Rocked

by Taryn Elliott

  “Uh huh. For—wait, for the world? What did you do?”

  “I may have gotten the Oblivion Instagram password from both Jazz and Simon in separate texts. They’re pretty excited about this.” She glanced down at her phone and back up, taking another picture. “Possibly a little too excited.”

  He dropped his arms to his sides and strode toward her. “C’mon, Harper.”

  “Saying my name all sexy-like isn’t going to stop me.” She flicked through the settings and shared the photo via Twitter and Facebook.

  Deacon must have heard the snick and whoosh of it posting because his chin dropped to his chest.

  She slid her phone back into her pocket. “The fans are eating it up, and it’s good for Casey’s show too. I plugged both. Win-win.”

  “I’ll take the free publicity,” Casey said without looking up from his papers.

  Deacon groaned, looking up at the ceiling. “Well, I guess it’ll get Gordo off my case, too. I suck at Twitter.”

  “It’ll be cool for Jazz’s scrapbook thing too. You should see all the stuff she’s got.” At his blank look, she shrugged. “What? She gave me the link.”

  Deacon slumped in his chair. “I feel stupid.”

  “God, why? Have you seen your body?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not some model.”

  Kate snickered behind her. “Darlin’, if the guys who came in wanting back tats looked half as fine as you, I wouldn’t mind doing the prep work.”

  “Kate.” Casey’s tone was unyielding.

  Kate just rolled her eyes and flashed a grin at Harper. “My brother is far too serious.”

  “And I wonder why I put up with her every day,” Casey muttered.

  Harper snuggled down into one of the netted chairs that were scattered all over the room. It looked like an oversized basketball hoop that hadn’t been clipped out. It was the perfect size for her and surprisingly comfy. She tucked her feet up and listened with half an ear as Casey and Deacon went through the details. When she heard full back tattoo, she looked up. “Wait, you’re serious? He can’t do all that in one night, can he?”

  Deacon looked over his shoulder at her. “One of the reasons Casey’s so famous is that he can do in four hours what most artists take eight to do.”

  “And it’s done well?” She winced. “I didn’t mean—” She twisted an invisible key in front of her closed lips. Nope, she didn’t want to know. Besides, she didn’t have any art on her body, so how did she know how long a session took?

  When Deacon climbed onto a padded table that had a face cut out, she immediately held up her phone for some shots. As he got comfortable she was struck again by just how ridiculously fluid his body was. Hardly a freckle marred his skin.

  Going with instinct, she slid under him and took a shot of his face peeking through the donut opening. “I see chairs like this at spas. Those involved a massage, not self-inflicted madness.”

  With the narrow opening, she didn’t have any choice but to focus on his eyes, and they were clear and bright. No fear, not even an ounce of trepidation.

  “The end is worth it.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  “Not a very convincing argument, Deacon.”

  He snaked his arm down and flipped the wisps of hair she’d styled forward. Usually she had it all pinned back away from her face. “Why do you do your hair?” He brushed the back of his knuckles over her cheek where she’d dusted bronzer. “And this.”

  “That’s not permanent.”

  “When I make a decision, it’s final.”

  She swallowed. In her ever-changing world, finality seemed so...rigid. She understood flux and quick bursts of satisfaction. For God’s sake, she couldn’t even decide to keep her hair long or short half the time.

  She slid out from under the chair and got sidetracked when Kate started prepping the large piece of the sketch across Deacon’s back. She taped it to his shoulders then tapped Deacon’s calf. “Up and at ‘em, Muscles. I need to make sure you’re all straight.”

  Harper swallowed as he stood in front of her and Kate ordered him to stand straight. Kate sprayed his back with some sort of solution. For the oversized camera on the trolley track, she explained about the prep work and the lotion that would adhere the design to his back. Kate fussed with the paper, and then pressed down firmly enough that Deacon had to widen his stance to stay still.

