Trip was pretty friggin’ handsome. Long legs. Nice yellow blonde goatee. Easy smile.

So I knew right then that I really needed to get my ass back to work before I thought any longer about how nice and handsome Trip was. Because it then reminded me how hot and ass**le-ish my boss was, and I knew that would only make me bitter.

No thanks.

“You comin’ to the party tomorrow, gorgeous?” he asked when I took a step back.

“There's a party?”

He nodded.

"Well, this is awkward." Both of my eyebrows shot up. I whispered, "I wasn't invited."

Trip laughed. “You're invited. Sonny only parties in one place, and that's with the Club." He crossed his arms over his chest and lifted his chin. "You hafta come. You got it in your blood."

Sonny had used those same exact words to con me into going to Mayhem with him last week. You got it in your blood. Then why the heck had my parents taken me to Florida?

"Me and your boy won't let anybody mess with you," he offered. "You'll come?"

Oh, what the hell. I hadn't been out in almost a year with the exception of the last trip to Mayhem. "Yeah, sure."

Trip grinned.

Glancing down at my watch, I sighed. It'd been twenty minutes since I left the shop and the last thing I wanted was to get in trouble when I got back. "See you tomorrow?"

He nodded, still grinning. "Sure will."

Waving at Trip, I kept taking steps backward. “Bye, Trip.” He winked at me right before I waved once more and speed-walked down the forecourt.

I spotted Sonny bent at the h*ps with his entire upper body suspended over the motor of a Chevy and since I didn’t see Luther—more than likely the boss— around, I yelled at him. “See ya, Sonny!”

He didn’t move but I heard him call out after me, “Later, Ris!”

It might have been because Trip was a handsome flirty bastard, or it might have been because Sonny went above and beyond the call of being a half-brother who had spent less than a year of his total life with me, but I smiled the entire—short—walk to work.

~ * ~ *

“You ever thought about getting a tattoo?” Slim asked me.

It was a little after ten. Blake was working on the same piece he’d been going at for two hours and Blue had just gotten saddled with piercing a cute but barely legal girl's tongue. I had a feeling she was going to regret that thing tomorrow, but I kept my mouth closed.

Rule number one in working at a tattoo parlor according to Blake—don’t talk customers out of services unless they were a really, really bad idea. Which meant I really, really needed to find out what they thought a bad idea was. Maybe a facial tattoo?

Slim and I had just given each other bug eyes when Blue walked off with the nervous girl and we'd followed after them with our eyes until they disappeared into one of the private rooms. Earlier, a woman well into her thirties had come in requesting to get one nipple pierced. Blue had been in the room with her for ten minutes when a scream pierced through the parlor, scaring the crap out of all of us. It was a miracle that Dex hadn’t messed up the tattoo he’d been working on because I’d whacked the computer mouse across the room in response.

I was fondly starting to call the private room the “torture chamber” in my head.

I nodded my head at Slim. “I wanted to get a tattoo on my lower back when I was eighteen.”

He raised an incredulous eyebrow. “A tramp stamp?”

The guy enunciated the words a little too carefully. Smart ass.

For that, he earned a smirk. “For the record, I didn’t know they were called tramp stamps before I wanted to get one,” I gave him a flat look. “I just thought they were kind of cool.”

“Cool?” He smiled, still enunciating slowly.

I repeated myself with a smirk.

“But…?” Slim trailed off, fishing for an explanation.

“But I couldn’t think of anything I liked enough to get tattooed on me for the rest of my life, you know?” And I'd found out two weeks later that I was going to need another surgery, but I kept that tidbit to myself.

Slim, who from what I’d seen over the last few days, was tattooed from ears to toes, nodded in understanding. “They’re addicting. I was only going to get one when I turned eighteen, and then one turned into two, and two into three—“

“And three into—,” I fanned out my fingers and wiggled them, “Everything?”

He snorted. “Exactly.”

I got it.

Pretty much ninety percent of the clientele I’d seen over the week were repeat customers. They’d mostly all been familiar with one or all of the guys working, and while not everyone had the amount of ink coverage that the artists had, two tattoos was more than my whopping zero.

And they were cool. Almost all of the work that wasn't walk-in was original, hand-drawn and transferred. They really were pieces of art or at least pieces of art in the making.

From what I’d seen in such a short amount of time, the tattoos weren’t just random crap people would regret when they were elderly. The pieces clients got seemed to be so much more than that. They were memorials and declarations. They were outpourings of love and pain. Letters and images, icons and symbolism, personal and eternal.

It was eye-opening for me. The art that they created were badges of honor. It was impossible not to get sucked into the emotion that went behind the artwork.

Well, at least that was the case with most of them. I’d already seen a sketch for a flaming penis that made me cringe.

“You have great skin. It'd be a perfect canvas.” He lifted both of his eyebrows before looking up abruptly and lifting his chin, still grinning but past me. “Done hibernating?”

I tensed up.

“Done with three hours of Club financial shit,” that grumbly, deep voice that I’d learned to associate with Dex’s cool mood answered from what felt like just a few feet behind me.

“Bummer.” Slim made a face.

“I don’t see us gettin’ any more business. Ritz, you’re free to go home whenever you’re ready, and Slim, clean up, yeah?” Dex said.

Slim nodded, hopped off the edge of my desk and walked toward the back. I heard the soft sound of Dex’s motorcycle boots lumber off, and I got up. I’d already cleaned everything about thirty minutes before. The frames, the coffee table, all the free surfaces. My stuff for the day was done.

Blake happened to look over when he took a mini break as I was throwing my purse over my shoulder, so waved at him and mouthed, “See you tomorrow.” He closed both his eyes and nodded before I walked out of the shop.

The street, usually heavy with pedestrian and automotive traffic during the day, was eerily quiet. There weren’t any cars besides the two Pins clients’ and it freaked me the hell out. It was like one of those scary movie scenes before the heroine gets chased by some psychopath serial killer but manages to survive. Survive half-naked, whatever.

Instantly, I regretted not asking one of the guys to walk out with me, but I didn’t want to ask them for favors. I didn’t need to get babysat and plus, I didn’t like being that needy girl. I'd been on my own for years. I could walk to my car by myself.