by Ophelia Bell
“Nah, I was too beat after the show. I need to be on my game if I’m going to win any contests today. This trip is all about putting Tendrils back on the map. By the way, congratulations to Vic!” He jabs a thumb to his other side, where Vic is evidently in a contest to put more food on his plate than Mako. “The bastard took the prize for best realistic black and gray yesterday. You two were runners-up, but no other winners among the four of us yet. I have hope for today, though.”
“About today,” Toni says. “We’re going to need both of you to coordinate schedules and set some time aside. Sam and I have a project to replace the best of show design I was hoping to enter tomorrow. We’ll need your help.”
We sit to eat and she pulls out her tablet, showing off the fully shaded and colored graphic of our final design from the night before. “It’s going on Sam’s back, so we’re going to need all hands to get this monster finished in time for the contest.”
“No shit?” Vic says, taking the tablet from her and examining the image more closely. He zooms in and scrolls around, then nods, looking impressed. “You two came up with this together, didn’t you? It’s tight. Best of show material for sure. I’m in.”
Mako takes the tablet and whistles. “Hell fucking yes! A showstopper we can all take credit for. Tendrils all the way, baby!” He raises a hand and I high-five.
When I drop my hand, I catch sight of the suited hotel manager who let Toni into her room yesterday. She stands at the entrance to the dining room, evidently making sure only guests enter. But my neck prickles with awareness because she keeps looking at us, and it isn’t me she’s checking out. She’s watching Toni.
It’s probably nothing, but I can’t shake the sense that I need to be on my guard. I’ve managed to avoid thinking about the risky nature of this trip, and Mason hasn’t called with any developments on the Amador front, so I’m still hoping we’ll fly under the radar. But even if Amador doesn’t know Toni’s identity, he’s bound to know she’s a close associate of the Flores family. She’s Celeste and Leo’s best friend, and both her younger brothers are Arturo’s favorite muscle. He doesn’t go anywhere without Baz and Benny.
“Sam? You having second thoughts about this tattoo?” Toni asks, squeezing my arm.
“Hmm? Ah, hell no. Why would you think that?” I redirect my attention to the table and my food, hoping to play off the churning in my gut.
“You got this grim look all of a sudden. You look like your brother when you’re serious, you know?”
“I look like Maddox?” I laugh. “Shit, please don’t tell me that.”
Mako claps his hands and points. “Fuck yes! It was killing me why I recognized that look. Usually you’re so mellow, even when you’re being broody. But just now you were totally channeling Mad Dog Santos with those eyes. Sometimes I forget you two are related.”
“Thanks, I think.”
“Hey, don’t sweat it,” Vic says. “You’re hands-down the better artist.”
“It’s cool, guys. I don’t need an ego boost. I’m pretty fucking confident in the quality of work about to go onto my back. When can we get to work on it?”
Toni continues staring with a worried look while the guys take out their phones and pull up their calendars. I give her a small shrug that seems to mollify her before we both check our own schedules.
For the next fifteen minutes, we shuffle things around, send texts to clients, and manage to block out a three-hour session this afternoon, and then another tomorrow morning. With three artists working on the thing, it should take half the time it would normally take to finish. Toni blocks off an extra hour to do final touch-up just before the judging starts.
I shove my worry about our observer aside by the time we get back to our booth and lose myself in tattoos for the next few hours. We break once for a late lunch of takeout pizza from one of the resort restaurants before it’s my turn on the table.
“You ready?” Toni asks, eyes bright. She’s practically bouncing in her seat and I narrow my eyes at her.
“You’re way too excited about this.”
“Sam, it’s a fucking gorgeous piece of art, and I get to put it on you. You have no idea how excited I am to be the first non-Santos to ink your skin.”
She cleans up her station and then preps it again, setting up the honeycomb of tiny cups and filling them with inks, mostly red and black, but a few other shades to add depth. Vic took the file with the final design to the resort’s business center and managed to print out a larger copy of it on a single large sheet, which is clipped to an easel just above the end of the table for everyone to use as a reference.
