Page 97 of Devilish Ink

Rian switched on the tattoo gun. The low rattle it gave was a welcome relief to the crushing silence of the tattoo parlour.

“I don’t think remembering is either,” Rian said, his eyes avoiding mine.

“I remember,” I said quickly.

Rian laughed darkly. “No, you don’t.”

I grabbed Rian’s wrist as he went to pierce my vein with the needle.

“I remember,” I said in a low hiss.

Rian slowly but calmly peeled my fingers away from him. My hand resembled a dead spider, its legs curled in. He shook me off. My hand fell heavy.

“Paying customers only,” he reminded me.

I hissed when the needle found my skin. I knew then that Ry had been gentle. Gentle with her pain.

Rian, on the other hand, was not. He gave me no mercy. I understood there would be no breaks. No checking that I was doing alright. He would tattoo me at a punishing pace, take my money, and be right back at the door, finger pointing into the dark.

“I need to tell you something,” I said through slightly clenched teeth.

The skin of the inner wrist was delicate. More nerve endings there than on my back. The body wanted you to feel there, at the hands. In the fingers. It wanted you to experience the pleasure of touch. The slick of soft wetness between a woman’s legs. A droplet of sweat in the arched small of a back. The wet heat of a mouth, tongue curling round.

But where there was pleasure, there was pain.

And I was feeling it.

“This isn’t a shrink’s office.” Rian didn’t bother to look up from his work. “I’m just getting paid to put ink in you. Nothing more.”

Looking up at the ceiling, I sucked in a breath.

Rian might not want to hear me. But he would. As long as that tattoo gun hammered against my veins, he would.

“There’s so much I didn’t see at the time. I don’t know why I didn’t see it…” I shook my head as I stared up at the ceiling. “No, I won’t say that. I did what I did. Or didn’t do what I didn’t do.”

Time to own up. To everything.

“I—I’ve been a bad brother. I’ve made terrible mistakes. There’s no excuse.”

I couldn’t be sure, but I thought that Rian dug the needle in even deeper.

I glanced down at my wrist. Blood pooled and my brother didn’t even bother wiping it away as he worked, bent over like madman.

I resisted the urge to hiss. To groan.

“That land, that land that used to be ours,” I said, my heart rate accelerating. “It’s hard land. Taxing land. It demands all of you. Body. Mind. Soul. And it changes you. It makes you hard. Cruel, even.”

I held my breath for a moment as sweat broke out across my brow.

“Our father was cruel. He was. He was a hard and cruel man. And…and he raised us to believe you had to be. That it was the only way. To survive. To keep hold of the land. To not let it break you.”

My fingers trembled as I drew the back of my hand across my forehead. I wanted to unbutton my shirt. It was constricting. Making it hard to breathe.

But Ry’s tattoos were there. And I hadn’t finished what I came to say.

“For Alan it was easy,” I continued. “That hardness. That cruelty. I had to learn it. I had to conform to it. It was unnatural, but I thought it was the unnaturalness of learning to ride a horse. You’d get used to it. You weresupposedto get used to it. And so I did. I became what our father wanted. I became what he was. What Alan was. What you, too, were supposed to become.”

“You’re tensing your arm,” Rian said, his words as sharp as the needle gouging my skin.

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