***
Surprisingly, there was already a line of bikes parked outside the club when we came rolling in. I winced at the idea that I’d be getting an audience out of this branding tradition. Blackjack slowly drove up to the curb at the edge, being careful to mind the space between him and the other bikes. He finally settles his feet down with the kickstand below him and the low hum of his bike is cut the second he keys the ignition off.
With his hands on his thighs, he finally leans back to stretch his spine after a long morning. I picked myself up with my hands at his shoulder, pulling my leg over the bike’s opposite side so I could jump down to my feet. He withdrew his key from the ignition and shoves it down the back of his pants before joining me to the sidewalk.
“You ready?” Blackjack gives me a look.
I returned his glance with a smile. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
He nods before taking my hand in his. “Let’s do this.”
The two of us walked our way to the club without a breath of regret. Whatever the boys had ready for us, we weren’t backing down at this rate. I had every muscle in me determined to face this like a real Monroe.
When we entered the clubhouse, it was dimly lit with the window shutters blocking out even the faintest of light. You would think a tattoo artist would need as much light as possible to capture the most detail in their projects. At the bar Zane, Kade, Dixon, Tank, Booger, and even Zoro. As soon as they spotted us, they went straight to hooting.
“Well, look at that,” Kade whistled to the both of us. “Get in here, ladies. Don’t be shy!”
“We don’t bite, much,” Dixon nudges my brother with a knowing smile.
I crossed my arms over my chest with a scoff. “Shouldn’t you be with your lady, Dixon?”
The man took his belt in his hands, leaning back into the bar with an undeniably cocky smirk, “I’d be with her sooner had you guys arrived earlier.”
“Don’t tell me he left,” Blackjack curses as he places a hand at the small of my back.
“Who left?” A voice came up behind the men.
At last, we noticed the figure sitting at the bar. My eyes went wide with shock as the familiar face stepped out into the faint ceiling light with his hollowed expression as remarkable as death itself.
“Dean, is that you?” I laugh in disbelief. “My God.”
Dean was one of the most self-serving tattoo artists that ever lived in Montana. He was the Picasso of Dixie that brought Renaissance to the Western hemisphere. Without a doubt, he could convince any person––man or woman––to put their skin under his needle. The man was so smooth that he could sell anything to anyone!
“What’s your poison, Ashley-dear?” The man flashes me a savvy grin while swirling a blend of whiskey behind the bar.
“Dean, with all due respect, I am not drinking while I’m in your chair.” I smile pleasantly before taking a seat at the bar with Blackjack.
Oh, honey,” he shakes his head before taking out his ink gun from behind the counter. “You’re going to need it if you think I’ve forgotten how dizzy you get from getting your vaccine shots.”
“Pour her some tequila, boys,” Blackjack requested of my brothers before taking the whiskey out of Dean’s hands. “And no drinking for you while you’re on the job.”
Dean gave Blackjack a haughty look of pride before shaking his finger at him.
“Even a doctor needs a drink to keep his hand steady.”
“You’re no doctor, Dean, and I’m sure as hell not your patient if you start drinking on me,” I retort coolly.
“I swear it’s like you two are married already.” He shakes his head. “Bunch of sticks in the mud.”
Kade passes me a shot of patron as we wait for Dean to set up the lights. To the right of the bar was a set of industrial stand-up lights that he had set up for the occasion. Each light was pivoted to point at the dead center of where he intended to work. Between the lights, he eventually pulled up a chair to which I assumed Blackjack and I were expected to sit in.
He had brought his cabinet on wheels from work where he carried tubes of ink, a selection of needles, and other instruments I’d rather not think too hard about. There were cords running everywhere between the chairs and tables as they all stemmed to the lights and tattoo gun in his hand.
When he was finished setting up the booth, he pulled a smock of an apron out from his cabinet and pulled it along his waist before tying it behind him. He slapped on his gloves with a smack to his wrists, more than ready to start. The entire scene looked like something from a Dr. Frankenstein movie.
