“Can I do another one?”
“Knock yourself out, JB.”
I didn’t stop until Sami forced me when he caught me trying to pump blood into my fingers to get rid of the numbness.
-o0o—
Bear was sitting on a chair, looking at his youngest daughter. When she met his eyes he saw how nervous she was. She’d been at Wicked Ink for seven months, and she loved it. Every damn second of it; no matter what they had her do.
She was about to do her first tattoo on him. Sami’d been smart enough to realize he’d kill him if he had her do the first tattoo on herself, which was the norm. Not even mentioning it wasn’t legal. She was still two months away from her seventeenth birthday. His sixteen, almost seventeen-year-old, daughter was about to do her first tattoo on a person.
The three artists and Trixie were gathered around to watch. Vi put up her long violet hair in a tight bun, and then the black rubber gloves. Everything else was prepared.
She once again made some adjustment to her power unit, the box supplying the tattoo machine with power. He knew that the higher the voltage, the faster the needle moved and the more it hurt. He knew that, just like he knew how a lot of other things worked in the studio, since this was all she talked about, and she made sure to tell him everything. Despite her insecure behavior at that very moment, she was a very different girl compared to what she used to be.
When she took the machine, he noticed her hands shaking. She took a few deep breaths, but she was still shaking, and finally looked at him with big eyes. He leaned forward and grabbed her chin.
“Baby, you know that even if I walk out of here with a lizard that looks like a dick, I’ll still love you.”
She gave him a small smile and nodded, took yet another deep breath, and started.
Sami wasn’t going to let her have real customers for a while yet, but Bear knew for a fact he had a line of Marauders ready to let her work on them. Guys covered in tattoos with a majority of their ink looking like shit anyway; they’d let her ink them, without a doubt. It wasn’t uncommon that someone broke out a tattoo machine while piss drunk in the middle of a party. He had a few of those tattoos himself. Most of the guys in the club did; they wouldn’t mind having someone practicing on them.
Sami and Joe stayed close the entire time, and Sami kept giving her instructions. Once it was done Sami leaned closer.
“Kid, that’s not a bad first tattoo.”
“It’s not?” she asked, and Bear noticed her trying to hide a proud smile.
The lizard looked okay, not much more than that—and that was with a father’s eyes, but it was definitely something he could live with. The lines were a bit shaky, but all in all decent. No matter what it looked like, he would still always have the first ink his baby girl ever did.
“Pretty good,” Joe said and looked at her. The skinny guy with tattoos all the way up to his face gave Bear’s daughter the sweetest smile. “I guess the training on Julius paid off.”
Bear laughed. He’d seen a picture of that pig side, and it’d been covered in flowers, butterflies and some things he recognized as her own stuff. When she started cleaning up, he walked outside to have a smoke with Sami.
“How is she doing?” he asked.
“Great. She’s doing well, really good, and she’s so eager to learn. She’s evolving fast.”
He knew she was. He picked her up almost every night she was working, and she worked a lot. Sami was impressed; she was working a lot more than he’d expected, and Bear knew he thought Vi was doing a good job. She was growing up, and he wasn’t sure how he’d deal with that yet.
-o0o—
Mac dumped the bag on the bed and looked around. There wasn’t much there. A bed, a desk, and a mostly empty bookshelf. He was back in his old room at his dad’s house, but he’d already decided to not stay there for long. He’d move into the clubhouse until he could find some other place to live.
Mitch had offered his couch, but Mitch was one anal motherfucker, just like their dad was, and living with him would drive both of them insane. He loved his brother, they hung out all the time, and he was happy he was in the club, since they’d been talking about the two of them as Marauders since they were kids, but there was no way in hell he’d live with him.
He also knew that Mitch didn’t sleep much. It was something he shared with Eliza. When she was a kid, she used to sneak into their room when she woke up in the middle of the night. If she wanted to sleep she came into his room, and if she wanted to sit up and talk she went to Mitch.
