Ink (The Haven Series) (3 page)

Colton did. There were only a couple of tattoo studios the biker favoured these days and Sketch’s self-named outfit was one of them. He knew from extensive experience that, behind the mouth, the owner was a hell of an artist. Shit, he’d been responsible for pretty much all of his right sleeve at one time or another.

Then that same mouth had gotten the opinionated tattooist in trouble - again - and he’d had his arm broken in a bar fight. It had put him out of action for weeks and left his customer with an intricate but
only half-finished Aztec warrior on his shoulder.

Cue Callie.

She’d been on the payroll for a while, but off Colton’s radar and it had taken a hell of a lot of fast-talking on Sketch’s part to convince him to let the little blonde finish up. It was just unfortunate she overheard the less than enthusiastic
I’ll give the bitch a chance, but she better damn well not screw up
. He probably deserved her snappy
don’t do me any fucking favours
– which was the sole reason he let it slide - but in his defence, she was probably the least likely tattoo artist he’d ever seen. Not that he cared about having a defence.

That had been maybe five years and many, many tattoos ago and he’d long since come to realise he’d gotten the girl all wrong. They did say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but he was a mean-looking bastard and thought that was pretty damn a
ccurate. She, on the other hand – fresh-faced and with that mane of silky blonde hair tumbling right down her back - was harder than she looked.

At least he didn’t have to admit his change of heart. His unspoken acceptance of her, in the wake of their impromptu run-in with a bunch of Reno gang-bangers, spoke volumes on its own. And beneath that almost-innocent exterior, behind those calm gray eyes, he’d found a fierce intelligence, ready sarcasm and, perhaps most surprisingly, a bold skull and crossbones design at the centre of an elaborate
half-sleeve.

That and she knew how and when to keep her mouth shut.

FLASHBACK

Much as his entire being was crying out to attack, to take out those who’d come after him now that he knew back-up was on the way, Colton couldn’t ignore the girl trembling in his arms. He’d inadvertently dragged her into this mess and now he was fairly certain she’d have slumped to the ground if he wasn’t holding her up.

“You gotta pull your shit together,” he growled, one strong hand wrenching her face upwards none too gently to stare at him with those huge gray eyes. “You hear me? Get it the fuck together.”

Seemingly numb with shock, Callie reached out to brush her fingers over the bloodstain on the front of his t-shirt and then shook her head as if to shake herself out of her stupor. “My car ...” she managed, fumbling in her pockets before pressing her keys into his hand. “It’s parked round the corner - oh my god!”

He didn’t have time to be impressed by her forced shift into practical mode, as her voice rose in a little shriek of fear. The first bullet whizzed past them to ricochet off the wall behind, the shots coming from the top of the broken fire escape they’d just negotiated. Even so, the way she managed to do as she was told and get it together didn’t go unnoticed.

“
Move!
” Colton barked, grabbing her hand in his and dragging her out of the immediate line of fire. “Car – let’s go!”

And then they were running, feet pounding the sidewalk. Breathing ragged. Hearts thumping in their chests. They reached the car and Colton threw himself into the driver’s seat, with Callie sliding in beside him - only to be thrown back in the passenger seat with a gasp when he floored it.

“Phone,” Colton demanded, holding out a hand for it. He never took his eyes off the road as he steered with his other hand, navigating the near deserted backstreets without the slightest heed for speed limits or stoplights.

Listening to his end of a brief call to one of his club brothers, Callie’s eyes flicked to the biker’s side and widened in concern. “Colt,” she said, something in her tone making him spare her a glance. “You’re bleeding again. Badly. Jesus ...”

Looking down at his t-shirt, he swore darkly. He realised the adrenaline must have stopped him feeling as much pain as he should, his exertions having taken their toll on the already deep wound. Shifting his gaze back to the girl, he watched as she twisted in her seat to wriggle out of her shirt.

Without a word, she pressed the wadded up material to his side to stem the flow of blood that had completely soaked through the previous makeshift dressing she had created and
simply held it there while he drove ...

***

Watching her skilled fingers as she worked, Colton knew he was hazy on the details of how that night had ended. But one thing he did know for sure, the girl had ended up saving his life.

And now, inking his abdomen, she was doing a hell of a job. She’d known exactly what he wanted, with minimum instruction from him. She just knew. Saw it in her mind’s eye and recreated it almost effortlessly. And, much as she made it uncharacteristically easy for him to close his eyes and zone out, he realised that he liked watching her work. He appreciated how she lost herself in what she was doing. He could identify with that.

He still had the bullet those same fingers had prised out of his side. Right before she’d fainted dead away.

FLASHBACK

“I ain’t going to no hospital – now one of you just pull the fucking thing out!” Colton hissed through gritted teeth, glaring round at the small gathering of pale-faced women and wide-eyed prospects.

He didn’t know how the hell he’d managed to get them back to the clubhouse without ploughing the car off the road, but somehow he had. And, with Callie by his side, he’d even stumbled inside and deposited himself on the nearest couch –
both their t-shirts and their hands covered in his blood, and her shirt still clamped to his wound.

“It
-It’s really lodged in there, Colt,” one of his brothers, with the less than confidence-inspiring nickname of Dozer, said unsurely, straightening up from surveying the damage. “We could end up making things worse. Maybe we oughta wait for Will and the guys to get back – they’re on their way.”

“Are you serious? He’s got a bullet in his side!” Callie exclaimed. “What the hell’s gonna be any worse?”

“She’s the only one talking any fucking sense,” the reluctant patient scowled. “Would one of you bastards just grow a pair already! Jesus Christ ...”

“That’s just the pain talking, Colt,” Dozer tried, scuttling over to the bar to grab the nearest bottle of Jack. “Here, try a shot of this.”

