folder from the filing cabinet, avoiding eye contact.

“Would you like to elaborate?”

“I fixed things,” I lied.

That was questionable, at best. Those scars on her back were a huge problem. Not because they made me want her any less but because physical damage wasn’t always in direct correlation with the emotional kind. Tenley was far more fragile than I ever could have guessed. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have let things go as far as they did, because in being with her I’d made her even more vulnerable. It was too late to take it back, and I wasn’t sure how to handle it.

None of what happened last night fit into my usual postorgasm routine. Nothing about Tenley did, and that gave me more cause to worry. I still wanted to put the tattoo on her, but my reasons had changed. I wanted it to help her heal from whatever happened. I was looking forward to that time with her, and not because she was hot and I wanted to get into her pants again. Which I still did. But more than that, I wanted to know her, and maybe she would want to know me.

I needed to talk to Lisa about it, but I didn’t want to hear that I shouldn’t have taken the loophole.

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“Because you’re a naturally suspicious person and you always expect the worst from me.” I played the hurt angle and hoped it would be enough to make her back down.

“That’s not true.”

“Oh, no? The other week at the bar you thought I pulled a Chris.”

“You disappeared without telling anyone where you were going.”

“See? I’m right. When was the last time I did something like that?”

Her nose crinkled as she tried to recall my last foray into the world of nightclub hookups. “I’m sorry,” she said when she realized it had been a damn long time.

“Whatever. It’s fine.” I went back to looking over my first client’s design, the eventual conversation derailed until I found the right way to tell her. I felt moderately bad over her guilt, but it was self-preservation. Chris showed up a few minutes later and, like Lisa, asked about Tenley. I gave him the same vague response before I got busy setting up my station.

I had the unsettling sensation of being watched and looked up to find Chris staring at me. “What?”

“You’re whistling,” he said, forehead creased.

“So?”

“Did you get laid?”

“What? Why would you ask me that?” It came out defensive.

“It’s what you do, man—you whistle when you get action. And you’re way too chipper . . .” He trailed off, looking like he was about to have a brain aneurysm from thinking so hard. “Did you fuck Tenley?”

I was across the room and in his face before I considered the ramifications of my reaction. I seized him by the shirt and lifted him out of his chair. Chris outweighed me by at least thirty pounds. “I didn’t fuck her.”

“Hayden!” Lisa raced over and forced her way between us. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Hayden fucked Tenley,” Chris repeated, like Lisa hadn’t heard him the first time he’d yelled it across the studio.

“Say it one more time and I’m going to break your face.”

Chris pointed an accusatory finger at me. “You broke the rule!”

I smacked his hand away, anger flaring.

“Touch me again and I’ll put you in the ground,” Chris growled.

“You want some? Let’s go.” I tried to get around Lisa, but she wasn’t having it.

“In the back,” Lisa ordered. When I took a step toward Chris, she shoved against my chest. “Now.”

“Better do what she says.” Chris shooed me away.

“Shut it, Chris.” Lisa pushed me in the direction of the office.

I was in for one hell of a tear down. I shouldn’t have gotten in Chris’s face, but he outted me before I was ready and now I had to deal with Lisa’s wrath. I’d wanted to tell her on my own terms and find a way to spin it to avoid her anger.

She ushered me into the office and shut the door. “You’re a jerk for making me feel bad. I knew something was going on the second I saw you this morning.”

“I wasn’t ready to talk about it.”

“Well I hope you’re ready now. What were you thinking?”

“That it would feel good, and I was right,” I said too quietly for her to hear.

“What was that?” She crossed the room to sit on the edge of her desk.

“I was going to tell you.”

“Oh? When? Before or after you started on her tattoo?”

“Before, probably. At least I fixed things with Tenley.”

“By having sex with her?”

“That happened after.” I paced around the office, my anxiety spiking.

“I’m not seeing how that fixes anything. I thought you were going to talk to her.”

“I did. I said what you told me to. Well, not exactly,” I amended, “but I told her about the rule.”

“And then you went ahead and broke it? She’s your client. You’re going to put a huge tattoo on her that will take months to complete,” Lisa said, her annoyance shifting to concern.

I rifled through the unopened mail, arranging the envelopes by size to keep from looking directly at her. “I haven’t started it yet, so she’s not technically my client.”

“Really?” She used the opportunity to barricade me behind the desk so I couldn’t get away. “Because if memory serves me correctly, you put a cupcake tattoo on her a few days ago, which makes her your client.”

“I don’t get what the big deal is.” That was untrue. The issue was pretty damn straightforward. “Tenley found a loophole.”

“A loophole?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t even my idea. I was checking her new ink, and she asked for clarification on the rule. So I explained it again. Tenley pointed out that I hadn’t started the official tattoo, because the little cupcake doesn’t count for shit. She had on these kitty . . . I just couldn’t . . .” I scrubbed my face with my palm, knowing the more excuses I spewed, the deeper my hole got. I met Lisa’s disapproving glare with an imploring one of my own. “She said it was okay to want someone, and I want her. And not just for sex because that’s not what it’s about with Tenley, but I wanted that, too, and so did she, so I stayed the night and we had sex again—”

“You stayed at Tenley’s?” Lisa asked, her surprise genuine.

“Uh-huh. And I was all set for Round Three this morning, but she had a meeting with her advisor and almost ended up being late, so I drove her to school instead.” My chest felt tight, so I rubbed it.

“I don’t even know what to do with that information. Three times? Is she okay?”

“It was only twice, and why wouldn’t she be okay?”

“Hayden, remember who put that piercing in your special place?” She pointed at herself.

Like I could forget that experience.

“I’m far too well aware of what kind of damage you could do with that thing,” she added.

“I’m not that big.” It should have been weird to talk about, but it wasn’t. Probably since she’d stuck a needle through my junk.

She gave me a patronizing look. “Yes. You are. And I don’t get the impression Tenley’s the kind of girl who has a plethora of experience in that area.”

I frowned at the implication. “I was careful with her.” In hindsight, she’d mentioned I was a lot to handle. Maybe I hadn’t been careful enough. I dropped into the chair and waited for Lisa to lose it on me. She didn’t. She either felt sorry for me or thought I was the stupidest person alive, or maybe a bit of both.

“It’s not like any of it matters now anyway. I told her we can’t have sex again until the back piece is finished, so there really isn’t a problem.”

“You told her what?”

When I said it aloud, it didn’t sound quite as logical as it did when I heard it in my head. “I told her—”