Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
Dean
Fuck I’m tired.
I got basically no sleep at all last night, and my shitty sketches couldn’t make that any more obvious.
I’ve been drawing some more mini tattoos for our ‘thirty bucks a pop’ days to kill time between appointments, and the small stylized anchors and buoys have become elaborate sharks and krakens.
Sea monsters as ugly as the inside of my head.
“Dean?” Tap, tap, tap . I look up from my sketchbook at the sound of Emily’s familiar knock, and smile as she pokes her head around the swing door. “Hey - your one o’clock is here early. Can you see her now? She just asked on the off-chance, cos she’s on her lunch break.”
Thank god. A distraction.
Sure , I reply, send her in. A nod would have been enough, but Em’s still working hard on her American Sign Language, so I sign everything I can to help her learn.
She turns her head. “He said that’s fine.
Go on in.” And the client that walks in is so very, very beautiful that it’s actually a little ridiculous.
Flawless, glowing roses and cream skin. Elfin features like the drawings of the pixies and elves in Emily’s Dungeons and Dragons books.
A friendly and warm smile, showing off perfectly straight, snow white teeth that belong in a toothpaste commercial.
Ink blue eyes, shining with interest. Pink wavy hair, falling to her rib cage.
And when I say pink, it is pink . It’s every shade I can imagine, from pale rose to neon, with some strands looking like the soft purple the sky goes at dusk.
I can’t tell if this effect was the happy accident of a home dye job, or if she paid a fortune to have this done.
Either way, she’s an avalanche of coolness.
“Hi,” she says brightly, holding her hand out for me to shake as Em goes back to reception. “I’m Liaden. Lovely to meet you.” She pronounces it Leer-d’n , and it sounds real pretty in her clear-as-a-glass-bell voice with a faint hint of an Irish accent.
I’m basically staring at this woman at this point, so I quickly shake her hand and nod towards my black leather chair. For just a second, I feel like catching up to Em and asking her to come back so I’m not alone and dork-ish with one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in real life.
Weird. Normally I couldn’t give a rat’s ass if my clients are hot or not. It makes no difference to me either way.
I look back at her as she settles into the chair and has one more glance at the black sheet of paper she would have been given on arrival. The one that explains to new clients about my muteness and what to expect.
She looks up and beams at me in a way that sends a tingle straight through my entire body, like when I stood right next to the amps at rock concerts when I was a teenager.
It’s a physical whoomp . I manage to move my face into Smile Number Seven, friendly yet professional, pleasant but with a touch of distance.
I have several different smiles. They’re one of my best communication tools, putting forward all the words I can’t speak out loud and saying it all for me.
“So, I’m fluent in British Sign Language if you know any of that?
” She starts signing the ABC in American Sign, and I blink in surprise.
It’s not a commonly known language in the UK, which isolated me just the right amount when I moved here all those years ago and I needed space.
“I’m afraid I only know the alphabet in ASL.
But we could probably get by with that well enough until I learn some more for next time? ”
I huff out a chuckle. She talks like she’s in The Matrix , and fluency in my language is a matter of a brief upload directly into her brain. I can’t watch that movie anymore, but I remember enjoying it as a kid. A-S-L O-N-L-Y , I finger spell slowly, mouthing, Sorry.
She shrugs. “No problem. It shouldn’t take me long to learn more, so I’ll add it to my to-do list.” She grins, and a dimple appears.
“Generally it takes the average person sixty to ninety hours of study to become conversant in a language, but I’m pretty sure I can beat that.
” There’s no arrogance in her tone, just confidence in her own abilities.
I think she reads a question in my eyes, because she explains, “I’m a linguistics Professor at the university.
I’m fluent in a few languages, but there’s always room for one more. ”
Ohhhhhh-kay.
“Now,” she continues, picking up her pristine looking red handbag.
It matches her red heels that remind me of my teenage crush on Audrey Horne in Twin Peaks .
In her navy dress with large white polka dots, she looks like a CEO.
Even with the pink hair. “Tim, your colleague Sadie’s brother, recommended you to me a few months ago because the tattoo I have in mind involves a large amount of script, and apparently you’re an expert in calligraphy tattoos. Is that correct?”
I nod, reaching for my red leather portfolio on the shelf behind her.
It’s full of photos of all my favorite tattoos I’ve ever done.
I could show them to her on my tablet, but I always think there’s something about a real leather folder full of your hard work.
I hear the faintest intake of breath from her, and notice I’m leaning over so that my chest is mere inches from her face.
Close enough for her to lick. Oh, thanks, brain.
Thanks a fucking bundle. I freeze for a second, unsure how to play this because it was completely unintentional.
But I can see how it might look to her… What would Leo do?
What would I have done back in the day, back when I was cool and un-fucked-up?
Thinking quickly, I pull one side of my mouth up into what I hope looks like Smile Number Twenty-Three, the chilled out smirk.
It seems to go over OK, because her eyes light up and she smiles back.
Shake it off.
I hand it over, safely severing the moment.
Still, the crackling energy doesn’t die; it just changes form, morphing into heady anticipation as she flicks through the pages.
I’m proud of those photos. I’ve built a solid reputation in the industry, and I find myself smiling inwardly at the thought that all the hard work was worth it if it brought this gorgeous woman to my chair.
Reluctantly, I snap that thought in two. She’s not for me, and, more importantly, I’m not for her .
This buzz I’m feeling, though… I can’t help but like it.
She assesses each photo carefully and thoroughly, and I can see the Professor in her, marking papers and forming judgments.
I wonder what grade she’ll give me, and feel warmed through when I read approval in the tiny shifts of expression on her face.
She whistles quietly at one of my personal favorites, a page of Twelfth Night in Shakespeare’s handwriting I inked on someone’s thigh.
“Well, that settles it. Looks like you’re precisely who I need. ”
A faint echo of some long-ago feeling slams through me at her words.
You can shake that off, too, I think to myself darkly.
She fishes her cell phone out from her bag and scrolls through her photos.
“What I’m after…” She’s distracted briefly as she searches for the right one, nodding decisively when she finds it.
“Yep, here it is. Basically, I’d like the most lifelike depiction you can manage of a fragment of the Rosetta Stone, and I’d like it all over my back.
Literally my entire back, covered. I’m imagining it’s going to be in varying shades of black and gray?
” She hands over her cell so I can see what she’s talking about, and I have to say, the Rosetta Stone looks like an interesting project for me to try to reproduce.
I’d heard of it, but never seen it, and I’m already considering the best techniques to replicate the rough, angular appearance of the stone’s surface, how to give the glyphs depth, matching how the letters look slightly tarnished but still completely readable.
I make a mental note to do more research online overnight.
This will be a useful way to occupy my mind when fighting the urge to sleep.
She turns in the chair. “Let me show you what I mean,” she murmurs, catching me entirely off-guard as she unzips the back of her dress.
Once it’s fully undone, she pulls the sides apart and tosses her hair out of the way, showing me her bare back as she straddles my chair in a way that makes my mouth go a little dry.
A thin, delicate white bra catch bisects the pale perfection of her skin.
Not a single birthmark, scar, or blemish of any kind.
It’s going to be the perfect canvas, if she really does go ahead with it.
“From here,” she says, indicating where the base of her neck joins her back and shoulders, “to here.” Her fingers now rub against the small of her back, around the two dips.
What would it be like to kiss my way down her spine, her warm skin under my lips…
I grit my jaw against the image. So professional, dickwad.
“I recognise this is ambitious for a first tattoo, but go big or go home, as they say.” She looks over her shoulder. “If you need to unhook my bra, that’s fine.”
I swallow hard.