“Don’t give him that!” Callie snapped, intercepting the bottle. “Alcohol thins the blood, idiot – you want him bleeding out? Here, I’ll do it.” And with that she unscrewed the top of the bottle and poured a generous amount over her fingers before turning to Colton. “This is gonna sting like a bitch,” she warned, her eyes filled with worry.

She wasn’t wrong, but he bore the fiery burst of new pain as she poured the alcohol on his side with nothing more than a sharp inhale of breath and a muttered stream of curses. “Just get it over with.”

“Fuck ...” she whispered, wondering what the hell she thought she was doing and downing a quick slug from the bottle herself before shoving it back towards the prospect. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, over and over, not pausing to think any longer before undertaking the task in hand.

She couldn’t begin to imagine the pain she must be causing him, her slim fingers probing inside the deep wound until they found slick metal. But he was almost perfectly still, his fists clenched and his eyes locked on her. His dark gaze seemed to silently urge her on, as if trying to tell her it was okay. Not that anything about this scenario was okay to her.

Then somehow she had it.

And for Colton, there was a pulling sensation. The pain
was almost blinding. He was pretty sure he even blacked out for a moment, but then the room swam back into focus and he was watching the little blonde hold up the bullet. She pressed it into his hand, right before she calmly announced that she thought she was going to be sick and then simply fainted into the hapless prospect’s arms …

***

“You doin’ okay there, tough guy? You looked miles away.”

Snapping to attention at the sound of her voice, Colton glanced up at Callie and the hard lines of his face softened into something like a smile. “Guess I was,” he admitted.

“Hey, if it was anywhere nice, take me next time,” she said, an impish little grin tugging at her lips. “Just don’t tell Sketch, ‘cause he’d probably make me take it outta my vacation time.”

“Is she pulling her
woe is me
stunt again?” Sketch demanded, passing just in time to hear the comment as he collected a sheaf of tattoo outlines from the front desk. “Girl, you
know
you walk the hell all over me. It’s those damn doe eyes ... Guess I better watch it - one flutter of those eyelashes and you’ll have Colt ready to take me out for treating ya so bad!”

“Oh, I don’t think ya gotta worry – I reckon Colton might be a bit harder to sway than that,” she smiled, not meeting the biker’s gaze as she went back to work, her fingers grazing his tan skin again.

But he merely shrugged, playing along as his already wandering mind took a new direction at the intriguing thought of her flirting with him. “I dunno, darlin’ - I do owe ya.”

“True,” she nodded, before a knowing smirk crossed her face. “But as if I’d waste that debt on Sketch.”

“Christ,” the man in question muttered, glancing from his tattooist to her shirtless client. “I dunno whether I’m offended or just plain intruding now. Someone remind me again who owns this place?”

***

CHAPTER 4

“So what’s the word on our morning visit?”

Will looked up from his paper at Sam’s question, favouring his sergeant with a grim look as he threw the copy of the Haven Herald down on the table. The grainy shot of forensics swarming round a shallow grave didn’t need the blazing headline it got for the biker to know exactly what it was.

“That little shithead,” Sam swore, clenching his fists at the thought of the rookie cop who’d been responsible for dragging him away from the most luscious pair of breasts he’d seen in at least a fortnight. Not to mention the very flexible brunette attached to them.

“That little shithead nothing, man. You wanna tell me what had you and Colton in such a rush you couldn’t dump the fucker more than six inches below the goddamn dirt? It’s a good job he didn’t bite the bullet in one of those whorehouses he liked so much or we’d have had his damn dick blowin’ in the breeze,” the put-upon president scowled, getting louder the more wound up he got. “Hey, maybe you coulda stuck a fucking flag on it – just to be sure the cops didn’t take too long to crawl up our asses and build a fucking
camp!
”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa – hang on a minute here,” Sam protested, looking downright offended by the accusation. “We had to go four fucking feet before that fat bastard would even fit for a start! But fuck ‘sake, boss, me and Colt didn’t exactly earn these patches last week! You send us to do a job, we damn well do it right. You
know
that.”

“I thought I did, but how else do you explain someone getting the jump on us less than twelve hours later? Hell, barely
six
hours later!” Will slammed his fist down on the wood in frustration.

“I ... I dunno,” Sam admitted, before his usually handsome face hardened in determination. “But I’m damn sure gonna find out. And when I do ...”

Taking Will’s unconvinced shrug as both another reason to prove himself and as a dismissal, Sam strode out of the office, letting the door slam behind him. Although even that, together with his thunderous expression, failed to deter the woman whose eyes lit up when she spotted him crossing the clubhouse.

“Sam!” she called, catching his attention for the split second it took for him to register her as his neglected companion from the night before. Polly. No, Poppy. Definitely something with an P ...

“Not now, darlin’.” He bore the kiss that sent her tongue snaking into his mouth, but brushed her off as she tried to curl a hand round his bicep. The playful Romeo who’d had no trouble sweet-talking her into bed was gone, to be replaced by the no less frequently seen stern sergeant – every bit as attractive to the club’s female following, but a hell of a lot more focused. “Duty calls.”

“Aww, but Sam ...”

But the pout didn’t sway him. He knew she’d still be there when it suited him, brush-off or no brush-off. They always were.

***

She heard the front door slam and footsteps heading straight towards the bedroom, for a brief second almost resenting having agreed to give him a key. Sure, she had a key to his place too – but that was different. He had so many apartments and always seemed to be living out of a suitcase. This was her
home
.

Still, she sighed and forced herself to relax. It was good that they were ... comfortable with each other. Out of that false phase of always having to pretend to be perfect. Letting the mask slip, even if it was only a little.

“Honey, I’m home!” he called cheerfully, footsteps now approaching.