Indelible

Angie Dressen’s goal in life is simple. She wants her son, Oliver, to have the childhood she never had. She remembers coming in second to the never-ending stream of girlfriends her father brought home, and she wants Oliver to know he comes first. Besides, between working full time as a waitress, struggling to finish her degree one class at a time, and raising her son, Angie doesn’t have time for love. Or so she thinks.

Luna Rinaldi is the wild-haired, leather-wearing embodiment of all Angie’s relationship fears. She’s a well-respected tattoo artist with a long list of past lovers and a reputation for leaving in the middle of the night. She’s also kind, thoughtful, and adventurous, with a serious soft spot for Angie and Oliver.

The two enter into a tenuous relationship, one that leaves Luna wanting more and Angie resisting the promise in Luna’s eyes. When they are together, though, Angie wants to believe in love, trust, and the possibility of forever.

Indelible

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Indelible

© 2010 By Jove Belle. All Rights Reserved.

ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-493-5

This Electronic Book is published by

Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

P.O. Box 249

Valley Falls, New York 12185

First Edition: December 2010

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Credits

Editor: Shelley Thrasher

Production Design: Stacia Seaman

Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])

Edge of Darkness
Chaps
Split the Aces
Indelible

For Tara, who takes care of us all every day. I love you.

Saturday, July 11

Luna arched her back, stretching the muscles and releasing the tension built up over the past forty-five minutes. She inspected her work, taking the image in as a whole. It was good. With the buzz of the tattoo gun in her ear and the ink flowing, melding with the flesh, she never saw the whole picture, just the fluid transfer of color one needle point at a time.

“One more session and we’ll be done.” Luna disconnected the needle and dropped it into the sharps container.

“I could go longer today.” Her client smiled. Luna knew from experience that, for some clients, getting a tattoo was a walk on the wild side and an opportunity to show off to friends.

“It’s not a good idea,” Luna said. The chair was already booked for another client. “Let’s get together in another week, okay?”

She collected her payment, waved good-bye to her client, then dropped her head onto the counter. It hit with a satisfying thunk. Her head hurt, and not just from the blunt-force trauma of cranium meeting table.

“Tell me why I keep taking clients like her?” Luna always felt the sting of artistic sacrifice after a session with Susan. No matter how much ink she added, Susan would never truly understand the beauty of altering the landscape of her body. For her, it would always be a trendy rebellion intended to upset her parents, rather than the affirmation of life that Luna wanted it to be for all her clients.

Her apprentice, Perez, smiled wickedly. “Virgin flesh?”

“We need a bigger space.” A larger location would mean more chairs and fewer visits from women like Susan. Her session wouldn’t have to be cut short in order to vacate the one and only chair for another client.

“Indeed.” Perez placed a fresh cup of black coffee next to Luna. “Drink.” She took a sip from her own cup.

“Thanks.” Luna closed her eyes and inhaled the aroma—dark, slightly bitter, and so seductive. Perez was a goddess with a coffeemaker.

Luna took a small drink and the ritual relaxed her. “Eventually we’ll have to go through all the real-estate listings.” She nudged the neglected stack of papers next to the register.

“Yep.” Perez took another drink of coffee. She resisted the paperwork involved in relocating Coraggio as much as Luna did. Besides, her client was due in ten minutes, so Luna could forgive her for not diving in.

Like a well-timed distraction, Ruby shuffled across the room above them. About time, too. Luna thought Ruby might sleep all day. Of course, she had good reason, since Luna had kept her up most of the night before. The two of them had an ongoing challenge: who could make the other one scream the most. Luna was determined to win. Besides, Ruby didn’t have any other obligations. She was a trust-fund baby, living off the fat bank account that the hard work of previous generations had created. She was a lay-about, though a
hot
lay-about, and Luna could live with that.

Coraggio’s current location had one advantage—the living space above the tattoo studio. When Luna first started out, not having to pay rent on an apartment had saved her from going bankrupt. “Ruby’s up.”

“Ruby’s more than up, lover.” Looking every bit the femme fatale from a 50s pulp-fiction novel, Ruby appeared at the top of the stairs. She smoothed the fabric of her fuck-me red dress as she descended, one languid step at a time.

Perez scooped up her papers, grumbled under her breath, and escaped to the back room.

