So Damn Beautiful (A New Adult Romance) (27 page)

“Hey, beautiful,” he said in a husky voice,
pulling away so that I was looking up at him. “Miss me?”

I didn’t want to sound too eager, so I coolly
replied, “Maybe a little,” which made him break out into a grin. I
looked at where we were standing. Tuff City Tattoos was a building
unlike any I’d ever seen. It was completely covered in graffiti.
Swirls of paint morphed into fire-breathing dragons; frolicsome
skulls; mermaids with bared breasts; and psychedelic mandalas of
birds, beasts, angels, and, above all, the puffy signature script
of the graffiti writer.

“This is incredible,” I breathed, and I
actually meant it. “These are like . . . larger-than-life-size
tattoos!”

Chase nodded as he pulled me into the
interior, where even more murals—gardens of unearthly delights,
tableaux of esoteric indigenous ceremonies, and images of monsters
wreaking havoc on city landscapes—covered the walls. “That’s kind
of the idea,” he said. “The guy who opened the place was a graff
artist. You can do cool stuff with tattoos, but graffiti’s even
more awesome in some ways. You can add white highlights to an image
to make it pop, and there’s more latitude when it comes to making
something bold and sharp. Besides, walls don’t bleed or pass out.”
He raised an eyebrow semiominously at me. “Plus, there are some
really superb and sick artists who come in here to do lettering . .
. old-school types like Comet and Park’ll come around now and then.
This was the place where I got my education and apprenticeship,
because guys like them actually wanted to pass down their knowledge
to the youngsters.” He shook his head, and his eyes darkened.
“Nowadays, most artists are just in the game for fame and money.
They couldn’t care less about leaving a legacy.”

I remembered what Elsie had said about
Chase’s vendetta against Quentin, and I wondered if he was
referring directly to him, but it didn’t feel like the best time to
ask. I was much more interested in the vivid pieces on the walls,
which ranged from geometric shards of lines and light to
heart-rending scenes of wartime and gun violence, appended by stoic
inspirational slogans like “Alive & Kicking.”

“I’m amazed by the variety,” I commented.
“Most galleries seem to color-code their art and group together the
stuff that fits under the same umbrella. This feels chaotic in
comparison.”

Chase laughed. “That’s ’cause it ain’t a
gallery, Goldilocks. What’s the point in following a formula that
doesn’t map onto the way the human brain works?” He squeezed my arm
and kissed the back of my neck, which sent pleasurable shivers up
and down my spine.

I turned to look at him. “So why are we here?
It’s gotta be after-hours, right? I mean, is there anyone else
around?”

“Nah, I wanted to give you a private tour,”
he said. “I’ve also been thinking a lot about you . . . and that QP
project. I mean, what would happen if I ended up giving you nothing
for the show?”

“That’s not funny, Chase,” I said. “I’ve been
working my ass off on this show, and you know what it means to
me.”

He flashed me an innocent smile. “Yeah, but .
. . well, you know I think the world of you, Goldilocks, but when
it comes down to it, what’s really in it for me? A lump sum and
some momentary renown?”

A wave of distress came over me. Was Chase
saying he wasn’t going to do it anymore? I suddenly felt stupid. So
maybe the sweetness he’d shown me had been part of a game all
along. I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. I didn’t know
what to say, so I sat down on one of the chairs in the waiting
lounge. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you,” I said.

“Whoa, wait a sec, Goldilocks,” Chase
replied, sounding concerned. “I wasn’t bullshitting when I said I’d
do it, and I’m not trying to pull rank on you or anything like
that. I just wanted to see how much you really care.”

I glared at him. “That’s not funny,
Chase.”

“Look, I’m just trying to prove a point here.
I’m sacrificing quite a bit by agreeing to go mainstream for this
show, but what’s the pound of flesh you’ve offered up?”

“What?”

“Shamans always say that in order to get
something, you have to give something of equal value. That’s
usually by way of a rite of passage—often a pretty fucking painful
one.”

His eyes were playful, but his words were
menacing.

“Can you just come out and say what you mean
already? Riddles and rhymes hurt my brain,” I said impatiently.

“If you let me tattoo you, I promise I will
deliver a piece that will make sure your name is on the lips of
every gallerist in town,” he said.

