A single slip of black ink lands on the wrong man's mouth?and suddenly Rowan Vale can't look away. In the halls of Harbor Brine, one collision becomes the kind of mistake that stains deeper than skin.

Rowan arrives in Seattle for a paid residency with one rule: stay forgettable. She's a tattoo artist who's learned that being seen can be dangerous, and she intends to keep her head down, finish the job, and leave with her secrets intact. Then she crashes into the magazine's meticulous editor?gray-eyed, controlled, and far too hard to read. He's everything Rowan avoids: steady, respected, impossible to shake. But that smear of ink on his lips feels like a dare, and the tension between them turns every meeting into a slow burn she can't outrun.

As deadlines close in, late nights in the archive and the pressroom blur the line between professional and personal. The more Rowan lets him in, the more she risks becoming memorable?and the more he risks breaking the discipline that's held his life together.

Desire is easy. Trust is the real gamble.

When an unseen threat from Rowan's past finds her in the city, their affair stops being private. To protect what they've begun, they'll have to decide what's worth exposing?and what they're willing to burn down to keep.