  Harper took pictures and tried not to focus on the fact that another woman was rubbing lotion on his back. It really wouldn’t be nice to break her fingers. Kate’s strokes were smooth and sure, but she was taking a little too much pleasure in the task.

  Harper finally dropped the phone and growled, causing Kate looked over her shoulder with a grin. “I’m a professional.”

  “Professionally step back then.”

  Deacon snickered, and Harper swallowed back a biting comment. She had no reason to be jealous. None whatsoever, but Kate was getting a good deal more familiar with Deacon’s back than Harper had yet. The chick needed to step back.

  Finally, Kate peeled back the large sheet of acetate that held the design sketch and the huge, purple network of lines left behind made her gasp. All of that was going to be etched into his skin?

  She moved around to the front of him and met his steady green gaze. “Really? Your whole back?”

  “He’s one of the best in the business. I trust him.”

  Her eyes drifted down to the sheer perfection of his chest. The flat brown nipples that pulled tight, the even breaths that expanded his chest, the light dust of hair that made her want to touch. She curled her fingers around her phone until it bit into her palm.

  “If you don’t stop looking at me like that I’m going to have a hard time laying on my stomach again.”

  “Right. Sorry.” She sidestepped him to see what Kate was doing. When he reached for her, she skipped out of reach. She really couldn’t handle that just now. “Mind if I take pictures?” she asked Kate.

  “Nope. I’m used to the camera.”

  Crap. She totally forgot about the camera. It was totally rolling. She must have looked like a swooning idiot. That was just fabulous.

  Harper took a few pictures of Casey Wilde’s setup: his bright green tattoo gun, the needles. So many needles. Better to not dwell on the needles. She focused a few more shots on Deacon then flicked out of Instagram. If she took any more, the entire world would figure out just how much she was obsessing about his stupid, perfect body.

  She dropped back into her netted chair and flicked through the Twitter feed. The replies ran from the cool factor to the hot. After a solid three minutes of scrolling through replies about how delicious Deacon’s body was, her blood pressure was somewhere in the high one hundreds.

  Yes, he is very attractive, thank you very much.

  Now stop fucking looking at him.

  “Overreact much?” she muttered and jammed her phone in her pocket.

  Monster Arms McGee was scrolling through his phone as if he wasn’t trussed up on a table waiting for torture. Casey was talking to the camera, explaining what he was going to do and how excited he was to work on Deacon.

  How the hell was she going to sit through this for four hours?

  She cracked her knuckles and hopped out of the chair to sit below him again. “C’mon, let’s get out of here. I can guarantee I have a better idea of what to do for four hours.”

  “You couldn’t have told me that before they transferred the design onto me?”

  She glanced at the bottles of ink and the now two tattoo machines. Not to mention the compressor and the low hum of other people being worked on. “Woman’s prerogative.”

  “Hey.”

  Cutting her eyes back to Deacon she cracked her knuckles again. “What?”

  “Relax. It’s going to be fine.”

  “What? I’m fine. I’m not the one that’s going to have a needle buzzing into my skin at Mach thirty. Drilling ink into my skin permanently.”

/>   “Harper?”

  “What?”

  “Breathe.”

  “I am breathing. You’re just crazy. Did you see the size of the tattoo he wants to do?”

  “Yes, I helped him design it.”

  God, was the room getting dimmer? “Are you freaking insane?”

  “Harper.”

  His voice was low and calm. It was pissing her the fuck off. “What did I tell you about trying to handle me? Don’t.”

  “Baby, you gotta breathe.”

  “Don’t call me baby,” she gasped. “Oh, God.” She brought her knees up and put her head between her legs. He slid his hand into her hair, his long fingers slipping right through the strands until he got to the back of her neck and massaged lightly.

  Deep, even breaths, Harper Lee.

  “Okay, I’m good.”

  He tipped her head up and she burst into laughter. His face was flushed from lying face down and his eyes were all bulgy, but they were worried for her.

  “Nice,” he said with more growl than voice. “I’m trying to have a moment here.”

