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  INKED (A KILL DEVIL INK NOVEL)

  Copyright © 2020 Sarah Darlington

  Cover Design by T.E. Black Designs

  Editing by Kamaryn Kretz

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, and events portrayed in this book are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced throughout this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ~ CHAPTER 1 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 2 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 3 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 4 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 5 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 6 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 7 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 8 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 9 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 10 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 11 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 12~

  ~ CHAPTER 13 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 14 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 15 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 16 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 17 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 18 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 19 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 20 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 21 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 22 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 23 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 24 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 25 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 26 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 27 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 28 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 29 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 30 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 31 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 32 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 33 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 34 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 35 ~

  ~CHAPTER 36 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 37 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 38 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 39 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 40 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 41 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 42 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 43 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 44 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 45 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 46 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 47 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 48 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 49 ~

  ~ CHAPTER 50 ~

  ~ EPILOGUE ~

  ~ BONUS CHAPTERS ~

  PREORDER: MARKED (Kill Devil Ink #2)

  ~ CHAPTER 1 ~

  ALSO BY SARAH DARLINGTON

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  To all the KILL DEVIL HILLS and NEVER TRUST fans out there! I wrote this one for you. Thank you for your continued support.

  ~ CHAPTER 1 ~

  NICK

  “Is this an impulse decision?” the girl with pink hair and a tattoo gun in her hand asked me. “You sure you’re sober? I can’t do this if you aren’t sober.”

  I turned to look over my shoulder. My bare ass was on display for the room, for this pink haired beauty to glimpse, and neither was a concern. I felt like I was stuck, buried deep under the sand. I’d felt that way for a couple weeks now, maybe longer if I were being honest with myself. I hoped this small amount of pain might shock my senses somehow, help me feel something again. At the very least, this was a parting gift... to me from myself. Tonight was my final night in town. Tomorrow I planned to quit my job and drive back to Maine.

  Good riddance, Kill Devil Hills.

  “Not an impulse decision,” I clarified. “I’m sober.”

  “It’s just... it’s a sea turtle on your ass.” She gave me this pained look. “On your virgin skin, no less. I feel like I should make sure this is really, really, what you want.”

  “What do most guys get? Barbed wire around their biceps. No thank you, sweetheart. I know what I want. This is what I want.”

  She bit down on her bottom lip, giving me a reluctant nod. Shit, she was a beautiful girl. I loved her pale pink hair color. For a brief second, I wondered what her story was. Was she from this beach town, born and raised, or had she escaped here just like I had, thinking it was the solution to everything, when it really wasn’t?

  I rested my face on my forearms, lying still for her, waiting for her to get started. Finally, the needle hit my skin. It stung. But it was a very bearable kind of pain.

  I don’t know if it helped or hurt the dull ache in my chest. After a couple minutes, my butt cheek just felt numb. I felt numb along with it.

  “So why the turtle?” the girl asked.

  I sighed. “C’mon, this isn’t a hair salon.” Again, I glanced over my shoulder. “You don’t have to bother with small talk. Not with me.”

  She looked at me with these big, kind of sad, brown eyes. I’d offended her. Fuck. I hadn’t meant to do that.

  “Hey.” One of the other tattoo artists that worked at this place stepped into her area. “I’m going to pop next door and get some dinner. Want something, Amanda?”

  “No,” she muttered. “Not hungry.”

  He turned his attention to me. “You’re probably going to be on that table for a couple hours. Want some dinner? The place next door is actually decent.”

  I cleared my throat. “No, thanks.”

  “Alrighty.” The massive guy with tattoos up to his neck stepped away. It wasn’t a busy night. Without him here, it would be just the two of us.

  I dropped my head back to my arms. I heard the bell on the door chime as he exited the shop. “He’s stupid,” I mumbled into my arms. Her name was Amanda. Thanks to Meat Head, I now knew my pink haired tattoo artist’s name was Amanda. “It’s stupid for him to leave you by yourself. It’s just us. It’s late. Even if it’s only for ten minutes, something could happen in those ten minutes. You don’t know how many creeps there are in this world. In the future, you should make him get the place next door to walk your food over.”

  My words were probably out of bounds. I’d never been great at minding my own business. But it was stupid. To leave her alone with one of her customers this late in the evening—plain dumb.

  “I hate this sea turtle,” she suddenly said. She stopped working, setting down the tattoo gun, peeling off her gloves. “I hate it. Like in the past year I’ve probably done this same sea turtle six other times. Exact copies. All of them on eighteen-year-old girls who don’t have a clue what they want. The kind of girls who walk into the store not knowing what they want and just pick out the first pretty thing they see on the wall. Fuck, it’s lame. Come with me.”

  “What?”

  “Pull up your pants. Come with me.”

  I had no choice. She had already left me behind. I glanced down at the ink on my skin. She’d barely even begun. I jumped off the table, yanking up my jeans over the tiny black blob on my ass, and I followed her. She led me deeper into the shop, past a couple other unoccupied stations, toward a back room. It looked more like a break room than anything. She sat at a computer, patting the chair next to her.