“Now, then,” Dean drawls slowly, “Who’s going to be first?”
Before Blackjack could even think to offer himself up, I downed my shot quickly and slammed its glass bottom to the table. It certainly raised everyone’s attention when they saw me determined from the get go. I pulled myself off the bar and stepped into the ring.
“I’ll go.”
Dean’s crooked smile intensified just at the whiff of my courage. “Anything for you, Ashley.”
As I walked across the floor, he welcomed me into the seat with an effortless gesture of his hands. I pulled myself down with the weight of my heart beating hard against my chest with every second that it counted. The second the tattoo gun started buzzing, I could feel that heartbeat practically creeping up my throat.
I closed my eyes, pulling my head down so I wasn’t so tempted to look. With a squeeze of my nails into my fist, I tried to calm myself down while Dean tested out the gun repeatedly.
A hand came down to my wrist to give me a light squeeze and I flinched. I blinked up to see Blackjack kneeling right next to me, offering his most assuring smile.
“It’s going to be fine,” he says, circling the inside of my wrist with his thumb. Releasing a slow sigh, I nodded.
“I know, I know. Better to get it over with.”
“And, where are we branding her, Blackjack?” Dean interjects smoothly.
The two of us exchanged looks before I finally arrived at a conclusion. “On my back.”
Dean cocked a brow, intrigued. “You’re going to have to give me specifics, dear.”
“Across my shoulder blades.”
“Anything you want specifically?” Blackjack inquires. I look back at him and think to myself, unsure of what to say. I didn’t think I’d have a big choice in it all but then again, it was my skin.
“What do you think?” I ask him. Blackjack looks at me for a moment and then averts his eyes back to meet Dean’s. “Add a deck of cards at both ends of the banner.”
The men overheard and whistled at that. I tried my best not to smile too much granted that this was going to be a bitch to have to sit through. Still, I had to give Blackjack creativity points where it counted. He really had put more thought into this than I did. It felt more exciting knowing that he had taken a moment to really customize the piece I was getting.
“Well, Ashley-dear, the time has come,” Dean mocks a sigh, “I’m going to have to ask you to roll up your shirt.”
“You’d like that wouldn’t you.” I scoffed hard before taking the end of my shirt, rolling it up over my head before pulling it close to my chest.
A choir of whistles persisted from the bar tops to which I flashed them my middle finger. A cool gel like substance was spread across the flesh, giving me a moment to breath for a bit. When the buzzing went on, Blackjack slipped his hand in mine and gave me a soft squeeze as I waited for the inevitable needle to strike its mark on my flesh. I gave him a little smile, still trying to comprehend how I managed to land myself in this situation.
All jokes and laughs were left aside the second I felt that sharp pain fixed up against my skin. My eyes went wide as I opened my mouth to let out a sharp hiss as the needles jetted past the very spot in a deep line. I clenched my eyes closed with every inch of muscle in my palm squeezing into Blackjack’s hand. Dean had his hand fixed at my shoulder, steadying the skin so that it wouldn’t crease as
easily with the way my body tensed up.
He traced along the same damn line and started leveling it up to what I felt was like a curve until the needle finally left my skin. I winced when he rubbed the ink away with his gloved hand before starting up again where he last continued, drawing an endless scrawl of detail into the font.
After thirty minutes of clenching, I peeked up at Blackjack when I could feel myself slowly start to get used to the irritating pinches that resumed across my back. However as soon as the needle started getting closer to my bone, I shut my eyes closed and yelped.
“Son of a bitch!”
“Ah, ah, ah. Language, Ms. Monroe.” Dean shook his head while tracing the line slowly.
I let out a breathy exhale as I squeezed Blackjack’s hand further with every increment of space that the tattoo brought out. Compared to how it started, this was unlike anything I’d ever felt with my trips to the doctor. It literally felt like I was developing a biting rash or an army of beestings hitting me at that same damn spot repeatedly.
