My brief conversations with the drunkards that stumbled to the booth with one hand wrapped around a beer bottle and another shoved down the front of their pants usually all went along the lines of:

"So if I get this expensive ass tattoo, do I get you for free?"

"No."

"How about a kiss?"

"No."

"Just a little one."

"No."

"A hand—"

The time Dex was around when a guy started going down that route had ended with Dex grumbling out, "Fuck off."

Oh Jesus.

He didn’t even spare a glance behind him to see the man who was bothering me, but apparently, the drunk idiot didn’t even need to see his face to get the message.

“Dex!” I hissed at him for being so rude when the guy only partially deserved it.

“Babe,” he responded, completely unapologetic and not giving half a shit. Then again, when did he? If I thought he’d pay attention, I’d try to give him a lesson in being polite.

Pointless, right?

Then there was Shane. Shane who came over every chance he got and what felt like every chance he didn't have. If I wouldn't have heard so much about him sleeping around with random women the day before, I would have sworn he had a man crush on Dex.

Maybe he did.

He must have warmed up to me after the night before because he'd make his way to the counter and look me right in the face or down at my chest. Blatantly.

Like there was anything there to look at.

It had first started off with him, smiling, and leaning in. "Can I see your ink?"

Before we left Austin, I'd been mentally prepared for how hot and humid the city would be when I'd stuffed elbow-length sweaters and cardigans into my duffel bag. Neither one of the guys had said anything but I didn't want it to be completely obvious to a crowd of body art lovers, that my skin was naked.

"I don't have any," I told him in a low voice.

He totally didn't believe me at all because he frowned but mysteriously let the question go. "Got a boyfriend?"

I'd been busy organizing invoices from the day before, so I only bothered to glance up at him before shaking my head. "Nope."

"You really aren't fooling around with Dexter?"

"Nope."

"I don't believe it."

He left and came back a couple hours later, this time Dex had run to the bathroom between appointments. Slim was busy with a client and I'd been sitting there, people-watching.

The first thing Shane did was tilt his chin up. "You sure you aren't...?"

Wanting to hide my irritation because Jesus! How many more times did he have to kill my self-esteem by reminding me that a man that looked like black sin on tan skin didn't like me in that way? There was only so much my pride could handle.

"Nope." I popped the last consonant to emphasize the fact that I wasn't and would never ever sleep with my boss.

“I don’t get it,” he murmured like he was trying to disprove a mathematical theorem.

A groaned sigh managed to escape from my mouth. “I’m not his type.” Okay, wrong thing to say. I amended my words as quickly as I could. “He’s not my type.”

The noise he made in response sounded like a mixture of a hiccup and a snicker. “You need glasses?” His eyes drifted to my cle**age again. "He threatened to break my fingers if I made a move on you. We’ve never had a problem sharing before..."

There went my appetite.

Before he had the chance to make my stomach roll, I spotted Dex coming down the aisle, wiping his hands on his jeans as his eyes locked in on Shane's form. The minute he was within speaking distance, he darted his gaze over to me. His gaze dipped down to my collarbones in annoyance.

"Babe, button up your f**kin' sweater. Everybody can see your tits like that."

Holy crap.

I glanced down to make sure that my boobs weren't hanging out for everyone to see, and they weren't. My shirt was racerback tank, the scooped front hit clearly above my bra-line for the friggin' record. I opened my mouth to argue with him, and then closed it. The last thing I wanted was to argue with him back and forth, then have Shane assume that that was... foreplay or something ridiculous.

I buttoned up the length of tiny buttons, looking everywhere but in front of me. Dex was talking to Shane in a low voice. His lips were moving but I couldn't hear what was being said between the two of them.

After a minute, Shane inclined his head and took off in the direction of his booth. I'd walked past it a couple of times already and I knew exactly where it was.

When he turned around, Dex glared at me. It was immature but I was irritated by what he'd said though I really would prefer not getting hit on by drunk strangers. The look I gave him in return was scathing. Well, as scathing as I was capable of.

~ * ~ *

There were a great many things that I learned in the three days we spent in Houston. Some things were more informative than others. Some things I would have rather not learned. And, a fraction were inevitable in this path called life.

I learned more about tattooing techniques than I could ever have imagined. With Slim and even Dex leading me around to different booths on Saturday and Sunday, they showed me the best and unfortunately, the worst too. The best: creativity. The worst: inexperience. The inexperience was spelled out with sloppy letters and terrible outlines. Another big thing I learned that seemed essential: Pins was well-known. There was a constant stream of people looking at the binders we’d brought and asking to see who was available. I was surprised by the pride nipping at my chest when I saw how respected they were.

I also learned that there were a lot of exhibitionists into body art. A lot. I hadn’t seen that many half-naked women in my life and that included the time I spent trolling  p**n  websites when I was itching to relieve some tension. I also learned that there was no inch of flesh on a body that couldn’t be tattooed. For example, an armpit. A penis. Balls. Palate. Tongue. The inside of a lip. Downtown lips! Face! I mentally made a decision that if I ever did get a tattoo, it wouldn't be in any of those places. I'd leave that to the souls that were way more brave than I could ever be.

Lastly, the thing that was slapped in my face over and over again was that Dex was a vagina magnet. I already knew that from the conversation I’d overheard with Shane, but I swallowed it and shoved away. He didn’t stop to speak to any of the women who dropped by our booth, and I wasn’t sure how to take that, so I didn’t. Back in Austin he'd kept that part of his life private at least since I'd run into him at the body shop. I refused to waste a minute wondering what his numbers were like.

It wasn't any of my business but lord knows I would have paid for his ass if he wasn’t my boss and I wasn’t confused with the way I felt about him.

After an exhausting Saturday, where we spent more than thirteen hours at the Expo, we ate dinner at some Chinese restaurant nearby and then promptly passed out watching Rush Hour in the hotel room with Slim narrating the entire movie perfectly.

Sunday was just as hectic. It seemed like every other person who had bought a ticket to the convention wanted Dex or Slim to tattoo them, so I had to balance out the requests as well as I could while also taking advantage of watching them work. It’d always seemed weird to me when we were at Pins to look at them but in Houston our proximity was so close and it was different circumstances, that it felt fine. If you were shy then you wouldn’t exactly get tattooed in the middle of an expo, right?