Chapter Seven
Tripp
Living alone was getting old. It seemed like the only company Tripp ever got was at work or getting his tattoo worked on. The omegas who worked there made the end of his day brighter, and Dray made it wholesome.
Not since that second visit had they gotten one another off, and Tripp didn’t push it.
He made sure his touches remained wanted, platonic, and when it came to his belly, fondly.
Because even if Dray never said yes, he deserved to know he wasn’t disgusting or unwanted.
Still, Tripp grew fonder every visit, and the memories of that wild night at the club, the pretty scale tattoos and the heated omega slicking down his thighs for him grew less important.
Drunken lust was all it was, a fleeting desire.
When he entered the parlor that evening, two smug omegas and a rough alpha stared him down with twisted little smiles and twinkling eyes.
“Is that him?” Dray’s voice barked out as he whipped from around a curtain, dark eyes nearly on fire with something he couldn’t discern.
“It’s me.” Tripp’s cheeks burned, and Dray gave him the finger before whipping the curtain closed.
“What’d he do? I need to go rough up the bastard for ya, Noodle?” A rough voice piqued Tripp’s attention. Not human. Too rough to be an omega, probably.
“Noodle?” Tripp mouthed, face twisting.
“Nope noodle. Snek,” Rick said, smirking.
An alpha was in there giving pet names to his mate! Er… Friend. A friend he had no business interfering with. Tripp tensed and took a deep breath. “Is it because of the packages?”
“Too much, that’s what he did. And no, I’ll take care of him.” Dray grumbled, and the buzz of a gun continued.
Rick gestured behind the counter and smirked, piles of boxes stacked neatly in a row. “They arrived this morning bright and early.”
“Good.” Tripp nodded before taking a seat with a huff. He’d been up half the night a few days ago reading articles about things new babies would need and had maybe gone a bit overboard.
“Gonna take up half our living room. How did you know what he wanted?” Rick wiggled on his stool. “He hasn’t even told us what he wanted.”
“I… I was curious, and I searched his email on the baby registry thing…” Tripp coughed lightly. “I bought a chunk of it and added some things that the articles said were a good idea for our kind.”
Snakes had scent sensitivities related to taste, and it made sense that Dray might want a scent blocking diaper pail and a stock of the good kind of diapers.
He’d had a friend that had a kid, and they’d loaded him up with so many diapers at first that he’d had to make two trips home with his wife and even then, that only lasted them four months.
“Never gotten so wet in my life,” Kay said, humming as he nibbled on one of those pseudo-healthy snack waffle things with a bee on the package.
The alpha nearby, a grizzled older male with steely eyes and a domineering build, nodded once with a grunt before giving Tripp a thumbs-up.
“Oh, by the by, this little rainbow of sunshine here is Kirk. He owns the joint.” Rick spun on his stool and gave the alpha an air kiss that he swatted away midair.
“My mates catch you doing that, and the misters will come after you with a fly swatter again, Rick.” The grumble that emanated from the male held a note of playfulness.
A toned chest with sparse salt-and-pepper chest hair had been covered with a fishnet tank top, his pants worn leather so soft it probably felt like butter.
Or snakeskin. The appraising look that Kirk gave him said it all.
“Sooooo, Tripp.” Rick nearly purred as he leaned over the counter. “Show Kirk your tattoo, the one you drew out of the HEA machine.”
Tripp had no idea what the HEA machine was, but guessed it was the gachapon. So, with no hesitation, Tripp opened his shirt to show off his omega’s work. Something lit up in Kirk’s eyes and through his forever-o’clock shadow, he grinned and showed off white, sharp teeth, two bedecked in gold.
“Looks done to me, why you coming back in?” Kirk raised a brow.
“It’s not done! There’re touchups…” Dray grumbled over the curtain. Tripp, for his part, closed his shirt and did his best not to make eye contact. Something about the male came off as invasive.
“Well, if it’s done, does that mean I can take you out for dinner?” Tripp waggled an eyebrow at Kay and got a snicker in response.
