Jake: The Sinner Saints #3 (6 page)

So, when she’d finally decided to act on Roman’s letter and leave town, she’d been forced to improvise. She’d sent her boss an email saying that there had been a family emergency and that Cheryl would be covering all of her classes for the next couple of days.

Technically, it wasn’t a lie, but unfortunately that
couple of days
was a couple of days ago.

What did you tell him?
Verity wrote.

That your brother was terribly sick, but that you’d be back any time now. And you will be…right?

Verity closed her eyes and raised a hand to rub at her temples.

That had been the plan. Of course, that plan had gone up in smoke the second she’d landed in San Francisco only to find out that Jake was nowhere near the city. Now she was coming up on the end of her second day, and she hadn’t even been out to the address that Roman had sent her.

Verity forced her eyes open, lifted her phone, and started to type.

You bet.

Good,
Cheryl wrote back.
Not that I could blame you for wanting to spend some alone time with Mr. Muscles.

Verity groaned as she slammed the phone back down on the mattress. The last thing she needed right now was to hear echoes of her own thoughts from Cheryl.

“Something wrong?” Jake’s deep voice drifted from across the room.

Verity shot up on the mattress. Damn. She’d been so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she’d somehow missed the sound of the shower cutting off.

“No. I’m good,” Verity said, quickly jamming her phone back into her jeans. “Just work trouble.”

Once it was safely stowed away, she turned toward Jake…and felt all the air leave her lungs in a giant rush.

He was standing in the archway between the rooms. A pair of jeans was slung low across his hips, the top button still undone. He was rubbing a towel over his short, dark hair, but it wasn’t catching all the water. Tiny rivulets still rolled down his neck and over his bare chest.

Dear God, that chest.

None of the fantasies that she’d indulged in had even come close. The man was magnificent—broad and cut. Hell, she could probably wash the laundry on those abs.

But even so, the build of his body alone wasn’t what had Verity’s jaw on the floor.

She’d known that his arms were covered in ink, but she didn’t give it much thought. Lots of Roman’s friends had artwork scattered across their limbs. Somehow Verity had figured that the rest of Jake’s body would be the same, dotted in haphazard tattoos.

She’d been wrong.

His sleeves were only one part of a much larger work. His shoulders and pecs were covered in ink. A single massive piece that made it seem like the top of his torso had been fitted with a protective sheath of hand-tooled leather. Verity had seen something like it before in real life, a detailed piece of Italian medieval armor that she’d studied in graduate school.

Everything inside her wanted to jump up and get a closer look. She was dying to see just how fine the details were, how much of the scroll work was layered in, how the artist had accomplished such realistic shading. All of it.

But she didn’t dare.

She swiveled her face away the moment he stepped deeper into the room. The last thing she needed was to be caught gaping…again. Their relationship had already reached its awkwardness limit. She didn’t want to push it over the edge.

She did have to spend the night in a small motel room with the man after all.

But surely, one more little look wouldn’t hurt anything. Just a tiny one.

A glance.

Nothing more.

She shot her gaze his way just as he sat down on the end of his bed…and caught a glimpse of more tattoos running across the top of his back.

Look away, damn it.

The voice in her head was loud. She knew she should listen to it. She really did, but somehow she just couldn’t get her muscles to comply.

“Nothing major, I hope,” he said.

Verity gave her head a shake, but didn’t turn away. “E-excuse me?”

“At work. I hope the trouble’s nothing major.”

“No.” Verity started to shake her head, but stopped. “But maybe…I mean, I hope not.”

Jake arched his brows as he turned toward her. He let the towel drop down by his side. “You don’t sound too convinced.”

Verity leaned back a little, hoping to catch another glimpse of the details tattooed on his back, but she could barely see anything. She’d have to lay all the way back to get the right angle, and that would be anything but subtle.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” she went on, risking lounging back just another couple of inches. “I just didn’t give my boss a whole lot of notice before I came out here, and I haven’t really earned any time off at work yet, and now my boss is asking questions, and…”

Her voice trailed off as a tiny portion of his back came into view. She craned her head to the side as far as she could, hoping to get a better look.

It was then she noticed just how quiet the room had become.

Verity flashed her gaze up at Jake’s face. His brows were pulled together, his chin cocked to the side.

“Everything okay, Verity?” he asked.

Crap
.

She sat up instantly. Her spine went as straight as a lamppost.

“Everything is fine. It’s just…” Her voice trailed off again as she searched for any plausible reason that she’d be trying to sneak a look at his naked back. In the end, she decided that the truth was far less embarrassing than anything she could make up. “Your tattoo is amazing.”

Jake’s eyes widened. Apparently, he hadn’t been expecting honesty either.

“Thank you,” he said.

“I mean it’s stunning,” Verity said, standing up from the bed. “And I’m practically killing myself over here trying to get a closer look. Do you mind?”

Jake looked up at her for a long moment before finally nodding. “If that’s what you want.”

Verity didn’t try to hide the wide smile that spread across her face as she plopped down on the mattress beside him.

“Thank you,” she said, as she leaned in closer to the canvas of his skin. “This is amazing. It must have taken a long time to complete.”

“A few months.”

The detail of the piece was just as amazing as she’d hoped. She reached out with one of her fingertips and traced the line of one of the intricate flower and frond swirls that decorated the shoulder cap. It was just like she remembered.

