Tegan: Exotic Ink Series (Book Two)

by LS Anders

  “I’m so sorry.” Rayna’s hand smoothed down the comforter hating the feel of the slick material under her palm. “My… late husband had an addiction too.”

  Tegan didn’t say a word, only placed his hand over hers, knowing he had to have heard her story from someone in the shop, most likely Cale. Those two males seemed to be close despite their difference in ages.

  Looking down at their hands laying together on top of the satiny comforter, she expelled a harsh laugh, unable to stop her words. “I hate this comforter. I hate these satin sheets, and I hate the neutral color even more. Brent picked them out. I had no say in the matter. He always got what he wanted, and it didn’t matter to him if I liked it or not. The look and texture have always reminded me of the lining in a casket.” She barked out another laugh. “That’s so disturbing. To think, he died doing what he loved the most and now, he’ll forever lie in a bed made out of the exact material he so cherished.”

  “You don’t have to be subject to his wants anymore, Rayna.” He gave her a hard look that quickly softened. “You should get rid of it and pick out what you want. How about we try that Motrin and Gatorade.”

  Leaving her for only a moment, he was back beside the bed handing her the hangover remedy.

  “Drink as much as you can without making yourself sick. The electrolytes will help you with your future hangover. You should go shopping on your day off tomorrow and splurge on new bedding. I’ll bet my goatee you’ll pick out something with pink on it,” he said, flashing her another rare smile.

  “Maybe I will. What makes you think I would pick pink?”

  “You wear it a lot.” He shrugged a muscled shoulder. “I figured it was your favorite color.”

  “So, your favorite color would be black, then since you wear it a lot.”

  “Nope. It’s pink.”

  “Pfft,” she mimicked him perfectly. “No, it isn’t.”

  “It is now.” He winked at her.

  “Would it be too much to ask if you’d stay with me tonight?” Rayna asked, feeling silly she looked quickly away.

  “Nope. You wouldn’t by chance have anything I could sleep in besides these jeans?”

  “As a matter of fact, there are joggers on the top shelf in the closet, if you don’t mind wearing Brent’s clothes. He was a lot smaller than you, so I can’t swear they’ll fit but help yourself.”

  “Works for me,” Tegan stepped into the walk-in closet and returned shirtless, wearing a pair of cotton pants like a second skin. “You were right. His dick wasn’t nearly as big as mine.”

  Rayna took one look at Tegan’s massive camel toe and couldn’t hold back her laugh at his jest as he tried for a more comfortable adjustment. Leaving the closet light on, he pulled the door closed as a makeshift nightlight, leaving only a sliver of light to slice across the bed. Walking around to the opposite side of the bed, a smile creased her face as she got an eye full of his firm ass in Brent’s too small pants.

  Slipping under the covers with her, he searched out her hand, enveloping it inside his much larger one. “If you start to feel sick again, let me know, ok?”

  “Alright. Thanks, Tegan.”

  “Anytime, Kitten.”

  The question as to why he had chosen that particular endearment was on the tip of her tongue, but she decided to let it go for now.

  Hesitant to close her eyes, she discovered she was good as long as her foot remained planted on the floor.

  Tegan’s warm hand felt amazing cradling her smaller one. The unanticipated gesture felt as unique as the man. He was quite the revelation. The more time she spent with him, the more layers of his personality began to show. The alcohol dissolving away his tough exterior, revealing multi-faceted sides of him she hadn’t expected. The man was as complex as her feelings were becoming for him. After tonight, she was even further away from figuring him out.

  She absently wondered if Tegan would hold her after they made love. She thought yes, since he had proven to be so compassionate. She began to doze, hoping for that to happen soon… the snuggling and the sex. She’d fallen asleep in his embrace once before, but being held by him after sex, to feel cared for, cherished? Now that would be a phenomenal feeling.

