“Shut up, Ink.”
“Ain’t like you to get all petulant, June-bug. Sassin’ me like this tells me I’m more right than I’m figurin’.”
I lurched out of the chair and drew up one of the waiting chairs over to the low coffee table where Ink had our dinner spread out. I took a bit more salmon and then dipped a chip into the salsa, and then washed it all down with a freshly cracked beer.
“Not answering.”
He nodded, and plucked a chip from the bag. “I see how it is. Can’t trust your own cousin with the truth. Ain’t like I haven’t known you since we was pissin’ our diapers or nothin’.”
“It’s complicated, okay?”
“You keep saying that. What’s complicated about it?” Ink lifted an eyebrow at me. “He wants your mukluks by his door. Seems simple to me.”
I rolled my eyes at him as I chewed and swallowed. “By his door…and then gone by morning, you mean.”
“So? You lookin’ for your mate and I just didn’t know?”
I took another roll of meat and cheese. “No, but that doesn’t mean I want a one-and-done hookup either.” I kept my eyes on the table instead of on Ink. “And with a guy like Remington? I’m not sure either one is a smart idea.”
“How do you know him, anyways?” Ink asked, dipping meat and cheese into the salsa.
“He’s a triplet, and one of his brothers is dating Kitty.”
“I didn’t think Kitty did dating any more than you do.”
“It didn’t start as dating, I guess.”
“And he’s an asshole who can’t be trusted like your boy Remington?”
“We all thought so,” I said with a sigh. “He’s…well…I guess he’s turning out to be different than we thought. Even to his own surprise, I think.”
Ink brushed crumbs out of his beard. “So there’s two more identical to him?” Ink shook his head in disbelief. “Don’t seem right.”
“Exactly.”
“Want to know what I think?” Ink asked, his gaze intense on mine.
I met it steadily, afraid of the way his beard waggled as he considered his words. “Always.”
“I think you want a mate and you want a one-and-done, you just can’t decide which you want him for more. And you’re scared of both.”
“I’ve never had a one-night stand, Ink, and I don’t plan to start now.”
“Yeah, and you never had a mate. Unless I’m wrong you don’t plan on startin’ that either?”
I sighed. “No, I don’t. I have to focus on my career.”
He blew a raspberry, waving his hand at me as if to wave away a putrid smell. “That mess you call a job ain’t a career, it’s a distraction. It’s you pacifyin’ Uncle Simon and Aunt Judy.”
“Ink, please.”
“Okay, okay.” He eyed me curiously. “I feel a truth, and I’m gonna tell it to you, now, like it or not.”
I sighed again, taking a swig of beer. “Oh god, here we go.”
“You’re gonna tat that man. You’re gonna put your mark on him, and he’s gonna put his mark on you.” He met my eyes for a long moment, and then shrugged as he looked away. “What that means, I dunno. It just feels like truth in my belly.”
I rolled my eyes and sighed. “Okay, mister shaman.”
He waved at me with a partially eaten meat-and-cheese roll. “Hey, I ever been wrong when I tell a belly-truth?”
I didn’t answer, because the answer worried me more than I was willing to admit.
“Thought so.” He patted me on the shoulder with a heavy hand. “Deny it all you want, June-bug, but you know I’m right.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I admitted.
He chuckled. “Eat up, cuz—I got a late-night client in fifteen.” He glanced at me. “I gotta put a wrap on that tat before you go. You shouldn’t even have that shirt on without it, and you know it. Bad girl.”
“Extenuating circumstances,” I mumbled.
“Sure, sure.” He gestured at me as he washed his hands and got the supplies to cover my new tattoo. “Get that shirt off for me again. And don’t worry, I won’t peek.”
I shucked my shirt, holding it against my chest as he put ointment on the tattoo, covered it with Saniderm, and then patted my other shoulder.
“Thanks,” I said.
He just smirked, his beard not quite hiding it. “When you gonna show him the rest of your tats? He seemed to like the piece on your chest.”
“I’ll slap that smirk off your big dumb face, Ink, and don’t think I’m kidding,” I snapped as I put my shirt back on.
Ink just chortled a rumbling laugh. “You never hurt a fly in your whole damn life, June-bug.”
“I’ll make an exception for you if you don’t lay off the subject.”
Ink raised his hands palms out in surrender. “Okay, okay. You know I just mess with you because I love you, yeah?”
Finished eating, I washed my hands and dried them, and then wrapped my cousin up in a tight hug, my arms around his middle, my head against his thick, warm chest. “Yes, Ink, I know. I love you too.”
“Of course you love me. I’m awesome.” He shoved me gently toward the door. “You can go now. I gotta get ready for my client.”
“It’s late anyway.”
“Hey—how you getting home?” Ink asked. “You don’t have a car. For that matter, how you even get here in the first place?”
“I…walked. Same way I always get here.”
He frowned. “Ain’t safe. I been saying that for years.”
“And I keep telling you, I’ll be fine.”
“Yeah…till you ain’t.”
