by Amiee Louise
Temptations
Tattoos and Tears – Book 1
By Amiee Louise
Published by Scarlet Lantern Publishing
Copyright © 2018 by Amiee Louise & Scarlet Lantern Publishing
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
This book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language.
All characters in this work are 18 years of age or older.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
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Prologue
Sam - 1 Year Later
To whoever reads this?
First off, know this: all roads lead to the same outcome.
To this very point in time.
I am not a coward, and I most certainly am not a quitter; I’m simply just a man. As I sit here alone in my apartment in the dark and deathly silence with the world at my feet with only the moon, my thoughts, and my thundering heartbeat for company, a lone tear runs down my cheek. I stare frantically at the bottle of vodka and the pile of pills scattered on the floor in front of me, reflecting upon my life so far—my biggest achievements, and my biggest regrets. They all seem to flash before me and then pale into insignificance. Everything is insignificant, void without her in my life. My soulmate, my reason to live. Gone, and it’s all my stupid fucking fault; I’m the one to blame. If I hadn’t left her alone and unprotected, none of this would have happened. I let it happen—the only woman I have ever truly loved, taken away from me by a cruel twist of fate. No words could describe the depth of feeling I felt for her. My Peyton … she was my whole world.
As I’m sitting here sobbing like a big fucking pussy boy and knocking back vodka neat from the bottle, the burn of the alcohol soothes the agonising, debilitating ache in my chest as it slides silkily down my throat. My mind starts to swim with thoughts of her, thoughts of the good times we shared together, the soaring highs and the heartbreaking lows, only to be over-ridden by thoughts of how she died. Ever since it happened, it has felt like I have been living my life underwater, struggling hopelessly to reach the surface, all the days blurring into one to create an endless fucking misery. The world carries on around me as if nothing has happened, completely oblivious to my pain. I feel so empty, so hollow and desolate. As if half of my being is missing and I can’t function without that vital part.
The mixture of emotions barrelling through me make me feel like I’m a teenage girl on the blob, hormones raging and my mood all over the shop. First, I’m happy, smiling and reminiscing about the good times we had, the stupid lame jokes only we would understand. Next, I’m consumed by inconsolable rage, such intense anger, and all I want to do is fucking murder someone. Then, I’m so sad and so miserable it consumes me that I actually want to die and end this car crash I call my life. The only memories I have left of her are the ones I hold in my heart, a collection of photographs, and my memorial tattoo. I can’t control the tears; I can’t spend longer than half an hour in the studio recording with the band because I can’t concentrate long enough to lay down the vocals for even half a song on our new album. I can’t sing a single line without breaking down into uncontrollable floods of tears. Today was her memorial, and it was the single hardest thing I have had to do in my whole entire life.
I feel responsible for her death, like somehow all this was my fault. It happened right in front of me on a large screen, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I felt so helpless, completely fucking useless because there wasn’t a single thing I could do to prevent it.
I get this crippling sense of loss every time I think about her. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, and I can’t close my eyes or dream without replaying the moment she died on an endless loop in my mind. At this point, I am struggling to care about anything, least of all the band and my music career. My career means nothing to me now without her; she became my sole reason to go on stage, my driving force to perform in front of thousands of adoring fans. She saw beneath my stage persona, she saw the real me, on and off stage.
The truth is, I have never really known true love before I met Peyton. You know the kind, the butterflies in your stomach, you can’t go to sleep until you have heard her voice, and you can’t see anything or anyone else apart from each other. You crave that one person like a drug, and she was my drug of choice. When we were in a room full of people, I only saw her; it was as if we were the only two people in the room.
With Peyton, it was instantaneous. I know it’s cliché, but the first time I saw her I wanted her. I knew one-hundred-million percent that she was the girl for me, even though she hated the fact that I was a rock star and she was immune to my charms when we first met.
Touring and being on the road with the band, we don’t get to have proper ‘normal’ relationships like your average twenty-something males. One-night stands, bunk-ups on the tour bus, and blowjobs in dressing rooms is more our style. It keeps the complications of real relationships to a minimum.
I had the ability to switch off my feelings before I met her. It was just mindless sex with the other women, the lust without the love but never with her. Sex without feelings I could cope with, but she opened up feelings in me that I had never experienced before. She showed me how to love and be loved in return.
My head spins as I take a long pull on the bottle of vodka and the sudden realisation hits me like a ten-tonne truck—I can’t go on living my life without her in it. I just can’t, I can’t see my future anymore. My life is pointless and totally fucking meaningless. She was everything, my whole universe.
