“No, ma’am. I’m keeping the sleeves.” He indicated his face. “But I could use some help with these.”
“Right. The eyes.” She slipped on a pair of horn-rimmed glasses—sexy ones that framed her eyes, spotlighted the bright-green irises that he only now noticed—and stood, leaning in to stare at the ink on his eyelids. The neckline of her lab coat sagged enough for him to catch a glimpse of the skimpy tank top beneath. He ignored it, instead concentrating on her face, a perfect distraction from thoughts of the two deadly numbers etched onto his lids.
“It’s a relief you only want a few of these gone. You’ve got so much ink on those arms, we’d be here for years.” One small, white hand reached out, cupped the side of his face, and pulled at his skin. Firm and painfully gentle.
Trying not to breathe her in, Clay averted his gaze. None of the nurses in the hospital had looked at him with this much kindness. It made his throat hurt.
“These are quite crudely done.”
“Ya think?”
She glanced at him, eyes wide with surprise, and he pulled it back. No point offending the person he’d come to for help. Why was he being an asshole?
Because she’s pretty and nice, and I’m not used to that.
“Sorry. So, these too.” He held up his hands, baring knuckles that had seen better days—knuckles that itched with the ink of his enemies. Ink that couldn’t disappear fast enough, as far as he was concerned. One hand to his neck. “This one and a few more.”
“Good. Black is good. And prison-style tattoos like this are generally easier to get rid of than professional work, so…I know it might not feel that way, but it’s actually a positive.” She smiled, cleared her throat, met his eyes, and held them. “I work with a lot of people who’ve been through some…hard times, Mr. Blane. And you…are you okay?”
“What? Yeah. Great,” he lied.
“I don’t want to pry, but if you’re in trouble… If you need help at all—” Her hand landed on his arm, soft and comforting, and something tightened in his throat before he shook it off.
“I’m fine.”
There were a couple of beats of quiet breathing as her eyes searched his. She was close to him now, lips compressed in a straight, serious line, and he could feel her wondering. Jesus, this was a mistake. He should go, before she freaked out and called the cops, who’d fuck everything up. “Where else, Mr. Blane?”
She sat back down and rolled a couple of feet away. When he caught her eye, expecting judgment, he was surprised to find more of that unbearable empathy.
In response, Clay stood up and pulled off his wife beater, looked straight ahead, and braced himself for the real judgment.
* * *
Before she could stop it, a startled oh escaped George’s mouth.
He was beautiful. Beautiful, but tragic, his skin a patchwork of scars, old and fresh alike, intersected by ink that ran the gamut from decorative to distressing. After a few seconds, she felt the awkward imbalance of their positions and stood, which still put her only about chest high.
A chest unlike any she’d had the pleasure of seeing. Beyond the obvious—the ink and the damage—his shape appealed on a level her brain couldn’t even begin to understand, but her body seemed quite eager to explore. She eyed his pectorals, curved and strong-looking, solid and sprinkled with a smattering of hair, and that vertical indentation in the middle, just begging a women to slide her nose in there, to run it up to a finely delineated set of clavicles, where she knew he’d smell like man, and down to the apex of a rib cage and belly carved in bone and muscle and sinew. She wondered how he’d gotten all that strength and unconsciously lifted a hand to touch…
With a start, George pulled herself back to the room, to her job, to her livelihood, for God’s sake, and felt her face go hot.
Dear God, my ovaries are taking over.
Take George’s professional trappings away from her—things like paper gowns and background music and attending nurses—and you might as well throw her into a barnyard or a zoo or whatever uncivilized place her overheated brain had escaped to.
This is a patient, she firmly reminded herself.
Not a man. A patient.
She cleared her throat, pushed her glasses farther up her nose, and leaned in. Still too close, too much. She thought she could smell him. Probably his deodorant, although it was more animal than chemical—very light, but inevitable in the stifling heat—and a hint of something less healthy. Alcohol?
