Under His Skin Read Free Page A

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