Ink

Chapter One

When injustice becomes law, rebellion becomes duty ...

If you've ever pulled off a backward mount on the pole, you'll know what I mean - people can sneak up on you far too easily.

If you haven't, well, it sounds simple enough; hands behind you gripping the smooth metal in your fists, and you use all of the strength in your core and upper body to pull your legs over your head, and parallel to the pole, thus eventually looking forward through your arms and into your adoring crowd.

Or, in my case, my worst fucking nightmare.

Combat boots. Check.

Baggy jeans hanging low on lean hips with the lingering scent of motorbike grease. Check.

Black tee shirt clinging to his sculpted abs. Check.

A leather jacket as old as I am. Check.

A jawline that could crack a crystal glass. Check.

And my initial, carved from the corner of his full, luscious lips, over his sharp cheekbone - a rugged, distinguished scar that just made him even more beautiful to me - if that was possible - than he did when I was fifteen years old. Yep, check.

It was Stix, all right.

I steeled myself while his angry gaze ran over inch of exposed flesh in my miniscule red bikini, tried not to let my muscles quiver away from the rigid pose. After three years of not a single word from him - or any of them, actually - I wasn't accustomed to his eyes on me. It never usually bothers me, being this exposed.

But Stix could make me feel exposed in a fucking Parka. Somehow, he could always see straight through me. I suppose that just comes when you're so aware of another human being - when there's something in the pheromones or some shit, and you'd just lie down and die for just one single touch ...

That was then. A lot had happened since I was fifteen years old.

"Stephen!" I smiled sweetly, holding my body rigid and parting my legs shamelessly, I owed my audience a view of something other than his back as he completely covered me from their eyes, "Bit busy right now, sweetheart."

"I can fucking see that, CeeJay," he muttered, arms crossed, from what I could tell, I wasn't looking too hard because I was eye level with his crotch, "Do the guys know about this?"

The guys? My brothers? Oh yeah, this was my favourite topic of conversation with them! Except I hadn't heard a word from them in three years, and I expected he knew that as well as I did. They'd all disappeared into the sunset - leaving my father and me to deal with the fallout from the Hellraisers that my brother had broken back against.

"I meant to put it in this years' Christmas card," I was trying to keep up the sequence, but it was a struggle with him so close, "It must've slipped my mind!"

I shouldn't have let go of the pole. I was trying to pull myself up into an ankle grip, to show that I was completely unaffected by his presence and all, but he walked around, grabbed my body and hauled his shoulder under it.

In front of an entire club full of potential customers I was kidnapped, with only a very startled ankle grip to keep me from being dragged off the stage.

My ankles aren't a match for Stix, let that be noted.

One of the bouncers did rush over, in all fairness to him, Brandon was fine to stay on my Christmas card list, the rest could just go cockadoodlefuckingdo! He was big, and brutish - he'd easily get me out of this madness, surely?

"Ink," he started, watching Stix warily as he manhandled me into a Fireman's lift while I kicked and punched his hard body wherever I could make contact, "Ink, are you okay babe?"