Vegas, Baby: The Complete Series by Fiona Davenport

3

Ariel

Letting a guy you’d just met ink whatever he wanted onto your skin was probably not the smartest decision I’d ever made, but it’d really paid off. The tattoo Maddox had done for me was stunning. I’d never seen anything quite like it before. It was intricate and delicate, yet somehow; it radiated strength. It was a beautiful mixture of different symbols; some I recognized and some I didn’t. The whole piece was inked with multiple shades of vivid colors. It was one of the most gorgeous things I’d ever seen.

When we walked back out to the reception area, Belle was already there. She was chatting with Wendy, and they both grinned when they saw that Maddox was holding my hand. I was in a bit of a daze from my tattoo session and that little kiss against the back of my neck, but I still knew what the smug look on Belle’s face meant. I was never going to hear the end of this.

After a quick glance up at Maddox to make sure he wasn’t looking at me, I stuck my tongue out at my sister. Her eyes went wide, and she slapped her hand over her mouth as she started to giggle. It wasn’t the reaction I was expecting, but I understood it when Maddox bent towards my ear to whisper, “If you stick your tongue out again, I’m going to take it as an invitation.”

Oh, my. I felt that sensual promise deep in my core as a shiver raced up my spine.

“And on that note, I better drag Ariel out of here or else she’ll never leave.” Belle came over and tugged my hand out of Maddox’s hold, offering him an apologetic smile. “Sorry, but I kind of need her since she’s my ride. Griffith isn’t expecting us back for another hour or so, but he’s already blowing up my phone. Cyra came close to rolling from her tummy to her back, and he doesn’t want me to miss it if she tries again.”

Any thought I’d had of suggesting that Belle could take my car and leave me here flew out of my head at the mention of my adorable niece’s possible milestone. “I guess we’d better get going then because I don’t want to miss it, either!”

“Definitely, but first I have a bone to pick with Maddox.” Belle shot an accusing glare in his direction. “Wendy won’t let me pay for my tattoo. She said you sent her a text and told her that if I put up a fuss, she should just tell me to tip Candice what you’d normally charge for my session.”

“Yup.” He leaned against the counter.

Belle’s eyes narrowed. “Griffith pays you for his ink, right?”

“Yup.” His lips kicked up in a small grin, and I had to stifle a giggle at how he was torturing my sister like he’d known us forever.

“Then I don’t understand why I can’t pay for mine.”

Maddox shrugged his broad shoulders. “And I don’t get why this is such a problem for you.”

“Because you can’t just give me a free tattoo!” Belle stomped her foot.

Their argument was going round and round in circles with no end in sight, so I raised my hand like I was a student in a class who had a question. I waited for both of them to look at me before I asked, “Is mine free too?”

“Probably, since Wendy wouldn’t let me pay for yours either,” Belle grumbled.

Maddox’s blue eyes flared with an emotion I’d only really ever seen in Griffith’s when he looked at my sister. “You sure as fuck are not paying to have my ink on your skin.”

“Fine. I get it. I’m guessing that you’re not going to budge on this since I recognize that caveman look in your eyes. I see it all the time from Griffith,” Belle huffed. “As long as you keep it aimed in my sister’s direction, my hubby might get over the fact that another guy paid for something for me. Maybe.”

“Trust me, he’ll get it.” Maddox kept his eyes locked on me as he walked over to the door and held it open for us. Then he followed us out to my car and waited until I was buckled in my seat to bend down and whisper, “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you soon, little mermaid.”

After he shut my door, I watched him walk across the parking lot and back into Ink Addiction before I started up my car and pulled out. My sister only managed to wait about two minutes before she started in on me.

“So.” Belle’s brown eyes twinkled with humor. “You let him call you little mermaid? I thought you hated that nickname?”

“Don’t even go there,” I warned. “If you even think of using it, I’m going to go out and buy you every single piece of Beauty and the Beast memorabilia I can find. Then I’m going to tell your hubby how much you love the music from the movie so that he starts singing it to you all of the time. And how much you want him to role play as them...in bed.”

