Betrayed 2(231)

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, swallowing my fear of needles. “I want a tattoo.”

“Okay. What kind of tattoo?”

I nodded at her arms and shoulders. “I want that.”

She frowned as if she didn’t understand. She asked, “You mean you want some flowers and butterflies? Where do you want them?”

“No, you don’t understand,” I said. I gestured at her with both hands. “I want that. All of that. On me.”

She gave me a smirk that let me know how amused she was by tattoo virgins who thought they wanted their bodies covered in ink.

“This,” she said, gesturing to herself, “is about twenty hours and a couple grand. And it hurts like a motherfucker, so we typically space something out this big over the course of a month or two.”

“I have two weeks,” I said, reaching into my purse. I counted out twenty-one-hundred-dollar bills into a net stack on the counter. Her eyes grew wider with each bill. “I’d like to have it done within a week so it has time to heal.”

“Okay,” she said slowly, reaching for the stack of cash. “We can do as much as you can stand today, then tomorrow, then the next day.”

“That would be great,” I said.

She folded the bills in half and shoved them into her back pocket. “Anything else I can do for you?”

I looked down at her clothes.

“Yes. You can tell me where you buy your clothes.”



RICK



I watched her as I sauntered behind the bar and pulled a fresh beer from the cooler. I twisted off the cap and tossed it in the trash on my way to her end of the bar. She glanced up, saw me coming, then looked down. The closer I got, the more beautiful she was.

“Hi, there,” I said, holding up the beer. “Can I get you one of these to chase that with?”

She blinked at me for a moment, like I was speaking fucking French. She picked up the shot and said, “No, that’s okay. This is fine.”

“Okay, it was going to be on the house,” I said, bringing the icy bottle to my lips and taking a slow sip. My eyes went over her as I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand.

She had to be the best-looking woman ever to set foot in Dick’s. Fuck, she was the best-looking woman I’d seen in a long time outside of the place.

Up close, her hair was the color of a raven’s wings. She had on heavy black eyeliner and dark lipstick that did not hide her delicate features.

She wasn’t what the kids called “goth”.

She was just dark and mysterious, like the queen of a biker bar where they only let good-looking people in.

I wondered what she looked like without all that shit on her face. How would she look stepping naked from the shower with only drops of water clinging to her soft skin? For that matter, how would she look in the shower from behind, all soaped up and bent over with my hands digging into her hips and my cock slamming into her pussy?

I shook off the fantasy and let my eyes drift down from hers. She had a long neck and big milky tits with deep cleavage that made my mouth water. Her shoulders and upper arms were covered in flowers and butterflies and smiling skulls. She had a little diamond pierced into the right side of her nose.

If the rest of her, the part I couldn’t see because of the bar, was as hot as what I was looking at now, this was a woman I had to get to know.

“That’s a lot of ink,” I said, letting my eyes go around her shoulders. I leaned back against the bar and crossed my arms over my chest so she could see the tats going up my biceps into my black t-shirt. “Must have hurt like a motherfucker.”

“It was a little unpleasant,” she said. She picked up the tequila shot and brought it to her lips. She hesitated for a moment, then tilted her head back and tossed the bitter shot into her mouth. Her eyes widened for a second and filled with tears as the tequila burned its way down her throat. She started to gag a little. She covered her lips with her hand. For a second, I thought she was going to throw it back up on me.

I chuckled and held out the beer. “Here, chase it with this. Makes the burn go away.”

She shook her head for a moment, then reached for the beer and took a long, cooling pull from the bottle. I covered my smile with a hand and watched her recover.

“Jesus,” she said, tongue hanging out, panting like a dog. “That really burns.”

I couldn’t help but laugh when she tilted the bottle again and drained it dry. I stuck out my hand and gave her my best non-threatening smile.

“I’m Rick,” I said. “Welcome to my place.”



SANDY



When I slipped my hand in his, I expected to be filled with a sense of revulsion, like touching the claws of the monster that had slaughtered your family. I held my breath and forced a smile as his long fingers closed around mine and he gave my hand a gentle shake.