Under Her Skin

by Adriana Anders

  “So, what’re you going to do now? I mean, you could probably get your own place and move back up to Northern Virginia, if you wanted, right?”

  “Yeah, I could.” Uma looked at Jessie again and back at the big house, remembering her first sight of that place and its owner. That first solid handshake, the most comforting thing she’d felt in forever. That was one thing that hadn’t changed as she’d gotten to know him. Nothing felt better than Ivan’s hands on her skin.

  Maybe she’d had all the time she needed to think. Maybe she was ready to find out what came next. She smiled and finished her beer.

  After a few more minutes of silence, she pulled two more beers out of the six-pack and stood up. “Mind if I steal these?”

  “All yours.”

  She smiled her thanks. “Better check on Cookie.”

  Jessie stood and stopped her with a hand. “I got it.”

  “You sure?”

  “Think I can’t take what she can dish?”

  “Yeah,” said Uma. “You’ll do just fine.” But still she hesitated, more from nerves than anything else. He came home. He changed his mind and came home. For me.

  “Go. Go on.”

  At Jessie’s nudge, she set off toward Ivan’s house without any sort of plan. “See you Monday?” Uma said over her shoulder.

  “Not till Monday? Don’t you want to come out for drinks with me and the girls this weekend?”

  It felt good to have an actual friend again. “We’ll see if I’m free this weekend,” she answered with a smile.

  * * *

  She looked taller than she had before as she approached, more in control. He wasn’t sure if that was an entirely good sign—for him, at least. On the other hand, the two beers she held definitely were. A peace offering. Or more like a consolation prize? A Sorry, dumb-ass, you lose, but how about a beer?

  By the time she rolled up and handed him the bottle, he’d worked himself into such a state, he slugged it down embarrassingly fast.

  “Whoa. Guess you were thirsty,” she said with that crooked smile he liked so much. “Working hard, I see.” She sat on the step beside him, mirroring the position she’d had with his sister moments ago.

  Jessie. He’d told her not to get involved, but the little brat couldn’t keep her nose out of his business. Well, it had gotten Uma over here, so he could probably forgive her.

  “Yeah. Tryin’ to get the place ready.”

  “You finally moving into the big house?”

  “Maybe. Depends.” He couldn’t possibly look at her. “Sort of waitin’ to hear from a possible…tenant. Or roommate, I guess you could say.”

  “Oh yeah?” She smiled again, only this time her flirtatiousness came out a little more. He liked this side of Uma: a little flirty, a little bossy.

  “Figured my proposal has a very slight chance of being accepted.”

  “Hmm.” She stood up, filled with purpose, pushing the boss role a little bit further. “You owe me a tour. Show me around.”

  His answering grin felt good on his lips—God, days without talking, and he’d missed the hell out of her. “Yes, ma’am.”

  They went up the front steps, and he tried to see it through her eyes: perfectly finished, pristine paint job, not a fallen leaf or speck of dirt underfoot. He knew she’d notice the other details too, with her photographer’s eyes: the wavy glass in the windows, original to the house; the perfectly fitted, working shutters; and copper gutters. The only thing out of place was the big punching bag hung where a porch swing should have been. Maybe they’d look for one of those together.

  No. No point getting his hopes up. They hadn’t talked it through yet. It could still go either way.

  He opened the door, and she hesitated beside him, one foot suspended above the welcome mat. The mat looked too clean. He could see that. He’d just bought it, after all. Okay, he could fix that. To prove some weird point, he scuffed his boots all over the letters before stepping through.

  Once inside, Uma’s breath caught on a strangled gasp. Oh no. She hated it. Or even worse, she thought he was certifiable for having a place like this.

  Because, let’s face it, the house was a little sterile. Like Whoville licked clean by the Grinch. Not a stick of furniture, not a tchotchke or gewgaw in sight. The walls were painted a stark, glaring white.

  Nothing else.

  When her breathing went back to a normal sort of rhythm, he dared to look at her, just a slide of the eyes, but long enough to catch her look.

