Under His Skin (2 page)

“Artists, to your stations.”

He pushed the door open and jumped up on the stage. His leg twinged. He windmilled his arms, the headline for tomorrow flashing across his mind, “Cliché Rock Star Busts Ass at Convention”. But his leg didn’t give out. It held. Cameras flashed, but not at him. Relief blossomed in his chest as he moved with the other excited clients, who had no idea who he was. It was nice to be nameless for a change. People didn’t recognize him without the long hair and kilt he’d sported on stage since it became a band trademark.

The rusty doors of memory hurt to pry open. Most days he didn’t allow himself to dwell on the guys, but today was about commemorating their accomplishments. Instead of burying it all deep inside, he held it close. As all of their major milestones had happened with an audience, in front of their adoring fans, it seemed only right that his decision to memorialize the guys would also take place with spectators.

“Clients, find your artist.”

Overeager, he forced himself to walk up to his chosen artist. He was already overdoing it if his leg was trying to buckle. Most of the clients had been doled out at random, but as a favor from a guy who had once worked promotion for the band, he’d been allowed to choose, and he’d made his pick based on portfolios. A quick internet search said she had a steady hand and excelled at both new school and traditional styles of tattoos. Perfect for what he wanted.

She bent over a desk, her ass up in the air. A worn patch at the bottom of one cheek, just below the back pocket on her jeans, showed a glimpse of skin. A mural spread across the back of her shoulders left on display by the cut of her halter top. Cherubs shot arrows at…zombies? He laughed and leaned against the padded table.

Standing, she laid out the tools of her trade on the top of a rolling set of drawers. Tattoos wrapped around her arms, bright, colorful pieces that melded together into two unique sleeves of art. She glanced at him and did a double take, her eyes a startling, vivid gray sparking some memory he didn’t share. Had he kissed her? There were weeks from the early years he didn’t always remember.

He held out his hand. “Hi, I’m—”

“Brian-fucking-Adler,” she said on an exhale. The way her brows were trying to crawl off her face didn’t speak well for her opinion of him.

“Uh, yeah.” When she didn’t take his hand, he spread his and smiled. He could play this cool, he was the king of cool.

She glanced left and right. Her jaw dropped as the pieces clicked into place. “You are not my client.” She groaned and lifted a hand to her forehead, rubbing her temple.

Frowning, he rested his hip against the table. Around them the other artists were putting their heads together with their clients. “I’m sorry, have we met?”

She pinched the bridge of her nose and moved her lips. If he wasn’t mistaken, she was counting to ten. The way she sucked in a deep breath drew his attention lower, to where the deep plunge of her white halter top plumped her breasts. Little leopard print spots prowled across the top of the mounds, tantalizing him to find out if they covered the rest of her breasts. He jerked his head up from ogling her rack and focused on her face.

“Sorry,” she blurted and gestured to the table. “You wouldn’t remember me. I’m not having the best morning. Sit, please.”

He did as she asked, making himself comfortable on the table.

“Let’s start over.” She smiled, looking more like a modern pin-up girl than his soon-to-be tormentor. “I’m Pandora, I’ll be doing your tattoo today. What were you wanting to have done?”

He’d seen her portfolio. If it wasn’t for that, he would get up and walk away now. Her attitude didn’t inspire confidence at the moment. “I want an old school ship on my side, but done in bright colors.”

“Oh.” Her shoulders relaxed and the tenseness in her face eased. “I do both. How big are you wanting it?”

He bumped a spot mid-hip on his left side, then up to just below his nipple. Her brows started doing the thing again where they wanted to crawl off her face.

“That’s—big. We only have twelve hours to do the whole process. Do you want it in full color? With clouds and waves and shit around it?” She slapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry, stuff around it.”

He chuckled. “I looked over your portfolio. You’re a freehander, aren’t you?”

She blinked at him, surprised. “Um, yeah I do a lot of freehand tattoos, but that’s usually for flowing stuff. Ships are precise, with rigging and sails and nets. I can do it with a reference, but—”

“Don’t let her tattoo you, man. She’ll screw it up,” a low, gravelly voice spoke from behind him.