Frantic pounding begins on the door while muffled voices shout outside, but I ignore them and scramble to my feet. My head feels like it is about to explode; I just want it all to fucking stop. Stumbling to the kitchen, I grab a knife from the chopping block before staggering back into the living room, unable to focus on my surroundings. I collapse onto the floor, hitting my head as I fall. The large bread knife I am holding clatters to the floor and echoes around the room. I reach for the knife and crawl towards the vodka and pills.
My vision is blurry, but I still manage to cut my wrist deep. The pain bites into my consciousness, and I’m relieved to feel something for the first time in weeks. The deep crimson as it flows down my arm brings a flashback to the forefront of my mind an overwhelming feeling of guilt washes over me like a tidal wave that I wasn’t there to help her. She was all alone and I couldn’t protect her. I scream hysterically to try to repress the image and hack carelessly at my wrist, watching as the blood dri
ps onto the floor. I grab a handful of pills and down the vodka.
I am so fucking sorry.
Life Sucks. Fuck you, see you bitches on the other side. Peace out.
Sam x
1
Peyton
From an early age, there were three things that were etched into my Peyton Harper DNA, into my very core as a human being. First thing being, celebrate the skin you were born into, which is where my love of tattoos comes from. Every piece of ink on my skin represents a part of my life, every tattoo has a special significant meaning to me, and every single one has a story behind it. I believe that everyone should celebrate the skin they were born with and decorate it with beautiful art. Art galleries have paintings hanging in them; I happened to have my art etched on my body. This is why I got into tattoos.
The first time I picked up a tattoo machine I knew it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I have ink running through my veins. I started from the bottom as an apprentice at the age of eighteen just out of school and worked my way up with pure passion and determination. With hard work, I became a qualified, fully-fledged tattoo artist. It’s difficult being a female in an industry which is mainly dominated by males. It is a pet hate of mine that people think that I’m incompetent as a tattoo artist just because I’m a woman.
I work in a tattoo studio in Islington called Saint Sinner Ink, which is owned and managed by Seb Henry. Yes, the Seb Henry, celebrity tattoo artist. He has tattooed the likes of Premiership footballers, music stars, rock bands, TV, and movie stars. People come from everywhere just to be tattooed by him. He is a legend in the tattoo industry at thirty-four years old.
He was reluctant to give me a real chance at first until I kept showing up at his shop every day with my portfolio, begging him to look at it. One day, I think he was so fed up with me pestering him, he finally looked, and by the expression on his face, he was instantly impressed. He gave me an apprenticeship that day, taught me the tricks of the trade, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Now, Seb is my brother from another mother, one of my heroes, and one of my closest friends. It is because of him I’m slowly building up a reputation in the tattoo industry as one of the best female artists in the city at just twenty-six years old. Seb is fiercely protective of me, and he has been one of the biggest influences in my life so far. I am eternally grateful to him for giving me an opportunity when no one else would.
Secondly, if you’ve got it, flaunt it—my mum’s wise words.
You see, my beautiful, dizzy, yet sophisticated mother, Sophia Harper—or Sophia Bailey as she was known back then before she married my dad—used to be a pin-up model in the late 1970s, and her face was famous worldwide. Her photograph was used in fashion magazines to advertise world famous brands and on billboards all across the globe. In her heyday, at just a fresh-faced, innocent, nineteen years old, my mum was beautiful—not that she still isn’t beautiful. She had legs up to her armpits, quite an ample bosom—which I definitely inherited!—amazing bone structure, and cheekbones to die for. Everyone knew her face; she was a rival to the likes of Twiggy and Jerry Hall. She stood alone on the beauty stakes with her unusual, wide, violet eyes and an air of vulnerability. Which my dad, Max Harper, recognised the day he met her when he was assisting the photographer on a poster campaign. He was instantly attracted to her, and to this day, he still says that every time he looks at her she mesmerises him.
The third and final thing that has been etched into my DNA since I was a child, is that if things sound like they’re too good to be true, then they’re bullshitting. It was because of the last thing that I met him.
Samson Newbolt, a.k.a Sam or Bolt, as his army of fans call him, the lead singer of rock band Rancid Vengeance.
As soon as I laid eyes on him, I knew he was trouble with a capital-T. He was cocky, arrogant, and rude. He was literally everything I despised in a man. Nevertheless, I was drawn to him like a moth to a flame.
I saw underneath the bravado; saw him as a vulnerable, shy, insecure guy who hides behind his stage persona. He was sort of beautiful, and he made leather trousers look sinful; he was the epitome of sex. He oozed sex appeal from every pore in his fine, over six feet of hard-muscled, red-blooded man body. What attracted me to him in the first place were the most gorgeous intricate tattoo designs inked all over his body, but I was kind of indifferent and immune to his charms to begin with. I was determined to make him work if he wanted me as his girlfriend.
