Normally, I fell back asleep with a respectable three feet between us, with Ink nearly hugging the edge of the bed. Now that I thought about it, I should have realized he’d been awake all along. Each and every time I’d awoken with a bang, he had too, and he’d hugged me through it before mumbling in his sleep and rolling over, putting distance between us.
Tonight, he didn’t.
Tonight, he stayed close, and I loved it.
Loved his heat, his hardness. Loved how safe and secure I felt.
When I awoke the next morning, it was to find his side of the bed empty, but I knew, point blank, that another nightmare hadn’t stirred me into wakefulness.
Why?
Because he’d held me close? Tucked me so tightly into him that I didn’t know where he’d begun and I ended?
As I spread out on his sheets, I star-fished and took a moment to savor the scent of him in his own personal space.
When my daddies had moved out of the clubhouse after momma and I had returned home, taking us to the custom-built house that was just across the compound, the single councilors and a dozen or so brothers had moved in too, filling the place to full.
Ink’s room was unsurprisingly plain, except for the work he had on the wall. Whether he liked to admit it or not, ink and flesh were his medium, but he was more than just a tattoo artist. He was an artist.
The plain white walls, the simple IKEA dressers, and the navy comforter didn’t speak of a biker. Hell, they just spoke pure bachelor. But the pictures he’d hung? Jesus, they were good—anything from Chinese-style dragons that soared over a three-foot by three-foot canvas, to tribal patterns that were heavy on repetition and detail.
Even though the pieces themselves weren’t original concepts, the flair they were completed with was. I’d never seen work like Ink’s before, and the fact I was in love with him was only one of the reasons I wanted to work with him. Being at the tattoo parlor would bring us closer together, sure, and that was one of my goals, but being taught by Ink would be like a dream come true.
His work created splashes of vibrancy amid a blank canvas of an anonymous hotel room, which was quite fitting considering the clubhouse was a seventies style motel. It had two floors—a wide reception area that had been converted into a common room, complete with bar and a small games room, and then at the opposite end, the family room and kitchen where the kids hung out.
Most of my life had been spent in or around the family room, and graduating had meant I could actually enter the common room—even though I knew my dads loathed it when I crossed the threshold.
I couldn’t blame them, not when I’d seen what I had. I knew if my momma wasn’t my momma, they’d have refused me entry, but Lucifer Steeler was all about equal rights, and if Matty and Seamus were going to be allowed in, then I sure as hell was going to be extended those rights too.
I had a feeling that was because I wasn’t the type of daughter my mother had expected. She’d thought I’d be a rebel, true hellspawn, and instead I quietly obeyed all their dictates, listened when they asked me to, and behaved myself. Maybe if I’d been the former, she wouldn’t have let me.
And yeah, I knew how ass backward that was, but I wasn’t going to complain, not when it meant I got to attend a lot of the parties that were held here.
See, I’d learned that rebellion came in two forms. If I argued, they didn’t trust me—my brothers were proof positive of that. When I complied, they thought I was a good girl and that I could be trusted.
But I couldn’t.
I did everything with a purpose in mind. A purpose that saw me with a lot more freedom than my brothers ever had. And that freedom? I used it to hang around with Saint and Keys, and to sneak into Ink’s room the way I did.
Parties were a way of life at the MC, and again, unlike my brothers, I never missed one.
Every weekend, there were two in the bar, and then on Sunday, it was a kind of family day. In summer, there was a BBQ, and in winter, it was like a hog roast where my dads and the older guys all