  Beginning to float away into an alcohol induced slumber, she was unable to halt the dream she dreaded from playing in all its full colored glory…

  Rayna jerked awake. The pulse in her temple thumped in time with her heart as she held her breath waiting to hear the sound again. Had the knock on the door been just a dream that had crossed over, drilling itself into her conscious mind or had it been the real thing?

  Glancing over at the glowing numbers that seemed to be hovering in the darkness next to her head, she rolled over onto her back. Stretching out a slender arm, her hand roamed softly over the satiny comforter feeling nothing but cold empty space.

  This came as no surprise.

  Tragically her husband, Brent, was known to frequently be away from home until the wee hours of the morning. Besides, he wouldn't be knocking. In the eight years she had known him, he had never forgotten his keys.

  Convinced she had dreamt the sound, her heavy lids dropped back into place as she drifted back to sleep.

  Sitting bolt upright, her eyes flew open when the knock became a battering ram. Throwing back the covers, her heart galloped behind her sternum as she grabbed her robe, throwing it on as she hurried down the hall.

  Another pounding had her yelping and cussing as she peered through the peephole. All of the blood immediately left her body, a cold blanket settled around her as fear slithered down her spine. Nothing good was going to come of this visit.

  Opening the door, she didn't utter a word as she looked between the two police officers.

  "Are you Mrs. Rayna Nichols?"

  Contrary to her passive personality, she had this insane urge to say no and slam the door in their faces just to make whatever the trouble was go the hell away. If the police were at her door in the early hours of the morning, somebody's ass was in trouble and since she hadn't found her husband in bed next to her, then it was his ass that needed help. Her help to be exact.

  Why didn’t he just ask the girl he was currently fucking to help him out?

  Brent had been so kind as to courtesy call her earlier in the evening to let her know he was meeting a client out for drinks.

  Yeah, right!

  She knew better than to believe that well-used excuse after learning the most difficult way possible that he was a liar. One night she had drummed up enough courage to follow him, and he had met with a client. She had recognized the girl from Exotic Ink. The girl had been his last appointment of the evening, but he had met her at her apartment and not out for drinks.

  Her battered heart shrank as she swallowed back her disgust recalling the memory of that night. Once he’d returned home, he hadn't even had the common decency to take a shower before sliding into bed next to her, still smelling of Eau De Parfum of pussy. She remembered curling into a tight ball, sleeping on the edge of the bed so as not to come into contact with him. Thankfully, Brent had never wanted to cuddle and only touched her when he wanted a quickie, because there was no way she could have dealt with him touching her after he’d just had his hands on another woman.

  The other times he had used that same excuse had resulted in photographic evidence of him with all different women that she had received from the private investigator she'd hired to follow him around. Even after witnessing his indiscretion first-hand and looking at the photographs, it had taken her quite a while to accept that Brent was cheating on her.

  "Yes," Rayna reluctantly answered.

  "I'm Officer Landry and this is my partner, Officer O'Malley. May we come in? It's about your husband," the brunette cop offered by way of explanation.

  Measuring the two police officers, she decided she liked the brunette. He was the older of the two with lines marking his face around his kind brown eyes. You only got wrinkles like that from doing a lot of smiling and
laughing. She could only hope for those kinds of wrinkles in her future. The ring on his finger said he was married, and she'd bet her last penny he had pictures of his family in his wallet.

  The other cop? Well, let's just say the lewd smirk on the redhead’s face shot a shiver of disgust throughout her insides and caused her to tug the two halves of her robe tightly together at her throat.

  "Um... I'm not really comfortable with that. So, can we do this here, officers?" she suggested in her soft voice, indicating the hallway where they were waiting.

  Normally, she went along with what other people wanted, but there were rare occasions when she would stand her ground... as politely as possible of course.

  Officer O'Malley nodded, his smirk turning down at the corners of his mouth. "Ma'am, I'm afraid we have bad news regarding your husband. He was transported to Lenox Hill Hospital via ambulance to –”

  Gasping sharply, she interrupted the policeman, firing off one question after another. "What happened? What kind of accident has he been in? How badly is he hurt?"

  "He is deceased, and we need you to make a positive ID.”