“The corners are almost done babe,” Blackjack assures me while checking over my back so often.
“Mhmmmm,” I hum, frustration practically sitting at the bed of my tongue.
It took what felt like ages to get the center right. I had to restrain myself from punching Dean in the face every time he passed over the sensitive skin. Blackjack offered me five-minute breaks so often, but I had to keep myself under the needle, otherwise we wouldn’t be done with this for another day.
I wanted this entire process completed by the time morning hits so that I wouldn’t have to pine over the after-pain for another week. Zane and Kade would give me extra shots of tequila every time I made a miserable noise. After so long, the pain dulled into a collection of annoying pinches. The bee stings subsided, and I was left with not only a spread of aches along the coast of my back, but I was forced to listen to that irritating buzzing coming from Dean’s tattoo gun.
Every time he pressed down on my skin to wipe the blood and ink away, I could feel my muscles tensing. Blackjack felt it every time I gave his hand a squeeze and pulled himself close to whisper something nice in my ear.
When Dean pulled the needle away after another good hour, I nearly thought he was giving me another five-minute break. To my relief, he was done with the entire etch from the font style to the details. We didn’t stop there however.
I had offered Dean my hand and described to him the silver pattern I wanted engraved on my ring finger with Blackjack’s name scrawled across. He warned me that fingers and knuckles were one of the most painful things to work on since they were closer to the bone than most parts of the flesh. That didn’t stop me from being persistent and insisting that he finish the job for me here and now.
He tacked that down as another forty dollars to the $400 job he painted across my back. Without Blackjack’s discount, the entire piece would have been six hundred with the extra details he insisted on. Thank God for that.
Before Dean was about to plaster the bandages on, Kade held his hand up insisting that he take a photo. He needed photographic proof to send to the Bears so that we could rub it in their faces once and for all.
“What about the redness? Won’t it look too fresh?” I ask, tracing my hand over the bandages.
Kade laughs abruptly. “Hasn’t Zane told you that he’s been taking photoshop classes while you’ve been away?”
I cocked a brow, dumbfounded. “You’re kidding me.”
“No, Ma’am. Who do you think designed the new emblem?” Kade smirks before looking over his shoulder to his brother sitting at the bar. “You bring that fancy laptop of yours today?”
Zane looked up from the said laptop, giving us the okay. “I set it up as soon as you got your camera out.”
“We’re set for business.” Kade folds his arms over his chest.
“Can I see the picture?” I look over to his phone.
I hadn’t seen Dean’s work just yet and I was insanely curious to know how it turned out.
“Sure, sure,” He nods, pulling the picture back up on his phone.
When I saw it with my own eyes, I felt my heart stop beating. It was quite the piece. From the way the cusp of the “P” sailed across my shoulder up to the scope of his name, I was completely breathless with the design. This was no simple signature of a name; it was a legitimate Reaper brand with Blackjack’s name along my skin.
The etch was gorgeous and nowhere near as degrading as I originally assumed from Dean’s style. Usually with any brand, a Reaper man wanted his name to be bold and stamped across his woman’s body. I was fine with anything originally, so long as it wasn’t as tacky.
I can see now that Dean was an exceptional eye to what a woman wanted, but Blackjack’s own delicate touch gave me a little smile.
“You like what you see?” Kade grins. I could tell he was enjoying this.
“Surprisingly yes,” I muse aloud.
“Well great. After we’re done cleaning this one up, we’ll touch up on Blackjack’s and…”
“Wait, what?” My eyes flash up at him.
My brother’s brows furrow as he copies my confused expression.
“Blackjack’s tattoo. He’s getting a piece done on his chest.” He repeats slowly.
“You’re kidding me––”
I was cut off the second Dean started his tattoo gun. The heel of my boot turned me around so fast that I nearly caught whiplash the second I set my eyes on Blackjack in his seat. My eyes stopped dead on his broad chest as he bared his skin for the point of the needle.
