Chapter 15: Needle & Knives
The steady buzz of the tattoo machine was a meditation Sammy usually slipped into like a warm bath. Today, it was just noise. A persistent, insectile whine that drilled into the molars on the left side of her jaw.
Her client, a woman named Chloe with silver rings on every finger, lay perfectly still on the leather chair. The skin on her ribcage stretched taut, a canvas of pinkish red where Sammy was shading the final wing of a hyper-realistic monarch butterfly. The stencil had been perfect. Her line work was, as always, flawless. But the shading today felt robotic. Her hand moved on muscle memory, her eyes tracking the interplay of light and dark, but her mind was a thousand miles away.
Or, more accurately, three nights away.
The scent of green soap and sterile wipes filled her nostrils, but underneath it, if she concentrated, she could almost catch the phantom smell of leather and his cologne on her pillow. She’d slept wrapped in it since he’d left. She hadn’t washed the sheets.
Click. The foot pedal released, and the buzz cut off. The sudden silence was a shock.
“You okay, Sam?” Lindi’s voice came from the next station over, where she was packing up after a large-scale koi fish. “You’ve been zoning out for like, twenty minutes.”
“Fine,” Sammy said, too quickly. She dipped her needle cluster into a cup of water, watching the ink swirl and cloud. “Just a long week.” She grabbed a clean paper towel and gently blotted the fresh tattoo. “How’s that feeling, Chloe? Need a break?”
“It’s all good,” Chloe said through a slight grimace. “You’re almost done, right?”
“Just the last bit of blackwork.” Sammy pulled a fresh pair of black nitrile gloves from the box, the snap against her wrists a familiar, grounding sensation. She switched to a tighter needle grouping, loaded it with more ink, and got back to work. The buzz filled her head again, mercifully drowning out her thoughts.
But it couldn’t drown out the memory of Caleb’s voice on the phone yesterday. His tone had been all wrong—clipped, tense, the way he got when he was dealing with a business problem he couldn’t immediately bully into submission.
“Hey, you home?” he’d asked, no hello.
“At the shop. What’s up?”
A long pause, filled with the sound of him tapping a keyboard. “The security system at the house. There was a… glitch. Night of the gala.”
Her stomach had dropped. “A glitch?”
“Some of the camera feeds from that night are corrupted. Like, digitally snowed out. Rebel’s looking into it.”
Rebel’s name had sent a jolt through her, hot and cold at once. “Is it… is it a hack?” she’d asked, trying to sound casually concerned and not like her heart was trying to beat its way out of her throat.
“Dunno. Rebel says it’s probably just a firmware sync error from the last update he pushed. But it’s weird, right? That it happened that night.” Another pause. “You didn’t see anything weird, did you? Hear anything?”
She’d seen Rebel Gage in her bedroom. She’d heard his rough voice in the dark, felt his hands in her hair. She’d fallen asleep on him.
“No,” she’d said, her voice miraculously steady. “Nothing weird.”
Now, under the bright, focused lamp of her station, the conversation played on a loop in her head. A firmware sync error. It sounded so plausible, so technical. So Rebel. He was always tinkering with the system, making it "more elegant," as he put it.
But the timing was a black hole sucking all logic into it.
He’d been acting strange when he left her room that night. Distant, almost spooked. He’d kissed her forehead with a tenderness that had made her chest ache, then slipped out like a ghost. She’d assumed it was the weight of crossing the line with Caleb’s sister. Now, a cold, slick doubt began to uncoil in her gut.
What if he wasn’t just covering their tracks from Caleb? What if he was covering his tracks from… something else?
She finished the last solid black line on the butterfly’s wing, her movements precise and automatic. “All done,” she announced, clicking off the machine for the final time.
After the careful wrapping, the aftercare instructions, the payment, and Chloe’s delighted hugs, Sammy was alone at her station. She wiped down her tray, her hands moving while her brain churned. Lindi was talking to a walk-in client by the front counter. The shop’s usual soundtrack of alternative rock played at a low volume.
She pulled out her phone. No messages from him. Not a single text in three days. Was that normal? After a night like that? She’d replayed their kiss by the pool, the feel of his skin under her hands in the dark, a million times. For her, it had been a cataclysmic shift. The world had reordered itself. For him… was it just another complication to manage?
A familiar anger, warm and defensive, rose in her. No. She’d seen his face. He wasn’t that good an actor. The raw need in him had been real.
Maybe he was just scared. Maybe Caleb’s “glitch” had spooked him more than he’d let on. Maybe he was trying to fix it, to protect them, before…
Before what?
