Punctured, Bruised, and Barely Tattooed(20)

“Yeah, I saw a couple of the mech drawings in your portfolio.”

He nodded. “If you’re familiar with the band Judas Priest and their album covers in the eighties—that inspired some of that stuff.”

She smiled. She’d thought those drawings were a tribute to the Transformers movies, but no way was she going to say a word and look stupid in the process. “You have some other stuff too.”

“I call that my ethereal stuff. Believe it or not, in the midst of all the dark shit I draw, I have a lighter side, and the girls who get tattooed are often more drawn to that than my hell imagery.”

“I saw a beautiful one—one where the girl looked like she was standing in a field and turned around, and the wind was blowing through her hair. What inspired that?”

He grinned. “If I tell you, you have to swear to never tell another soul. And if you do, I’ll deny that shit.”

She laughed and picked up a chip. “Fair enough.”

“It was from a book I read when I was a kid. I hardly remember the damn thing, but I just remembered this scene. It’s this young woman who’s found out something bad and she’s running away to be by herself. Her dad calls to her and she turns around, and he realizes she’s not the little girl he once thought. She’s all grown up and beautiful…and sad. For some reason, that image stuck with me. It was a pioneer story, so you can tell the clothes she’s wearing in my drawing don’t really fit the story, but that was the picture in my head.”

“It’s beautiful. Who got that tattoo?”

“This guy came in and said it looked like his wife, so I inked it on his back. It turned out great.”

“You do a lot of angels and stuff too.”

“Yeah. Sometimes. Like I said, sometimes I need some light. I dwell in the dark shit too much sometimes.”

That struck a chord with her, but she tried to keep her voice steady. “Don’t we all?” She kept her gaze focused on another chip that she was going to dip, hoping not to give herself away.

But either it was too late or he was—as he’d continually proven himself to be—too perceptive. “Speaking of dwelling in dark shit, can I ask you something?” She couldn’t help but look in his eyes. His voice was too sincere to resist. “What happened last week when I was tattooing you?”

Oh, no. Stay calm. “What do you mean?”

“I know you said you have a fear of needles, but you seemed to have a hell of a time.”

“Yeah, I did. I’m okay now, though. I powered through it, right?” No way in hell was she going to tell him that they’d opened up an old wound. Well, wound was an understatement if she’d ever heard one, but they’d opened up something huge, something she was going to have to deal with. She wasn’t ready to talk to Stone about it, though, and she felt relieved when the waiter brought their food, effectively derailing any more talk of her issues, allowing their date to get back on track and stay on the light side.

That was what Kory needed desperately.





Chapter Nine



WHEN THEY LEFT the restaurant, Kory asked what they were doing next, and Stone grinned, refusing to tell her. “You wanted a surprise, and I’m not one to disappoint.”

She muttered, “Damn you,” but smiled, figuring she’d know soon enough.

The direction they were heading told her right off the bat that they weren’t going to the movies. They were going in the opposite direction, so she figured they were heading to the bowling alley. That was okay, because she liked bowling all right. She just wasn’t very good at it.

But they drove right past the bowling alley, and Kory was curious as hell where they were heading. She couldn’t figure it out.

Stone turned off the road onto one of the bigger streets in town, but that gave Kory no idea. They were going to wind up in a residential neighborhood. Were they maybe heading to his place?

In a couple of minutes, her wait was over when she realized Stone was pulling into the large gravel parking lot that signaled the main entrance to the river walk. There was only one street light, and that was near the entrance. Kory figured that was because people didn’t typically use the river walk at night. It was used all day long by walkers, joggers, and bicyclists, from dawn till dusk, but people often avoided it at nighttime. There had been too many stories about the occasional bear and she’d even heard a whisper about a mountain lion. She wasn’t familiar with the way wild animals worked—if the predators hunted at night—but that would have been enough to scare her off had she been into nature and exercising.

She wasn’t.