Bull moved to the side and Jack nodded at me.
“Me too.” Came another voice.
And another.
And another.
Until every man in that small, dark, bloody room nodded in agreement.
“Not me,” Wolf replied with a laugh. “I had it all good, but I was born into the wrong life until Bull found me.”
“You belong with us. No doubt you’ve been searching for this your whole damn life,” Bull retorted. “So what’s it gonna be, kid?”
I looked over each man, seeing the same darkness within each one of them. It was a darkness that I saw every time I looked in the mirror. A darkness which had always frightened me. A darkness I had always been afraid to let go of.
Until tonight.
Tonight I had let go of the darkness, loosening the leash on it and letting it run free. And it had felt fucking glorious, if the truth be known.
I had the Devil inside of me, so maybe it was time to be with other men whose demons were as dark as mine.
~ 5 ~
The buzz of the tattoo machine was low and melodic. The sharp vibrations across my right bicep from the tip of the needle were soothing me something fierce. It was the calmest I’d felt in forever.
Sketch, another biker at the club, was frowning hard as he held my arm in his grip and continued with the picture I’d asked him to do. He hadn’t been happy about it at all, but it was what I had wanted and I wasn’t about to change my mind. He muttered something under his breath and I looked down at him with a smirk.
“Quit your bitchin’ and get on with it.”
The buzz from the machine stopped as Sketch took his foot off the pedal. “Bitchin’? Quit my bitchin’? I’m tattin’ fuckin’ flowers on you, brother. Might as well cut my dick off and suck it myself, just be done with it.”
I looked down at my arm, at the small speckles of blood prickling to the surface of my skin along the delicate lines of the aster flower Sketch had just tattooed on me, and I felt my chest tighten.
“Well?” he asked, watching me inspecting his work.
Sketch was a year or two older than me, but he was lighter than me. Didn’t have the same weight on his shoulders, nor did his eyes gleam with the darkness trying to escape from inside of his soul. Sketch was everything I wasn’t; his eyes were only dark when duty called for it, and his shoulders were free of burden. The man was full of charisma and the type of charm that could win anyone over, and he knew it. He loved this life—the rawness of it, the savagery and the freedom of being lawless—despite him growing up in a happy home life with a mom and dad who had actually given a shit about him.
“This is good,” I said with a nod. “Real good.”
“Don’t call me Sketch for nothing,” he said with a shrug. He grabbed a wipe and smoothed it down my arm, wiping the blood away. Little did he know that the blood that truly stained me couldn’t be wiped away. Aster’s blood was branded on me forever.
Sketch sat back on his stool and looked over his work. “I guess I can make even the girliest shit look good on someone, huh?”
I looked at the tattoo again and grunted in response. The flower wasn’t quite what I’d asked for in that it was darker and bloodier. Thick bold lines shadowed the thin petals, and blood dripped from the petals instead of raindrops. It was fucking perfect.
“All right, five more minutes and I’m done with it. I’ll wrap it up and then you can get the fuck out of my chair. Thanks for being my guinea pig today. When I’m inking up celebrities and getting blowjobs from Playboy bunnies I’ll remember to call out your name as I cum.” Sketch leaned forward on his stool before looking up at me. “Oh, Bull and Wolf want you on the front gate tonight. We’ve got visitors from out of town, and that means a shit ton of bikes to make room for.”
I nodded okay and let my thoughts drift as the machine buzzed to life and he continued with my tattoo. Sketch’s tattoo machine was new, as was his desire to start tattooing, but one look at some of his drawing had put any worries I had to bed. The tops of his thighs were covered in random tattoo doodles, as he’d been practicing on himself over the years with beat-up, piece-of-shit equipment he’d bought off eBay. Bull had given him the largest room in the clubhouse, and part of it was partitioned off as his soon-to-be studio.
Today he’d wanted to start practicing on someone who wasn’t himself ready to take this hobby to the next level, and he’d been working through the clubhouse tatting up anyone and everyone so he could get in as much practice as possible. However, he hadn’t been happy at what I’d wanted, but I’d promised him he could cover me from head to toe eventually and I wouldn’t interfere with his designs. But I wanted to choose the first design to brand my skin with forever.
He didn’t understand, but readily agreed anyway. And now there I was with my very first tattoo: an aster flower.
A bloody aster flower no less.
A glimpse of my dark past and a remembrance to her.
*