Ink moved behind the counter where the cash register was, withdrew an old rotary phone, dialed a number, and spoke in Yup'ik, which I spoke, but not as fluently as Ink did. I followed the conversation enough to know he was asking whoever was on the other end to come pick me up and take me home.
“Who are you pawning me off on, Ink?” I asked, as he hung up.
“Just a friend. You can trust him.”
“Him?” I asked, skeptical.
“His name’s Jasper Fox. I did some tattoos for him, and he keeps me supplied in fresh game, since you know I don’t hunt no more. He’s good people.”
“Why don’t you drive me home?” I asked. “I don’t want to go with a random stranger.”
“I don’t have a car anymore—my old Jetta died months ago. Plus, my client is gonna be here soon.” He looked out the window and indicated a pickup even older than the one Remington had driven off in, as it sidled noisily up to the curb outside the parlor. “That’s him. Just call him Fox.”
“I don’t know, Ink.”
“June-bug. You trust me?”
“Of course.”
“Then trust him. You’re fine.”
I let out a breath. “Okay, okay. Bye, Ink. I love you.”
“You better come back here sooner next time, yeah?”
“I will.”
The pickup was probably older than me, just this side of being an actual classic, but it was lovingly maintained, with not a scrap of rust on it anywhere, the engine idling with a rattling grumble. The man standing outside the truck, leaning a hip on the hood, was Yup'ik, of course—tall, thin, with jet-black hair cut short and left messy, as if he wore a hat more often than not and didn’t care what it looked like. He wore loose blue jeans over scuffed, aged work boots, and a denim vest lined with fluffy white fleece, his chest and arms bare beneath it. He had an enormous knife strapped to his belt at his right hip, and there was a rifle in a rack on the back window of the cab.
His eyes were so dark they were almost black, glittering as they watched me approach, his clean-shaven jaw shifting. He said nothing.
“Jasper Fox?”
“Just Fox,” he muttered.
“Okay. Fox, then.”
He indicated the passenger door. “Get in.”
Okay, then. I climbed in and buckled up; the inside of the truck smelled like old cigarettes,
engine grease, and skinned animal carcass—the latter because there was a killed, cleaned, and skinned hare lying directly on the cracked leather bench seat between me and the driver’s seat.
Fox climbed in, buckled up, put the truck in gear, and drove away. After a moment, he glanced at the carcass, and then reached down, snagged a leather game bag off the floorboard, and shoved the hare into it. “Sorry. Dinner.”
I laughed. “If you know Ink, then you probably have heard some of the stories about my dad.”
Fox nodded, a ghost of a grin on his face. “Drivin’ around with out-of-season deer carcasses in the front seat of his truck.”
“Still does it, too,” I said. “A little old bunny doesn’t bother me.”
He seemed to know where he was going, as I remember hearing Ink mention my street address on the phone to Fox. The rest of the drive was silent, and oddly, not uncomfortable at all.
When we pulled up to my apartment building, he parked, jutted his chin at me, and that seemed to be his version of goodbye. It should have been weird that a man I didn’t know, and had spoken less fifty words to knew where I lived, and had driven me home, but it wasn’t. For some reason, Fox felt similar to Ink, in that familial, platonic sort of way.
I opened the door and stepped out of the truck. “Thank you for the ride, Fox.”
He nodded once. “Welcome.”
And then, as soon as I shut the door, he was gone in a cloud of blue-gray exhaust.
“Well,” I said to no one. “That was weird.”
“Who was that?” I heard Kitty say from behind me, startling me so badly I screamed and jumped a foot in the air.
I spun around, clapping my hand over my heart. “Holy crap, Kitty. You scared the bejesus out of me.”
She was standing in the entryway to our building, dressed in her comfy lounging outfit—meaning her tiny green cotton shorts and a see-through white V-neck T-shirt, which she was wearing braless. “Sorry.” She indicated the direction Fox had gone. “Who was he?”
“A friend of…a friend.” I was being evasive, but I wasn’t ready to answer questions about Ink, or why I’d kept my tattoos secret from my best friends and roommates.
Kitty shook her head. “You are so mysterious, Juneau. A friend of a friend.” She widened her eyes at me dramatically. “He had a rifle in the cab.”
“This is Alaska, Kitty. You should be used to that by now.”
“Out in the bush, maybe. This is downtown Ketchikan.”
“You’re acting like a cheechako,” I muttered.
“A what?”
“An outsider. Someone not from Alaska.”
Kitty blinked at me in surprise: I rarely gave away clues to my deeply traditional Yup'ik background—my great-grandmother was one of the last generations to get the traditional face tattoos as a girl, and it was from her I’d learned to appreciate the beauty of marking one’s skin. My father was a hunting and hiking guide in the deep bush, and my mother made native art, which she sold to tourists as they got off the cruise ships. My sisters—all five of them—were married and had several children each, and kept homes; their husbands offset the family food budget through hunting year-round, using their subsistence licenses. I was the only one in the family to ever move away from our traditional Yup'ik territory: I went to the University of Alaska in Anchorage to study law, and even though I moved back after I got my degree, I’m still Yup’ik, and always will be.