  “Oh, Ivan,” she whispered, brown eyes glowing in the fading light. “It’s beautiful.”

  Thank God.

  Again, he squinted and tried to see it from her perspective, how it really was, without the layers of garbage he’d shoveled out, the paint he’d sanded off, all the hours of work he’d put into it.

  The house was grand. Its ceiling floated high above their heads. Every breathtaking detail: trim, newel post, every stair tread polished to a shine. Crown molding that, like the window glass, was original to the house. And utterly still. So quiet you could hear a pin drop.

  All that was missing was a little life.

  Love.

  He followed her into the first room on the right. The parlor.

  After an initial, soundless oh, she started talking. Finally.

  “Needs color. Something warm, maybe an earthy gold. And plantation blinds for privacy, but no curtains. You wouldn’t want to cut out any of this amazing light.” She moved to the center of the room, facing the fireplace, and he might have imagined something proprietary in her step.

  “Oh, Squeak would love an area rug there, in front of the fire. And the cats. Cats love a good rug, so it would have to be big.” Her eyes flicked to his, burning with excitement. “An armchair there, large enough for you, Ivan.”

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?” Oh, there was the challenge he’d been expecting.

  “You got the animals and me all accounted for. Although maybe not Pepe. Now, what about you, Uma? Where’re you gonna sit?”

  “Hmm.” She slitted her eyes and took a slow turn around the room. “I imagine a dusty blue or turquoise chaise.”

  “A chaise?”

  “Or a fainting couch. And lamps. If you think that overhead light’s staying on all the time, you’ve got another think coming.”

  “Lamps,” he repeated, allowing the tiniest bit of hope to well up in his chest. “Come on. I’ll show you the rest in a minute, but you gotta see this first.” He led the way back into the entryway and up the stairs, to the last door on the landing—the master bedroom.

  He pushed the door open on the only furnished space in the house. He’d gotten a big bed—king size, just in case—and rugs to keep her feet warm in the morning when she got up. Bedside tables and a mirror and hangers in the closet. The quilt from his workshop was here, clean and folded across the foot of the bed. There were a few odds and ends, like the bookshelves and ratty armchair from out back. It didn’t look completely done yet, but it was cozy. Almost like a home.

  “This is yours, Uma. Your bedroom. Not mine, not ours. Yours.”

  “Wha—”

  “Hang on. Let me explain.” He rushed to stop her, touching her arm and wishing he could pull her into his body entirely. “What you decide to do is your choice. I get that. And the last thing I want to do is take that away from you. But I want you to understand…” Ive swallowed and looked away from those luminescent eyes. “Sometimes in life, you work hard for somethin’ without knowin’ quite why. Now I know. I’ve been workin’ on this house all these years for you. For us.”

  “Ivan—”

  “Wait. I’m not tryin’ to force your hand. And we’ve only known each other a few weeks, so… This place, it’s yours.”

  “The room is beautiful, bu—”

  “N
ot the room. The house. The house is yours, Uma. For as long as you want. Forever. With or without me.”

  “That’s… I can’t take—”

  “You can do your photography. And I’ll keep doin’ my thing. You can keep checkin’ on the old bat next door, if you still feel the nee—”

  “Stop.”

  He stopped. She moved forward and put one slender hand on his chest.

  “Why did you decide not to go after Joey?”

  “Aw, hell.” He stepped back and thought about it. There were lots of reasons, some of them having to do with survival and self-awareness. But the most important was the realization that he’d taken her power away from her, by going against her will. Exactly the way Joey had when he’d tied her up and hurt her. Ivan would never do that again. “It’s complicated.”

  “Try me.”

  “First of all, I had to go. I had to.” Unconsciously, his hand went to rub his chest, hard. “Thought I was gonna die, Uma, when I saw what he did to you.”