It was nice being back in Greenville. The time in Emporia had given him a sense of what it was to be a real member, and he didn’t think it would’ve been the same if he’d done it at home. It had been a hellish time, though. The problems there had taken their toll and it had been rough. A lot of troubles, a lot of fights, and some kills. He’d been there through it all, and towards the end he wasn’t ‘Brick’s son’ anymore. That was what he’d wanted from the get-go; make a name for himself, not as someone’s kid.
The kind of trouble they’d had there could bring members closer, but it also made people tired. If you’re constantly on your guard, you eventually end up eyeing your fellow brothers wondering how long they’d last, and what would happen once they cracked. He wanted to get out of there before he started to become suspicious.
“Is this okay?” Mel asked when she came through the door.
“It’s fine, Mel, but I won’t stay.”
“I know,” she smiled. “Just glad you’re back, and I know your dad is, too.”
She gave him a hug, and just before stepping out she turned around.
“And I’ve made dinner.”
He had missed her cooking and no matter where he’d stay, he’d make sure to catch as many dinners as possible.
With a deep sigh, he took another look around his old room. It felt like a lifetime since it was his and as if it belonged to someone completely different.
But when he was at the table with his dad, Mel, Mitch, Eliza, and one of Eliza’s friends—that’s when it felt like he was at home and his old self again. It felt good.
CHAPTER ONE:
Not The Honky-Tonk Kind
-o0o—
MAC HAD BEEN BACK to Greenville for almost six months when he walked into Wicked Ink for the first time. He hadn’t seen much of Vi, but according to Bear, when she wasn’t in school she was working. She was by the counter when they arrived, leaning over it with full focus on the drawing in front of her.
When Brick laughed, she looked up and gave him a smile. She was doing that a lot more these days, smiling. He’d noticed it the few times he actually had seen her. Bear said it was because of this gig, and Mac felt proud to have had even a small part in her finding that. She was still quiet and shy, but had a different confidence about her. And she should.
She wasn’t eighteen yet but had already been an apprentice for almost eighteen months. Even Mac knew that being Sami’s apprentice gave her a lot of cred from the get go; he was known for picking out talents and helping them reach their full potential. And Vi was considered a talent.
“Show me what you got, hun,” Brick said and leaned against the counter in front of her.
As far as Mac knew, she wasn’t taking on real customers yet. He didn’t know how official it was that she was working at Wicked Ink. He’d asked, and apparently there were no laws about how old a tattoo artist had to be in Arizona.
She’d inked most brothers in the state and the adjoining states. Initially, it was the old guys who gave her a go. Then the ones with so much ink and so many shit tattoos one more wouldn’t be noticed. But when Dawg let her ink him, Mac realized she was getting good, because he was picky as fuck with his ink. Brick’d realized the same thing, which was why he’d decided to give her a shot as well. He’d given her free rein, the only requirement was that it had to ‘smell of Marauders’ without the word being spelled out. He thought it would get him something unique and good. She’d b
een really eager about it.
She’d never asked Mac if she could ink him, though, despite the deal they made that day when he gave her the idea to become a tattoo artist. She’d never even mentioned it.
“I did a couple, but this is the one I like best,” she said and handed Brick a paper, still looking nervous.
All three of them leaned over to see it, and all three of them stood quiet for a few seconds, and then Brick chuckled. “Wow!”
It was a strange pattern, forming… he wasn’t sure what it was.
“It’s a celtic pattern. I checked and the Scottish origin of ‘Baxter’ is from a celtic tribe. The English origin is from ‘baker,’ but I though it was better to go with the celtic idea.” She pointed. “It’s a cannabis plant, and the bases of the leaves, here,” she pointed towards the middle, “if you look closely, you can see that they look a bit like diamonds.”