Brian turned and pasted a cool smile on his lips. He recognized that bastard.

“Go fuck yourself, Robert,” Pandora said in a honey-sweet voice.

“Seriously.” Robert stepped closer. “She used to be my shop girl, couldn’t hack it so she went over to this prissy all-girl place. She’ll screw you up, man.”

Pandora pushed to her feet, hands balled into fists.

Getting caught between two irate tattoo artists did not sound like the best way to start off his day. Still, Robert was high on the list of douchecannoes. Standing, Brian put a hand on her shoulder.

“Thanks for your opinion, man, but fuck off.”

Robert held his hands up. “Your funeral.” He backed away from the station and walked down the line. People were conspicuously not looking at them.

She shrugged his hand off. He almost braced himself for a punch but it didn’t come.

“Sit.” She nudged him back. “Shirt, off.”

While she dug around in the drawers, he pulled his shirt off and lay down on the table. Turning to face him, she paused, gaze raking critically over his chest.

“I heard about the accident,” she said as she sat. “I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.” He laid his hand over the scars above his hip. “I was thinking you could use the scar tissue to imitate waves. Incorporate it into the design.”

She nodded, eyes tracking his fingers. “Okay.” She sucked in a deep breath and pulled on gloves, snapping them at her wrist. “I’m going to wipe you down. How far do you want this to go?”

“Here.” He tugged his pants and boxers down to expose the scars from surgery.

Pandora nodded and her cheeks turned a slight pink. “Okay, it’s up to you, but you can either take your pants off and let me pull your boxers down on one side, or you can pull them down and lay on them. The problem is how it will make your body lay.”

“I’ll take them off.” It wasn’t as though the whole world hadn’t seen him in his underwear already.

She looked back up at his face, all business once again with no sign of the blush. “This is going to hurt like a bitch, you know?”

He got up from the table and loosened his belt. His jeans were still too big and practically dropped off his hips. “I don’t have any feeling in my hip. My side will hurt, but I think after being trapped in a human blender, I can handle it.” He must have made the grinning grimace the band’s former manager had told him not to, because she turned away. He lay back on the table before any of the gawkers could snap a picture of his mangled leg. There were a few things he still wanted to keep private.

“You sure you want me to draw this on you?”

He glanced up and down the line. Artists were bent over drawing, clients hanging around looking bored. “Yeah.”

“Okay, this is going to be cold.” She turned back to him, rag in hand, and began wiping his skin, over his chest, down his side and abs. The sensation disappeared when she went over his hip. If he weren’t watching her he wouldn’t have known she was still touching him.

She asked him questions about colors and style as she shaved the sparse hair off one side of his chest. She clipped a few flash art images of ships on the back of her work station and turned to study him, an odd-looking long brass pen in hand.

“Ready?”

He curled one arm under his head and grinned. “Ink me up.”

The pen glided over his skin, tickling slightly.

“Is this going to be a
Good Ship Clementine
tattoo?” she asked, referencing his band’s first number-one hit.

“No.” He had to clear his throat. “No, if you could stick Homeward Bound on it, that would be great.”

Pausing, she glanced up at his face. “Okay. Any particular reason?”

He needed to get comfortable saying it. Turning his head, he stared up into one of the fluorescent lights above. “It’s the last song we recorded.”

She didn’t say anything for a few moments, and when he glanced down she was intent on drawing the tattoo. “Do you want to put anyone on the ship?” Sitting back, she met his gaze.

Rolling the idea around in his head, he nodded. “Yeah, that would be cool. Thank you.”

Chapter Two

Tattoo Machine: The modern handheld device used to create a tattoo. Alternating electromagnetic coils move the needle up and down.

She was about to tattoo Brian Adler. As if the contest hadn’t rattled her nerves enough, he had to be her client. He wouldn’t remember her. It had been years, and his career as a musician had taken him all over the world. But she’d never forgotten him, had even cried when she saw the news coverage about the crash.

