His eyes are drawn downward. Black boxer briefs are the only piece of clothing Malcolm is wearing, tight enough to cause a slight bulge where the fabric digs into the flesh of his thighs and the V of his hips. On his right thigh, a thin strip of detailed lace is inked beneath the hem of the briefs, wrapping around like a fucking garter belt, a knife expertly tattooed underneath as if actually holding the weapon against his skin. Realistically, the blade would cut through the delicate material, but in the world of ink, this impossible scenario is making Rowan’s head spin.

There is a smattering of other, smaller tattoos on his arms and something peeking out on either side of his hips underneath his briefs, and Rowan finds that he desperately wants to get closer to inspect them all.

Malcolm rubs his hands over his face, giving Rowan a perfect view of his knuckle tattoos. It takes a second for his brain to register the words upside down, but as soon as it does—the tattoo spelling THUG LIFE—something in him lurches.

He needs to know more about him.

About this man who’s completely blindsided him and who has somehow flawlessly combined feminine and masculine symbols on his body to create an image that isn’t wholly one or the other. Rowan wonders if maybe he’d gotten the rougher tattoos first—the knife and the skull and the pistols—then come to terms with something about himself that led him to add the lace, the flowers, the heart with a woman’s name on it. Or maybe it was the other way around, or maybe neither is true. Either way he desperately wants to find out.

So far he’s spent so much time ogling Malcolm’s body and tattoos that he’s hardly noticed his face at all. And when he finally flits his eyes upward, once again his breath catches. Dark hair buzzed short at the sides and longer on top, curling attractively over his forehead. Thick, dark eyebrows that show so much expression even though he’s not actively talking. Sharp nose leading to pouty lips that Rowan both wants to kiss and see wrapped around his cock.

And his eyes.

God.

Rowan’s always been good with words, but coffee and chocolate and all that other corny shit have nothing on the piercing golden caramel of this man’s eyes, and no other comparison does them justice. The whole black-and-white aesthetic he has going on is shattered by the pop of gold. And when his eyes flit around the room and land on Rowan’s—for the briefest of seconds—Rowan swears his heart stops.

It’s clear that the other men around him have seen him before. Hell, most of them have probably fucked him before. But they seem to be so unaffected by his presence, casually chatting with each other and hardly paying attention to him at all, and Rowan can’t help but want to grip each of them by the shoulders and shake, because how is no one else having as much of a reaction as he is right now?