“Shirt off, honey. Let’s get going.” Toni slaps on a pair of gloves and waves at me. I strip off my T-shirt and lie flat on my belly, my cheek propped on a pillow covered in a disposable paper pillowcase.
Prep takes a few minutes, but is relaxing under her gentle touch. She carefully shaves the fine fuzz off my entire back from my shoulders to just below my lats, then wipes it clean with a mild sanitizer. The transfer sheets are in two pieces, which she carefully places, first the right side, then the left. Then she stands and moves to my feet, and I hear the click of her camera before she returns to show me the screen and the shot of my back, the design’s outline stretched across it.
“Lined it up pretty well, I think.”
“It’s perfect,” I say, a little breathless because this is likely to be the biggest tattoo I ever get, but it’s also the one that means the most. She still hasn’t registered that the face is hers, and I’m not about to clue her in. Let her keep thinking it’s my sister.
Mako and Vic both putter around, setting up their own carts and workstations, bumping into each other until they get everything situated around the table. Onlookers have started to gather, and Chelsea’s familiar voice is urging her crew to move in close.
“Guys, mind if we set up a tripod here to record the process? Sessions like this are pure gold for our channel, and the event organizers will want clips too.”
“You okay with having this recorded?” Toni asks.
“Just show me where to sign,” I say, propping up on my elbows. Chelsea’s cameraman extends a tall tripod near my head, attaching a small camera to an arm to get a decent angle of my back.
“Reposition as needed,” he instructs. “It’ll be streaming live for segments too, but I’ll be back to check on it for those.”
“No pressure,” Mako jokes. “You ready to get this thing started, Sammy boy?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.” I give a thumbs up and smile at the crowd that’s gathered, feeling like I’m about to embark on a deep dive or something.
It isn’t a bad analogy, because for the next three hours it’s like I’m underwater amid a cascade of constant sensation when all three sets of needles start buzzing against my back. Sometimes it’s no more than a tickle, but sometimes it’s painful and I have to grit my teeth. Toni begins with my shoulder on her side of the design, so I can see her out of the corner of my eye. Simply watching her work is a balm to the pain. Between the sting of the needles, her touch is practically a caress, and I fantasize briefly about one day maybe being allowed to return the favor.
Every so often Vic moves the camera, and I wish like hell I could watch them work.
“Who’s the face?” Mako asks. “She’s pretty. Looks like you, Toni, but that’d be crazy, wouldn’t it?”
“As if,” Toni says. “It’s his sister, which you should know since you’ve met her. Elle’s the one Santos who got all the brains.”
“I remember Elle,” Mako says. “She also got all the looks. But this doesn’t look like her.”
“It’s an amalgam,” I interject before Mako starts to get any ideas. “Of the women who mean the most to me. And yes, Toni’s part of it.”
Toni’s all of it, but I need to not freak her out if I can help it.
“Shit, Sam.” Toni’s tattoo machine stops buzzing and she sits back. “Why didn’t you tell me last night? How you ma
naged it without reference pics is nothing short of amazing.”
“Must be that photographic memory,” Vic says. “It’s why he’s so fucking good at what he does. Not to mention overflowing with useless information.”
“Pretty kickass superpower, if you ask me,” she says, leaning over my back once again. The needles sting near my spine this time, and my skin tingles with goosebumps when her breath gusts across my nape. “Is it genetic, or something you learned?”
“My brothers and I all have it to some degree. No idea why. Not that it ever did me any good.”
“Well, I am honored to be a part of the design. I just wish I’d known. You are a constant surprise.”
Her tone is a little awestruck, which makes me feel like even more of an imposter. I’ve used my skills at perfect recall so rarely for anything worthwhile besides my art. The most recent exercise just happened to include a whole pile of secrets that she’s only a tiny part of, and that I wish like hell I could forget.
