Chapter 20
RIGGS
With as little interference from Damon as I could muster, I made the decision to hire two artists to work for me at Ink and Ember.
I spent most of the day Thursday ironing out schedules and booth rent, and Friday night I made Damon come over to help me move everything around to make room so the space was ready for Merrick and Holden to start the following Monday.
It had been at his insistence, after all.
It was the least he could do. Thankfully, it didn’t take long for the two of us to get the shop in order.
We finished just before ten, both of us hopping up on the counter so we didn’t stomp all over the freshly mopped floors.
“He’s proud of you,” Damon said quietly, kicking the steel toe of his boot into my ankle bone.
“Who?”
He scoffed and swung his legs over the counter, jumping down and landing in the already dry waiting area.
“Who?” he mocked. “You know who.”
It took me a minute to piece it together. Smith had spent the whole week at the forefront of my mind, but that’s not who Damon was talking about.
“For this?” I asked, gesturing at the two blank booths we’d set up for my new hires.
“Yes, but I also meant for…” He didn’t finish his statement, instead reaching across the counter and plucking at my hoodie.
“For dressing for the weather?”
“For moving on,” he said.
I swallowed hard.
Was that what I was doing? It hadn’t been my plan, and it didn’t feel that way to me, but Damon wasn’t so far off base with the statement.
“He seems sweet,” Damon said, and I nodded, swiveling over the counter and standing up. Stretching my arms over my head, the hoodie in question lifted and Damon teased a finger across my bare stomach. I smacked his hand away, then smacked him in the face.
“He is sweet.”
“Young—”
“—er than me.” I rolled my eyes at my best friend. “He’s on the right side of twenty-five.”
“And you’re almost on the wrong side of forty.”
“I’m thirty-six,” I reminded him. “I’m not that old.”
“No,” he agreed. “You’re not. And that’s why you’re going to come have a celebratory drink with me now, right?”
Groaning, I suddenly felt much older than I was. Tattooing was hard on the body, moving heavy chairs around and scrubbing baseboards didn’t help matters.
“Where?”
“Rapture.”
I exhaled a breath, bracing my hands against my hips. “Why on earth?”
The flush on his cheeks gave him away immediately. “Athena,” I surmised.
“I’m just a man,” he said with a laugh, and I smacked him again.
“I’m only going for a drink.”
“And a show?” Damon arched a brow.
“You just told me you thought Smith was sweet,” I reminded him.
“I didn’t know one precluded the other.”
Sighing, I shoved a few loose strands of hair away from my face and gave Damon a look that conveyed all of the tiredness I felt in my bones.
There was no harm in going with him. Smith was at dinner with his brothers, and we didn’t have plans until the next night.
I’d already taken care of dinner reservations so there was nothing I had to do to get ready for our first date.
I’d even gone to the bother of booking a hotel room, though I hadn’t decided if we’d use it or not yet.
The change of scenery might be nice, especially at the end of a long week.
“Okay, fine,” I conceded. “But I’m not staying out late.”
“You rarely ever do.”
The floor to the shop was dry enough then that I didn’t feel bad running upstairs to change into something a little more appropriate for a place like Rapture.
I’d never been one of those guys who showed up to the club in slacks, but I dug a pair of clean black jeans out of the closet and paired it with a plain black V-neck.
I redid my hair into a loose bun at the back of my head and re-laced my boots before joining Damon back down in the shop.
We took separate cars, since his plan was to go home with Athena at the end of the night and mine was to go home alone and count the hours until dinner the following night.
Once in the club, I felt better about my decision to come.
The loud music was a welcome distraction from the man who’d become the singular focus of my waking—and some of my sleeping—thoughts.
Damon dragged me to the bar where we both exchanged pleasantries with Callum, and I eyed them with interest when Raf showed up and got in on the conversation.
Damon obviously played a certain role with a woman like Athena, but it was beyond interesting to watch him pay the same respect to a man.
Most of his experience in the BDSM space had been with partners of a different gender, but his sudden interest in men had piqued my interest.
“Do you fuck Grant and Wes?” I asked him after we’d gotten our drinks and headed toward the patio. The LA evening was warm, but biting when the wind blew. I wished I brought my hoodie, but Damon already thought I was unhealthily attached to it and I didn’t want to fan those flames.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“When you and Athena do whatever you do. I can’t imagine she excludes them.”
“She plays with women too,” he reminded me.
I tilted my head to the side, eyes narrowed. “That wasn’t a denial.”
“I haven’t had sex with them,” he said, lumping Athena’s two longest partners into the same grouping as a singular unit. “Not like…penetrative.”
The corner of my mouth twitched, and I waited him out.
“I’ve done oral with them,” he muttered, and I laughed at the embarrassed way he said it.
Reaching out, I ruffled Damon’s hair and gave him a friendly shove against the back fence. “You better not be kneeling on that brand new tattoo I gave you.”
A low laugh that sounded a lot like a purr hit my ears, and I lifted my arm at the same time Athena came up behind me and slid hers around my waist. She tucked in beneath my shoulder and tilted her face toward mine and blew me a kiss.
“I gave him a pillow, Riggsy,” she teased. “Don’t worry.”
“As long as someone is looking out for my work.”
“Of course.” She wiggled her way around between us and lifted the hem of her already short skirt to show me the fresh tattoo on her thigh. “I take care of mine too.”
“I know.” I gave her a squeeze and let her go. “Where are Grant and Wes?”
“They’re in the bathroom.” She smiled at me sweetly before looking at Damon.