Verity followed the piece around to his back, crawling around on the bed as she went. And she was glad that she did. The backside of the work was just as amazing as the front. He even had the harness straps that ran around the middle of his ribcage.

And the shading—it was phenomenal. Everything was so well done that, if it weren’t for the warm feel of Jake’s taut skin under her fingers, she would be tempted to believe that it was the real thing.

“You know, I saw real pauldrons like this back when I was in college. I thought they were gorgeous then, but this is exquisite. So much more alive,” Verity said. “What made you want to get it?”

Jake cleared his throat. The line of his shoulders stiffened as she came around to his other side.

“Same,” he said shortly. “Saw it. Liked it.”

“Come on,” she said with a laugh. “There
has
to be more to the story than that. You didn’t sit through countless hours of a needle poking into your skin on a lark.”

A second later, Verity ran out of mattress to crawl on. She lowered herself down onto the carpet to get a close up look at the finely crafted image of the archangel Michael with his sword held high that emblazoned the front.

Jake’s chest expanded as he drew in a deep breath, and Verity’s eye was caught by how the artwork moved with him. She spread her fingers out over the chest plate as it slowly fell back into place.

“I came across a similar piece of armor back when I was stationed in Europe, and I kind of fell in love with it,” he said. “It was light and strong. Made for real battle, but still someone took the time and effort to make it beautiful. I felt a connection to what it symbolized.”

“Which is?” Verity asked, looking up into his eyes. They were dark with an emotion she had a hard time putting her finger on.

“What it means to be a warrior living in a civilized world.”

Well,
that
sounded interesting. She cocked her head to the side.

“Please. Tell me more,” she said, lifting herself up a few inches higher on her knees.

Jake’s mouth went hard and flat for a moment, as if he were deciding how much to tell her, but his gaze never left hers. Eventually, Verity could tell that he’d decided to share, because his lips parted and he drew in a long, slow breath.

“War…combat…it changes you. There’s no way around that,” he said, his voice soft but even. “It has a way of stripping you bare, of forcing you to confront what lies behind all your carefully constructed masks.”

“And what did you discover about yourself?” Verity asked, honestly intrigued.

“Many things,” he said cryptically. “Most importantly, I believed in what I was doing. That I felt a calling inside me to keep innocent people, to keep my country, safe. But that didn’t make what I had to do any easier. To this day, I carry the weight of every decision, every action, every drop of blood around with me. Over time, that weight became a burden, one that threatened to drag me down to the ground.”

“I can’t even begin to imagine.”

“Then, one day my team and I found ourselves in this Italian castle, and I saw this old piece of armor hanging on a mannequin. At first, I didn’t understand why someone had taken the time to make it so beautiful. A battlefield is a terrible place for a work of art. But then I realized that the armor wasn’t just meant to protect his body.”

“It was also intended to protect his soul,” Verity whispered as she slowly came to the same conclusion. Her hand stilled over his breastbone. “Of course. All that beautiful scroll work, it’s not just meant to remind him of what he’s fighting for, but who he is. To protect him from succumbing to the barbarism that he fights against.”

“Exactly.” Jake’s brows lifted as he gave a single nod. It was almost as if he hadn’t expected her to understand.

And until this moment, she never had. When she’d studied that armor back in school, she’d viewed the pieces through the eyes of an art student, not bothering to see past the medieval ornaments and patterns. Never once thinking of the living, breathing men that had worn them all those years ago.

Men like Jake who fought to guard and protect all that they held dear—their countrymen, their families…their lovers.

Her mouth suddenly felt dry, and she snaked the tip of her tongue out to wet her lips.

“See,” she said, her voice breathy. “I told you there was a better story.”

Jake stared down at her for another few heartbeats, before his eyes narrowed slightly.

“What are we doing, Verity?”

She blinked and opened her mouth, but at first nothing came out.

“T-talking about your tattoo,” she managed to finally say.

He lifted his hand and slowly curled his fingers around her wrist, but didn’t pull it away.

“No. I mean what are we
really
doing?” His voice was so low that even this close she could barely make out his words.

For the first time, Verity looked down at her hand—really looked at it. Her fingers weren’t splayed across a piece of armor. Her fingertips hadn’t been caressing a lifeless mannequin. And there was no pretending that deep down she didn’t know that.

A part of her—a big part, if she was being honest—had touched Jake because she’d wanted to. Sure, the art on his skin had drawn her in, but it was the man underneath she was almost desperate to feel.

And dear God, did she feel him—the steady, constant pounding of his heart under her palm, the rise and fall of his breath, the heat of his body.

Her hand started to tremble under his touch. She raised her eyes to his. The intensity of his look nearly stole her breath.

He was right.

What had she done? What had she
really
done?

And how the hell was she ever going to live it down?

“I am so sorry,” she said. Her voice was soft, but she punctuated every word. “I got carried away. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I know you’re not…”

Her words trailed off as shame got the better of her. Verity closed her eyes, doing her damnedest to regain her composure.

“Verity—” Jake tried.

She shook her head, stopping him short. She couldn’t bear to swallow his consolations.

She opened her eyes a long second later and pulled her palm away from his chest. He released her wrist. Slowly, she rose up from her knees.

“It won’t happen again,” Verity said, taking a step back. Then another. “I promise.”

Jake’s stare stayed steady on her. It seemed like he didn’t blink for a full minute. His body remained motionless, but still somehow hummed with a potent energy that Verity swore she could feel from across the room.