Her thumb hovered over his name in her contacts. She could call him. Demand to know what was happening. But the memory of his expression in the moonlight—vulnerable, torn, haunted—stopped her. Pushing him felt dangerous. Like poking a wounded animal.
“Earth to Sammy.” Lindi appeared, leaning against the partition. She was holding two coffees. “You’ve been in a seriously cryptic mood since that fancy party. Spill. Was the champagne that bad?”
Sammy accepted the coffee with a weak smile. “The champagne was fine.”
“The company wasn’t?”
“The company was… complicated.”
Lindi raised a pierced eyebrow. “Complicated-hot or complicated-boring?”
“Complicated,” Sammy repeated, sipping the coffee. It was bitter and perfect. “Just complicated.”
“Alright, mysterious one.” Lindi knew when not to push. “Well, your three o’clock canceled. Stomach bug. You’ve got the rest of the afternoon free.”
An open afternoon. It stretched before her, a void to be filled with more circling thoughts. She couldn’t go back to the empty mansion. Not with the silent, watching cameras and the ghost of Rebel in her sheets. Not with the knowledge that some of those eyes had been mysteriously blind on the one night she’d needed them to be.
She made a decision.
“Actually, I think I’m gonna head out early,” she said, starting to break down her station with renewed energy. “I’m spent.”
She drove home with the windows down, letting the choked LA air whip her hair into a frenzy. The opulent gates of the Holmby Hills estate slid open with a silent, hydraulic sigh, swallowing her car whole. The house rose before her, a monument of glass and sharp angles, looking less like a home and more like a spectacular cage.
Inside, the silence was a physical weight. Her heels clicked a lonely rhythm on the vast expanse of marble in the foyer. The scent of lemon polish and emptiness filled her lungs. She dropped her bag on a sleek, uncomfortable bench that cost more than her car.
In her room, she kicked off her shoes, the cool wood floor a shock. Shedding her clothes felt like shedding a skin. She pulled on soft cotton shorts and his stolen t-shirt, the fabric now carrying her own sleep smell more than his. It was a pathetic comfort.
She padded to the kitchen, the mansion’s vastness pressing in. The refrigerator hummed. She poured a glass of water, listening to the ice crackle. The pool glittered outside, a rectangle of impossible blue under the late afternoon sun. The scene of the crime. She looked away.
Her phone, face-down on the counter, buzzed once. A text notification. Her heart did a stupid, hopeful lurch. Lindi, probably. Or Caleb checking in.
She flipped it over.
REBEL: Door locked?
A cold wave, sudden and sharp, washed from her scalp down to her feet. She stared at the words. Her eyes flicked to the massive front door, fifteen feet away across the foyer. She hadn’t touched it since coming in. The system auto-locked after sixty seconds. It was always locked.
How did he know she was home? He could have guessed. She finished work early, it was logical. But the timing. The exactness of it. As if he’d been waiting.
Her thumbs hovered over the screen. She typed, deleted, typed again.
SAMMY: It locks itself. You know that.
She hit send. The three dots appeared immediately. He was watching. He was typing right now.
REBEL: Check it.
The command was simple. Absolute. A chill traced her spine, a mix of fear and something darker, more thrilling. She didn’t move. She watched the three dots pulse, a digital heartbeat.
REBEL: Sammy.
That single word, her name, broke the spell. It was the voice from the darkened bedroom. A low, urging rasp. She set her glass down slowly, the click echoing in the quiet kitchen. She walked back to the foyer, her bare feet silent on the stone.
The grand front door stood, immense and solid. She reached for the polished steel handle. It was cool under her palm. She turned it.
It didn’t budge. Locked.
She leaned her forehead against the cool wood, closing her eyes. He’d asked a question to which he already knew the answer. He was reminding her of the rules, his rules. The system he controlled. Her breath fogged briefly on the varnish.
Her phone buzzed again in her hand. She looked down.
REBEL: Good girl.
His reply sent an instant thrill to her core.
A warm, liquid shot of electricity that started low in her belly and flooded outward, prickling her skin. It was a visceral, unexpected reaction that made her breath catch. Did she have a… praise kink? The thought was absurd, but the evidence was a sharp, undeniable heat spreading through her.
She stared at the two words on her screen, her back still pressed against the cool wood of the door.
He was testing her. He was playing a game whose rules only he understood. Her thumb trembled slightly as she tapped out a reply.
SAMMY: How did you know I was home?
She sent it. The three dots appeared, vanished, then appeared again. He was there. He was watching the conversation unfold in real time. The silence in the fretched around her, suddenly feeling less empty and more… occupied.
Her second question followed, blunt and aching.
SAMMY: And why have you been avoiding me for three days?