He cowered under the weight of her stare, and I was hard-pressed to blame him.
Athena was a powerhouse of a woman, nearly six feet tall when she wasn’t in heels, with bright red hair and stiletto nails to match.
She pressed the tip of one of those nails right into the center of Damon’s chest and asked him, “Did you want to join them?”
Damon tried to swallow, his tongue visibly sticking to the roof of his mouth. As much as I wanted to watch Athena put my best friend through his paces, I had to step in and save him from his misery.
“Be nice,” I whispered against the side of her head, and she dropped her hand from his chest and pouted up at me.
“I’m very nice.”
“You’ve very a lot,” I corrected, and she was not fazed in the slightest.
“The boys were going to the bathroom and they were going to get a drink, and then they were going to dance awhile. Get the blood flowing. Athena took Damon’s hand in hers and lifted it to her mouth, kissing his knuckles. “Did you want to dance with me?”
Damon’s eyes darted to me, and I jerked my chin toward the dance floor.
He’d absolutely dragged me out on a Friday night against my will, but I’d understood how the night was going to end for me long before I agreed to come.
Damon had wanted me as a buffer in case whatever game he was playing with Athena didn’t work out, and that was okay.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t convinced whatever the four of them were up to would last, but as long as they were safe and happy, that was all I wanted for any of them.
I watched the two of them wander back into the club, and I rested against the fence to nurse my beer for the next hour.
I had no plans on leaving, but it also felt a little inappropriate to go inside and watch a scene without knowing for sure it was okay with Smith.
He’d already been so gracious about my other confessions, I didn’t want to test the boundaries of his acceptance before we even had a chance to get things going.
Watching a scene didn’t feel like cheating for me.
I’d talk to him about it on Saturday, I decided, not willing to bother him at dinner about it.
Smith had been worried going into the meal because, in the throes of excitement, I’d unintentionally sucked a bruise right onto his neck.
Well, not entirely unintentional. I’d definitely meant to leave a mark, but my brain had been a little clouded from the sounds he’d been making.
It was irresponsible of me to have not checked with him first, but I also couldn’t remember the last time I’d gotten that territorial…
or carried away. Ownership was not a common feeling for me.
Pride and protection, absolutely. The need to mark another man?
The desire to even want to? Something else entirely.
Smith Covington had truly turned my entire world on its head in under two weeks.
“You look terribly distracted,” a voice to my right said, and I glanced over to find one of the owners of the club making their way toward me.
Verity was a wisp of figure, all sharp lines and grace.
With long and shiny dark hair, tied half up and half down, they looked as ethereal as ever, a dark red gloss on their lips the only color on their face.
“I’m thinking about what conditioner you use and why you won’t tell me the brand,” I teased, flicking at the ends of their hair when they got close enough for a hug. Their partner, Aaron, wasn’t far behind, two drinks in hand and enough gray against his temples to show his age.
“I have to keep some secrets,” they said, taking their drink from Aaron’s hand and raising it to their mouth. The gloss didn’t leave so much as a smudge against the glass. “How have you been? I feel like it’s been awhile.”
“I’ve been good,” I said, realizing it was the truth.
“Good?”
“Just hired a couple guys to come work at the shop,” I said, which earned a smile. “And I’m…kind of seeing someone. Maybe.”
Verity’s face flashed like they were a cartoon character with hearts in their eyes. They leaned against Aaron’s strong shoulder and hummed out a very pleased-sounding noise. “Tell me.”
“There’s not much to tell at this point. It’s new.”
“Certainly new has a name,” they pressed.
This was the crux of it, of dating people who were members of a club owned by a friend. They would know more about Smith than I did, most likely, and that included history I wasn’t privy to yet.
“Covington,” I said.
Aaron made a noise in the back of his throat. “Which one?”
“Smith.”
“The baby,” Verity cooed.
“He’s twenty-five.”
“And you’re older than him and I’m older than you,” they said. “He’s new though. Are you…sure?”
“New is good for me,” I promised them.
New meant I could go slow. New meant I could ease into things with Smith in a way that felt comfortable for me, for us both. It meant I didn’t need to shove Ev’s memory out the window just yet.
“Then we like it, don’t we?” Aaron coaxed, and Verity gave me a kind smile and a squeeze against my wrist. I realized in that moment how much I missed them.
After Ev passed, I had pushed away everyone in my life and they’d let me.
Damon was the only one who’d fought his way back in when it was too dark for me to see my hands in front of my face.
I owed my life, my shop, my home, all of it to him because I’d been in such a dark place when Ev had died.
As the years inched on and I started to rebuild and return, everyone had been there waiting for me like I’d never left.
I realized it wasn’t that they’d walked away from me and my grief, they’d chosen instead to wait it out.
Losing love was a hard thing, and at the time, the space was what I’d needed and somehow they all understood that.
When I came back to Rapture for the first time, Verity, Landon, Justin…
the whole lot of them treated me like I’d never even left.
Waking up from my grief felt a lot like coming back to myself again, a conscious choice I made every day with every decision. From renovating the building to opening the shop to hiring part-time artists and bringing Smith into my bed, every act was a reclaiming, a welcome home.
“We more than like it,” Verity told me. “Truly. But would you be a dear and go refresh my drink?”
They batted their lashes at Aaron, who was helpless to tell them no. I laughed as he took their empty glass and headed back into the club.
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” they murmured, watching Aaron go.
“What is?”
“That for as much as things change, at the heart of it, we’re always the same.”
I swallowed hard, nodding my agreement and desperately hoping it was true.