  “I’m sorry.” She cleared her throat, but the laugh escaped again.

  The sound of the gun was painful. She couldn’t imagine—didn’t want to imagine how it felt.

  She scrambled out from under the table and hissed as a black gloved Casey dabbed some sort of ointment on the transfer then tugged Deacon’s skin taught and began. And her Deacon went from tapping and teasing to stone.

  She watched in fascination as his chest—which previously took fairly deep breaths to fill up that monster rib cage—let out one long breath and then, it barely rose. The man went all Zen on her in less than twenty seconds.

  She took a few pictures of Casey starting the work. At the first well of blood, she backed up and averted her eyes. Intellectually she knew there would be blood, but watching it bead up under the flat black ink was more than she could deal with. She flicked through the pictures she’d taken and uploaded the best of them to Instagram. She fielded texts from Simon and Jazz and busied herself with answering tweets.

  When the music snicked on and One Direction blasted through the speakers, she finally laughed again. Casey’s face said it all.

  Kate was going to die.

  Now this she understood. The brother/sister dynamic put her on even ground. Harper couldn’t help but brush her fingers through the strands of hair that escaped Deacon’s stubby ponytail as she walked by.

  To keep herself from going crazy, she took pictures of the studio. The huge lamps that shot perfect daylight through the dark room, the other chairs that were set up with more clients, the camera crew that was rolling. She even took a few pictures of the people that were behind the glass as they’d been a few hours before.

  When she spotted Jazz in the front of it all, she grinned.

  “See someone you know?”

  Harper turned at Kate’s voice. “Yeah, Jazz is here.”

  “Jazz from Oblivion, Jazz?”

  “Is there any other?”

  “Holy shit. Where?” The previously unflappable Kate disappeared. The exact same light green eyes that her brother had were wide and a little panicked.

  Harper nodded to the window. Jazz spotted Harper and waved frantically. “Can she—”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t even know what I was—”

  “Yes, she can come back.”

  Harper cocked her fists on her hips. “Why, Kate Wilde, are you a fan?”

  “No.”

  The answer was way too quick and her eyes were darting around like a hummingbird on simple syrup. “I think you’re a fan.”

  “Don’t let me say something stupid. Punch me or something.” Kate gripped her arm. “Seriously.”

  “All right, all right.”

  Jazz bounced into the room, an earbud in one ear, her ever present phone in her hand. Her hair was jet black with lime green and silver braids threaded through it. She wore a black tanktop, with a lime green bra crisscrossing her back and peeking from the sides. Black jeans were chopped at the knee and rolled up, hugging her surprisingly curvy body. Green and silver Chucks finished the outfit.

  The girl was badass and frighteningly adorable at the same time.

  Jazz stopped in front of her and looked her up and down. “Thumbs up, Chef Girl. That outfit is tight. Look at all the boob you hide under your apron.”

  Harper grinned. “Jazz, I’d like to introduce you to Kate Wilde. She’s...” Harper wasn’t quite sure what Kate’s status was in the Wilde conglomerate.

  Kate held out a hand to Jazz. “I’m Casey’s sister, pain in the ass manager, and the biggest Oblivion fan.”

  “Oh, really?” Jazz stepped forward and enveloped the taller woman in a hug, then curled her arm around her back and shuffled her off. “I need you tell me all about this deal on camera. Think you can do that? I’d love to do a vlog about it for our YouTube channel.”

  Harper had been hoping for a break in the nervous Nelly act she had going on, but as usual Jazz was in full social explosion mode. She was pretty sure Jazz had singlehandedly created the Oblivion phenomenon just with Twitter and YouTube.

  It was impressive as hell.

  She wandered back to Deacon and slid under the table. “How are you doing?”

  “It’s not fun, but after a while you get used to the burn.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “Nah. Just determined. And it’s cool as fuck.”

  She laughed. “Finally the truth is out.”

  “I have my moments of ego.”