“I haven’t decided if I’m going to say yes, yet.” Dray went back to buzzing away at whatever the male in there needed done. He grumbled, and a loud swat interrupted his work. “I swear to Snake Jesus, Dave, if you pop a boner, I will tattoo the MINI Cooper logo on it.”
“He means it,” Rick called out.
“And I’ll hold you down while he does it.” Kirk’s echoed sentiment kept Tripp from barging back there, hissing, and maybe even shifting to bite someone. “And this alpha out here wanting his attention is a rattler.”
“No need to hold me down! Put a brick on the thing to keep it from popping up. Sucker hasn’t listened to me since I was in grade school.” The rough laugh of the customer put Tripp at ease.
“Iguana,” Kay mouthed toward Tripp, and the voice almost seemed familiar, the scent, too.
After a few minutes, Tripp’s question was answered. The wide-set face of an iguana he’d seen the ass of not six months ago popped out, and they stared at one another.
“You seem familiar, bro.” He squinted.
Anger flared in Tripp’s chest and the urge to do violence peaked and then fell flat. Emotions cycled through him. Tripp took a cleansing breath, sat down, and rested his hands over his knees. “I should. I walked in on you plowing my fiancée back in summer.”
A few hisses of displeasure rang around the room. Rick clucked his tongue. “Damn, dude.”
“Oh, shit, man. You’re Shelby’s ex. My bad, man. She said you two were like, arranged kinda deal and it was an open thing.” He held his hands up. “She’s kinda a bitch, you know?”
Tripp shrugged. “I’ve moved on. Sorry to hear you two didn’t work out.”
“Oh, no, we’re still together. I needed some hot ass on my channel for views, and it works. We kinda vibe. But hey, she said you owned ViperCro data. I was hoping my social media manager could, like, get in on that with you. I hear good things.” The iguana had no shame.
Tripp blinked. “You fucked my fiancée and want me to handle your data?”
“Yeah, that’s probably a no bueno move, my dude. Sorry.” He scratched the back of his head before offering Tripp a card, that he took. “So yeah, here’s my card. Think about it, yeah? My uncle owns IgDyme and he definitely would be interested.”
That had Tripp’s attention. “Well. I suppose I owe you for taking her off my hands.”
“That’s the spirit. Six Seven!” Dave did some moves with his hands like he was burying a cough and pantomimed flossing his ass with a towel before shuffling out of the studio. Weird encounter, but IgDyme was a very influential marketing firm, and those always had a use for Tripp’s work.
Rick blinked. Kirk coughed, and Kay glanced around at everyone, including a rather bereft-looking Dray. The bear pouted. “Aww, I thought I was going to see a fight. Can you bite him for us, please?”
“Your fiancée left you for that?” Dray sneered. “He just got a tiny man pushing a lawn mower through his pubes tattooed on.”
“Well… I’ve seen his taste in women, not like his tattoo taste would be better.” Tripp stuck his tongue out.
“You have the same taste in women, apparently.” Kirk raised a brow.
“We were childhood friends, and we got pushed together. It was already going south. I think she was just waiting for something stable to come along to bail.” Tripp waved a hand dismissively.
“You got used,” Rick said with a sneer.
“Yeah, don’t we all at some point or another. I can’t muster the energy to participate in bullshit drama.” Tripp leaned back in his chair and sighed heavily. “Also, what was with all that weird shit he did before leaving?”
“Influencer,” Kay said with a shrug before turning his phone around to show me a video of Dave shirtless and belly-sliding through an all-you-can-eat buffet while old people stared on in horror.
“I could use less influence. A lot less.” Tripp shook his head.
“Same. Oh, em, gee.” Rick crossed his legs on the stool and smirked as Dray’s anger melted from his face.
With a sharp step, he reached out to grab Tripp’s hand and tugged, drawing him back. The whole area smelled of one of those bleach wipes, and Tripp hopped up, tugging at his shirt hem. Dray didn’t touch his equipment for a moment.
