Tough Enough by M. Leighton Page A

At first glance, I thought it was just some sort of tribal tattoo. It looked a little like a twist of teeth or claws. But on closer inspection, I can see that there are letters intricately woven into the wicked-looking spikes.
    “It’s Latin.
Pugnare superesse. Vivere pugna.
Fight to survive. Fight to live.”
    Makes sense for a fighter, I suppose. It doesn’t register that the words might have a deeper meaning until I more closely examine his skin.
    When the cream is rubbed in thoroughly, I make myself pull my hands away. Holding back a sigh, I reach for a dish of makeup, swirl a small brush through it and lean in to attack a scar that runs around his shoulder blade in a semicircle. It’s an odd shape, but I don’t ask any questions. For all I know, he had some sort of surgery that he doesn’t want to talk about. It’s as I’m applying coverage to the pale pink line that I begin to notice other things that I was too distracted to notice before, when I was rubbing my hands over Rogan’s flesh and asking about his tattoo.
    There are three long white gashes that run down his back. Not like claws, but at different places, like something scratched or cut him in separate lashes. On his lower back are five small dots in an orderly pattern that’s a little bigger than the size of my palm. And on his right side, just below his ribs, are two perfectly round scars about the size of a pencil eraser. I can’t imagine what the other marks are, but these two look suspiciously like cigarette burns. Old ones.
    Fight to survive. Fight to live.
    What has he had to survive? What has he had to fight for?
    As I’m working, my mind is running a mile a minute. Unfortunately, my hands are nowhere near keeping up. In fact, I’m rubbing my index finger over the tiny dots when Rogan speaks, causing me to jump guiltily.
    “I bet you weren’t expecting to have to work this hard for your money today, were you?” I glance up at his profile. One side of his mouth is quirked, but there’s no humor anywhere else on his face.
He’s covering up.
I know that for a fact. I recognize it because I’ve been doing it for years.
    “I would expect nothing less from a man who fights for a living,” I reply softly, letting him off the hook. I would want someone to do the same for me if the situation were reversed. Some scars can’t be talked about for fear of opening the old wound and bleeding to death. I know
that
for a fact, too.
    A grunt is the only reply I get from him. As I set about camouflaging more quickly rather than so rudely examining this enigmatic man’s body, I can’t curb the sense of sadness that fills me.
Or
the sense of connection.
    For all his cute winks and sexy grins, for all his charisma and devil-may-care comments, this man has a past. A violent past. And something tells me that it has nothing to do with fighting for money and
everything
to do with fighting for his life. Despite the attraction that I feel toward him, Rogan just became more dangerous to me than ever before. Now I can relate to him on a deeper level, a purely emotional level. I can relate to a violent past. And the desire to escape it. Now we share something important. Now it will be
even harder
to fight him.
    When I’m finished patching up his back, making it so that the world doesn’t see what’s been done to him, I tell him quietly, “You can sit up now.”
    I back up as Rogan swings his long legs around and pushes himself into a sitting position, muscles flexing everywhere as he moves. As always, I’m aware of his beauty, but now, as perverse as it sounds, he’s even more appealing to me. He seems real and fallible and maybe a little bit broken. He hides it well, of course, but now I know. And I can’t
un
know.
    I avoid his eyes as I treat his chest to the same considerationthat I gave his back, only with slightly less attention to detail since the camera shots will be focused mainly on his back. I’m fully aware of his mossy gaze on me as I squirt