Cipher by Moira Rogers

from dirty sex in a dingy motel room. Sticky blood had mostly dried on her T-shirt, and the fabric stuck to her skin as she rolled over. She was groggy, hungry, sore and distinctly sketchy. Sex had never seemed less appealing.
    Then she sat up, and remembered what it felt like to want.
    Andrew was doing pushups. Shirtless. The muscles in his shoulders and back flexed with every effortless movement, which made the tattoo on his back flex right along with them. Thick black ink cut across tanned skin in a style she recognized all too easily. One of the Ink Shrink’s creations, an intricate phoenix with a vaguely tribal feel, so large the bird’s wings spanned Andrew’s back and curled around his shoulders.
    The Ink Shrink wasn’t always subtle, either.
    “Almost done,” he said without looking up. Two more pushups and he rocked back on his knees, stretching his arms. “Feel better?”
    He had a tattoo on his arm too, and finding it fascinating kept her from dwelling on his chest. “Uhm, I feel less drunk. More like I got shot.”
    “Stiff and sore?”
    Yeah. Those were two very important things to remember, especially if Andrew was going to stay half-naked. “Pretty much. And I should have taken my shirt off last night, I think. There’s blood on it. I could use a shower.”
    “Bath,” he corrected. “And keep that arm dry.”
    She hadn’t brought a change of clothes, and the bathtub looked so questionable she opted to do the best she could with a towel and some warm water. The grimy mirror reflected an unpleasant picture—pale skin, tangled hair, bruised-looking eyes. She did her best to avoid her own reflection as she washed, then dragged her fingers through her shaggy hair and gathered the mess up on top of her head.
    Trying to rinse her shirt in the sink proved pointless, and the effort just made her left arm burn. She abandoned the garment in the garbage can and pulled on the closest thing to a shirt that she had—a black hoodie with the word meh emblazoned across the front in all its apathetic glory.
    Meh pretty much covered it. She eased the sweatshirt on over her bra and zipped it up as she returned to the main room. “I really need to buy some clothes.”
    He rose and passed her on his way to the small bathroom. “We’ll take care of that as soon as we figure out—” His words cut off in a curse.
    Kat jumped and regretted it. “What?”
    He backed out of the bathroom and turned, his eyes shadowed. “You left your stuff all over.”
    “My T-shirt? Why would it…” Shit. Sera was addicted to one of the thousands of procedural crime shows that cluttered the airwaves every Wednesday, which made Kat a captive audience. “You mean I need to clean up the evidence?”
    Andrew averted his gaze. “More like it’s a damn hard thing to look at.”
    “Oh.” He’d been acting so restrained that she’d forgotten the main reason alpha shifters drove her insane—the stifling, oppressive protectiveness. Even Sera, the most submissive shifter Kat had ever met, got downright testy when she thought her human roommate was in danger. The fact that Andrew hadn’t dragged her into the bathroom to bathe her himself probably evidenced the kind of self-control people gave medals for.
    Against her better judgment she reached out and touched Andrew’s shoulder. His skin was hot under her fingertips, and she traced the swooping whorl of one of the phoenix’s stylized feathers before she could stop herself. “I’ll take care of it.”
    “Kat.” He tensed, and his voice dropped to a rasp.
    “Sorry.” She leaned into him, pressing her forehead to his shoulder as she snuck her good arm around him in an awkward hug. “Thank you. For not flipping out and getting neurotic bossy alpha on me. But if there’s something I can do that’ll make it easier, you can ask.”
    He smoothed her hair. “Help me figure out what comes next.”
    No commands. No plan, already outlined and fixed into place. She swallowed hard and