“Another thing my friends weren’t lying about. You’re hot as hell,” she murmurs, lust darkening her blue eyes.
I know what she sees when she looks at me. A big, tatted motherfucker who could be either a fighter or an ex-con. Maybe both. She sees a man who would shut the door, push her up against the wall, and fuck her six ways to Sunday right next to the framed black and white photograph of a woman with my art on her back.
She’s not wrong. On either of those. In my twenty-nine years, I’ve been in the ring and on both sides of the law. And after a match, with the adrenaline still raging through my veins, I had no problem finding a woman at the club, bar, or even around the ring willing to let me pound out the rest of my energy in her body. Even now, I’m far from a saint or a monk. Sex is still an outlet—maybe even more than it used to be since I don’t have fighting anymore.
But too bad for her, I don’t fuck clients. Or employees. I never shit where I eat. That’s just begging for trouble.
Not that I’d take her up on the invitation in her stroking hand anyway. She’s too goddamned young.
She’s only a couple years younger than Eden.
Yeah, and Eden is even more off-limits than this coed.
Gripping her wrist in a gentle but firm hold, I pry her hand off my junk.
“Thanks,” I reply to her earlier compliment. “You can pay up front.”
I half expect her to storm out of here, hissingassholeor something, along with a dramatic exit. Instead, her lips curl into a wicked smile that probably has those frat boys at Loyola coming in their khakis.
Damn, I almost feel a flicker of sympathy for her parents. No doubt, they’re hosting fancy dinner parties up in their big-ass, gated home, blissfully ignorant, thinking their precious, beautiful daughter is at her school studying and doing sorority girl shit. When, little do they know, she’s at a tattoo shop, attempting to give a hand job to an ex-fighter in a neighborhood that would send them into heart palpitations.
This is just one of the reasons I don’t plan on having kids.
They never fail to break your fucking hearts.
I should know since I’ve cracked my parents’ hearts into so many fragments, they resemble jigsaw puzzles. With a few missing pieces.
The familiar, corrosive burn of guilt scalds my chest like acid, even more painful because itisfamiliar.
“I’ll see you out there,” she says, sauntering out the room, the fragrance of her floral perfume trailing behind her. Hell, it smells like it cost a bill. But it still can’t compete with the summer and peaches scent that I could identify in a damn perfume factory full of open bottles.
Shaking my head, I grab the bottle of disinfectant. For the next few minutes, I spray and clean the black leather seat and arm cushions on the massage chair I use for shoulder and back tattoos. Collapsing the equipment, I stow it along the wall and head out.
Stepping into the main part of the shop, the loud, grinding mix of metal, electronic, and classical music that is Igorrr’s hit songieuDblasts out of the state-of-the-art sound system, one of the first things I had installed after I bought the shop three years ago. The drone of tattoo machines and the hum of voices buzz beneath the pounding heavy metal.
This is home. A home I created for me with the family of my choosing, if not birth.
Pride swells inside me, pressing against my chest wall, as it does whenever I walk in and stop to think how lucky I am to do something I love. The big storefront window still looks out on busy N. Western Avenue and its bars and cafes. Exposed brick still covers one wall, and cubicles dot the wide, open floor plan. Art decorates the walls, along with the hanging portfolios containing stencils, drawings, and pictures of past tattoos.
In front of the long desk stands a couple of glass cabinets stocked with Hard Knox Ink merchandise—shirts, hats, chains, jewelry. That had been Eden’s idea. After retiring from the Bellum Fighter Championship, or the BFC, I’d wanted to completely separate myself from that part of my life. Hell, I’d named the shop after my fighting name only at my brothers’ insistence. That had been as much as I’d been willing to concede.
But when I hired Eden a year ago as my receptionist and, later, office manager, she’d informed me I would be stupid not to capitalize on my career and reputation. After a lot of nagging, I caved. Honestly, I didn’t give a damn what brought people through the door. Every artist here, including me, can hold our own once we have the client in our chairs. Yeah, some people might walk through those doors to rubberneck and find out what happened to Hard Knox Gordon, former two-time BFC heavyweight champion. But most come because our tattoos are the best in Chicago.
“Hey, Knox. What the fuck is this, man?” Hakim Alston yells from his cubicle. The wheels of his stool roll over the tiled floor, and then he appears in the doorway, his long dreads held back from his face by a black bandana. “I mean, some of the shit your brother listens to I can tune out, but this? It’s weird even for him.”
“I’m sitting right here, asshole,” Jude calls from the space that adjoins Hakim’s. “And I’m just trying to expose you to different kinds of music, elevate your taste.”
“I got one thing that elevates, and I don’t need your help with that,” Hakim shoots back.
“Yeah.” My other artist, Heaven Travers—who refuses to answer to anything but V—chimes in as she walks past us. “He handles thatallby himself. Emphasis on ‘hand.’”
“Now, that’s just wrong,” Hakim grumbles. Then, as Taylor Swift replaces Igorrr, he shakes his head as V, the resident Swiftie, cackles from her cubicle. “And that’s worse. Really, Knox?” he continues. “Isn’t it some kind of cruel and unusual punishment to work under these circumstances?”
I snort. “File a complaint.” I happen to like Taylor’s latest CD and work out to it. Not that I’ll admit it to Hakim, or anyone else, for that matter. That kinda shit you take to the grave.
Pausing a moment before continuing to the counter, I peek into his space, checking out the piece he’s working on. Daenerys Targaryen and her three dragons cover a wide back from shoulder to waist. Eden is aGame of Thronesfanatic, which is the only reason I recognize the characters. Hakim has been working on this guy’s back piece for weeks now, between the outline and adding color. And even though it’s only the fifth session and about halfway done, it’s stunning. Each of us specializes in a certain style, and Hakim’s is realism. The tattoo could’ve been ripped from the pages of any graphic art book and superimposed on this guy’s back. That’s how detailed it is, with color that pops off the skin.
“Damn. That’s coming along good,” I murmur.