Then Mac saw it. No fucking way would he have known if she hadn’t showed him, which made it brilliant. It also struck him that she obviously knew about the Marauders’ business of smuggling in pot and diamonds from Mexico. Which he found surprising, but it wasn’t up to him what she knew or not.
His dad was quiet, just staring at the picture, and Vi cleared her throat.
“I have some others as well.”
“I don’t need to see them. I want this. It’s a Baxter-Marauder tattoo, it’s fucking perfect, girl.”
Vi’s nervous expression turned into an embarrassed smile. “So you like it?”
“It’s amazing, honey,” Brick answered. He leaned further over the counter, grabbed her neck and gave her forehead a kiss. “You nailed it.”
Mac agreed with his father’s statement, but soon forgot all about the tattoo when he saw Vi putting her hair up in a ponytail. He kept looking at her long, lean neck as she rolled the hair into a tight bun.
‘Seventeen,’ he repeated to himself. Waaay to young. So hot, though. That’s why he hadn’t seen much of her—he’d avoided her. Not that they’d been all that close to begin with, but it seemed better to just stay out of her way. Avoid temptation.
When Brick’d asked him to come with him, he couldn’t find a good reason not to. Especially not after Brick’s argument that Mac should see how how she was doing, since it had been his idea to begin with.
When she took Brick to one of the back rooms, Mac sat down on a couch next to Bear and looked around. It looked like most of the tattoo shops he’d been to. Modern with some steampunk details.
A woman in her forties, covered in tattoos and a face full of piercings, came out from the back rooms and started to pull out drawers, looking for something.
“JB!” she yelled, and Mac was surprised when Vi came out from behind the curtain leading to the back. He’d never heard anyone else call her that.
“Yeah?”
“Where are those fucking ticklers?”
“Got a date?” Vi asked with a small smile as she got behind the counter and started to help with the search.
“Yup.”
“Sami wanted you to try the vibrating kind.”
“We have vibrating tongue studs?”
It was around that point Mac started to feel slightly uncomfortable, since he figured out what a ‘tickler’ was for. Bear was shifting next to him, indicating he was equally uncomfortable with the current topic of conversation, but he didn’t say anything.
As far as Mac knew, Vi’d never had a boyfriend, and she still seemed… very at ease with discussing BJ aids. When Vi was safe back behind the curtain, he turned to the tattooed woman.
“Why do you call her JB?”
“Jailbait, keeps customer off.” She halted and looked at Mac for a moment before giving him a grim smile. “Customers like you, so you stay the fuck away, or I’ll force pierce you in places you didn’t even knew could be pierced.”
“He’s with me,” Bear chuckled and turned to Mac. “That’s why I don’t freak out when she talks about sex shit with my girl. She’s very protective of her.”
“You own a sex shop and a strip club, and she’s an almost eighteen-year-old girl in the twenty-first century. She knows about sex shit,” she said to Bear. “And she has to be able to handle stuff like that. People come in here and ask about piercing their dick. Can’t have her blushing, looking all cute. They might blow a load.”
“Piercing their dick,” Bear mumbled to himself and shook his head. “People are fucked up.”
“Guys your age tend to look at her,” she said to Mac, ignoring Bear completely, and walked around the counter holding out her hand. “I’m Trixie.”
“I’m Mac.”
“So you’re the guy who put her up to this? Owe you a fat one for that, want a piercing?”
“No,” he answered and took her hand. He felt a little uncomfortable thinking about pierced dicks and other places he couldn’t imagine. “I’m fine, thanks.”
“You should go and have a look at her working. She’s good.”
He gave Trixie a nod and got up. He could see the value of her scaring guys off, but he didn’t like being the age of the guys who usually looked at Vi. Or, rather, that guys his age looked at Vi.
When he walked into the backroom, he found Vi sitting on a chair with his dad on a gurney-looking thing in front of her. The ink was going on his shoulder blade. He already had a lot of ink on his back, but she’d angled it to fit perfectly. He looked at the sketch again.