I started to laugh, but Chase remained
serious. “Oh no . . . you’ve gotta be kidding me!”

Chase gave me a disarming smile. “The way I
see it, you’re getting the best of both worlds—a Chase Adams
original in your sculpture garden and on your beautiful lily-white
skin. What do you say?”

I thought he was crazy, first and foremost.
Never in a million years had I had even the smallest bit of desire
to tattoo my flesh. Most of the time I cringed when I saw
attractive people with ink all over them, mainly because I felt the
human body was perhaps the most perfect work of art around to begin
with. Why tamper with that? Besides, I’d seen a lot of badly done
and half-finished tattoos on people who were unduly obsessed with
body modification. It almost seemed like an illness to me, and it
was one I had never wanted to indulge in myself.

“I’m sorry, that’s really not an option,” I
said. “I think tattoos are pretty dumb.”

He sighed. “That’s a superficial opinion,
Annie. Yeah, they’re dumb because most people get ’em for all the
wrong reasons. For most indigenous people, tattoos anchored the
soul and drew in benevolent spirits. Not to mention they were proof
of a person’s endurance in the face of tremendous hardship. A
tattoo was a sacred rite of passage, the sign of an experience that
nothing and nobody could take away from you. It was about earning
your stripes, not hopping on the bandwagon just because everyone
else was doing it.”

“But why do you want
me
to do it?”

His voice was passionate when he spoke. “I
want to see how much you’re willing to bleed for this, Annie. Not
because I want you to suffer but because I want to know you can
hang. I want to know how strong you are, even if you haven’t been
willing to show it so far.” He paused. “And I have the perfect
design.”

“What is it?” I asked cautiously.

He smiled mischievously. “Do you trust
me?”

My breath caught in my throat as my eyes met
his. “Yes.”

“Then you’ll just have to wait and see.”

I sat up straighter. “Are you crazy? I need
to see what it is before I agree to anything.”

He shook his head slowly.

A fog of silence hung over us. A big part of
me hated Chase for being so confident that I would agree to
something so . . . degrading. But a larger part of me was strangely
thrilled. And as resistant as I may have felt, the way my body
responded to his demand made me fully aware that he wasn’t wrong in
presuming I’d go along with nearly anything he proposed.

I pretended to be angry. “This really isn’t
something a feminist would do.”

“Maybe not, but a real woman—one who feels
sorrow, passion, pain, and pleasure fully and completely—wouldn’t
turn this into some kind of politically correct argument,” he said.
“It’s not about gender, you know.”

“So why aren’t
you
getting a
tattoo?”

He held his breath for a moment, and then he
stood and pulled up his T-shirt. I gasped when I saw several trails
of what looked like cigarette burn marks around his abdomen. Tears
came to my eyes. I’d never noticed them before.

“I guess you could say I already have my own
tattoos,” he said wryly.

“Oh, Chase,” I moaned, pulling him close to
me and kissing those spots. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t sweat it. It happened years ago, and
it’s a good reminder,” he said, caressing my hair. His deep-green
eyes were serious as he spoke. “I wear my scars proudly.”

That was when a girl walked into the room
from the back area of the tattoo parlor. She was petite yet curvy.
Her black hair was streaked with white and purple and piled atop
her head. She would’ve been stunning, in my opinion, if her face
hadn’t been covered with piercings. She even had what looked to be
a serpent tattoo running from her neck to the right side of her
face. A leather skirt, black fishnets, combat boots, and a
skintight long-sleeved T-shirt littered with tattoo designs rounded
out her look. I stared at her legs through her fishnets, confirming
my first impression: there wasn’t a single bare piece of flesh. She
was entirely covered in tattoos.

“Hey, Martinique,” Chase called out.
“Martinique, Annie. Annie, Martinique.”

She nodded at me, but she didn’t seem
nonplussed by our presence. “This your girl who’s getting the
tattoo?”

Chase looked at me with undisguised heat in
his eyes. I could feel Martinique watching us both, which made me
feel somewhat giddy and disoriented.

“I . . . I didn’t exactly
plan
on
getting a tattoo,” I told her.

She rolled her eyes. “Seriously? Chase, you
didn’t tell me she was squeamish,” she said, darting a pointed look
at him.

