Page 8 of Triple Trouble

I gazed up at my reflection in the mirror. Even without color, the image was powerful.

And best of all, it obscured the NATHAN tattoo enough to deliver a powerful message: you don’t own me. Nobody does.

“It’s perfect,” I said.

While Gertrude led the camera crew up a staircase covered with piles of rubbish, Jackson held the tattoo gun to my chest and began to draw in quick, precise lines.

4

JACKSON

I’d always taken my job seriously.

Whenever I was at work, I was a hundred percent professional. It didn’t matter who I was tattooing or how hot she was; I focused on what I was doing and got the job done. It was easy enough — art had been my passion since I’d been old enough to hold a pencil.

I had what Xavier called tunnel vision, where I could disappear into a project for hours on end without even realizing that time had passed.

But with Emma, my tunnel vision didn’t have its usual hold on me.

Our clients were sometimes prone to fainting, so I had a habit of glancing at their faces occasionally to make sure they were okay. Emma’s burgundy hair and ice-blue eyes made it impossible to avoid checking on her more frequently than I needed to.

She was everything I liked in a woman: hot, tattooed, and someone who obviously had an interesting past. In my experience, boring people didn’t get lovers’ names tattooed on their chests.

She was watching a television series on her friend’s phone, a documentary about hoarders, and they made comments to each other as the cleaning crew hauled trash out the house.

“How could anyone live like this?” Emma wondered aloud, as the workers found a dead cat under a pile of rubbish in the living room.

Her friend shrugged.

“Heartbreak does weird things to people,” she said. “You’ve spent so much time on my couch that I wondered if you were heading in this direction.”

My ears pricked up.

Heartbreak?

Did that mean Emma was single?

I chastised myself for asking that question, even though it was only in my head. I was here to do my job, not pry into the personal lives of our clients. Not even the ones with exceptionally perky breasts.

In order to keep the outline of the phoenix smooth, I stretched Emma’s skin between the thumb and forefinger of my left hand while I manoeuvred the gun with my right. As I drew the phoenix’s wings, this meant keeping my thumb on the swollen part of her breast, right near her areola. Her chest rose and fell every time she took a breath. Even though I was wearing gloves, I could feel the heat radiating from her body.

It was distracting, but I did my best to focus.

The phoenix design was one I was particularly proud of, and I wasn’t surprised she’d chosen it. The three of us — Xavier, Adrian, and I — lived upstairs in the apartment above the shop. When Emma messaged us, we were watching a low-budget horror movie. Even though we were sitting in the same room, Xavier sent me screenshots of Emma’s messages.

“Do you think you can mock up a few designs?” he’d asked, and Adrian looked at him curiously.

“Sure,” I said.

I didn’t know anything about Emma, but a few quick social media searches gave me a foundation to work with. She was twenty-five, her mother had died when she was eighteen, and for the past five years, she hadn’t uploaded many photos: just a few pictures of her smiling with a man who had cold eyes. I scrolled through older photos and discovered that she liked animals, judging from her photos at zoos and wildlife sanctuaries.

My first design was a floral one, with a heart-shaped lock and antique key within a burst of flowers. My second one was a burst of butterflies that would fly out of her cleavage among twisting vines. The phoenix was an idea I’d taken from one of my old art journals — it was an unfinished sketch I’d loved but never finished, and with this new motivation, I sat down and finished the sketch in one sitting.

I didn’t like to influence my clients’ decisions, but the phoenix design was my favorite, and I’d been pleased when Emma chose it.

As I forced myself to focus on the outline, I accidentally brushed my thumb over her nipple.

She winced, and I automatically pulled both hands away.

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