Dark Ink Tattoo: Episode 1 Read online

  “Bella, baby,” I warned her, and somehow through her orgasmic haze she managed to brace herself again.

  “Give it to me, Jack,” she begged, her voice rising, as she started to clench again.

  I – if I hadn’t made sure she was wet – if I hadn’t felt her clutch my cock before – I might have worried about the ferocity with which I fucked her now. But no matter what I did she took it and then I felt her pussy grab greedily on, like she was trying to suck me dry --

  “Goddamn,” I moaned, and thrust deep one last time. My cock rammed inside, and then and only then, did everything spill out. My body shuddered as I moaned but I kept her on me as I spasmed, pushing my cum as deep as it would go, claiming her for me as her pussy milked me tight.

  She fell forward, and I fell on top of her, still inside, both of us throbbing. The hunger was gone – would be gone – for the rest of the night. If I could only fuck her every night – I pulled her to me – but she struggled free.

  “Don’t go,” I complained.

  “I’m not. I promise. I’ll be right back.”

  She pulled away from me and off my cock as I sighed. Reality came rushing back, brushing away foolish dreams. What time was it? My phone was in my jeans back in the kitchen.

  “Don’t go anywhere!” she shouted.

  “Where would I go, woman? You’ve fucked my dick off,” I shouted back, and heard her laugh. I looked down at myself, at my fat cock slung to one side. It’s a good thing I was immortal, or that might be the truth.

  She returned, naked and gorgeous, holding the bowl she’d been stirring when I’d first walked in. She put her finger to her lips for my sake, and then began casting a spell – something Latin-y about binding and safety and protection. I tried not to look bemused.

  “There,” she said, when she was done, and had painted a half-circle of the bowl’s contents on the floor around the bed. “Now you’re mine.”

  “Hmmmm?”

  “I used some of our juices to bind you to me. Now you’re not allowed to leave my side.” She set the bowl down and fell back into bed beside me.

  I tilted my head. I didn’t feel any different. But I was also still on the inside of the circle. “Don’t good witches usually ask permission first?”

  “They do, but desperate times and all that.”

  I traced a hand down the side of her body. “You know you could’ve just asked?”

  “It’s not like you exactly come when called, Jack.” True. “And anyhow, it’s temporary,” she went on. “I only need protection for a few days. After that I’ll be fine. I’ve seen it in the cards.”

  I opened my mouth to tell her all the reasons I was unreliable, namely that I died with the rising sun. But I knew that’d sound stupid and she wouldn’t believe me, or worse she’d ask to see, and I couldn’t just show that to her. There was no other vulnerability quite like dying by someone.

  So what I said next was, “Okay,” even though I knew it was wrong, and pulled her to me. The sooner she thought I was trapped the sooner she’d sleep and I could leave. I brushed her hair away from her face gently. Maybe she could come to the shop tomorrow night, if she was still speaking to me then, or I could get the night off – but there was nothing I could do for her during the day – she’d have to go with non-magical 911. And I couldn’t tell her a thing.

  “Bella –“ I said, trying to come up with a good – any! – explanation.

  She reached up and bopped me on the nose with a fingertip. It smelled like wet dirt and sex. “Shush. It’s done. Just go with it. Your boss is too into you to fire you if you take off a few nights. I’ve seen that too – so don’t worry.”

  Not for the first time, I wondered what went on inside her head.

  “And tomorrow we can go by the shop and get your gun – I want these gone.” She pulled back from me and lifted a breast, showing a new tattoo I didn’t know she had – six paw prints, wolf tracks, running underneath.

  “A cover-up?” I made a show of pursing my lips thoughtfully. “I’ll see what I can do,” I said, and pulled her even closer. “Go to sleep, silly girl.”

  “Did I wear you out?” she asked disingenuously, snuggling up, tossing a leg over my thighs.

  “Always,” I said. I kissed her forehead, and then stared at the ceiling until I heard her snore.

