Paradise Found (BBW Erotic Forbidden Affairs) (6 page)
Read Paradise Found (BBW Erotic Forbidden Affairs) Online
Authors: L.E Joyce
Hot Ink…Coming Soon!
When troubled tattoo artist, Walsh Jackson, finds himself the prime suspect in his ex-wife’s and shop rival Bob Grim’s gruesome double murder, he sets out to clear his own name. He follows a trail of dead tattoo artists into the underbelly of the Hungarian mafia. They want one thing: The exact location he found the vial of ink he wears around his neck. They tell Walsh that tattoo artists will continue to die if he doesn't take them to the source. But Walsh can't take them, he can't tell them anything about the vial. Whatever its source, he knows one thing for certain: the vial of ink comes from the part of his life he can't remember. Alone and out of options, he turns to FBI Special Agent Bridget Ash, lead investigator of the tattoo parlor deaths, and a hot one-night stand he was hoping to run into again. Blonde, long-legged, and aloof, Walsh can't keep his mind off her, but something gnaws at him, telling him she may not be what she seems.
Bonus Excerpt from Hot Ink by L.E. Joyce
If Walsh Jackson hadn’t walked into Zeek’s Bar and started a fight with Bob Grim, he would have missed the girl in the pencil skirt and stiletto heels standing outside his tattoo shop.
He hadn’t wanted to hit Grim. It wasn’t his fault that Walsh’s wife was now Grim’s; Walsh had fucked that up all on his own. But salt gets thrown on old wounds when there’s whisky involved, or so it goes when Walsh and Grim throw down in the same bar. Grim threw the first punch. Walsh threw the last, and his hand now needed the fifth of Jack he kept in his shop office just for emergencies like these. Even though he had already sobered up, getting drunk all over again was just what he needed. There would be no going home to an empty house and a cold bed tonight. Walsh didn’t want to remember that Grim had everything that used to be his–a kickass house and a gorgeous wife who loved him.
As Walsh rounded the corner to his shop, INK, he saw her–slim, long legged and blonde–the trifecta of his tastes. She wore a blue skirt suit and a thin white blouse untucked and lightly fluttering in the heavy Miami summer air. She looked end-of-the-day disheveled, but in an intensely classic way. Looking at her Walsh knew one thing for certain: it was too late for a girl like that to be outside in a neighborhood like this. Nobody was safe after dark in Richmond Heights.
Walsh approached slowly. He didn’t want to startle her, yet something told him that this girl wouldn’t scare easily. As he drew near, he saw on her face a frayed sadness as if she was fighting hard to keep something at bay. Her eyes burned onto a sketch in the front window, one of his own–The Blue Woman–as Walsh affectionately named it. The girl in the suit stared at the sketch in the same inquisitive manner as he often did himself.
What was it about it this sketch? Was it the woman’s dark hair flowing in the invisible breeze? Was it how the pale moon shined down and made her black hair seem blue? Was it the way her sheer white gown billowed in waves? Was it the two swords she crossed at her chest? Or was it the blindfold, and the way in which a slight smile creased her lips telling the viewer how much she liked it. Walsh believed that when he could answer these questions, he would finally find a way to stop drawing The Blue Woman, that he would stop seeing her every night in his dreams and everyday in his waking world, and everything he believed she kept from him, like the life before he was found naked in this sweltering city, with no memory of who he was or how he got there, would be revealed.
The blonde standing at the window of Walsh’s tattoo shop looked at the sketch so intently that she didn’t hear him behind her.
“She’s something, isn’t she?” he said.
The blonde jumped and turned around to face him, and that’s when he saw how truly beautiful she was. Bright green eyes, milky skin, and lips he wanted to sink into. But there was something else. There was the same frayed sadness he saw from afar, but up close, he could see a desperation of sorts, an eagerness to live outside one’s own skin.
“What?” she asked.
Walsh collected himself. “The sketch,” he said.
The girl glanced back to the sketch. “Yes. It’s really amazing. Can you tattoo it on my back?”
This shocked Walsh; the girl didn’t look like the tattoo type.
“I could pay you double if you do it,” she said as if sensing his hesitation.
“This tats not for sale,” he said flatly. He did not elaborate. He did not tell her that he had already tried on several occasions to ink it and failed. It was if The Blue Woman somehow wouldn’t allow it.
“What about something like this then?” she said, and handed Walsh a sketch that she clutched in her hand.
Walsh unfolded the paper and found cascading thorns and thickets and vines.
“Can you do it?” she asked with a hint of strain in her voice.
He inspected the design. “No color, soft lines. Sure, I can do it. No problem.” Walsh fished his key from his pocket and unlocked the front door of his shop. “Come on in and we’ll set you an appointment.”
The girl stood fixed on her spot. “Triple if you do it right now,” she said.
“It’s 1:00AM. My shop’s closed, sweetheart.”
“Don’t call me sweetheart,” she warned.
“Sorry, you didn’t tell me your name. Usually when a woman offers me money, I at least know her name.”
“My name is Bridget,” she said, “and I’ll pay three times your normal rate if you do this tattoo for me right now.”
Walsh never sweated over a customer walking out of his shop before. This one–he didn’t want to let her go. He could tell that this girl wasn’t messing around. She could quickly walk away and find another artist to do it for her at this time of night, no problem. He thought of Bob Grim and how he probably went straight to his tattoo shop across town instead of heading home to Gina. Walsh didn’t want to give Grim the chance to snake yet another woman away. He quickly surveyed his right hand, deciding the fifth of Jack would have to wait a little while longer.
“All right, Bridget,” he said. “Let’s talk more inside.”
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