She hit send before she could second-guess the neediness in the words. It was there. She felt it, a raw scrape in her throat. The bubble with his name glowed. He was typing. A long moment stretched, thin and taut.
Then, his reply.
REBEL: The front gate sensor pings my phone. I saw your car code enter.
REBEL: And I’m not avoiding you.
It was a technical answer. A sterile, logical explanation. It should have been a relief. Instead, it felt like a deflection. The gate sensor. Of course. She exhaled, the sound loud in the quiet. But it didn’t explain the timing, the eerie precision of his text the second she’d walked into the silence.
His second text was a lie. She knew it in her bones. He was avoiding her. The proof was in the hollow, silent days since he’d slipped from her bed.
Before she could formulate a response, another message popped up.
REBEL: I left a gift for you in your top drawer.
She stared at his words until the screen went dark.
A gift.
Her fingers tightened around the phone.
She took the stairs two at a time, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. The phrase echoed in her head, all wrong. Gifts were wrapped in pretty paper, left on kitchen counters with cards. They weren't announced via text after checking your locks. They weren't hidden in your underwear drawer.
She burst into her bedroom, the lavender walls feeling suddenly claustrophobic. Her gaze went straight to the sleek, modern dresser. The top drawer.
It was her most private space. Satin and lace, mismatched socks, and the sleek, rose-quartz vibrator she'd bought on a whim last year. Her 'little rose friend.' Heat rushed to her face. She'd used it more times than she'd admit, especially lately, her mind painting vivid pictures of dark eyes and skilled hands that belonged to Rebel. The idea of him knowing, of his fingers brushing against it while placing some other object there, made her skin crawl with a sickening blend of shame and arousal.
She didn't text him back.
Instead, she crossed the room in three long strides. She yanked the drawer open.
Nothing looked different at first. The familiar chaos of black lace and soft cotton met her gaze. She shoved a hand in, pushing past the silken layers, her fingers searching. They brushed against cool, hard plastic. Not the smooth curves of rose quartz. Something else.
She pulled it out.
It was a device, flat and matte black, about the size of a credit card but slightly thicker. No buttons. No ports. Just a seamless, obsidian screen. It felt heavy in her palm, dense with purpose. She turned it over. Nothing.
Her breath came in short, sharp pulls.
Hesitation froze her for a full ten seconds. Then, driven by a dread-curiosity that made her fingers tremble, she swiped her thumb across the dark screen.
It woke instantly.
The glow was faint, casting a pale blue light on her face. It wasn't a home screen with apps. It was a live video feed. The image was crisp, high-definition, showing a bathroom. Not hers. A bathroom she’d never seen before. It had stark, gray-tiled walls, a rainfall showerhead, and a single shelf holding plain, masculine products. Industrial. Clean. Utterly sterile.
Her brain scrambled, trying to place it. One of the guest suites downstairs? No. The style was all wrong. This was somewhere else entirely. The camera angle was high, in a corner, looking diagonally across the space toward the shower.
The door in the feed opened.
Rebel walked in.
Sammy’s hand flew to her mouth, stifling a gasp. He was here. In this place. On this screen. In her hand. He was wearing a worn, tight black t-shirt and jeans. His hair was slightly messy, like he’d been running his hands through it. He looked tired, the sharp lines of his face shadowed. He walked into the center of the frame, his back to the camera’s perspective.
He didn’t look up. He didn’t acknowledge the lens in any way.
He reached down, grabbed the hem of his shirt, and pulled it over his head in one fluid motion. The muscles of his back tightened and shifted, the intricate tapestry of his tattoos rippling across his skin under the cool bathroom light. Sammy stopped breathing. Her thumb tightened on the edge of the device, her knuckles whitening.
His hands went to his belt buckle. The leather slid free with a soft, metallic hiss she couldn’t hear but could imagine perfectly. He pushed his jeans and briefs down in one motion, stepping out of the pooled fabric with a simple, unselfconscious grace. He stood naked for a moment, his back still to her, the powerful lines of his body rendered in flawless, silent detail on the small screen.
Then he moved.
He walked to the shower, his stride easy. He reached in and turned the knobs. A plume of steam began to rise almost immediately. He stepped over the tiled curb and into the spray.
He didn’t close the curtain.
He stood directly under the showerhead, the water sluicing over his head, down his shoulders, over the planes of his back. He braced one hand against the wall, his head bowed, letting the water pummel his neck. His other hand swept back through his wet hair. He turned slowly, water streaming down his chest, over the dark ink there, tracing the lines of his abdomen. His eyes were closed, face tipped up into the spray.
Sammy was frozen.