  Chapter 7

  Bella’s room had black-out curtains in true Vegas style. I had an amazing sense of time – and I could feel mine slipping away. It had to be almost pushing up on five. I’d spooned Bella until she’d overheated and rolled away from me, and I hadn’t chased her across the bed.

  What was I going to do with her? I guess it depended on how much she hated me. I’d find out tonight.

  I crept out of her bed and walked up to the line she’d drawn. I didn’t feel anything. I waved a hand over it, and then I hopped over it entirely. Whatever magic – if any – she’d mustered, didn’t work on me. I wondered if any of her ‘magic’ worked at all. I knew there were powers at large that most humans didn’t dream of – and I also knew if I ever told her I was a vampire, she’d go from the wild thing she was to some kind of groupie.

  I backed away from the bed, waiting for her to wake up, and when she didn’t, I headed into the kitchen.

  * * *

  I got dressed in the entryway, popped the bottom lock on her door so it’d latch behind me, and then made sure it was after I closed the door, quietly testing the lock. It was solid – and when I looked at my phone I realized I was late.

  I drove faster than I should have to get back to Dark Ink, guilt over leaving her chasing me – and the knowledge that every minute longer I was gone was one I might get caught. As I pulled into Dark Ink’s parking lot I was almost as surprised to see Mark’s BMW there as I was to see Dark Ink’s ornately painted front windows, shattered.

  Mark and Angela were standing in front of the damage. I leapt out of my car and slammed the door, running up, as Angela whirled.

  “Jack!” Angela shouted, and stormed over to me. She was beautiful, she was always beautiful, but this time – her skirt wasn’t more than an inch down her hips and her sweater-top was unbuttoned almost down to her navel – she was sex on wheels.

  “You!” she started, looking from me to the building. There were tears welling in her eyes and she raised her hand up to hit me.

  I caught her wrist before she could – and a shock permeated through me, a whole-body lightning, like the bangles she wore had turned her arm into a battery. I stiffened, transfixed, then let go.

  “Sorry –“ I apologized, as Mark loomed.

  “No,” she said, taking her arm back and touching it where I’d touched her. That shock -- had she felt it too? Then she ran a hand through her tousled hair. “I don’t normally hit my employees – I just – I thought you were dead!”

  I looked back at the front of the shop. “It’d take more than a little broken glass to kill me.”

  “The alarm company called -- you were supposed to be there!”

  “We get lunch breaks. Look at the sign –“ I pointed, and prayed she couldn’t smell the sex on me, like I could so clearly smell on her.

  Mark cleared his throat. “All right – about this,” he began and went for his phone.

  “What’re you doing?” Angela said.

  “I’m calling the cops. And a repair shop.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  Both Mark and I looked at her. I was glad, I didn’t want to get tied up here too much longer, dawn was on the way – but this was clearly the act of vandals.

  “Just – let me clean it up,” she said, and started over into the glass, teetering on her heels. Mark gave me a man-to-man look then.

  “Angela,” I started, walking after her, “It’s my shift. I’ve got this.” I could call in some favors. I had an hour. And the dawn crew would be in shortly – “Go home –“

  I reached her side and saw her crying, tears flowing down her face – but the entire rest of her body,
the way her jaw was clenched, the set of her shoulders, her hands in fists by her side, said she was ready to attack. Crying – but angry.

  “Angela, come on,” Mark said, rounding her up. He weighed twice what she did, he could pick her up and carry her out of here if he had too.

  “I’ve got this,” I promised again, and she flashed me a look, nodding once, then followed Mark back to his car. I waited until they drove off, then I pulled out my phone.

  * * *

  Dawn crew was new artists who had to take what shifts they could get, and Mattie, who in another life had clearly been a farmer. I called all of them first, rousting most of them from bed, and Mattie arrived earliest like he always did.

  “Hey!” he shouted from outside. “What the hell?”

  “I know.” I’d collected the biggest shards into the trash, and been working with a broom and dust-pan for half-an-hour. The glass had gotten into all the couch cushions – we’d have to go after them with a vacuum.