  Hesitantly, I sat down beside her. Had she gained nothing from my lecture on safety and strangers? I guess not.

  After a moment waiting on the computer to boot itself up, she typed “sea turtle tattoos” into Google, and started scrolling through images. “The designs from the wall, the ones that John has drawn,” she started talking. I didn’t know who John was, I guessed maybe the owner of this place? Her boss? “They’re great designs, beautiful designs, but none of them very unique.” This coming from a woman with mostly flowers on her skin. Bubbly, colorful flowers. “Because anyone who walks in the front door can look at John’s art and choose that turtle off the wall. You’ll be on the beach this summer, and I promise
you’ll see someone walk by with your same turtle on her shoulder. Or on her foot. Maybe on her ass, just like you.”

  I’d be in Maine this summer. But even if I were here, it would be the least of my concerns. “Maybe I’ll find my soulmate that way,” I muttered. “We can have matching turtle ass tattoos and ride off into the sunset together.”

  She smiled at my dry humor. Which was amazing in itself because most people never got my jokes, when I made those ‘true to myself’ kind of jokes. “I have an idea.” She left me and the computer. At the table in the room, she grabbed a piece of plain white paper. She began to sketch something. Her own turtle. It wasn’t at all what I had in mind when I decided I wanted this tattoo. The one I’d chosen from John’s wall of art was truer to real life. But her version—it was made up of all these cuts and lines. Completely abstract. It was a piece of art. I don’t know why, but I instantly loved it. Something about it spoke to me. And then the shell of the turtle, instead of giving it a normal shell, she gave it sails. It was half turtle and half pirate ship. Who knows what the fuck it was? But I loved it. I loved it fiercely. I wanted this on my skin.

  She shrugged when she finished, passing over her design to me.

  I took the paper. “I like it. Let’s do this.”

  “It’s weird. I know.”

  “It is weird, but I’m choosing this. Can you put it on my ass now, Amanda? Please?”

  Again, she smiled at me. Damn, she had a pretty smile. “One turtle ass tattoo coming right up.”

  ~ CHAPTER 2 ~

  AMANDA

  This guy was strange. Like ‘super, impossible-to-figure-out, this-conundrum-will-drive-me-insane’ kind of strange.

  So far, I’d gathered that he was wealthy. Like, super wealthy. Like, if he told me he was some famous actor, I wouldn’t have been surprised. I could smell it on him. Like, literally, as I pressed the tattoo gun to his fair skin, I thought this in my head. I’d never smelled anyone who smelled as good as this guy. It had to be what money fucking smelled like. I wouldn’t know, I’d never had much in that department, but he smelled like he cost a fortune.

  Then his sea turtle choice. I mean... what? Why? Seriously, of all things, why would a guy want that? He had no other ink on his skin. He had virgin skin. So why one lonely sea turtle as his first tattoo? Why on this random Wednesday night had he walked into this tattoo shop wanting that of all things?

  I’d also hijacked his tattoo. I’d called it lame after he gave me that small, annoying lecture on my safety. Then I’d drawn something I never thought he’d be into. Sometimes my brain worked in pictures. I’d see images in real life, and I’d want to chop them up, rearrange them, make them into something new. Most days, here at work, I stuck to the book, copied John’s artwork onto people’s skin, and never deviated. But tonight I’d deviated. And it floored me that this white-collar guy, who smelled like heaven, who was one of the most handsome men I’d ever seen in real life, was into my design.

  Still, all of that wasn’t what had my skin buzzing. The little hairs on my arms were prickling being so near this guy. Not out of fear; it wasn’t fear I felt around him. But my senses were on high alert, and I kept trying to dissect him to figure out why I felt this weirdness around him.

  “You really sure about this?” I asked again. “You want my design on your skin forever? You can be honest with me. It won’t hurt my feelings if you hate my artwork. I mean, most people just choose the stuff from the wall. And—”

  I was following him down the hall, back to my station. But he stopped on a dime and turned to me. I nearly bumped into him. “Stop it. Stop doubting yourself. Stop questioning me.”

  He stared at me with these insanely fierce blue eyes. The seriousness in those eyes made my heart race like a stampede of wild horses. They were eyes that could make a girl drop to her knees if asked. I was certain of that. I bet this guy could have sex with whomever he damn well pleased. One look like that, and any girl would be his.

  “You are talented. I want you to put your design on my skin.” He stepped closer. His voice unwavering. I stared up at him feeling paralyzed. “Then after I leave, I want you to tear that paper in your hand to pieces. Don’t put it on the wall for anyone else to get. Don’t post it on Instagram for the world to copy. I want it to be only mine.”

  He was intense. My conundrum over who the hell this guy was suddenly multiplied by one thousand. The way he spoke. The way his chest moved in a slow, even rhythm as he breathed. Not to mention, the way his shirt fit over the lines of his muscular chest. All of it had me at his mercy.