Just looking at him brought back the memory of that morning. She’d stumbled into her living room after one of her last great drinking binges and sat down on the ratty couch she’d picked up on some street corner. The TV had been playing aerial footage of a small private plane splattered along a mountain ridge. The wreckage was scattered, which was why it had taken the rescue crew so long to find the bodies of the band members.

Pandora brushed her fingers across her cheek. She’d cried when they finally found him. The bastards had played a loop of his mangled body being dragged down to a bit of level space where he could be lifted out for treatment. The fan sites and bloggers had labeled him dead. No one thought he’d survive. But he had.

She busied herself arranging her equipment so it was all precisely lined up. He wanted a tattoo to remember his band, and to send their memory to rest. The contest faded from her mind. Every day she touched people’s lives, helped them celebrate and commemorate life, but rarely did she have the chance to do a tattoo that meant something to her. Brian might not know it, but she promised herself that this would be one of her best tattoos.

“Okay, last chance to tap out,” she said, mustering more bravado than what coursed through her veins.

Spinning on her chair, she took in the man he’d become. He was every bit as hot as she’d thought when she was a teenager. Now, without all the long greasy hair he’d been known for in the band, he looked like the man she’d first met. With the close-cropped haircut, nothing could detract from the intensity of his green eyes. Her gaze drifted down to his muscular chest, now comically half shaved. She was slightly jealous she hadn’t been the one to pop his tattoo cherry, but the two rattlesnakes circling his shoulders, about to strike each another over his sternum, were amazing. He had a few other smaller tattoos, but nothing as large as what she was about to do to him.

“Do your worst.” He winked at her, and her traitorous libido danced with joy.

Turning to her table, she filled a little reservoir with black ink and picked up her favorite tattoo machine. She ran her fingers over it, tracing the pin-up girl flaunting perfect thighs along the barrel, and tested the bands holding the needle in place. It was her routine, what she did before every tattoo. Next, she twirled her Monroe stud in place for luck. She pressed the pedal with her foot and the motor hummed to life, speaking to a piece of her deep within that took over when she got into the zone. Dipping the needle into the ink, she swirled it around and closed her eyes, embracing her inner calm.

When she had enough ink, she turned to Brian, only to find him watching her. He had the most captivating eyes. There was a melancholy quality to them now that she wished she could wipe away. Nothing could bring back the people he’d lost, but she could do their memory justice. She flashed a smile, determined to do what she could for him here and now.

“Deep breath.”

When she placed her left hand with a folded paper towel against his skin, she could feel the heat of his body through the latex. It was a cruel kind of torture to have her hands all over him but separated by gloves. She breathed with him and held the pedal down with her foot. The machine in her hand vibrated to life and everything was right in her world. Her vision narrowed to the highest point of the ship she’d drawn on his skin with a special tattoo pen. Brushing him with the needle, she watched his skin absorb the pigment. Slowly, she traced the long lines of the mast and topsail, pausing to refill on ink and wipe away the excess pigment on his skin.

“How do we know each other?” he asked after she’d settled into a rhythm doing the outline.

Biting her lip, she glanced up. “Oh, um, we don’t know each other,” she mumbled, ducking her head to focus on the delicate lines of a net draped over the side of the ship.

“Come on. You looked like you were going to run away from me earlier. What did I do? Was I a jerk?”

She swirled the needle in the reservoir and met his gaze. She had to work on him for the rest of the day and she did not want to relive those memories. “No, I was dumb and embarrassed myself. I wouldn’t exactly call it knowing each other.”

“What did you do?” He sucked in a breath as she worked on a particularly sensitive area over his side. “You don’t seem like the kind of chick who would flash her tits. It couldn’t have been that bad.”

If only she could be lumped in with those girls. “Nope.”

“Did we, uh…”

Choking on a laugh, she shook her head. “No, not that either.”

“I’m not going to give up. Do I need to apologize for something I did?” The smile on his face was infectious. There was no sorrow there now. Something in her chest relaxed and her hand moved more freely across his side.

“No,” she said, her cheeks heating.

“Did you hit on me?”

She shook her head and turned to get more ink. “I’m not answering this. It’s stupid.”