  “Anything get stolen?”

  “Not that I could tell.” They hadn’t taken the iPad we used to charge our clients, or broken into the office for the cash drawer. Everyone’s kits looked secure.

  “Weird,” he said, stepping through the window to join me.

  Mattie started his morning routine, making himself coffee with the hot water spigot and his French press, and turned on the radio, as I stood looking out the broken window. The neighborhood we were in wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad either – and on a chilly night like last night, most people’d had had better things to do.

  So was this personal? One of the newer artists? People generally didn’t become tattoo artists because they played well with others. I couldn’t help but think of Angela, barely clad and standing there pissed. Mad because it was her business that’d been attacked? Or mad – because it was a message meant for her?

  Just like the one I’d seen her get from the LVMPD?

  The jangly rock song on Mattie’s station ended, and the morning DJs took over.

  News fresh from Summerlin – a violent murder on the corner of Verdant and Ambrosia. The victim was Bella Wintermichael --

  The broom I’d been holding clattered as they went on, and Mattie emerged from the back. “Jack? You okay?”

  I didn’t answer him as the DJs went on describing the scene. It must’ve just happened – minutes after I’d left her. Bella he had chosen me to protect her, I’d ignored her, and -- what if she’d been right, and I was the most evil thing in her life?

  “You’ve had a long night,” Mattie said, coming up.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” I said, remembering Bella’s worried eyes.

  He clapped me on the back. “Go home. Get some rest. We’ll get this cleaned up, me and the boys.”

  I nodded, and walked out to my car in a fog.

  * * *

  I’d figure out who she’d been scared of – and I’d make them pay in ways they never dreamed. My hunger pulsed inside me like a super nova. It’d been so long since I’d let it go – but at the thought of the carnage I’d wreak on Bella’s behalf, my fangs began to bud.

  A piece of glass outside spun away from my boot, distracting me from my bloody daydreams. I watched it twirl, then knelt down to pick it up – it had a flourish from Dark Ink’s blue and gold letter D. I’d never forgive myself for what’d happened with Bella – but if anything happened to Angela – my hand tensed and the glass nicked me. I watched it bleed for a moment, then threw the glass far away before bringing my hand to my mouth. I never wasted blood – not even my own.

  And tomorrow night I’d be drinking someone else’s.

  * * *

  Thanks for reading the first episode of Dark Ink!

  If you’re interested in more, read on – there’s a teaser from episode two – or you can go ahead and buy it here.

  If you want to know when Cassie’s next releases come out, join her mailing list!

  As always, if you’re happy, tell a friend – or tell the whole internet, and leave a review. These matter more than you know (plus encourage me to write faster ;)).

  If you’d like to read some of Cassie’s other fiction, please check out her Amazon author page or join her page on Facebook.

  Here’s links to her other work:

  Dark Ink Tattoo – Episode 1

  Dark Ink Tattoo – Episode 2

  Dark Ink Tattoo – Episode 3

  Sleeping with Monsters Series (Paranormal Erotica)

  The Haunted

  The Hunted

  The Hated

  Stand Alone (Chose Your Own Adventure Erotica)

  The House: Come Find Your Fantasy

  The Edie Spence Series (Urban Fantasy)

  Nightshifted

  Moonshifted

  Shapeshifted

  Deadshifted

  Bloodshifted

  Teaser from Dark Ink Tattoo Episode 2

  Chapter 1

  I sat down in a plastic chair on the other side of a bulletproof window and held a phone to my ear. “You wanted my attention. Well now you have it.”

  Gray, my ex-boyfriend and my son Rabbit’s father, sat on the other side, holding his own phone to talk to me. “Hey baby,” he said, grinning broadly.

  I waited there to see what he’d say next. I didn’t want to give him anything. They’d taken my coat, but I made sure what I was wearing showed neither curves nor skin. And my expression was flat. He was nothing to me. And there was nothing he could do to me, behind bars – which was where he was going to rot. Forever.