She held up her hands in a gesture of surrender. “Geesh! Pull out the big guns, why don’t you?”

“Yeah, well. I didn’t want you to get any ideas.” I’d gotten a lot of The Little Mermaid jokes as a kid, which she was well aware of. “Just because I let a super-hot guy call me ‘little mermaid’ doesn’t mean I’m going to let anyone else get away with it.”

“Since I have a super-hot guy of my own, I totally understand where you’re coming from,” she conceded.

“But Maddox isn’t mine,” I denied. “We just met a few hours ago.”

“Yeah, and I noticed you guys were holding hands when you came back out after your session with him. Did anything else interesting happen back there?”

“No, of course not! Why would you even ask me that?” I protested, my cheeks heating.

“What?” She blinked her eyes innocently. “I just figured there must’ve been a reason that he took you back to his private studio.”

I didn’t understand the point she was trying to make. “Where else was he supposed to do my tattoo?”

“He has a station a couple of doors down from Candice’s. She was surprised he wasn’t using it when she popped over to ask him a quick question after she was done with my tattoo. I guess it’s where he usually does his sessions. She couldn’t remember the last time a client was in his private studio,” Belle explained.

“Oh.” I hadn’t thought twice when Maddox had walked me past a bunch of stations, but I really liked the idea of him doing my ink in his personal space. It made me feel like my tattoo was even more special than it already was.

“While I was waiting for you to finish up, I asked Wendy about it. She thought maybe the last time he did a tattoo for a client back there was when he did work on some foreign dignitary who was in town and needed to have his security in the room with him, and that was last year.”

When I pulled up at the next stop light, I turned my head in Belle’s direction and rolled my eyes. “You’re such a nosy Nellie! Did you spend all your time after you were done with your tattoo grilling Maddox’s staff?”

“Of course I did, silly,” she laughed. “What kind of sister would I be if I didn’t ask questions about the guy when the chemistry between the two of you was probably visible all the way on the moon.”

“Like you have any room to talk,” I grumbled. “I’ve seen how you and Griffith are together.”

Belle flashed me a triumphant grin. “Exactly! Thanks for making my point for me, sis.”

We bickered back and forth good-naturedly the rest of the way to her house. She practically leapt from the car when I pulled into their driveway. “Slow down before you hurt yourself,” I called as I exited the vehicle. “Or else you’ll end up in the emergency room, and Griffith will blame me for it.”

“No, I won’t since I saw it all happen from the window,” he disagreed from their open front door. “Your sister’s right. You need to be more careful, baby.”

He softened the warning by tugging her into his body when she got close and claiming her mouth in a deep kiss.

“Where’s Cyra?” I asked after they finally came up for air, and we headed inside the house.

“Sorry, she just fell asleep maybe five minutes ago. I tried to keep her up so you could see her, but my baby girl was beyond ready for her nap.” Griffith pointed at the monitor screen on the kitchen counter, where we could see Cyra in her crib. “What’d you two get up to while you were out?”

I figured that my sister would prefer to show him her tattoo in private since it was going to mean a lot to him to see his name and Cyra’s on her skin. But, she hadn’t seen mine yet, so I decided to show both of them and then get the heck out of dodge before she told him she’d gotten one too. “Belle talked me into getting a tattoo!”

“A tattoo?” Griffith echoed, his eyes narrowing. “You guys better have gone to see Maddox. I wouldn’t trust anyone else.” It wasn’t a surprise that he was worried. When he and my sister became a couple, he’d kind of taken on a big brother role with me. It was sweet.

“Of course she did.” I tugged the soft material of my shirt so they could see the spot on my left shoulder where Maddox had inked me. Belle oohed and ahhed over it, but Griffith was strangely silent as he stared at my skin. “What do you think?”

He pointed to at the top of his full sleeve where he had a smaller version of one of the unique symbols in my tattoo. When I looked closer at the very spot where his finger was pointing, I realized the center of the symbol was an M and an H.  I gasped, and my eyes flew up to meet Griffith’s laughing ones. He grinned and winked. “He basically marked you as his.”