“Fuck, this is so good,” he mumbled. “Would you mind me doing the same, Dad?”
“Nah, I’d like that,” Brick smiled. “A Baxter-Marauders family ink.”
He sat down in an armchair giving him free view over her working the ink. Seventeen. He wished he could tell himself she looked a lot older, but she didn’t. She looked her age, or even younger. She was small, with a slender body and pretty face. Her eyes were light brown with an almost yellow golden shimmer, a really pouty mouth with full lips, and finally the dimple in her chin. When she readied the machine and checked the needle with a magnifying glass, he looked at her hands. Small hands with a delicate wrist; they were beautiful.
She turned to his dad. “Ready?”
Once she’d started, Mac slowly realized that a hot, beautiful chick doing ink was mind-blowingly sexy. He got worried when Trixie walked in and shifted in his seat to hide his growing boner from her.
“Music?” Trixie asked with a glance towards Vi.
“16 Horsepower,” Vi answered.
When the music started, Mac stared at Vi. It was a well-known fact that Bear was a metalhead, and he’d just assumed Vi liked something… at least similar to that.
“Country?” he asked.
“Sort of… indie, country, folk, religious… thing,” she said, and he saw the blush on her cheeks. “I like it.”
“Vi has a thing for country,” Brick said with a laugh. “Breaks Bear’s metal heart that she’s not into ‘proper’ music.”
He focused on the music for a while. It wasn’t bad, but definitely not something he’d normally listen to. She was right, though. It wasn’t regular country, and he just had to ask.
“Do you like regular country music, too?”
“Some of it,” she said with a shrug. “Not the honky tonk-kind, but some other stuff.”
“She’s big on Whitey Morgan,” Brick said, and winked at him.
That’s when Vi turned bright red. Mac’d had no idea she liked country, and at the moment it saved him from that boner, since he was laughing.
“Sure you wanna tease her while she’s inking you?” he asked his dad.
“Whitey Morgan is actually called ‘outlaw country,’” Vi mumbled.
“It’s still country, Vi,” his dad said. “But it’s okay, we still love you, honey.”
Mac sat in silence and then started to laugh again. “You’re probably the only country fan on the planet with purple hair.” She glared at him, and he smiled. “Hey, I’m just kidding. And this is okay. What were they called?”
“16 H
orsepower.”
He listened to the music while flipping through a tattoo magazine trying not to look at Vi. When the next song started it caught his attention. It was good. Really good.
“What’s this song called?”
“Prison Shoe Romp,” she answered. Then added with a shy smile, “It’s my favorite on this album.”
Seventeen, he reminded himself again and took a deep breath before looking away. Also the daughter of his extra father. You did not hit on your almost dad’s not-yet-legal daughter. You just didn’t. To top it off, she’d had a crush on him for years and doing anything would be so fucking wrong. It wasn’t going to happen. Ever!
-o0o—
I was thrilled! Wade ‘Brick’ Baxter, the president of Marauder Riders MC, loved my design, and I was leaning over him, doing it at the moment. Putting it on his shoulder blade, and it would stay there forever. Something I’d designed especially for him. It was a big approval of my work!
I’d been nervous, not only that he wouldn’t like it, but because it was my first personalized design. He’d said he trusted me to be able to do that, which that was pretty much the coolest part. Brick had trusted me to do a good job.
In general, since I’d decided I wanted to be a tattoo artist, things had started to look up. I was still in high school, but worked as often as possible. School didn’t feel as unbearable anymore, since I knew it’d be over soon, and I didn’t have to worry about what would happen once it was. I had a career that would work with… how I was, and how my head worked.
When it didn’t feel as if they were going to change their mind and send me walking, I asked Sami why he’d taken me on, and he told me. It was that I could do such good portraits. Even if he wasn’t going to force me into a specific style, he hoped I’d use those skills and specialize in realistic tattoos. I hadn’t decided yet.
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