Fuck she was gorgeous.
A year I’d been lusting after her. Craving the taste of her. Obsessing over how she’d feel in my arms, writhing against me as I claimed that mouth with mine. The old me would never have waited. I’d have gone after her the first damn day I laid eyes on her until she was mine.
…But I wasn’t that guy anymore. Neither of us were the men we’d been before, and trust me when I say, that was good thing. And not going after Kennedy wasn’t just some restraint thing. It was a necessity—part of Caleb and I’s pact with each other to make damn sure the demons from our pasts that still hunted us would never harm anyone else.
Tonight had been proof of that we’d been smart to feel that way.
Kennedy straightened, brushing her hair back from her face as she shut the cupboard and turned to smile at me. My eyes drank her in as she leaned against the cupboard, her arms crossing over her soft tits. It was cooler in here, and when my eyes were drawn to the two hard little points of her nipples pressing against the thin cotton of her shirt, it took a lot to hold back the animal growl.
Temptress. Angel. Obsession. Like I said, I’d wanted her since the day I laid eyes on her.
…We’d wanted her, actually.
Yes, we. Plural. Caleb and I had figured out a long time ago that it was useless fighting over girls. Useless and counterproductive. After all, he and I were closer than brothers, really. We’d helped each other out of our own personal hells earlier on in life. We’d seen each other through the darkest times imaginable, and come out the other side harder, but stronger.
Me, I’d been angry. I’d been angry all the fucking time, like this cancer inside of me that was slowly consuming all of me. Caleb met me when I was underground bareknuckle fighting in mob rings. That shit was brutal, but I wanted it. It’s like I craved the punishment—like I needed it to numb the pain I’d known my whole life.
Caleb numbed his with booze and drugs. He met me and I was an angry mess. I met him and he was almost a full-blown junky—strung out, doped up, and with mostly whiskey and cocaine running through his veins. Two messes like us? Well, we should have been dead a hundred times by now. But there we were, still kicking.
It was art that saved us both.
I’d been drawing forever, and when I bumped into the guy who’d been spray-paint tagging up the same alley I liked to paint in one night, we started talking. That was eight years ago, and we’ve been closer than brothers since. He got me out of the fights, and I got him clean. That was the worst ten days of either of our lives, holding him down while he sweat and screamed out his demons, detoxing the hardest way possible.
But Caleb was strong, and he beat it, even if breaking up with heroin took him through hell and back.
And after that, the two of us just kept moving. We’d been in Vegas for a while, both of us working our way up at the Crossfire Tattoo Parlor as apprentices and then full-on tattooists. Tattoos numbed the pain. Tattoos were healing for both of us. Cathartic. We needed that.
But eventually, we found ourselves here, on Blackthorn. Ryker, an old buddy from Vegas, had moved here with his little girl. We ended up following him a bit later, working at his bike shop that he and one of his old buddies from his motorcycle club days opened here. We’d worked hard, we’d saved and finally, we’d opened our own tattoo shop, Outlaw Ink.
We’d started new lives, and we were happy here. The business was going well, we’d gotten to know other people who lived here, and we’d both at least sort of made peace with knowing Kennedy was off limits to both of us. We couldn’t get close to her like that, because as good as life was going, Caleb and I both knew the past would someday try and find us.
…And that night, it had.
I knew it was a hired gun who’d kicked in the back door of the parlor that night when we were closing and tried to mow us down. Caleb had caught the bullet as we dove for the piece we kept behind the register. The guy winged him alright, but Caleb had managed to be a whole lot more accurate, putting one between the guy’s eyes before he crashed to the floor.
The hospital was out. We probably would have made it in time, but it was the questions that would have come later that we both wanted to avoid. After all, Blackthorn was supposed to be a new start for us—a break and severance from our old outlaw days. But like I said, we still had plenty of demons over our shoulders and plenty of skeletons in the closet. So, when the hospital was out of the question, my first thought had been Kennedy.