What’s crazy is that in spite of the weighty nature of all the intel about the Amador Cartel on that little flash drive my brother handed me a few months ago, the only piece likely to ruin my life involves Toni, and my brothers pretty much forbade me from telling her.
I don’t see the point now, though. Not after the last two nights with her and every sign so far pointing to this being an uneventful weekend other than the show itself. Whenever she does find out the truth about Arturo, I’ll deal with the fallout, but until then I’m not going to rock the boat of this thing we’ve started.
I realize I’ve been dozing for who knows how long when the trio of tattoo machines go silent. Toni pats my ass and bends over to my ear. “We’re done for the day, honey. I’m just going to clean you up and cover this, then let’s go check out the concert. What do you say?”
“Can I see it?” I ask in a groggy voice, propping myself up on both elbows and craning my neck around. Of course I can’t see shit, so I slump down again when she nudges my shoulder and wait for her to gently spray down my back and wipe it clean of any errant blood or ink.
She carefully coats it in ointment and snaps a photo. Then she hands me her phone, which I stare at while she layers a sheet of thin plastic over the tattoo and tapes it down.
It’s brilliantly detailed and everything we envisioned the night before. They’ve worked from the outside in, and the dark side that constitutes my half of the design is about three quarters finished while the colored side is only about halfway done.
“We rocked it today,” Toni says, “so it’ll be quick tomorrow. We’re leaving your spine for last, though, since that’ll probably take the longest and hurt the most. Oh, also, Chelsea said she’d email us the link to the raw video and we can watch it before they post it.”
“I love watching you tattoo,” I say, a little drunk from the constant flood of adrenaline that’s now dissipating. I sit up and she hands me my shirt, eyeing me with a tilted head from her stool.
“Let’s get you fed before you fall over. Maybe we should skip the music and just put you to bed after.”
“What? Hell no. Sweet Child’s on tonight. They’re the real reason I came, you know. I even have the T-shirt.” I hold up my shirt for her to see before putting it on. At a glance it might look like the Guns N’ Roses logo, but it’s been subtly reworked to make it unique to the tribute band it belongs to.
“Aren’t you a bit young to be that into Guns N’ Roses?” she asks. “Hell, they’re before my time.”
“They are timeless. Besides, all my older brothers loved them, and I wanted their constant approval. This tribute band is one of the best.”
Toni snickers and ruffles my hair like I’m a big kid, but then she leans in and kisses me, destroying the effect. I cup her cheek and kiss her back, savoring every second.
19
Toni
Sam gets a second wind while we eat, his eagerness to go to the concert driving him, even though his exhaustion is apparent from the circles beneath his eyes. He was so wobbly after the tattoo he had me worried, though he didn’t so much as flinch or utter a protest while he was under our needles. I’d half-intended to take him back to his room and put him to bed—and maybe join him—but far be it from me to stand between a man and his favorite music.
We snag a couple beers on our way to the arena and push our way through the crowd when we see Vic and Mako near the stage. They make room and we squeeze in between them just as the music starts, loud and raucous.
Sam chugs his beer and raises his hands, making devil-horns in the air, head-banging as he belts out the words to “Welcome to the Jungle” along with the lead singer, who grins down at us and bobs his head. The crowd jostles us and I’m forced to move in front of Sam, reflexively pushing back against him when the tightness of the throng overwhelms me.
He wraps his arms around me, shielding me with his big body. “I’ve got you,” he says close to my ear. “You can let go. I won’t leave your side.”
I lean back against him, absorbing the sense of safety he infuses me with until I acclimate to the noise. Before long, the buzz from the beer kicks in and I get caught up in the energy. With Sam’s hands at my waist, I finally let go, singing along to the songs, bouncing and swinging my hair as I dance and spin with him. It’s the most liberated I’ve felt in ages. Sam is even more into it, and I can hear his voice even clearer than the lead singer’s.
His eyes are bright every time he looks down at me, though he fixates on the band even more. After they finish “Paradise City,” the singer pauses and says in an English accent, “You guys in the back probably can’t see it, but this bloke down front is giving me a run for my money. You wanna get up here and give it a go?”