  “I thought you didn’t—”

  “I couldn’t live with it, you know? My body, my brain, it was like they’d seen you got hurt by him, and there was nothin’ left but makin’ him pay. No choice but to go. It’s what I do when I love someone. I can’t…” He shut his eyes tight, opened them, and met hers. “And then I got there, fuckin’ crazy as hell, and I saw myself. I saw…who I coulda been and who you woulda been if he hadn’t done that.”

  “Oh, Ivan. You shouldn’t do that to yourself.”

  “No, but you know what I realized? It’s gonna sound insane, but…if he hadn’t hurt you, if I hadn’t made all my stupid mistakes, if…if the ad hadn’t run in the Gazette and… You wouldn’t be here.”

  She gasped at his words—a tiny sound, but enough. Just enough for him to latch on to. “We wouldn’t be here, baby, if we hadn’t gone through all that shit. And I couldn’t imagine not goin’ home and seein’ you again. Gettin’ to know you.” He leaned in, eyes down, and put his forehead to hers. “How could I find out everything there is to love about my woman if I break the first promise I ever made her?” He whispered the last bit.

  Another sound, this time the shaky sound of Uma crying, and he cringed before starting to pull away. But she stopped him with a hand to the back of his head and a quick, wet kiss.

  “I didn’t think you’d listened,” she whispered. “I thought you…didn’t care.”

  “I can be a bit slow. Sometimes takes me a while to catch on. But I usually do, baby. Eventually.”

  She sighed. “Good.” She stepped into him and put her cheek where her hand had been—right up against his heart. “This is good, Ivan.”

  “You like the place?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t mean just the place. I mean you, me…”

  “Us,” he finished for her, because it seemed so right.

  “Yeah. Us.”

  His arms went around her and pulled her in tight—probably too tight, but Ive wasn’t good at holding back. “I love you, baby.”

  She nodded against him and sniffled. “Me too. God, me too. When you…when you came back and pulled him off me, I thought…I thought you’d do it then, and I couldn’t stand that you’d do something so awful. For me. But you didn’t. You didn’t lose yourself. We won.” She shook her head. “God, yes. Yes, I’ll move in. I love our room.”

  “Your room.”

  “It’s our room, Ivan.”

  He ran a hand down her back, remembering the places that bastard had marked her. The beautiful Uma Crane. Something skittered through his brain, a question from the night he’d made the promise he’d almost broken.

  “So, what’s the R stand for?”

  She pulled back with a question on her tear-stained face, the most gorgeous thing he’d ever seen.

  “Huh?”

  “Uma R. Crane you said. I made my vow to the beautiful Uma R. Crane. What’s the R stand for?”

  Oh, man, her smirk kicked him right in the gut, and he couldn’t help but smile.

  “Guess you’ll have to wait and find out,” she whispered, taking off of her shirt and yanking him back toward the bed with a smile.

  Order Adriana Anders’s next book

  in the Blank Canvas series

  By Her Touch

  On sale April 2017

  Read on for a sneak peek at the next

  book in the Blank Canvas series.

  He Will Always Bear the Scars

  Undercover cop Clay Navarro left the Sultans biker gang a changed man. Its ringleaders may be awaiting trial, but he wears the memory of every brutal act he had to commit tattooed across his skin. He doesn’t have space in his messed-up life for anything gentle—not now, maybe not ever.

  Dr. Georgette Hadley is drawn to the damaged stranger’s pain, intimidated but intrigued by the warmth that lies beneath Clay’s frightening exterior. But when the Sultans return looking for revenge, she finds herself drawn into the dirty underbelly of a life forged in violence…that not even her touch may be able to heal.

  1

  The moment Ape’s hand landed on his shoulder, Clay Navarro knew the game was up.

  It could have been the look in the asshole’s eye that told him, or the way his fingers dug into Clay’s muscle way too hard to be friendly. Probably, though, it was that other thing—that elusive animal intuition that told you your life was about to end.

  He managed, somehow, to shrug off Ape’s hand and veer off into the head, mumbling something about taking a piss. As soon as the door closed behind him, he leaned down and spoke into the button mic sewed onto his leather vest. He was frantic. God, was he having a heart attack? Wouldn’t that be something, to have a heart attack on the day all the shit was supposed to go down?