He was what music magazines described as ‘rock’s bad boy’, and he was always being photographed falling out of nightclubs with a different woman—sometimes more than one—in the newspapers and gossip columns. He was what my best friend, Ruby, and I described as an ‘attention seeking man whore’.
His onstage look was leather trousers with chains and studs, black eyeliner, black, leather-studded cowboy boots, vests, and tight t-shirts to show off his muscles and tattoos. He wears a silver thumb ring on his right thumb and a leather-spiked cuff on his left wrist. The only thing that separates him from his stage persona is his offstage look. Offstage, he wears skinny jeans instead of leather trousers—they do things to his arse that should be illegal in most countries! He also wears black Converse trainers and he alternates from tight fitting dress shirts with the sleeves rolled up to show off his tattoos and rock band t-shirts. In the media, he is as well known for his style and fashion sense as he is for his music.
I had heard of his band, and I was familiar with their cool, guitar-driven, all-out rock anthems because Ruby was a huge fan and played their songs constantly, but I was seemingly unfamiliar with the members. At least, until Seb got a call from their manager, J.D. Apparently, the band was in town, and they all wanted new tattoos. They had heard Seb was the best in the business; the band had seen his work and wanted him to tattoo them.
Cue the rollercoaster that I was about to embark upon.
2
Peyton
“Rubes, please hurry up, babe; I’m going to be so bloody late for work.”
I share a modern two-bedroom studio flat in Camden Town, overlooking the famous Camden Market, with my best friend, Ruby Logan. She is the sweetest, most beautiful, loving girl I have ever met. With long shoulder-length, jet-black hair, flawless olive skin and dark hazel eyes, she has the perfect figure with curves in all the right places, stands at five foot eight, and has legs that seem to go on forever; she could totally be a model. We have known each other since we were five years old and we grew up together. She is like a sister to me, and we have always been close, ever since I can remember. Her family was my family, and my family was her family.
She has an older brother, Remy, who is three years older, and he served in the military. I lost my virginity to Remy at the age of seventeen, and we were close until he joined the army at the age of twenty. He and Ruby were once estranged due to their parents, Pearl and Ray, favouring Remy when they were younger. Previously, this has caused epic arguments, and I have been a shoulder to cry on on many occasions. Remy moved to America six years ago after he lost his leg below the knee due to a roadside bomb. Despite her former estrangement with her brother, she still keeps in contact with him via phone and Skype and visits him when she can. She is extremely stubborn and refuses to admit when she is wrong.
She is also the worst timekeeper and has a very annoying habit of taking at least an hour in the bathroom every morning. I have to be up early if I want to get in the bathroom before she starts her daily routine.
Ruby is like clockwork; you can literally set your watch by her. She wakes up to her alarm of ‘Dance with the Devil’ by Rancid Vengeance and bounces out of bed at six-thirty AM with such enthusiasm for the day ahead before going to the kitchen to switch on the coffee machine. While quietly humming a random tune, she pads across the floor, trying her hardest not to wake me up before my alarm goes off at seven thirty AM Next, she heads to the bathroom, turns on the shower, and her routine begins.
I love her to death, but she is
such a colossal pain in the arse! Especially when we have to be somewhere, whether it’s work or a social thing. I very often have to go across the hall to our neighbour, Danny Debonair, who is one of my best friends and the loveliest flamboyant, gay drag queen—also known as Debs on the weekend—just so I can get my morning shower and get to work on time.
“Give me ten minutes, sweetie.”
I roll my eyes to myself. Here we go again.
“It doesn’t matter; I’ll go to Danny’s. I’m going to be so fucking late.”
Irritated, I turn to stomp out of the flat in my pyjamas. I hate lateness with a passion; it is one in a long line of my many pet hates. The bathroom door flings open, and I am slapped in the face with a haze of perfume-filled steam, the remnants of Ruby’s morning routine.
“It’s all yours, babe.”
She blows me a kiss, and she knows I can’t stay mad at her for too long. It takes me less than half an hour to shower, get dressed, style my hair, and apply a little make-up ready for the day ahead. The flat is filled with the aroma of freshly-brewed coffee—my favourite smell in the world. I don’t have blood running through my veins, I have pure caffeine! I don’t function if I don’t have my morning coffee fix; it is an essential way to start my day. Ruby leans casually against the doorframe of my bedroom sipping her steaming mug of coffee.