“She’s still scared of me?” Ruby ran a manicured nail—polish matched to her dress and her name—across Luna’s cheek.

“Must be.” It was easier to agree than to tell Ruby that Perez didn’t like her. Rather, she didn’t like Ruby’s role in Luna’s life. Perez wanted Luna to meet a nice girl, settle down, and raise 2.2 kids. Luna wanted that, too, but she wasn’t interested in being celibate until it happened. Wasn’t it enough that she no longer considered it a personal obligation to have sex with every lesbian in the greater Portland metro area? Ruby was the perfect solution for Luna—wild as hell in bed, didn’t believe in the word
no
, and wasn’t looking for long-term commitment. Which worked well since Luna couldn’t offer one, at least not with Ruby. All in all, it was a win-win situation.

“You
still
working on this?” Ruby flipped through Luna’s real-estate listings. She looked as though something sour had crawled inside her mouth and died there, and her normal honey-smooth voice cracked around the edges. Moving Coraggio seemed frivolous to her. Why fix it if it ain’t broken? Ruby obviously did not inherit her family’s go-forth-and-conquer attitude when it came to business.

As much as the process for expanding intimidated Luna, a large part of her—the foot-stomping, I-can-do-it part—wanted to prove to Ruby, and herself, that she could make this transition successfully. More than that, though, she needed to remind herself where Ruby fit. She was not her business partner, and Luna did not need to justify her decisions regarding Coraggio to her. Ruby was a fun time in bed, nothing more. Luna wanted to keep it that way.

Luna pulled Ruby in for a hard, brief kiss. As far as distractions went, slipping her tongue between Ruby’s teeth usually worked. It not only side-tracked Ruby, but usually left Luna wondering why she was trying to distract Ruby in the first place.

“Coffee?” Luna started toward the back office.

“No, you stay here. I’ll get it.” Ruby rolled away from Luna, her hips leading and the rest of her body following languorously. “Let’s see if I can chase Perez out of another room.”

A few moments later Perez scurried in, like a puppy scrambling to avoid Cruella’s reach. “Devil woman,” she muttered at the beaded curtain, then turned toward Luna. “I don’t get it. What do you see in her?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Anyone with eyes could see why Luna was attracted to Ruby. Her appeal was all on the surface for everyone to enjoy. She was the perfect stiletto to Luna’s combat boot.

“I know she looks good, but what about at the end of the day?”

That question was even more absurd. “At the end of the day she
feels
good.” God, did she ever. Ruby could do amazing things with her body, and her buttermilk-smooth skin could almost make Luna forget that she didn’t love her. But the moments after climax when reality slammed into focus made Luna want more than Ruby offered. Perez’s questions were right on target. Luna wouldn’t be satisfied with a surface-level relationship forever, and no matter how hard Ruby made her come, and vice versa, they weren’t in love with one another.

“You’re hopeless.”

Hopeless? Such a final word, which left Luna emotionally tired. She had officially hung up her whoring-around shoes, metaphorically speaking. Still, it was impossible to go from race car to minivan overnight. Transitions like that happened by degrees, right?

“It’s not like you’re all tied up, Perez. When was the last time you went on more than two dates with the same woman?”

Perez wrinkled her nose and stuck out her tongue. “That’s not the point. I’m still young.” At twenty-six, she was closer to thirty than twenty, but Perez hadn’t grasped that youth was rapidly departing.

Luna remembered the Peter Pan feeling of her mid-twenties. She had held on to it well past her thirtieth birthday.

“And I’m not?”

“You’re thirty-three.” Perez said the number with a frown. “At a certain point, you really should settle down.”

“This conversation is over.”

Perez started to speak.

“Ruby is thirty-four. Want me to tell her you think
she’s
old?”

The color drained from Perez’s face. “No.”

They looked through real-estate listings in relative silence while waiting for Perez’s appointment to arrive. The sound of Ruby riffling through the morning paper as she drank her coffee filtered in and mixed with the occasional flipping of pages as Luna and Perez sorted, considered, and discarded potential locations.

Frustrated and contemplating leading Ruby back up the stairs for a reminder of why she kept her around, Luna rubbed her hands over her eyes and forced herself to exhale. A tiny bit of tension escaped with the breath and she thought again about taking up meditation, even if it was so damned boring to do.