  “Shit’s hitting the fan here. Whoever’s listening, I need backup.”

  He glanced at the tiny window and considered trying to make a break for it, but there was no way he’d manage to squeeze through. But man, he couldn’t risk the op at this crucial moment, even if it meant saving his skin. Not when they were so close to taking the sons of bitches down. There was no choice but for him to go out and face whatever Ape had in mind for him—try to stall him and bluster his way through. Whatever it was, they’d catch it on the wire.

  Back in the hall, however, flanked by three of Clay’s Sultans MC “brothers,” he was pretty sure there’d be no bullshitting his way out of this. There was a sick sort of glee on Ape’s face when he shoved Clay into the manky vinyl dentist’s chair, brandished his tattoo gun, and said, “Thought you needed some new artwork, bro.” After a pause, the man smiled and said, “How about your lids?”

  “No fuckin’ way, man.” His heart rate spiked.

  “Knuckles, then,” said Ape, and Clay knew better than to argue. There was a chance he hadn’t been made—that Ape was just being his usual sick self. Considering everything that was at stake, he had to ride out that hope for as long as he could, and if that meant letting the crazy bastard ink him up some more, then so be it. He forced his body to relax, forced a smirk onto his face.

  But then one of the other bikers grabbed for him, and it was all Clay could do not to go down swinging. He submitted at the last moment, pulse flying, reminding himself that he just had to make it through a few hours before it was all over, one way or another. The biker grimly held him, head locked so he was staring straight ahead, unable to watch as Ape pressed the tattoo gun to his finger. He tightened his jaw through the inking—a quick, messy job, even for Ape—and broke the hold long enough to glance down at his knuckles.

  DEAD MAN, they said in big, thick black caps. Fuck. “What the—”

  “Sit your ass down and stay put, or I’ll pop your fuckin’ eyeball,” Ape said through gritted teeth. He brandished the tattoo gun at Clay’s face.

  Clay bolted up, but the two MC brothers were on him in a flash, grappling him ba
ck down. One had an arm locked around his neck, holding his head still for Ape and that damned tattoo gun. Clay flinched away, tried to push free, but there was no stopping that needle coming straight for his eyes.

  He slammed his lids closed and prayed for a miracle.

  “What the shit?” Clay managed to spit out before Ape went to work on his eyelids. The only thing worse than the pain was the fear. He breathed through it as best he could, waiting it out as Ape inked him. He didn’t open his eyes until he was sure the needle was away—and even then he was left blinking and dazed, eyeballs stinging.

  “What are—” Clay began, fighting to sound normal even after all this—until he spotted Ape pulling out that little ax he carried around with him everywhere. He stiffened, fought, expected to feel the deep slice of a blade in his skull, to see Ape’s crazily grinning face through a film of blood, his brain matter scattered across the walls.

  He should have known better. Ape might be a total lunatic, but he didn’t do anything without Handles’s approval. The only thing he carved at was Clay’s shirt. With the sharpened ax blade. The fucker sure had a flair for the dramatic.

  So maybe Handles didn’t know yet. Maybe there was still a chance he could ride this out until the end. Or at least until backup arrived.

  Something occurred to Clay’s crazed brain as Ape picked the tattoo gun back up and leaned in to etch something onto his chest. The asshole hadn’t touched Clay’s leather cut—the biker vest would have been the first thing to go if they knew for sure he was an undercover cop. Ape was killing time until Handles got back. Nothing more.

  I’m not a dead man. Yet.

  But if he wanted to convince his brothers he wasn’t a cop, he needed to work a lot harder at being Jeremy “Indian” Greer instead of Clay Navarro. And, right now, Jeremy would be pissed as shit.

  “The fuck, man?” he bellowed, elbowing one of the other men away, breaking free. The needle slid against his side, and Ape moved closer, pressed harder. He stank of stale booze and old sweat, piss, and blood.

  “Think we don’t know who you are?”