“Please take a seat on the table, Mr. Blane.” There, that would give her some much-needed distance. Doctor, meet patient. She waited as he stepped up effortlessly and settled himself with a crinkle of paper, perfect muscles shifting under tragic skin.
Burns and battle scars. Even the tattoos.
Most weren’t professionally done, except for the arms and one word she could see, curved at the top of his chest in scrolled lettering that skimmed his collarbones. MERCY, an oddly poignant blazon fluttering above the mess beneath.
“This one looks professional,” she said, reaching out toward the letters before stopping herself, her finger almost close enough to touch the crisp-looking hair. She’d have to touch him eventually, she knew. But better to do it with gloves on, laser in hand.
“That stays.”
Good, she thought, with the strangest sense of letting go inside. Just a tiny slide into relief that the man wasn’t all blades and bared teeth.
“And like I said, I’m keeping the sleeves. They’re…mine. Except for the clock.” He touched his wrist. “We can get rid of that.”
His hand moved to his chest, and he rubbed himself there. The move seemed unconscious, mesmerizing, the sound of his hand rasping over hair loud in the quiet room.
MERCY. What a strange banner for a man who looked like he’d been spared nothing.
“Got it. Keep MERCY and the arms,” she said with an attempt at a smile. She eyed those arms, where death and destruction appeared to play the starring role. A skull, covered in some kind of cowl with a scythe and what looked like oversized earrings took up his right forearm. Higher, from shoulder to elbow, leered a mask, Mayan or Inca, and perfectly in keeping with his chiseled face. The other arm had darker imagery: a kilted man with a sword, wreaking havoc on what looked like a big wolf. A griffon sat, claws sharp and deadly, and around all of the violence, rooted in the clear-cut line of his wrist, was a complicated design made up of knots and what she thought were Celtic symbols. Crowning it all, an oversized cross covered his entire shoulder, overflowing into the ink on his chest and back, connecting the MERCY in front to his back.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Doctor, she almost wanted to correct him, because anything was better than ma’am. It sounded old, dried-up, sexless, which, on second thought, was probably more than appropriate. Although she didn’t feel sexless right now.
Christ, not at all.
For each tattoo, she went through her usual questions: How long ago had he gotten it? Had it faded? Was it professional? What kind of ink was used?
He didn’t know about the ink for two of them—the eyelids and knuckles—which wasn’t good. She’d had people come in with tattoos made from soot—a lot of those ex-cons—but his didn’t look quite so crude. People would use anything, anything at all, on themselves and each other. She’d once had a patient whose “ink” had been made from melted car tires. The memory made her shiver.
George glanced up to find him looking at her, his attention intimidating in its focus.
She ignored it. Back to his body.
Around his neck curved a black spiderweb, its lines thin and delicate, unlike the heavier areas where no ink had been spared.
“This should be faster than some of the others. The black and the…” She leaned in. “Huh. It looks sketched in. Very light. Interesting how shallow this one is. Looks professional.” Which was weird
for a prison tattoo. She’d seen spiderwebs like this before, and they were all prison tattoos.
He nodded, didn’t appear surprised in the least, and quirked that eyebrow again—his version of a smile. “Good eye, Doc.”
“And the rest? You want those gone?”
“All of ’em.”
“I’m afraid it’s going to hurt.”
“Don’t mind.”
Across his body, front to back, her gaze traveled, taking in every pit, every crag, every heartbreaking curve. What a tragic story—she’d seen bits and pieces of ones like it, but this—
Her eyes landed on a swathe of discolored flesh marring his side—a burn, if she wasn’t mistaken—an elongated triangle, curved at the top like an—
“Oh no,” she gasped before her hand flew to her mouth to cover it. An iron. He’d been burned with an iron, the skin melted. “Who did this to you, Mr. Blane?”
When he didn’t answer, she went on, cowed and embarrassed at her outburst. She should be professional, should keep her shock to herself. Lord, if she couldn’t control herself enough to do that, she shouldn’t be seeing patients at all, should she?
