“Hmm,” I considered, as our main course maki arrived. “Obviously you know I really like to read. But! I’m also pretty into ice- and roller-skating. I was even part of a roller derby league for a while last year, before work got too intense for all that time off elevating ankles and icing my various bruises.”

“No shit,” she marveled, a lip-biting smile curving her lips. “Emmeline Harlow, elbow-throwing spitfire on wheels. You’re right. Would not have guessed.”

“Make that Electra Hex,” I said, twirling one of my chopsticks with a dramatic flourish, “formerly of the Mass Marauders.”

“ ‘Though she be but little, she is fierce,’ ” she quoted, arching a playful eyebrow. “And don’t tell me that one’s overused, because I know—and in this case, don’t care.”

“I wasn’t going to say that. The rest of that quote doesn’t get as much love, but I like the whole thing. ‘Oh, when she’s angry, she is keen and shrewd! She was a vixen when she went to school.’ Such Shakespearean sass.” I grinned down at my sushi. “I always thought it might make a cool tattoo.”

“On you, it would.”

I canted my head, surveying the milky canvas of her shoulders and arms, my mind straying helplessly to the remembered salt-and-confectioners’-sugar flavor of her skin. “Speaking of ink, do you have any? Seems like it would be your thing.”

A complicated expression slid over her face like a passing cloud as she glanced down at her plate. “I’ve meant to do it, a time or two,” she said, quicksilver eyes flicking back up at me, both wary and vulnerable. “But it hasn’t quite panned out yet, for . . . various reasons.”

“You realize being cryptic about it is only going to make me want to dig deeper.”

“In that case . . .” Her gaze swept over the collection of tattoos on the insides of my forearms, darkening with interest. “I’ll make you a deal.”

Reaching slowly across the table, she grazed a fingertip over the line of designs that ran vertically above the veins of my wrist. I felt her touch, the warm pad of her finger and the sharp edge of her nail, like a blooming tingle spiraling through my body. Coursing down my arm and into my torso, dipping into my belly and coming to coil hot between my thighs, as if she’d skimmed her finger directly along the raw skein of nerves that tangled under my skin.

“If you tell me what all of yours mean,” she said, as I caught my breath, her voice low and honey glazed. “Then I’ll return the favor.”

“You’re on.” I cocked my head, feeling a little tipsy and a lot bold, her touch still lingering on my skin. “Do you . . . maybe want to come over? For a nightcap, and tales of tattoos good and ill?”

She considered me for a moment, anticipation leaping into those pale wolf’s eyes. “You know what, Harlow? I think that sounds exactly like what I want to do.”