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MEKHI GAVE AURORA PERMISSION to bring some of her equipment home so she could work on Ruen. He’d arranged to have the night off a couple of days after our mission to hunt down the demon. I helped Aurora carry her gear up to our apartment, then ordered pizza so she wouldn’t have to cook for once.
“I’m excited about doing this tatt,” my bestie said as we devoured the tasty fast food.
“I can tell,” I teased her. She grinned at me, then stuffed more food into her face.
Even spraying air freshener wasn’t enough to get rid of the smell of melted cheese. Ruen would just have to put up with it, since Aurora was about to do him a huge favor. We could open a window, but his sense of smell was so acute that it wouldn’t make much difference.
My sidekick turned up an hour later and knocked for entry. I opened the door for him and he hesitated on the threshold. “You didn’t rescind my invitation to enter your apartment, did you?” he asked me suspiciously.
“What would happen if I had?” I asked curiously.
“It would look like I’d walked into an invisible wall if I tried to step across the threshold,” he replied. “I’m sure you’d find it absolutely hilarious.” His tone was sour, but there was suppressed excitement in his eyes that he was trying hard to hide. We all knew this tattoo was going to mean a lot to him.
“It’s safe for you to enter, Ruen,” Aurora told him from her side of the apartment.
He stepped past me, only flinching slightly in anticipation of being rebuffed. I hadn’t rescinded his invitation just to prank him, so he was able to enter our home. I closed and locked the door, then followed him to the other room.
Aurora had borrowed a table from work and had moved her couch to make room for it. “Where do you want me to do your tattoo?” she asked in a crisp, professional voice. Everything was set up and she was ready to go. She’d even brought her stool along, since neither of us owned anything suitable for her to perch on while she worked.
“I was thinking of getting the knives tattooed on my chest,” Ruen said hesitantly.
“How big do you want them?” I asked, moving to stand next to Aurora.
“Life sized,” he requested.
Aurora’s face lit up that she was going to get to duplicate his weapons exactly. “This is going to be even better than I’d hoped,” she said with a grin. “Take your shirt off and lie down,” she requested.
“I need to brace myself for the sight of your pale, scrawny body,” I joked as he shrugged his jacket off. Ruen gave me a withering look, then unbuttoned his shirt.
“Can you get his knives from your trunk?” the demon requested.
I kept his beloved weapons in my scuffed trunk rather than in his car, since he could only use them in the underworld. Figuring she wanted me to leave the room until Ruen got settled, I left them to it.
Making coffee while I was on my side of the apartment, I listened to Aurora deftly make the vampire comfortable with small talk. She was good at dealing with nervous people, even though he was her first virgin.
Once our coffee was ready, I retrieved his knives and carried the drinks and weapons to the temporary tattoo studio. Ruen’s shirt was off and he was even bonier than I’d expected. Muscles rippled on his abdomen and arms, but his pecs weren’t defined like someone who worked out hard.
“You have beautiful skin,” Aurora said, running her gloved fingertips over his chest. There was nothing sexual about it. She was just trying to figure out the best place to ink him.
“I’m not going to end up regretting this, am I?” Ruen asked nervously.
“Nope,” I said on her behalf. “Aurora did some ink for me and I love it.”
“Can I see it?” he asked.
My face reddened at the thought of him seeing Drake’s gold dragon on my back. “It’s kind of personal,” I hedged.
“In that case, please keep it covered,” he said primly.
Aurora and I snickered as she took his knives from me. I put her coffee mug on the kitchen counter, then took a seat on her couch. “How long will this take?” I asked.
“I’ll be able to work a lot faster than usual without any humans watching me,” she mused. “It’ll only take me a couple of hours to do them both.”
Ruen didn’t need to breathe, so she would be able to work on him without worrying about him moving unexpectedly. “I’m ready whenever you are,” he said bravely, then closed his eyes.
Aurora examined the knives closely, then propped her sketchpad on the kitchen counter next to them. Her tattoo gun buzzed to life and she began to work.
I got up every now and then to take a look at her progress. I’d never seen a tattoo artist work so fast before. Her skill was amazing and she was able to duplicate the sketch perfectly. Music was playing in the background and her face was a mask of concentration. I made more coffee and she paused to sip it every now and then.
“How does it look so far?” Ruen asked after the first hour. He hadn’t opened his eyes at all to take a peek. She’d just finished inking the runes onto the blades. The tatt was only half done and it was absolutely amazing.
“You’re going to die when you see it,” I told him.
“He’s already dead,” Aurora said absently.
“He’ll die all over again,” I joked. She cracked a smile and kept on working.
An hour later, she finished filling the two blood drops with red ink, then wiped his skin clean. I moved to stand next to her as she critically appraised her work. “What do you think?” she asked.
“It’s almost as good as the tatt you did for me,” I said in awe. “But I’m probably biased.”
Ruen still hadn’t opened his eyes. He lay there like the dead man he was, not breathing or moving. “Is it done?” he asked with a hint of hope and dread in his tone.
“It’s done,” she declared. “You can take a look at it now.”
He moved so fast that he was just a blur. One second, he was lying on the table. The next second, he was standing in my side of the apartment, staring at himself in my full-length mirror.
We ambled in to join him, sharing excited smiles at the awed look on his face. “It’s beautiful,” he murmured almost too quietly for me to hear him.
“I know,” my bestie said, rightly proud of her work.
The knives were so realistic that it was hard to believe I couldn’t pull them out of his chest and stab someone with them. The gray mist she’d added around them gave them an almost spectral look. The blood drops stood out starkly against his pale skin and the black and gray ink.
“You won’t let anyone else have this tattoo?” he asked, unable to tear his eyes away from the art that was permanently etched onto his thin body.
“That’s a custom job I drew just for you,” Aurora confirmed. “I’m going to tear the page out of my sketchpad so no one else will see it.” That’s what she’d done for my dragon. She hadn’t taken photos of it to post online either.
“Thank you, Ms. Sky,” Ruen said with quiet dignity. “How much do I owe you for this tattoo?”
“I don’t charge my friends,” Aurora said. “My reward is seeing your expression and knowing how much you love it.”
He stepped forward and hugged her, which was a sight I never thought I’d ever see. He usually tolerated her affection without returning it. To see him voluntarily embracing the demon brought a lump to my throat. She hugged him back and tears were standing in her eyes when he released her. “You did a remarkable job,” Ruen said gruffly. “Your skills as an artist transcend even your abilities as a sex demon.”
Aurora was blown away by his praise and had to reach for a tissue from her pocket. “It’s all thanks to you guys that I found out I could draw,” she said tearfully. “If you hadn’t rescued me from the hounds in the first realm, I would have died without ever knowing I had this hidden talent.”
“We both benefit from having you as our friend,” I told her, on the verge of crying myself now. “We’d be lost without you.”
Ruen nodded his agreement, no doubt thinking about how we would blunder around in the underworld without her there to guide us. I was thinking about how lost I’d feel without her in my life. She’d filled a void I never knew existed, since I’d never had a best friend before. Or any friends at all if I was being honest with myself.
“I have things to do tonight, so I should go,” Ruen said, taking one last look at his new tattoo in the mirror.
“Are you going to tell Drake about your tatt?” I asked.
“He already knows I asked Aurora to do it,” my partner said as he donned his shirt and jacket. “It isn’t wise to keep secrets from a dragon. They tend to discover the things we want to keep hidden.” His tone was slightly bitter as he cast a longing look at the knives that were sitting on the counter.
I let him out and helped Aurora carry her gear back to her SUV. The tattoo had been a resounding success. We celebrated by spending a few hours gaming.
