Page 80 of Miguel
“I was looking at the tattoo!” I protested feebly.
“Cool, huh? Ink did it.” She pulled me towards an empty table and forced me down onto a seat, right before she sat across from me.
She looked to be about my age. I noticed we were two of the youngest women there–besides Camila, who sat at a table with some of the older Diablos members–and she seemed to be excited about the prospect of a friend her age.
“Is that the norm here?” I waved in the general direction of her boob tattoo. “To get one of those when you become a Vieja?”
Xiomara laughed. “Not really. Ink did this because he’s a savage with no manners.” Her eyes gleamed. There was something wicked about her. An energy lived inside her depths and she was unleashing it in my direction. “Unless you want one?”
I didn’t answer that. If only because I wasn’t sure what to say. Did I want a tattoo? The prospect of being marked down like that, as property, was overwhelming. It was just another part of this world that I likely didn’t understand and made me feel out of place. I wondered if Miguel had expected it of me. He hadn’t said anything, though I made a mental note to ask him about it later.
“Oooh, a virgin?” A second woman appeared behind Xiomara, helping herself to a seat at the table with us. This woman had bright purple hair, several piercings and tattoos against her skin. Smokey eyes took me in with vibrating eagerness that had me leaning away a fraction. Her eyes roved over my skin like an artist looking at a blank canvas. “I’d kill to get my hands and tattoo gun on you. How do you feel about piercings? You’d rock nipple piercings.”
I could feel my face flush.
“This is Fer,” Xiomara introduced. “She’s my best friend and works at the shop with Ink and I.”
“Nice to meet you.”
Fer’s eyes shone brightly again. “Doyou want a tattoo?”
“I… I don’t…um…”
“I hear you’re a teacher,” Xiomara interjected, interrupting my awkward ramblings like my response wasn’t necessary at all.
I brightened at the change of subject. “I am, yes.”
“Tell me about it.”
So I did. I opened my mouth, and once I began talking about my job and everything it entailed, I couldn’t bring myself to stop. Xiomara and Fer stared at me, enraptured in everything I had to say. Xiomara’s encouraging expressions just made me talk more, and by the time I finished, her fist was propped on her cheek and she was smirking at me.
“I know what Miguel sees in you.”
Fer nodded her agreement.
My entire face flushed at that unexpected compliment. I tried not to stammer. “What do you mean?”
With her free hand, Xiomara waved in my direction. “You’ve got that whole sunshine vibe. The sunshine to his stoic, gorgeous and innocent school teacher to his serious bad boy biker. You’re really cute.”
I couldn’t find a response to this. Luckily I didn’t have to come up with one because at that moment, a man came up from behind Xiomara. A heavily inked hand encircled her throat, squeezing and pulling her attention upwards.
“You flirting with the new Vieja?” the deep voice of the man rumbled. His cut said Ink.
So this was her proprietor.
Damn.
He was…
Xiomara smiled with brightly painted lips up at him. “Just telling her the truth.”
“Hmm.” He hummed right before he bent down and took her mouth in a savage kiss. Spider-man style.
I watched their open affection. The way their tongues tangled together in the awkward position that didn’t seem to hinder them at all. I couldn’t peel my eyes away from the display and could feel my face flushing brighter as I took them in.
Finally, when Ink pulled away, he flashed a smirk in my direction.
He was…
