Chapter 2
Slim
“How are things at the shop? Any problems?” Prez asks me during the Wolves' annual Thanksgiving poker game at the clubhouse.
I pretend to examine my cards.
It’s been a little over three weeks since Rebel started working for me. Three weeks of long, torturous mental foreplay. Edging. Orgasm denial. Pick your poison.
Every day she’s shown up looking like a Suicide Girl, (un)dressed in a way that shows off all her tats (and some of her tits), and with her makeup done in that sexy maneater way of hers.
“Nope,” I say.
I’m not stupid enough to admit that my biggest problem is self-inflicted.
I assigned Rebel a workstation facing away from me so she wouldn’t notice I was watching her.
Unfortunately, that also means that whenever she bends over while working on her clients, I’m treated to a perfect view of my tattoo on her lower back.
The one I put there because I was turned on by the idea. The infamous bullseye.
Blood surges into my cock at the thought of painting it white with my cum again. Images of the countless times I’d pounded into her from behind flash through my brain, and I consider folding, in case I have to run into the bathroom to rub one out like a horny teenager.
Those first days when Bell started working for me, I would mumble my hellos and leave any instructions I had for her and my other two artists with our receptionist. I played it cool on the outside, but I watched her joke and talk with her colleagues, and every time we all sat down to dinner in the breakroom, I was all ears.
Secretly, I was begging for glimpses of her life during the last six years. Where had she been? With who? Was she seeing someone now? Had she thought about me at all?
Once, she told Buzz that some hotel in Hawaii was overrated.
I looked it up afterwards, and it turned out to be a luxury resort.
Who had taken her there? I was angry and short-tempered for the rest of the night, and when I got home, I lost it with Marissa about not teaching the boy to sleep in his own room.
Afterward, when they’d both fallen asleep with tear tracks on their faces, I wanted nothing more than to take it back.
I knew Junior needed his mom and was too small to be left alone in a dark, empty room.
Unfortunately for him, the thought of Rebel fucking some rich guy in Hawaii had been too much for me to bear.
“I’m happy to hear that. Keep doing what you’re doing,” Prez says before calling.
I don’t think he’d be saying that if he knew the truth.
That first week, I gritted my teeth until I got home, where I would wake Marissa and try to get it out of my system, but unlike in the first few months of our relationship, pulling her hair from behind and pretending like she was Bell wasn’t working for me anymore.
Not when I had the real thing in front of me every fucking day.
During Rebel’s second week at Inkspiration, the shop got a new playlist, which sounded like the soundtrack of the hot, sticky summer of ’99 when Bell and I got together.
Rebel had come up to me during my patch-in party and whispered in my ear.
“I have a present for you. Meet me in your room in ten?”
The rest was history. Before the night of the party, I had carefully kept my obsession to myself; she was the club princess and my friend’s younger sister, meaning she was untouchable on two counts.
I’ve always thought that she must have used her incredibly skilled mouth to suck out a tiny part of my soul that night, and she just… never gave it back. That’s the only explanation I can come up with for my inability to be indifferent to this woman.
One night, two weeks after she started working for me, Rebel and I were on cleanup duty. She went and clicked around on the computer, and the speakers started blaring Poison by Alice Cooper. She gave me a look I knew all too well, and I knew resistance was pointless.
I grab her hard enough to leave bruises as I slam my mouth on hers. I feel her lips curve against mine, and I bite the lower one to scold her for gloating, but the pain makes her moan. That coveted sound sets my blood on fire, and I’m inside her before the song is over.
However, it isn’t lovemaking. It is an almost angry reclaiming.
My hand is fisted in her hair as I pound into her from behind, and I care nothing for her pleasure, although, judging from her enthusiastic movements and moans, she’s getting hers.
When I see that her hips start chasing mine faster and faster, I abruptly stop thrusting.
“What the fuck?” She turns to angrily look at me over her shoulder.
I yank at her hair to pull her up to me, and she reluctantly complies.
“Who does this pussy belong to, Rebel?” I ask into her mouth, and her eyes widen.
“Seriously?” She asks in a bratty way, tilting her head to the side.
I reach around her and slap her right tit. She yelps, but I feel her pussy clench around my dick.
“Yes, seriously.”
“This is your pussy, Dylan,” she says seductively, slowly resuming her movements, and this time, I let her.
