Page 16 of Make Me Dream of You

“I can’t just put your name down. Noah has to approve new clients first.”

Smile officially gone.

“I’ll take her,” that familiar, velvety voice says, and I look up just as Noah is walking out from a back office. He’s wearing black jeans and a threadbare white T-shirt, the tattoos covering his entire torso just visible through the fabric. “Livvy’s an old friend,” he says to the girl at the counter, but his eyes are on me.

She rolls her eyes and goes back to whatever she was working on before.

He smiles, his lips parting just enough to show the tip of one cuspid. And just that little smirk and the way he hasn’t taken his gaze away from me has my entire face burning.

“Do you know what you’re wanting to get?” he asks.

“Um. Yeah. I sketched something. It’s rough.”

“Come on back and let’s take a look at it.”

I follow him around the counter and back through the door he came out of a minute ago. It’s an office with a small desk in the center and a couple of chairs, black metal cabinets along the back wall, and all black-painted walls. But these black walls are covered in large, framed photographs of intricate tattoo pieces.

Noah leans back against the desk, gripping the edge of it with his hands, the muscles in his forearms flexing under his black tattoos.

“Is your drawing in there?” He gestures to the sketchbook clutched in my arms.

Right. “Yeah.”

I fumble with my sketchbook, turning to the page with the finalized angel wings. I lay it down on the desk, open to my sketch. He leans over to look at it, his thumb grazing the spine, his expression unchanging.

Why did I think this sketch was good enough to tattoo? It’s obviously dumb. I’m about to snatch the book back and just say never mind when he picks it up.

“Wow, this drawing is beautiful,” he says.

“Thank you,” I say in a weird, way-too-breathy way. “It’s nothing, really.”

“No, seriously, I love how they don’t feel static, and you have a great attention to detail. Do you have other sketches in here? Can I see?” He lifts the corner of the page to turn it.

“No!”

He pauses and we look at each other. Standing here while my cheeks get hot, pretending I didn’t just almost freak out over nothing.

Not exactly nothing, I may or may not have sketches of his eyes in there. His eyeballs. If he sees those and realizes it’s him, I’ll vomit.

“Another time, then?” he asks.

“Yeah, totally.”

“Do you want the tattoo around the same size as the sketch?”

I nod. “One on each hip.”

“Show me where.”

My jeans are too snug to pull them down enough without unbuttoning them. The sound of the snap and me unzipping my jeans echoes around the office in the most mortifying way possible. All the while, Noah’s watching as I shimmy my pants down my hips, exposing the top of my pink, cotton panties. Why didn’t I wear cuter panties?

I pull the boring pink underwear down on one side, just enough to expose the little bit of skin along the front of my hipbone where I want the tattoo.

“Right here,” I say quietly.

He lifts his eyes up slowly to me. “Okay.” He clears his throat. “I’ve got some time right now. A client cancelled. If you’re up for it.”

“Yeah, I mean, yes. Let’s do it.”

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