“Then you should definitely come tonight,” Kyrone said to Jared.
Jared lifted the needle away from Kyrone’s skin and looked up at him, a lazy smile on his lips. “Come?” he asked, his raised eyebrows nowhere near as innocent as his voice had been.
“To the club,” Kyrone said, though he smirked as he spoke.
“Maybe.” Jared went back to work.
“Maybe? That’s all I get?” How hard was this guy going to make him work?
“Yes.”
Kyrone let out a huffy breath. He’d have liked something a little more concrete.
“This isn’t a ‘buy a tattoo, get a guy free’ day, you know,” Faye said.
Kyrone laughed, which meant Jared had to lift the needle away from his skin until he’d stopped cackling and his chest was still again. Not that Jared wasn’t smiling too. He looked highly amused by his mentor’s comment.
“That’s a shame,” Kyrone said once his laughter was under control. “Because I definitely like the look of this guy.” He looked directly at Jared as he spoke.
Normally, when he made such a forward remark, the man in question would blush fiercely. Jared didn’t. He returned Kyrone’s stare in an almost lazy fashion before smiling and getting back to work on the tattoo. Even though Jared hadn’t committed to going to the club that night, Kyrone knew he would show up, and he was really looking forward to seeing him there.
2Jared
After bandaging up Kyrone’s ink, giving him aftercare instructions, and sending him on his way with a complimentary pot of the perfume-free moisturiser Faye liked to use, Jared headed back up to the top floor of the tattoo parlour. He sat in the seat closest to the window, with a sketchpad balanced on his knees. He let his mind drift as he stared out the window and nibbled on a piece of very dark chocolate. There wasn’t much of a view outside. The tattoo parlour was situated in one of the shopping arcades in the town centre, so all he could see was a view of the opposite shop. If he looked down, he could see shoppers purposefully walking through the arcade.
Kyrone had been a character and a half. The fact that he was hot as hell had made him easy to flirt with, and as Faye hadn’t seemed to mindtoomuch, he’d gone with the flow.
“Hey, kiddo,” Faye said as she joined him.
He looked round, smiling at her.
“You did good work down there.”
“Thanks for giving me the chance to work on the tattoo.” He hadn’t been working at Ink Envy for long, so he was thrilled every time he got the chance to do some inking. Okay, so he was only filling in simple tattoos at the moment, but hopefully he’d be allowed to do more intricate work soon.
Faye pulled up a chair. “Are you going?”
Jared frowned. “Going…?”
She laughed “To the club?”
“The Vibe?”
“Kyrone was clearly into you.” She motioned towards the sketchpad, which Jared gave to her readily. She started flicking through the pages. “I was fairly sure you were interested in him too.”
Jared shrugged. “Maybe.”
“These are good,” she said as she looked through his designs and drawings.
Not all of them were for tattoos. Some were sketches of the building opposite or other buildings that had taken his fancy as he was getting to know the city.
“Kyrone’s a good guy,” Faye said thoughtfully, inclining her head to the left. “But I get the idea that he’s the one-night-stand kind.”
Jared didn’t see that as a problem, but he kept the thought to himself.
She gave him the sketchpad back. “I thought you should know that in case you do decide to go to the club tonight.” She pursed her lips. “Canyou go to nightclubs?”
Jared frowned. “Why wouldn’t I be able to?”