  Instantly, her legs turned to jelly. She wasn't sure what she had expected, but death certainly wasn’t on her list of guesses. This had to be a mistake. The redhead had said, "make a positive ID," as in not for certain it was Brent.

  "How... how did it happen, Officer...?"

  "The coroner hasn't yet determined the cause of death," the brunette officer provided.

  "What... what do I need to do, Officer... Landry?" Rayna glanced down at his metal name tag before her eyes swung up to meet his. "Are you sure it's Brent?"

  She tried swallowing, but there was not a drop of moisture left in her mouth. Her knuckles had turned a stark white from where she was clinging to the door to keep from sliding to the floor.

  "We won't know that for certain until you come with us to identify the body."

  "Alright... um... give me a minute to change," she said, slowly closing the door in their faces and relocking it. She felt bad that she was being rude to Officer Landry, but there was no way she was letting his creepy partner in her apartment.

  Her bare feet slapping against the hardwood floor sounded overly loud to her ears as she rushed down the narrow hall of her Manhattan apartment to the single bedroom. Rising panic squeezed her chest so tight, that her heart was now pounding in her throat and left only enough room for a whisper of breath to fill her lungs.

  This could not be happening. It just couldn't. Stuff like this did not happen to her. She did not have cops showing up at her door to tell her that her husband was dead!

  Tossing her robe on the foot of the bed, she hurried inside their shared walk-in closet. Not bothering to remove the lacy camisole and boy shorts she always wore to bed, she hastily threw on a pair of jeans and an oversized hoodie over the top of it all.

  Spinning around to leave, her arm brushed against the hanging garments on Brent's side. Hitting the pause on her inner panic, she lifted one long sleeve of his graphic tee to her nose, pulling his familiar scent into her lungs.

  She missed him. She’d been missing him for such a long time but hadn’t realized how much until this moment.

  Tilting her head back, she blinked back tears she thought had all been shed. She’d buried the yearning for his company and sadness over his multitude of indiscretions a long time ago, but those awful feelings bloomed inside her heart once more.

  He couldn't be dead. It would be way too weird if he were. She had just hired a divorce attorney and was getting ready to file. She had wanted him to be free of her but not like this.

  Forcing herself away from her thoughts, she smoothed down the sleeve. Grabbing her purse and cell, she made the short journey back to the front door.

  The cops were where she had left them waiting in the hall. The redhead's eyes pinned her to the floor, flashing with annoyance as she fished her keys out of her purse to lock the door. Well, too damn bad! She wasn't comfortable having two strange men in her house while she was home alone. It didn't matter to her that they were in uniform, and he could wait for her to lock her damn door.

  Following the officers onto the elevator, she began to convince herself that it wasn't Brent's body at the morgue. That it was some other poor soul that had been mistaken for her husband. She was just going to the hospital as a courtesy so they could eliminate Brent and find the correct family to break the devastating news.

  Once they’d reached the lobby from the seventh floor, an eerie calm had settled over her. She'd either successfully mind fucked herself into believing her own denial or she had gone into shock, because suddenly she'd stopped feeling altogether. She now felt... nothing.

  Not sad.

  Not panicked.

  Not... anything.

  She knew all this was a mistake, and she was on her way to the hospital to view some stranger’s corpse. That’s why she had gone completely numb, because her instincts were yelling at her that it was not Brent.

  Stepping from the pocket of warmth the building afforded and out onto the sidewalk, the frozen night air slapped her hard in the face. Well, she was feeling something now.

  Shielding herself from the wake of frigid air created by the passing cabs, she pulled up her hood tucking in a few errant strands of blonde hair that were whipping across her face. Keeping pace with the officers, she slipped her arm free of the shoulder strap, cradling her purse in front to shield herself from the biting cold, attempting to retain as much of her body heat as possible.

  Crap. She should have worn a stupid coat.

  Officer O'Malley opened the back door of the police car for her to get inside. A couple walking past nailed her with a judgmental stare as if she were a criminal.