He motions to Sam, whose mouth falls open. I spin around and look up at him.
“Sam, you should do it!”
Mako and Vic both yell, “Do it!” In just a few seconds, the entire crowd is chanting, “Do it! Do it!”
His eyebrows draw in. I can’t hear him, but I can read his lips well enough to know he says, “Are you sure?”
“Hell yes!” I yell, then smack his ass and point at the stage. “Get your hot little ass up there, honey!”
He presses a kiss to my cheek before turning and vaulting over the security barrier, then leaping up on stage like he’s got springs in his feet. The crowd roars with excitement, and he swipes both hands over his face, shaking his head as if he can’t believe what’s happening, but he’s grinning just as wide as I am.
The lead singer laughs and reaches for Sam’s hand to shake. “What’s your name, friend?” he asks into the mic, then aims it at Sam.
“Sam Santos.”
“You here as an artist or a connoisseur of ink?”
“I’m an artist with Tendrils, a studio out of San Diego.”
The three of us hoot and cheer from the front, and I’m thrilled to hear other cheers burst out from around the arena.
“I’ve heard of them. That’s Toni Valentine’s shop, isn’t it? What’s it like working for an icon?”
“Toni? She’s a fucking goddess,” Sam says, smiling down at me.
My cheeks heat and I bite my lip, because my heart is pounding so hard I hear it over the rumble of the crowd. He’s the one who looks like a god standing up there on stage in the spotlight. If I didn’t know him so well, I’d swoon. I have no doubt most of the women watching right now are going to have filthy fantasies about him after tonight with his tight T-shirt, inked-up arms, and five o’clock shadow. Who cares if those tattoos aren’t real? They only enhance the effect.
Sam and the lead singer step back for a moment to confer with the band, then Sam returns to the front of the stage and secures the microphone into the stand. He’s in his element as the focus of attention, a version of him I haven’t seen before, and my heart pounds harder in anticipation.
The lead singer picks up his guitar and begins to pick out a familiar melody. The notes pluck at my emotion the instant I hear them; then Sam st
arts to sing “Don’t Cry” and I’m absolutely lost.
It isn’t just hearing this song put to music now after hearing him sing it to me in the darkness of our first night here—everything about his performance drags me under. His steel-gray gaze remains fixed on me through the whole song, as if he means every single word he belts out, despite them being written decades ago by a different person.
But that’s the way of songs, isn’t it? We all appropriate them to our own needs, giving them our own meanings. I don’t want to think about what this choice of song means to Sam, but at the same time I absolutely want my suspicion to be true, no matter how crazy a hope that is.
I’m so enthralled I’m not even dancing, and when the song ends, I just stand there until he hops off the stage to the whistles and shouts of “more!” He looks apprehensive at first, but when he makes it back to me, I wipe the look off his face with a kiss. It’s too loud in here to express what’s going through my head right now, so I just grab his hand and lead him through the crowd and out of the arena entirely.
The resort is too busy for my tastes, and we don’t have a moment alone for me to say anything meaningful until we get back to my room.
When we step inside and he asks, “So, did you like it?”
I turn and push him up against the door, shutting it with his weight and laying another kiss on him that’s even hungrier than the last. He groans into my mouth and skates his hands down my sides, hooking his fingers into the waistband of my jeans and then sliding them around to my lower back to pull me tight against him.
Holy fuck, he’s hard as a rock already, and knowing I get him this hot just makes me even hotter. I grind my hips against him and he lets out a curse, dipping to hook both arms beneath my ass and lift me. I wrap my legs around his waist, continuing to kiss him as he walks us to the bed.
I let him lay me down and he begins undressing me one garment at a time, and I accept each hungry kiss he gives me in between. When I’m naked, he strokes my skin, letting his eyes and hands travel over every inch as if he’s committing my shape to memory. It hits me that’s exactly what he’s doing—that what he sees now is something he will be able to recall with perfect clarity long after this weekend is behind us.