“She’s not . . . are you, Annie?” He looked
at me quizzically, as if sussing out whether I had the chops to go
through with it.

I took a deep breath.
A tattoo?
Really?

“As long as there isn’t too much blood,” I
said.

A triumphant smile spread across Chase’s face
as the heat in his eyes deepened.

“It’s always less than people think,”
Martinique said, as she fished around behind the large counter in
the front. “Just make sure you lock up, Chase. I don’t want Marco
crawling up my ass for letting you in here again.”

Chase broke eye contact with me and raised up
his hands in a gesture of innocence. “You don’t even have to say it
twice, Marty. We’ll be in and out.”

She scrunched her nose. “And be sure to clean
up, too.” She gave me an abstruse look. “He can get kinda messy
sometimes.”

I gulped, wondering who else Chase had
brought back here to ink up. Had he also slept with Martinique? I
didn’t want to care, but, based on their easy rapport, I knew it
was quite possible.

Stop it, Annie!
I told myself. I knew
I had no right to be jealous, but, considering I was about to do
something pretty much irreversible that would connect me to Chase
forever, I felt like I had a right to wonder.

“You sure you’re eighteen?” Martinique asked,
looking at me quizzically.

“Almost nineteen,” I said, somewhat annoyed
by the question.

She nodded. “It’s not that I care—I got inked
for the first time when I was sixteen—but they’re hard-asses about
that around here, so I gotta be careful.” She almost sounded
apologetic. “Chase is skilled, so you’re in good hands. I taught
him myself.”

I looked at Chase, who was nodding. “It’s
true—people don’t know me as a tattoo artist, but I learned the
tricks of the trade from the master herself.”

Martinique stuck out her tongue. “Mistress to
you! Nice to meet you, Annie. I’m out.” She waved and headed out
the door.

I couldn’t help but feel irritated at the
grin on Chase’s face. He noticed. Pulling me into an embrace, he
kissed my forehead. “Hey, Goldilocks, don’t be like that. I’ve
known Marty since we were in grade school. She’s like a sister to
me.”

Of course that made me feel stupid and
ashamed of my jealousy, but I tried not to show it. “Are we gonna
do this thing now?”

He smiled and dragged me down a hall, turning
into a small room. My heart rate quickened when I saw the tattoo
chair, which reminded me of some kind of military torture device. I
grabbed Chase’s arm reflexively.

“You
are
committed to making it in the
art world.” It was more of a question than a statement.

I closed my eyes. “Yes.”

He ran his fingers through my hair. “Don’t
make the mistake of thinking this is for anyone else, Annie. It’s
not even for me. It’s for you. It’s a symbolic mark, something
people around the world have done for millennia to express their
endurance and commitment to something bigger than they are.”

I nodded, feeling myself fall under the sway
of his beautiful voice. I thought of all the forces in my life that
had threatened to keep me down, to tell me that I wasn’t smart
enough, rich enough, pretty enough, or strong enough to make it.
Those were voices that had begun speaking to me long before Elsie
had entered my life. But I was determined. I wasn’t going to be
silenced or deterred. Not this time.

A gleam of naughtiness entered my eyes as I
said, “I don’t care where it goes, but leave my lower back out of
it, okay? No tramp stamp for me.”

Chase laughed. “I was thinking it would be
nice on your hip, kinda close to the pubic bone.” He grabbed my
hips, which made me hold my breath in anticipation.

As he helped me down on the tattoo chair and
proceeded to explain the entire process to me, I could barely hear
him. As he picked up the needle and moved it toward me, his eyes
locked on mine, adrenaline began to course through my veins.

“Remember, Annie, pain can be ecstasy,
depending on how you take it in,” he said.

When the needle entered my flesh, tears came
to my eyes. Chase had mentioned the process might be easier if I
bit down on something, but I had refused. I wanted to feel every
texture and nuance of the sensation. I’d never been a fan of
intense pain, but there was something about this kind—and the fact
that Chase was the one delivering it—that made it feel like it was
several shades beyond mere physical discomfort. As Chase continued,
I could feel the sensations shifting. They were still intense, but
the intensity started to feel almost orgasmic. The stabbing claw of
the needle in my skin sent electricity coursing through my veins,
until my body felt like it was a massive network of spasmodic
light.