Vegas, Baby: Volume 2

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