“You didn’t have to do the thing with the stuff.” Dray’s churlish voice went small. “But it was really thoughtful. Thank you. I don’t want you to think I’m using you.”
“Either way this goes, I won’t regret buying you things.
Tell me to fuck off, I will. Keep the stuff.
Never a moment’s regret. The food was good company.
You’re really pulling me out of my shell.
If things don’t go the romantic route… I still want to spend time with you.
” Tripp held his hands up and flinched when Dray wrested his shirt up and stared at the tattoo, fingers running over the inking.
The way his keen eye studied fine details showed his skill, his love for his craft.
“Gimme ten minutes to touch up a few things. Then we can go on a date. Tonight.” Dray didn’t look him in the eye, focused on his work.
“Tonight?” Tripp perked up, heart skipping a beat.
“Yeah. Lemme do my thing, gimme fifteen, and we can go do something. I’m craving junk food.
” Dray made quick work of touching up a few spots that Tripp had no idea needed a thing.
He rounded out the end of a rose petal, shaded a little on a scale patch on the snake, and wiped things down before adding a bandage and cream.
“Have some place in mind, or would you like me to take you, or would you like me to pick someplace? What kind of junk food?” Tripp fumbled with his shirt and his phone, opening the map app to see what was around the area.
“Corn dogs. I have a place. Best corn dogs in town.” Dray flinched as Rick and Kay snickered up front.
“Kinda phallic food, bro.” Kay chuckled as a slap rang out—a high five.
Dray sighed. “Don’t read into it.”
But his cheeks were pinkening pleasantly.
“I won’t. I don’t think of sex twenty-four seven.” Tripp huffed and slipped out of his booth. “I think of programming and code. And webcomics.”
“Dray likes his webcomics, too,” Rick teased as Tripp went to the waiting area and flopped down.
“Maybe we should see what we’re reading.” Tripp rose his voice above the din of the background as Dray went to the back, running water drowning everything out.
“Soooo.” Rick leaned over the counter, a weird flashlight in one hand, a rubber sheet spread out over the table—a piece of fake skin. In his other hand, he held his tattoo gun, running it over a pattern sketched onto the sheet. “You wore him down.”
“I didn’t wear him down. I offered; he made a condition, and I waited for the condition to be met. Wearing someone down means they didn’t like you in the first place and probably still don’t.”
“Fair point.” Rick kept moving the gun, but no ink left behind. “Good move on your part.”
“No ink?” Tripp glanced over the work, eerily reminiscent of that solo cup pattern from the eighties.
“Blacklight ink. It’s usually invisible.” Rick clicked the button on the flashlight, and a painful-looking light made everything go high contrast save for a half-formed design glowing over the skin.
A fleeting memory of scales on a hand, drunken dancing, the club… An email sitting in his inbox he didn’t want to watch. He had Dray. That memory would go away. He’d stop pining, wondering what became of him.
“Oh, do a lot of those?”
“On club-scene kids. Yeah.” Rick continued doodling, distracted by the art. He clicked it off and continued his work. “Also good for stealth tattoos.”
Tripp nodded slowly, mind still stuck on those gorgeous scales. And before he could ask further, he shook his head and Dray stepped out, hoodie bunched up and eyes narrowed. “Great for doodling, too.”
“Doodling?” Tripp offered his arm, and Dray frowned at it and huffed before reservedly taking it.
“Scribbling all over your body like a damn bathroom stall.” Rick grumbled, and Dray gave him the finger.
They waved goodbye as Tripp envisioned a particular bathroom stall, an omega in the throes of lust. He shook the thought from his head again. “Where to?”
“I don’t have a car, so you’ll have to drive.” Dray flashed his phone, and they headed for his car to the shittiest little putt-putt golf place ever.
“Golf, huh?”
“They never change the oil in the fryers. The corn dogs taste like heaven.” Dray tilted his head back and made a gargling, drooling noise.
“I’ll take your word for it.” Tripp shook his head, and they made it to his car, slid in, and were off into the wild beyond.