  “Yeah, but you were embarrassed to yank off your shirt for the crowd of people. Who’s going to see it?”

  “Oh, I strip on stage. Those lights are fucking hot. I just don’t do it as often as Simon. Usually by the end of a show.”

  “Well then.” She hadn’t seen that when she’d taken a peek at the show yesterday. And she needed to eject that from her memory banks now. She was already riled up past the point of reason.

  “Since we’ve got time to kill, tell me about Harper.”

  “Harper is boring. Tell me about you instead.”

  “Nope. You can find out half of my stuff on Google.”

  She stretched out on her side and propped her head on her hand with a yawn. “I just got out of culinary school. Most of the chefs I know went for restaurants or bakeries and here I am on the road.”

  “You could work at any restaurant. I know the stuff you feed us is way more simple than what you could be doing.”

  “Yeah, that’s true. But I’m not all that great at dealing with egocentric chefs that are going to tell me that I don’t know how to slice a tomato.” At his raised brows, she laughed. “I worked in New York for one of my internships and you should have heard the things that came out of this guy’s mouth. When he slapped my ass on one of my shifts, I kind of...”

  “Decked him?”

  She pressed her lips together. A bit worse than that actually. “Let’s just say he had a bit of a limp and I had a pink slip.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah. Misogyny doesn’t usually bother me. I’ve been on the road for as long as I can remember and have been called every derogatory name in the book—”

  “That’s shitty.”

  “Yeah well when you’re a female roadie you deal with other roadies, musicians that created the definition of grabby, and then there’s the fans that don’t like being told no.”

  “I wish I could touch you right now.”

  “Move and I’ll kill you, Romeo,” Casey muttered. “It’s bad enough I have to listen to sappytime stories and flirting.”

  She sucked a laugh between her teeth and smiled up at him. Deacon wrapped his hands tighter around the makeshift handlebars at the top of the chair. Casey was working from the bottom up.

  “Normal people could move,” she teased. “But you are one big road map of muscles. One move and everything moves.” It was hotter than hell. The few times she’d gotten her hands
on him she could definitely prove that as a truth.

  “Damn rowing machine.”

  She slumped onto her back and covered her face with the inside of her elbow. Now she had rowing in her head too? Life really wasn’t fair.

  “I have a question.”

  “Okay, muffles. What’s the question?”

  She rolled back into position. “What on earth are you doing with me? Shouldn’t you be looking for the next triathlete? I can barely run across the parking lot.”

  “You’re full of shit. You’re in shape.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yoga and swimming when I can. I need to be small in the kitchen. You saw Mitch.”

  He snorted. “That is one scary dude. He threatened to leave me in a downtown back alley this morning.”

  “What?” She sat up. “No, he didn’t.”

  “He warned me off of you.”

  “Ugh.” She covered her face with her hands.

  “Yeah. I told him I couldn’t do that.”

  She peeked between her fingers. “What? Really?” That did sound more like Mitch than the guy that sent Deacon after her at the bar. “And you’re still alive?”

  “He told me where you were, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah, he did.” And that was a miracle in itself. Mitch had taken his role of watchful uncle to heart as soon as she’d gotten on this tour.

  “Don’t look at me like that.”

  “How did you go from threats of violence to getting my location, Deacon?”

  “Sorry, state secrets.”

  “Okay, Deacon,” Casey interrupted. “I need a stretch and we’ll set you up to sit for the next half of the session so I can do your upper back and shoulders.”

  Harper slid out from the little nest she’d made under the table and stood. “Holy crap.”

  “How’s it look?”

  His skin was slightly raised with irritation, but the black ink was glossy with what she guessed was triple antibiotic ointment, at least she thought it was based on the mediciney smell. The art followed the line of his spine, and the knife-like precision of the lines was amazing. It was all male with a taste of tribal influence. The design was obviously made for his body. This was no page out of a book. And all of it made her want to touch and stroke each line.