A part of her screamed, a high-pitched internal siren of violation. This was a camera. In his bathroom. He had put it there. He had given her the feed. He was showing her this. Performing for her. The realization was a cold splash of water in her own face. He knew. He knew she was watching right now.
Another part of her, darker and furious and hungry, was riveted. Her gaze drank in the sight of him—the way the water beaded on his skin, the shift of muscle under the ink, the stark, vulnerable line of his throat as he swallowed. Heat pooled low in her stomach, a sharp, insistent ache that had nothing to do with anger. She was shocked by her own body’s traitorous response. Her breath fogged the screen. She wiped it clean with a frantic jerk of her thumb, not wanting to miss a single second.
He moved under the water, running his hands over his face, down his arms. It was a normal shower. Slow. Methodical. Almost ritualistic. And entirely for her benefit. He never once opened his eyes to look at the camera. He didn’t need to. He knew exactly where it was. He knew exactly who was watching.
The want that rose in her was a living thing, thick and hot in her throat. It was tangled with the violation, the two feelings coiling around each other until she couldn’t separate them. This was his gift. A window. A deliberate, calculated exposure. A secret for a secret. Her cheeks burned. Her entire body felt electrified, humming with a dangerous current.
The steam thickened, softening the edges of his form. He was a phantom behind the mist, a beautiful, naked ghost on a tiny screen in her shaking hand.
A frantic, irrational thought pierced the haze: I want more.
A frantic, irrational thought pierced the haze: I want more.
The device felt suddenly searing in her palm. She was leaning forward, her nose almost touching the screen, her breath creating little fog circles she hurriedly wiped away. The steam in his shower was a thick, curling curtain. It clung to the glass door, beaded on the gray tiles, and wrapped around his form in tantalizing, obscuring tendrils. He was a shape moving through a cloud, a suggestion of solid muscle and smooth skin. He turned, a slow, almost lazy rotation under the water.
Her teeth sank into her lower lip. She willed the vapor to part. He shifted, bending to pick up a bar of soap, and for a second the view cleared. The line of his flank, the curve of his ass, a flash of thigh. Then the steam swirled back, hiding him again. A frustrated sound escaped her throat, raw and wanting. She was a voyeur in her own bedroom, complicit in her own violation, aching for a clearer picture.
Her thumb, acting on a desperate impulse, swiped across the screen. Nothing happened. No other angles, no zoom function. It was a single, fixed lens. A deliberate, torturous frame. A gift with strict parameters.
The water shut off. The sudden silence from the device was a shock. He stood for a moment in the dripping stillness, water cascading from the dark ends of his hair, running in rivulets down the ink etched into his back. He reached for a black towel hung on a bar just outside the shot. He dried his face first, the fabric obscuring his features, then dragged it slowly down his neck, over his shoulders, across the defined ridges of his spine.
Every movement was careful. Controlled. A performance.
She watched, mesmerized, as he stepped out onto the mat. He kept his back to the camera, the towel now wrapped around his waist, tucked securely. He ran a hand through his wet hair again, pushing it back from his forehead. Only then did he pause. He stood perfectly still for three heartbeats, his head tilted slightly as if listening.
Then, with a deliberate slowness, he turned.
His eyes opened. They looked directly into the lens. Into her eyes, miles away. His gaze was a physical impact, dark and unblinking and knowing. A slight, almost imperceptible smirk touched the corner of his mouth. He gave a single, slow nod.
The screen went black.
Sammy jerked back as if slapped. The device fell from her numb fingers onto the soft carpet. She stared at it, a flat, black monolith against the pale pile. Her heart was a wild, caged thing hammering against her ribs. Her skin felt too tight, flushed and oversensitive. The room was too warm, the silence too loud.
He had seen her watching. He had known. The entire silent, steamy display had been for her. A test. A mirror held up to her own hunger.
Her phone, forgotten on the dresser, buzzed.
She lunged for it, her hands shaking.
REBEL: Did you like your gift?
The casual cruelty of the question stole her breath. She typed, her thumbs clumsy and angry.
SAMMY: What the hell was that?
SAMMY: That’s not a gift. That’s a violation.
The three dots pulsed. She could picture him, towel around his waist, leaning against that sterile bathroom counter, typing with a calm that felt like violence.
REBEL: Was it?
REBEL: You looked.
REBEL: You didn’t turn it off.
Each message was a nail. He was right. She had looked. She had craved more. Shame burned through her, hot and acidic, but it was met by an equal, ferocious defiance. He didn’t get to do this. He didn’t get to expose her like this and then judge her for looking.
SAMMY: You put a camera in your bathroom. For me. That’s insane.
REBEL: It’s a window.
REBEL: You wanted one.