  Except a month ago he’d started sending letters – and last night, he’d sent someone to bust the windows of the tattoo studio I owned, I was sure.

  “You look tired,” he said. “Long night?”

  There was a point in time when I would’ve thrilled at his concern. When I’d been eighteen, when I’d started running with the Pack, when I’d seen him – I knew I’d had to have him in that obsessed-teenager way. That my life wouldn’t be complete without him. He was six-four, broad-shoulders, Viking-arms, and – yeah, given my now-boyfriend Mark I clearly had a type.

  But Mark was a lawyer, not a drug-dealing-murdering-son-of-a-bitch-behind-bars who I hated every day.

  I crossed my legs and stared off into middle distance, ignoring him. I knew he hated that. As leader of the Pack, he expected utter loyalty – and with the exception of me, he’d mostly gotten it. Werewolves and bikers had an inherent sense of hierarchy.

  “Angie,” he said, his voice just a croon, the husk of his wolf coming through. He knew what I had inside me, how much the wolf-part of me still wanted to please him.

  “Don’t try,” I told him. “It won’t work.”

  My wolf was a fickle bitch. Luckily I took silver every day, so that I was always the one in control. I’d learned it from the Pack – smuggled colloidal silver into prison was the only way Gray could stop from wolfing-out on moon-nights too.

  He leaned back, surveying me. “I just wanted to see you again, Angie. That’s not a crime.”

  “Breaking Dark Ink’s window is.”

  “If I did that, it’s just petty vandalism. Plus I’d have I had my guys make sure no one was inside. All completely theoretically, of course.”

  I gestured to myself. “Well, you’ve seen me now. I’m going to go –“ I hung up the receiver and brought my eyes up to stare at him blankly like he didn’t count.

  He waited until I’d almost stood to ask, “How’s my son?” – I didn’t hear it, so much as I read his lips through the glass.

  Blood rushed in my ears. If I could keep going, walk on out like I hadn’t heard him – but I’d waited half a second too long, and I knew he knew I had. I sank back into the chair, trying to appear indifferent, and when I picked the phone back up I made sure to say, “What?” in an incredulous tone.

  Rabbit was the only good thing to come out of my time with the Pack. And when I’d gotten out, I wasn’t even late yet – and then he’d been born late, besides
. There was no way they could know anything for sure, unless –

  “I’m not stupid, Angie. He looks just like me. I have photos.”

  Bile rose at the thought of some drug-running biker following my son around with a camera. “Rabbit isn’t yours. He’s mine and some other guy I fucked. I fucked a lot of guys after you. Still do.”

  “Looking for a cock big enough to replace mine?”

  “Hardly,” I laughed sharply. “Let’s just say that when you’re not a virgin, you have a lot of catching up to do – and that those experiences put earlier ones in… perspective.”

  He was still looking at me with that trademark killer-grin. “I’d forgotten how feisty you were.”

  “Did your masturbatory fantasies leave that out?”

  Gray leaned forward. “I know you’re afraid of me, Angie. I can see it in your eyes. You don’t have to be.”

  He’d left me alone for seven long years, until last month. Maybe he’d changed behind bars. Found Jesus, or Buddha, or whatever.

  He put his hand up to the glass and tilted his head. “I just want to be a family again.”

  And at that, I laughed loud and true. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  His eyes went cold, like a predator’s, and I remembered just how hard he could hit. “He’s not yours,” I repeated.

  “Cut the crap, Angie – unless you want someone to help me get a DNA sample.”

  I froze. I wasn’t sure what I was more scared of for Rabbit sake -- him finding out that he was a werewolf – or that he was related to Gray.

  “Being in here,” he said, knocking on the glass between us, “has given me some perspective. I know now I never should’ve let you go.”

  At that – all the anger and all the memories came rushing back. “Like you let Willa go? And all the girls before her? Fuck you, Gray,” I said low, this time with my own wolf’s voice, and watched him startle. “Fuck you. You knew she might die – that I might die – and you never said a word.”