Doctor Atlas gave a kind smile as she set about preparing a syringe. “That’s an accurate guess. Stress can really take a toll on a person’s health.” Loren looked away as the needle plunged into a vein at the crease of her elbow. “How have you been managing with your fainting spells?”
“I’ve had a few.” Her voice was little more than a croak. Sweat beaded on her forehead as the needle pinched, and a burning sensation spread up her arm.
“You didn’t tell me it was that bad,” Darien accused. He was leaning against the counter by the sink, watching her intently with that dreamy-but-intimidating gaze.
Loren shot him a glare. “You didn’t ask.”
The doctor hummed thoughtfully as she finished up with the blood tests and began preparing the items needed to touch up Loren’s tattoo. “I get the feeling that it’s not so much the blood tests that bother you as it is the tattoo.”
Loren nodded, nerves fluttering in her stomach as the doctor set up the tattoo machine. The crepe paper crinkled as Loren began to squirm, instantly sick to her stomach at the sight of that magical ink. Its iridescence—the glow and colors like a jellyfish—should’ve made it beautiful, but to someone who’d experienced its sting before, it only made it look deadly.
“I certainly don’t blame you,” the doctor said, reddish hair gleaming in the rows of fluorescents. She had the same straight, angular features as Tanner, the same gray eyes. “Lay back and get comfortable. It’ll be over before you know it.” Loren did as the doctor said. “Though it might help if one of these fine men held your hand through the process.”
Slowly, Loren turned her head to assess the group of Darkslayers.
Not one of them met her gaze. Jack coughed, Maximus idly scratched the back of his neck, and Tanner took a sudden interest in the ceiling texture as he rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. Loren might’ve laughed, had she not been so nervous.
And Darien…Darien just stared at her. His expression was unreadable, as it often was.
She cocked an eyebrow at him, and he cocked one of his in answer, but made no move to come any closer.
She almost rolled her eyes. Did they think she had cooties or something?
The doctor spun around to face them, the wheels of her chair squealing on the linoleum. “What’s the matter with you all? You have no problem hunting down demons and criminals, but you’re scared to hold a pretty girl’s hand?”
Maximus and Tanner looked like they might’ve stepped forward after another few seconds, but Darien moved first.
“Pussies,” he muttered. He dragged up a stool and took a seat at Loren’s other side, where he promptly gathered her right hand into both of his. The feeling of his warm, calloused fingers wrapping firmly around hers made her stomach do a backflip.
Darien met her gaze, and she wondered if he picked up on the unsteady pulsations of her heart. Sitting this close to him, she could see every black eyelash, every fleck of silver in his irises.
As if aware of how nervous he was making her, his thumb began drawing circles on the back of her hand; the feeling caused a skip in her heartrate. And when his eyes found hers, and tightened a little with amusement, she scowled at him.
“Do I make you nervous?” He was horribly failing at stifling that smile. That charming, infuriating smile she liked more than she cared to admit. The dimple in his left cheek was showing again.
“Of course not,” she lied. And itwasa lie. A big, fat lie, just like the one she’d told him that night in the dining room.
His thumb was doing that lazy circling again, and she found the nerves in her stomach rustling faster. Everywhere he touched stimulated her skin like nothing she’d ever felt, and she didn’t want him to stop. It was so distracting that she almost forgot about the pain that would begin at any second.
Darien was watching her with an expression she couldn’t pin down, as if he was trying to figure her out.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she muttered. “I’m only nervous about the pain.” He looked like he wanted to laugh.
The doctor turned on the machine, and a familiar loud buzzing filled the room.
The pain was instantaneous, as usual. The first touch of the tattoo gun to her skin had pain zipping up her arm like bolts of lightning, and it took everything she had not to bite her tongue off as Doctor Atlas began to darken her tattoo. That stupid, awful tattoo she’d had to live nearly her entire life with.
Loren didn’t want to admit it…but having Darien beside her made the whole process a little more bearable.
She wasn’t sure what to make of that.
—
Darien had to admit he was impressed by how well Loren handled the whole situation.
For the first few minutes, she endured the tattoo in silence, her free hand gripping the hem of the leopard-print tank she wore. The fingers that were tucked beneath his own barely tightened, as if she was afraid to reveal to him just how much this was hurting her.
As Doctor Atlas neared the halfway point, sweat began to bead on Loren’s forehead. Her hand squeezed his so hard, her painted nails dug into his skin like little knives.