  She was half tempted to pull a Callie and tell them to fuck off. Her foul mouthed, no-nonsense co-worker at Exotic Ink Tattoo Studio would not have hesitated, but Rayna was the passive friend and just looked away sliding into the back seat.

  When the pneumonia hole wasn't immediately shut, she looked up quizzically at Officer O’Malley and found him looking her over, a half grin painted shamelessly across his face.

  It had to be her imagination, because that would be way too sickening for a man that had just told her he thought her husband was dead to now eyeballing her on the way to identify the corpse. Yet again, she wished she had Callie's mouth and a modicum of her fortitude, because she would let this guy have it.

  "Would you mind shutting the door, please? It's really cold outside," she asked in her usual shy tone.

  "Not used to being in the back of a police car?" he mused.

  "Um... no. Luckily, I'm a good girl."

  Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say, her comment igniting his interest. The cop made a move to lean forward into the car before his partner called him back.

  "Let's go, O'Malley!"

  Luckily, he obeyed like a good little puppy and shut the door leaving her alone. Her eyes bore into the back of his skull as he dropped into the passenger seat in front of her. The words, disgusting perverted asshole, were banging on the back of her teeth trying to find an escape.

  Suspicions narrowed her eyes. The cop had given her a thorough once over when she’d first answered the door, and she knew he had seen the tattoos on her exposed legs and had assumed the worst about her.

  She never could understand why some people automatically associated tattoos with bad behavior. It was an artistic expression of yourself and had nothing to do with whether you were a good person or a bad person. In twenty-eight years of life, she had never even gotten so much as a parking ticket.

  She'd bet that douchey cop had no idea that her favorite client was Judge Jeremiah Satterfield. When he wasn't presiding over the New York City Civil Court, he had a standing monthly appointment with her to complete a huge, full color Japanese dragon he had hidden under his robing. They had been working on the tattoo for half the year, and he kept adding to the design appearing not to want their sessions to end a
nytime soon. She expected the tattoo would run the entire length on his right leg and rest on the opposite shoulder before she was done with the thing.

  Sadly, her glaring hadn't resulted in exploding Officer O'Malley's head so she began familiarizing herself with the interior of the backseat, wondering idly who the last passenger had been. An entire array of disturbing images of law breaking people popped into her head, and she'd bet anything they didn't disinfect the car after a drop off.

  Hugging her purse tighter, she made it a point not to touch anything. She was definitely going to toss her clothes in the washing machine as soon as she got back home—

  Home!

  Holy crap! She was going to have to hurry back before Brent got there. He would freak completely out if she were gone. She hadn't thought to leave him a note telling him where she'd gone. He was so weird like that. He cheated on her constantly but seemed to be worried about her all the time. It just didn't make any sense to her…

  Well, actually it did make sense. As a matter of fact, it made too much sense.

  She had been a virgin when they'd met, and he had been her first and only. Her southern belle of a mother, Jane Ann, was of the old-fashioned variety and even though that upbringing had been excellent for her culinary skills, it had done nothing for her skills in the bedroom. She could cook the hell out of a prime rib, but she had no clue how to suck a dick and Brent craved variety. She couldn't help but feel personally responsible for the affairs he'd had. How could she blame him for looking elsewhere since she was so sexually inept? They hadn't been a married couple, not in the carnal sense for a good year, and it was all her fault.

  Besides, Brent never liked her cooking. He was a wishy-washy person about what he stuck in his mouth. Some days he was a vegetarian, then he was gluten free, and then he was low fat and no sodium. He would always boast about eating clean, but she had personally seen him eat an entire box of Hostess cupcakes. She had nothing against the delicious pre-packaged confection, but given the fact that she had taken multiple culinary classes with a focus on pastry making, you would think he would at least try something that she’d made instead of constantly bitching that the ingredients she’d used weren’t healthy enough for his constitution. Which merely gave him another excuse to leave her home alone to prowl around the city looking for another conquest under the pretense of having to go out to find his own dinner.