Immediately, both men released me, and apprehension crawled up my spine.

“Sorry, man. Thought she was someone else.”

“Fuck off. If I see you assholes around here again, they’ll find you floating facedown in the Mississippi.” Heat met my back, and the voice rumbled low in my ear. “Come on, cupcake, let’s go.”

My gaze landed on the two men who were now raising their hands and backing away, tripping over themselves, actually.

I didn’t want to turn around. If they were afraid of the voice behind me, how much scarier did the body it belonged to have to be?

Then again, he’d run off two guys on the pretense of some appointment. What was that about? The wall of heat dissipated behind me, and I found the courage to turn around.

The blue-and-red neon lights of the sign attached to the marble building on my right read VOODOO INK.

A tattoo shop?

Immediately, my attention caught on the back of the man striding toward the door.

A tattoo appointment?

People stepped out of my unlikely rescuer’s way as though he were a force of nature unto himself.

His brown-and-gold-streaked hair was twisted up in a knot at the back of his head, and broad shoulders stretched the back of a black T-shirt with the same logo on the back. Ink covered every inch of his visible skin.

He was a man-bunned, tattooed giant.

A man-bunned, tattooed giant who had saved me from being assaulted by drunk, grabby men.

The space he’d left on the sidewalk filled with people, threatening to swallow me up again, and I made my decision based on nothing more than a shred of instinct.

I followed him.

THIS IS A BAD IDEA. NO, not a bad idea, a terrible idea.

Misgivings of every shape, size, and volume buzzed to life inside me as my hand landed on the doorknob. I didn’t have a tattoo, and more than that, I’d never even thought about getting one. Girls like me, the kind who watched the world from the outside looking in, didn’t go to places like this.

Before I could decide whether to twist the knob or walk away, the door flew open and I jerked back. A brunette stormed out, wearing only ripped jean shorts and a push-up bra with enough padding to turn her boobs into cannons.

“What an ass. Who turns this down?” She wasn’t talking to me, at least not until she almost collided with me. “Good luck with that prick. Maybe he goes for the good-girl vibe you got going on. His loss.”

My gaze lifted over her shoulder to see the back of the man-bunned giant inside the shop, and no one else.

I didn’t bother to reply that I wasn’t trying to get him to touch me because she was already melding into the crowd that I was trying to escape.

But she did make my decision easier. The chime jangled as I slipped through the open front door and shut it behind me. The giant didn’t turn around for several long seconds.

One look at his face, his arms, his hands, his . . . everything, and I knew I should walk right back out that door.

If there could be a universal picture of dangerous as hell embodied in the male form, the man-bunned giant would be it. Muscles rippled beneath the black T-shirt as he lifted a hand to his beard-covered face.

The world had apparently decided to throw me a bone. He was gorgeous, and I hadn’t accidentally grabbed his penis. Go, me. I could definitely see why she was pissed he wouldn’t touch her.

Unfortunately, the world had bestowed all that . . . man . . . on me. Also known as someone who needed to start at the beginner level, not the more man than you could ever handle in three lives level.

I’d had two crushes in my life, and one of them didn’t count. Gianni was replaced as my security when he “accidentally” grabbed my ass as he helped me out of the car, and Angelo had seen him and reported the incident to my father. It was the closest any guy had gotten to third base, and I’d gotten a cheap thrill. Unfortunately, that thrill had been killed when it had come out he’d stolen some of my panties. Ick.

Before Gianni, there was my aunt’s yard guy, Marcello. For three years, he’d trimmed and mowed and edged while I drooled from the window. Compared to this guy, Marcello was a gangly child, and my lady parts were sending out an SOS from disuse.

My brain snapped back into the present as my rescuer’s green eyes, almost emerald, scanned me from the soles of my Sperrys to the top of my blond head.

“Where the hell were you headed? The country club?” His voice seemed even deeper and louder in the confines of the black-walled tattoo shop.

“I wouldn’t wear jeans to a country club.” My response was instinctive, yet ridiculous. It wasn’t like I’d spent much time at the club, but even I knew they wouldn’t let you in wearing jeans.

His lips quirked as if he might smile, but they smoothed back into a lush line.

Lush? Wow, Eden. Simmer down.

Why had I thought following him in here was even a fraction of a good idea? Scratch the fact that my body thought he was the most delicious thing it had seen since that piece of triple-chocolate Almond Joy cheesecake Angelo had brought me last week when he picked me up from work. Apparently my body was waiting for the notification from my brain that this guy was beyond out of my league.

“I can just go.” I made a lame gesture toward the door. Getting a tattoo in New Orleans wasn’t on my Must Do list, anyway.

His expressive mouth turned downward. “You go back out there and you’re gonna get more of the same. You look exactly like the fucking tourist you are carrying that bag around. Makes you a target, if you haven’t figured that out yet. Why the hell didn’t you leave it somewhere?”

“Because the hotel didn’t have a room for me, and told me no one else would either. I didn’t exactly plan this.”

“Which hotel?”

“The Roosevelt.”

He didn’t roll his eyes, but it was a close call. Maybe he was staring up to the ceiling for divine guidance?

“You just showed up there thinking you could get a room a few days before Mardi Gras without a reservation? You fucking serious?”

I bristled at his tone. I was so freaking sick and tired of being scolded like I was a child.

“Hey—” I started, having no clue what I was going to say, but I was going to say something, dammit, and it was going to be good. But the giant interrupted me.

“Did you have a plan? Walk all over town looking for a hotel? Probably get fucking mugged, if not raped, in some dark alley too?”