Bad to the Bones(56)
“That’s the best case scenario. But after what happened to you on that mesa, I hope they’re not planning on making any more transient drop-offs.”
I sighed deeply. “What a Mongolian clusterf*ck. Or taking her to the bath house.”
“What’s the bath house? Hey, look. Here’s Knoxie’s ink studio.”
I looked up. We were standing right under The Missing Ink, a storefront on Rael off Bargain Boulevard, with blacked-out windows and giant glossy posters showing Knoxie’s work at Hell City, apparently a tattoo expo. I was mesmerized by other photos of him standing proudly by inked citizens. Lots of bikers and rough sorts, but also many glamorous or average folk.
“He’s very good at biomech,” mused Lytton. “That, and Asian. He blends those two styles.”
I didn’t know biomech from Justin Bieber, having been so out of the loop for so many years. But in some of the photos, Knoxie posed shirtless, and that was enough to grab anyone’s attention. A painful hand squeezed my heart as I went all melty at the sight. I had to lean my hand against the glass, practically breathing steam on it, and Lytton came closer, instinctively being protective.
God, Knoxie was beautiful. I had never really admired a man for his physical beauty before. He possessed an eight-pack of abs, his nipples brown and flat in juicy pecs that boasted just the right amount of silken chest hair. He was so carved his hip bones stood out above his low-slung belt, and the thought of his long, fat cock made my * flutter again.
He hadn’t spent the night at The Citadel the night before, and I was worried. There had been no word from him or about him. Lytton must have picked up on this, because he said, “Let’s drop in. If he’s working, we’ll just say hi and split.”
I cheered up immensely. “Okay.”
Lytton, being a gentleman, held the door open for me as I closed my umbrella. The expectant, happy smile on my face froze as I was slammed in the gut with a sight so horrible it felt my brain was bleeding.
Knoxie was on top of some bimbo on one of the tattoo beds.
The way she squirmed, spread her thighs and wrapped her arms around his broad, bare back let the world know she wasn’t being coerced. And the way he swiveled his hips, his jeans-clad glutes clenching as he pressed into her, made it painfully obvious that he wasn’t being forced, either.
I had no f*cking idea who she was. Only that her abundant tit squished out the side of her flimsy black tank as Knoxie pressed on top of her, and that her upper arm boasted a grey wash drawing of a cartoony skull wearing a sombrero with a banner declaring “La Vida Loco.” There were some other trendy things, jalapenos, guitars, bombs and what have you—I wasn’t really concentrating on that, but for some reason that f*cking skull wearing the sombrero got to me. I blamed it for all my troubles. Maybe it being a skull made me think this cunt was affiliated with The Bare Bones, one of their sweetbutts.
I guess a gust of wind reached the writhing couple. They suddenly detached, and just as Lytton behind me said “Maybe we should go now,” they whipped their heads to see me.
That was the worst. Not only was I being rejected in a hugely public way, Knoxie about to get his pole varnished in the middle of f*cking Rael Street, but now they had seen me, and my f*cking mortification was complete. The whore’s eyeliner was smeared like some kind of Kiss groupie, her lips swollen by his brutal kisses.
Knoxie raised his torso off the slut. “Bellamy!” It was hard to tell what emotion his voice conveyed other than embarrassment at being caught red-handed.
“Come on,” Lytton insisted, yanking on my arm and taking the umbrella from me.
It was the sanest thing I’d heard all day.
Pushing past Lytton, I stomped blindly down the street in the rain. He was instantly at my side guiding me, saying,
“It’s all right, Bellamy. That slut means nothing to Knoxie. You’re his old lady.”
The thing was, as well-intentioned as Lytton was, his remarks completely missed the point. “I am not Knoxie’s old lady, Lytton! He can do what he wants!”
“But hasn’t he claimed you? Put his mark on you?”
I thought of the wooden locket Faux Pas had brought into my room. The one Knoxie had snatched away. I might have been hallucinating again, but it sure didn’t look like Shakti’s portrait in that round wooden frame. It was obvious that Knoxie had gotten Faux Pas to do something, change the photo in the frame, but Knoxie had apparently changed his mind and didn’t want that anymore.
“No! He’s done nothing of the sort. I told him I’d be faithful to him for reasons of STDs but I didn’t make him promise the same. Who cares, anyway? We’re just friends. He’s my guardian, my protector. And you’re the one doing that most of the time anyway!”
I stomped along, even though I was going in the wrong direction, Lytton holding the umbrella over my head as he scurried next to me. With every breath I sucked in, I saturated myself with the air of uncaring. With every breath, I steeled myself to be cold, callous, tough. With every exhalation, I breathed out the air of empathy, caring, giving a shit.
With every breath I took, I forgot I had loved Knoxie.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
KNOXIE
Something prevented Knoxie from running down the street after Bellamy.
Maybe all her statements about how casual they were. Maybe her insistence that they keep things on a superficial level, that things be zipless. It just wouldn’t seem right running after a girl who had just proclaimed they were only about bonding with no emotional entanglements. Why run after her when he’d only been doing what would be logical after being hit by declarations like that?