“Blackja––!”
“Shhhh!” Kade hisses, giving my arm a little squeeze. “You want Dean to mess up his mojo and give him a butterfly instead of a brand?”
I pulled my arm away and strode my legs over there. Blackjack’s brown eyes went from Dean to my approaching figure, cocking a brow at the disbelief in my expression.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” I demand.
“What do you think, sweetheart?” He smirks at my fluster.
I bit the inside of my cheek, putting my hands on my hips.
“The Bears only need to see one brand.”
“And?” He inquires.
“You don’t have to do this,” I insist, pulling myself down to the chair beside him.
He takes my hand, giving me a wry smile. “Have you learned nothing, Monroe?”
Blackjack rubs his thumb coarsely against my hand, shaking his head. I’m serious about this.”
I open my mouth to protest but by the time I could, Dean had already cut me off. “Save your sweet talk for your honeymoon, Ashley. I’ve got a job to do.”
My eyes narrowed back up to the artist with a glare worth a thousand daggers but that didn’t stir him up one bit. He started on Blackjack’s chest with the determination of a Spanish bull on parade. Blackjack kept his chin up as his chest was continuously prodded by the cycle of needles on rotation.
I watched him intensely as his expression failed to change throughout the process. Every so often he’d give me a little look when it became apparent I was worried, but all it took was a little wink for me to end up smirking all over again. No matter what the relationship was, it was more than obvious that Blackjack was serious about seeing this whole thing through to the end and so was I.
CHAPTER 13
Ashley
“Wait, what do you mean I’m moving out?” I blurt out.
That was the first thing I could manage to say when my father told me what was going to happen. I had just come home from walking my friend Antonette’s seven devil dogs when I found my daddy in the kitchen with the newspaper. The second I stepped inside the house, he apologized for his insensitive behavior the past couple days. He explained that with the stress from the Bears he had snapped. On top of that, we were still upping our security measures so that we could prevent any more of our supply from magically disappearing.
We finally started to talk about it. How much hate we had
for the Bears, if he heard any news from our allies. My father didn’t want me to know too much about club politics, but that was horseshit. I’m his daughter, of course I’m going to know how the club runs – what to do, what not to do, etc.
He’d reached out to some of the smaller clubs in Montana to get their opinions on hunting these Bears. If he asked me, the Bears had been a problem for far too long. Every other club in Montana respected my father, but Grizzly, no, he constantly challenged my father.
Montana may have been a big state to some, but it was a small world for us. News travels fast and if one club was targeted, it wouldn’t be long before others were involved. My father reluctantly admitted to a few trusted Prez’s about our drug supply being shorted, about it disappearing from the safehouses.
No one had been affected directly from other clubs although there were signs going around that two others were missing some of their supplies as well, only in their cases it wasn’t drugs, it was guns. It was concerning to know that in total there were three clubs who were having supplies go missing, I don’t know which was worse – having some of our drugs nixed or having guns stolen.
This was cause for alarm with the other Prez’s as well. I knew my father was going through a lot, but until today that didn’t really resonate with me. When I could understand, I finally gave him my forgiveness. However, that didn’t stop him from persistently pushing my buttons.
I couldn’t even stay in my seat when he told me that I was being forced out of my home. My childhood home. I darted up and paced the kitchen with my arms crossed in front of my chest with only one word escaping me: unbelievable.
“Blackjack and I talked, sweetheart,” He continues slowly, averting his eyes from me. “We both that you should move in together.”
“You’re doing this again.,” I respond with a shake my head, and pushing my hair out of my face with frustration. “You both are agreeing on something I have no say in. I thought we were going to put a stop to all this?”
The events in the last few weeks have bothered me to no avail. I was frustrated and almost to my breaking point. Yes, I owe these men a lot. They helped nurse me back to life, back to the old Ashley that I thought was long gone but that didn’t give anyone the right to keep making decisions for me.
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