  Completely at his mercy.

  He had an invisible tether tied straight to me. I nodded, unable to speak. Then he touched me. His hands went to my neck.

  In the four years I’d been working here, I’d never had a customer touch me. Not like this. His comments about my safety earlier—I’d ignored them. I’d never felt unsafe here. My coworker Finn was huge, he’d be back any minute, and I felt certain he could protect me from anything.

  But then again, this guy’s sudden touch wasn’t unwelcome. The opposite, actually.

  He had his hands on my neck. They were warm, wonderful. One of his thumbs traced over my skin, sending shivers all through me, and I’d never wanted anything more. Yes, he could have squeezed those hands around my neck. And it’s possible I wouldn’t have been able to fight him off. But he didn’t squeeze. He moved closer. He pressed his lips to mine.

  My eyes fluttered closed just as he kissed me. This guy had the softest lips. The gentlest lips. I could barely believe a guy as beautiful as this man was kissing me. His kiss wasn’t fast or greedy. It wasn’t angry the way I’d felt anger in his words. He took his time. He moved in slow motion. Even when he deepened the kiss, and I tasted his tongue, he still moved carefully. Fuck, it was nice. It felt like he was savoring me. For minutes we stood there kissing and enjoying each other. The crush I’d had on him the moment he walked through the front door compounded exponentially. I felt like goo with this man.

  Until he broke away, and I opened my eyes.

  “That kiss was...” he started to say.

  Incredible?

  “Inappropriate,” he finished, moving a step backward. “I’m sorry. I’m having a shit day. I shouldn’t have done that. I promise it won’t happen again.” His words were harsh, direct, to the point. Almost as if he’d slapped me with them. A stark contrast to the perfect, soft kiss he’d just pressed on my lips.

  Asshole.

  “You shouldn’t have,” I agreed. “I have to go make a transfer for the drawing. Go lay down.”

  He nodded, walking away.

  I stood there for a moment, breathing in and out, fuming. He was a stranger. He meant nothing to me. So why was I feeling so pissed off over that one small kiss? I could barely think straight, I was so mad at him over it. Maybe because he started it and then he immediately took it away.

  “Damn him,” I whispered. I went back down the hall to the transfer machine. I needed to copy the design I’d just drawn onto transfer paper. So I did that. When I returned to my station, the guy was still there. For a moment, I’d been thinking he might have left. He hadn’t left though; he was lying on my chair on his stomach with his pants half down around his hips like before. He had his head buried in his arms, and he didn’t look up as I came closer and sat down next to his side.

  Rolling my eyes, so freaking annoyed with him, I got to work. I used alcohol to rub away the old design then I transferred the new design onto his skin. I was forced to speak to him again, only for a moment, as I asked him if the placement of his tattoo was right.

  “It’s good,” he mumbled.

  Seemed like we were both mad at each other over that kiss. Not long after that Finn returned. The thing with Finn was this: when I first started working here, we’d sort of dated. Our short relationship had consisted of one very boring dinner. Followed by one awkward-as-hell hookup, in the very chair this guy was now lying in, where we bumped heads a lot and t
he fluorescent lights killed the mood before we could even get to the good stuff. After that we gave up on trying to date and both decided we were meant to just be friends. We’d been good friends since. We even had this understanding between us, an act we would sometimes play, whenever one of us felt uncomfortable with a customer. Usually it was Finn who was the uncomfortable one, not me.

  “Going okay?” Finn asked, stepping into my station to check on me. I could smell the onion and garlic on him from the pizza he must have just eaten.

  “Fine, babe. It’s going fine, babe.”

  “Love you, babe,” he said to me, instantly understanding what I meant. He grabbed an extra chair from the corner and plopped it straight down next to my chair.

  “Love you, too,” I muttered in return.

  That was it. That was our code with one another. The guy on the table—he didn’t even so much as flinch over my fake ‘I love you’ exchange with Finn. He continued to lie perfectly still.

  ~ CHAPTER 3 ~

  NICK

  Jesus Christ, this was awkward. I kissed a girl with a boyfriend. Meat Head was her boyfriend. Of course he was. Why wouldn’t he be? Because my shitty luck always worked that way. I always found myself in these impossible situations. To make things worse, Boyfriend had positioned himself right next to my head, acting like Amanda’s own personal bodyguard. If I turned to look left, I would have been staring straight at his crotch. It was like the dude knew somehow what I’d done. He knew I’d kissed his girlfriend, and now he was hovering over me.

  I lay still while Amanda worked on my tattoo. I said absolutely nothing the entire time. She could have been putting Bugs Bunny on my ass, and I wouldn’t have opened my mouth.

  An hour or two passed. No other customers entered the shop, so her bodyguard had no reason to move from his post. “I thought you were doing a different turtle,” he asked her at one point. Had it taken him a full hour to notice the difference?

  “We changed it,” she answered.