Okay. Slow down, concentrate. In an attempt to control her breathing, to rein in her pulse, she closed her eyes.
Now. Open, professional, serene.
She continued cataloging the man’s sufferings. On his back were two perfectly round scars. Don’t react. Be a doctor. She kept her voice calm, steady when she said, “You’ve been shot.” In the back. “Are you safe now, Mr. Blane?”
“Yes.”
“Do you need help? There are people who—”
“I’m fine,” he interrupted, his voice harsh, the subtext screaming that she’d better let it rest.
After a few beats, she continued her perusal. An S, as intricate as the letters on his chest, but not nearly as dark, followed by a scrolled M along his spine and a C on his right shoulder blade, with a complicated set of symbols in between—a triangle, arrows, an eagle, a river. A skull. The whole thing making up a deadly coat of arms.
“They really laid it on here.” Her hand skimmed the picture, gently, barely touching. With a shake of her head, she went on, “I’ll be honest with you. This is a lot of ink. It’s going to take months, with gaps in between to heal. And it’s going to hurt. This red here, that’s not good. Red’s a lot harder to get rid of. The particles don’t break down as easily and—”
“How long?”
“Several sessions, definitely. A few months, certainly. I would venture to say close to a year. Possibly longer.” She’d seen tattoos take ages to fade. And some…some never went away. “There’ll almost always be remnants, Mr. Blane. I just need to make sure you understand that. Your skin’s never going back to how it looked before.”
He nodded and sighed, that big back curving slightly, as if in defeat. Were he a woman, she’d put a hand on his shoulder, comfort him, but this man…no. Better keep that to a minimum.
“I’ve got a couple farther…uh…farther south.” One wide, ink-blackened hand gestured vaguely to his legs, and she smiled nervously, nodding as if this were all just par for the course. As if she hosted half-naked bad boys in her office every day.
“Yes, well. How about we start with one session whenever we can fit you in, and we’ll—”
“Start now.”
“Oh. No. There’s prep that needs to be done. We need to numb you for big surfaces like this. And then when you come in, we’ll also ice you down. For the pain.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing visibly, and she could feel his nerves or fear or whatever that edge was. “Clock’s ticking, Doc.” His expression grew impossibly harder: jaw tight, lips curving down into a sharp, pained sneer. “Just…” One of those big, rough-looking hands skimmed his chest. “At least my face and knuckles. Here, too. Whatever a suit can’t cover up to start with, but…”
That surprised her. “A suit?” she asked before she could hold the question in.
He gave a tight smile, one brow arched high. “Yeah. Can’t picture that, huh?”
“Oh, no, that’s not what—”
“I know what you meant, Doctor.” He caught her eye, held it, intimidating, but also human behind the markings. “Not offended.”
“Look.” She glanced at her watch, avoiding the parody of a timepiece etched into his wrist. “It’s late on a holiday weekend and—”
“I don’t need pain meds. I can do this. And I know you got family waiting. But maybe you could just…” He looked away before nodding once and turning back to her with a harshly expelled breath. “You’re right. Not the best time. I’ll let you get back to your life.” He stood, swiftly and smoothly, and George couldn’t help but stare at the mess of his skin, contrasted with the perfection of his body—the mystery of the man within.
All sorts of bodies came through her clinic, young and old, tight and saggy. She’d examined some whose scars were hidden and others whose damage was obvious. There’d been babies, fresh and new and already marred for life, and yes, there were sometimes men she admired. Next door, for God’s sake, was a plethora of hard bodies to choose from. The MMA school overflowed with them—men who lifted and punched and fought and worked, but this… This was masculinity in its purest form. This man didn’t primp in the mornings or even look in the mirror. He got up, he washed, he walked out the door. Only there wasn’t a door in her musings. There was nothing but the great outdoors, savage and unkempt, or the mouth to a cave.