“Then I want to hear about it while I fuck you, slut,” I say sternly, punctuating my words with a smack on her ass, which causes her to moan even louder.
“Yes… Dylan… this is your pussy. Take it,” she pants as she cums, and I barely pull out in time to jizz all over the bullseye.
"Bullseye!" I think stupidly, like I did every other time I hit it, but then something akin to nausea overcomes me.
What the fuck am I doing?
I quickly step back from her and pull my boxers and jeans back up.
Rebel turns around and stretches out in the tattoo chair, not caring for the jizz getting smeared all over the leather.
“Well, this is certainly a new side of you,” She says, smiling up at me, then frowns and sits up. “What is it, babe?” She asks carefully.
“We shouldn’t have done this,” I grit out, and it’s clear she hasn’t been expecting it.
Good. It feels intoxicating to have the upper hand for once.
“I have an ol' lady now, a family, so this,” I gesture between the two of us, “shouldn’t be happening.”
“You certainly weren’t thinking about your bitch or your kid a moment ago,” she shoots back angrily.
“Don’t talk about my kid,” I yell, and her eyes immediately fill with tears. “Oh, shit. I’m sorry, Bell. Fuck!”
I kick the wastebasket to the other side of the room and sit down at my work station, burying my face in my hands.
What a fucking mess.
“I’m sorry too,” I hear Rebel say a few minutes later, and I look up to see her fully dressed again. “I know you're taken, and I shouldn’t have messed with you like that. But we’ve always been so good together, and now that we’re in close quarters every day, I just couldn’t help myself.”
“I know what you mean,” I smile at her. “Let’s just say we did it for old times’ sake and leave it at that, what do you say?”
Rebel examines my face for a long minute. It’s almost like I’m brand new to her, and she’s trying to memorize my features. She then narrows her eyes slightly.
“Okay. Old times’ sake. I’ll see you tomorrow, boss.”
She’s out the door before I can say anything else, and I’m left to wipe the jizz off the chair all by myself.
That was the first night I slept in the guest room. I felt like a huge piece of shit. I just… the thought of sleeping in the same bed with my baby boy and Marissa…
Twitch folds and makes some stupid joke, and I laugh alongside everyone else as my eyes wander over to where Rebel is sitting at the bar. She’s wearing a skintight beige dress with no bra underneath. I briefly squeeze my eyes shut to get rid of the image.
Do I even want her back? After how she did me last time? After I’ve built a life with Marissa and Dylan Junior? I love Marissa… right?
I mean, I know we started out all wrong. When she walked into my shop, for a second, I thought Rebel had come back. The hair, the eyes; the two of them could be sisters. However, Marissa was softer and less outgoing, and, if I’m being honest, kinder.
I fucked her casually for months, but inevitably, there were pockets of time we spent together, just talking. And with each new conversation, I found myself being more drawn to who Marissa was, instead of who she looked like.
When she showed up at the clubhouse one day, looking all frightened and on the verge of tears, everything in me went on high alert. My woman was in danger, and I had to protect her.
Only, she wasn’t. She was pregnant. I immediately asked her to be my ol’ lady. I’d promised myself that I’d never go through another loss.
It’s been great. Not brain-chemistry-altering like my relationship with Rebel, but I think those are once-in-a-lifetime, anyway.
Maybe it was because we were young and in love with the club lifestyle, high on the outlaw image we had of ourselves, but maybe we’re chemicals that react strongly only to each other.
Where does that leave me?
Dylan loves Rebel.
Not anymore.
The day after hooking up with Rebel, I went to work, cool, calm, and collected. I tried my hardest not to think about hitting the bullseye, nor did I look at the chair we had done it on.
To make matters worse, Marissa stopped by after picking DJ up. I saw her self-consciously pull her hairnet off as she entered the shop, and I rushed to meet her.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“I was worried about you,” she says as she kisses me.
I worry that Rebel might come out of the back room and see it, but I force myself not to flinch away from Marissa.
“You slept in the guest room last night, so I figured you weren’t feeling well. We made you soup.”
Junior giggles at the words, and I warm up a bit. Marissa cares about me so much, and it feels nice. Why throw all of this away for someone who’s never been this thoughtful?
“Hey, Riss,” Buzz says as he returns from his smoke break. “Are you here to mark your territory?”