Could I work at a tattoo parlor?
I thought for a second about the only other place I'd gotten an email back from and the cocktail waitress position at the strip club wasn't exactly appealing. I had a friend who had worked in a salon waxing people's private parts. What's been seen cannot be unseen, she'd told me once.
So, yeah. I could. I didn't have a choice.
"You Sonny's girl?" the deep baritone voice asked from down the hall, in time with the low squeaking thud of boots on tile.
It kind of happened in slow motion. Turning around. Coming face to face with him.
~ * ~ *
It should be said that the first—and only—time I saw Dex Locke had been the week before at Mayhem.
Sonny had dragged me to the bar by sheer manipulation. I'd just gotten to Austin not even two hours before.
And it probably didn't help that I'd just kind of... dropped in.
It'd been a last minute trip. Up until the moment I turned in the keys to my apartment, I hadn't been sure what exactly I was doing. Not that there were many options. I could either drive to Sonny's place in Texas or go up and crash on Lanie's couch in Cleveland. After living with Lanie for a year and knowing that I'd be staying with her and her parents, going to Sonny's hadn't really seemed like much of a decision.
It was inevitable.
But then again, Mom and Dad had kept me on the east coast for a reason. A reason I was clearly dumping into the garbage and possibly setting on fire.
"It'll be fun," he'd said at first.
"A lot of people remember you when you were a kid," he'd kept going, knowing I was a sucker for him.
Sonny wanted to make a point because he kept babbling. "Just because you lived in Florida doesn't mean you weren't born into this."
Like a fool, and because I loved Will and I loved Sonny just as much, even if he wasn't my full-blooded brother, I fell for it. We'd dragged ourselves to Mayhem so he could welcome me into my estranged family.
During the drive, all I thought of was my mom. It was a blessing she wasn't around to strangle me with her bare hands, smiling throughout the process of her choking the life out of me.
Surprisingly, it'd been fine.
Mayhem was smoky and smelled faintly of piss and not so faintly of beer. The place was old, with stained bars and scuffed hardwood floors that had seen better decades. Pool tables were set up on the far side of the bar that smelled like... yep, that was pot. I was pretty sure—only about ninety-nine percent sure—smoking was illegal inside but I definitely wasn't going to complain to the abundance of tattooed and leather-vested men that mobbed the floor.
Like a proud peacock, Sonny had walked me around the floor, through crowds of people that bordered on inebriation and did the splits on the ridiculous. Loud, outgoing, boisterous, young, old, hairy, not-so-hairy, tattooed, not-so-burly. The factors that made up the WMC members varied across the spectrum.
Having been steered toward a stool in the middle of the bar, Sonny and his very blonde, very flirtatious, very bearded friend, Trip, flanked me.
It was a little weird, I guess. Growing up, it'd just been Will and me. Being the oldest, I'd always been the one watching out for my younger brother; the person to threaten to rip organs out of orifices if he wasn't left alone. I'd been the protector. The one who cleaned his butt when he was too little to do it himself without smearing more poop than he actually wiped.
So having Sonny around, worrying about his friends getting too close or giving me looks that he didn't like, was strangely nice.
I'd barely been sitting there a minute, an entire, lonely, miniscule minute in a bar that had been so heavily smoked in over the years that the scent seeped from the wood like sweat on a professional athlete. A bar that was owned by a group of people that my parents hadn't wanted to raise me around. A total of sixty seconds before the noisy crowd burst into loud jeers right by the door.
Trip had groaned, shooting Sonny a side glance, shaking his head like whatever was going on was old news. "Somebody's on his damn rag."
“Quit being all dramatic, he’s not always PMSing.” He cut me a glance. “No offense.”
I held up my hands and shrugged. “Eh.” I’d be a hypocrite if I said that I didn’t turn into a moody zombie on my period.
Trip rolled his eyes at my brother’s comment. “I”m just sayin’, Son, you’d figure he’d have his shit together by now. Don’t they teach better tips than counting to ten in those classes he had to take?” he snickered, glancing over my shoulder. “Dumbass.”
My inner nosey hooker perked up at all the clues they were dropping. Anger management classes? “What happened?” I asked in a conspiratorial whisper.
“It’s cool, Ris.” Sonny shot Trip an aggravated look. “He got in trouble for assault a long time ago. He’s fine now.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.” It wasn’t like whatever man they were referring to had ‘Anger Issues’ tattooed on his forehead. I hadn’t even seen him yet.
“Dex.”
I blinked at Trip’s explanation.
“Locke?” he offered like that would mean something to me. It didn’t.
Sonny grabbed the top of my head and shook it. “Don’t worry about it, kid. I’m sure I’ll introduce you sooner or later.”
At that time I thought to myself that it wasn’t like I really cared whether or not I met someone that was constantly pissed off.
~ * ~ *
Shoulders and chest.
The guy was somehow all elegant trapezius muscles and pectorals when I first saw him up close. A tight, black v-neck stretched over broad shoulders, barely hiding two bold tattoo sleeves that ran up from the wrist and disappeared underneath the fitted shirt.
That alone made me go a little brain dead though I should have known better than to let my hormones run rampant. I’d never really had much of an opinion on whether I thought tattoos were that much of a deal breaker when ogling a guy but…from the heat that had flamed up my neck, I was a fan. A big, season ticket holding fan.
I kept looking at him while he closed the distance between us, a portfolio shoved under one long, muscular arm that drew my attention to the inches of colorful red skin the cut of his shirt showed tattooed on his chest. I'd been too far away at Mayhem to see more than just splotches of heavy color on his skin.
Holy crap.
I should have been glad the cap had hidden his facial features at the bar, so I had time to take in the magnificence that was his tattooed upper body without the added distraction of a face that made my ovaries scream glory hallelujah. His wide shoulders and thickly veined forearms were more than enough to make a girl stare. Because his face… Jesus, shit. Jesus. Shit.
I was going to ask Santa for his good identical twin for Christmas.
“Hi,” I squeaked out. Hot men went on my list of people who made me nervous and therefore had me acting like more of an idiot than usual. Like if knowing I'd be working for a man who had been to jail for assault wasn't nerve-wrecking enough. “I’m his sister, Iris,” I corrected him. My smile was wonky for sure. "Half-sister to be specific."
The guy with the most striking face ever created blinked at me.
Oh boy he was friggin’ hot in a very masculine, raw way. Not like the men I saw so often back home who used more skin products than I did. High, angular cheekbones that looked sharp enough to cut granite were crafted alongside a hard, square jaw that had needed a shave yesterday. The purest and bluest eyes I’d ever seen were deep set above a nose that was just short of straight, and ohmigod lips that I knew had to have been used thousands of times—it’d be a shame if they weren’t. The guy had the most flawless male bone structure I’d ever seen.