Hard and dark, his hair almost black, with brows that arrowed straight out from three deep frown lines. And his body—she stared, caught up in the realness of this man, which was the oddest thought, as if the rest of her patients were somehow less than this one. This wasn’t just another epidermis to examine. This was muscle, undeniable in its curves and hollows. And even the damage was heartbreakingly appealing, layered as it was on top of that firm flesh, his energy palpable, tensile strength, so real that she could almost feel him vibrate with it.
Beneath her gaze, under the harsh white light, she could have sworn his nipples hardened, and viscerally, her body felt it, reacted as if separate from her doctor’s brain.
Keep it in your pants, Hadley! The man is probably dangerous, possibly in trouble, and, if nothing else, completely inadvisable.
Out of guilt, as if to make up for her rogue brain or overactive hormones or whatever the hell was pushing her to skim the line between brazen and professional, she put a hand up to stop him.
“Fine. We’ll do your knuckles and your eyes and see how it goes from there. Your face is… You’ll need injections and metal eye shields. Would you like something to drink? Water or tea?”
“Tea?” he asked, that brow up again, and she felt herself flush.
Right. Not a man who drank tea.
“All right, well, I’ll need to numb your lids first.”
“No numbing.”
“It’ll be painful, Mr. Blane. Like being splashed with hot bacon grease.” I know firsthand, she almost added but decided to keep that detail to herself. “And if you accidentally open your eyes, it’s… Look, I don’t recomm—”
“No numbing,” he repeated firmly.
“Okay, then. But I’ll have to insert eye shields. They’re like big metal contact lenses.”
“Sounds sexy.” His voice was low with what might have been humor—an apology, perhaps, for his abrupt words before.
George’s eyes flew to his to find him watching her, and rather than dwell on the way his gaze affected her, she looked quickly away and busied herself by collecting supplies. If nothing else, she could at least pretend to act professional.
She was, after all, a doctor.
3
Jesus Christ, the doc wasn’t kidding. This shit hurts.
Like poison, the Sultan ink hurt worse going out than it had
being put on. There’d been other shit happening on the day Ape had gotten him, of course. Stuff like adrenaline. Fear, too. Fear had been a distraction. I’ll pop your fuckin’ eyeball, Ape’s whispered words rushed back to him. He was still shocked the asshole hadn’t blinded him.
He’d been the traitor, after all. He’d deserved it in the eyes of the Sultans.
Here, Clay could feel the ink splitting apart with every painful pass of the laser, flooding his bloodstream, and one day soon, leaving him forever. Months. Months of this treatment, she’d said. It couldn’t happen fast enough.
Besides, what was a little more pain? It didn’t bother him. In fact, the burn helped center him.
A good thing, considering the goddamned racket the machine made. A fuck-ton of noise for such a small piece of technology. He eyed the big red Emergency Stop button on the machine’s console, wondering about the circumstances that might lead to pressing it. It let out these rhythmic beeps and zapping sounds that brought him right back to his room in the clubhouse, where he’d been caught like a rat. That feeling of being trapped and useless and alone, with the sound of gunshots tearing through the place. It was all he could do not to get up and bust the hell outta there. Or, more likely, cover his ears and curl into the fetal position, right there on the paper-covered table. He shut his eyes, tight, remembering Handles’s face just before that first bullet tore into his back. It was that face he saw over and over again. That look that told Clay the man wasn’t there to protect himself or his brothers. No, this was an execution. And purely for revenge. For taking them all in. For making them believe he was one of them. For making Handles like him, even love him, maybe, like a son.
But the woman—Dr. Georgette Hadley—kept Clay from losing himself in memory with calm, gentle touches. She moved his hand into place, held his body where it was, and kept his mind right there, in the room. Mostly.
He’d been fighting this thing for a while now, this compulsion to disappear into his head. Had fought it in the months at the hospital and the single week at home before they’d torched his place. He’d fought it while talking to that lawyer, Hecker.
Under Her Skin Page 30