She frowned at me. “So, if you’re getting rides from ‘a friend of a friend,’” she put air quotes around the phrase, “Does that mean you’re not seeing Remington?”
I closed my eyes and sighed. “Why does it have to be an either-or situation? I’m not seeing Remington, and Fox was, like I said, a friend of a friend who gave me a lift home since it was getting late.”
Kitty’s eyes narrowed. Right then a cold wind blew and Kitty shivered, wrapping her arms around her middle. “Get your evasive ass in here, Juneau. I’m getting cold standing here in the open doorway.”
I pushed past her. “You are wearing your slutty jammies.”
She whacked me on the butt as I trotted up the stairs in front of her. “Rome happens to love my slutty jammies, thank you very much.”
“That’s just because your ass hangs out of the bottom of the shorts, and that shirt is see-through.” I turned back to her as I opened our door, and reached out to pinch her nipple, which was standing on end from the cold. “For example, you could currently cut glass with those puppies.”
“That’s exactly why I love that shirt,” I heard Roman’s bass voice say—it made me jump, both because I wasn’t expecting him to be there, and because he sounded, obviously, exactly like Remington. “Bring those glass cutters over here, sex-kitten.”
I rolled my eyes at Roman, who was lounging on the couch, big bare feet kicked up on the arm, watching an old Oklahoma football game on our little TV. “Sex-kitten? Really?”
I was facing away from the couch as I set my purse down and slipped off my cardigan, moving gingerly; I happened to glance toward the couch just in time to see Kitty lift her shirt, flashing Roman. She shook her sizable tatas at him and then shoved her shirt back down, laughing hysterically as she realized I’d seen the whole thing.
“You weren’t supposed to see that!” she said, cackling.
“No kidding,” I said. “Do you need me to leave again?”
“Yep,” Roman said.
“Nope,” Kitty said, overlapping Roman, smacking him on the chest as she climbed onto the couch, draping herself on her side between Roman and the back of the couch. “We got out of bed ten minutes ago, you ravenous beast.”
He idly twiddled her peaked nipples over the shirt. “Yep. And I was ready for more after five.”
He lifted her up his body so her breasts draped against his face. “Mmmm. Kitty’s titties,” he said, nuzzling them. “I’m in heaven.”
“Stop that, you pig!” Kitty said, shifting down his body.
“Oink, oink, sweetheart.”
I faked a gag. “Okay! And on that note, I’m going to my room.”
“If you hear loud noises from out here, just stay in there for…oh, another hour or so,” Roman said.
“An hour,” Kitty said, laughing. “You wish you lasted that long.”
“Is that a challenge?” Roman said, his voice a feral growl.
I shivered, and my nipples ached, because that growl sounded so much like Remington’s when he said things that were very similar.
“No!” Kitty said, too quickly, and far too submissively. “If you drew it out for an hour, I’d probably die.”
“Of orgasms. What a way to die, huh?”
I heard her slap his hand. “Quit that! Rome…stop! Not with Juneau here.”
“You know you can be quiet about it. They didn’t even hear me come in last night…or you coming this morning.”
I closed my door on them, muting their voices to a dull murmur…but the sounds I heard told me I needed more than a closed door to block them out, so I turned on some Harry Connick Jr.
I barely recognized Kitty now that she was dating Roman. She was far more outgoing, far less reserved both in the way she dressed and how she behaved. The Kitty I’d known before Roman wouldn’t have even held the hand of a guy she was seeing around us—but with Roman, they all but have sex in front of us, as evidenced by the current scene in the living room. I could hear Kitty laughing, and it was a… certain type of laugh. I was right here in the apartment, but she clearly just couldn’t help herself.
I sank onto my bed, kicking off my wedge heels and unbuttoning my shirt, carefully shedding it. I had a full-length mirror on the outside of my closet door, and I twisted to view Ink’s latest artwork—it was, unsurprisingly, incredible. You could almost reach out and pet the cub’s fur, which was so detailed you could see individual strands of fur. The bears’ noses looked almost wet, and he’d somehow made it look like the bears’ paws were leaving footprints in my skin.
I won
dered, if I were to try, if I could achieve artistic skill of that level. Certainly not without a lot of time and practice, but…I think I could. I’d done a couple of pretty elaborate pieces on Ink, and I knew part of the reason he always went shirtless was to display his tattoos…most of which were mine. He displayed them proudly which was, I guess, a testament to my skill.
I sighed, unhooking my bra and tossing it on the floor. It felt good to get that off, and I needed to get the strap away from the fresh tattoo. I hadn’t been intending to put it on at all, but if I hadn’t Remington would have been looking at me for far longer, and that would have been…awful.
In a lascivious sort of way.
The instant his eyes flashed on my bare chest?
My heart had slammed in my chest, and my stomach had been flipping, and I had kind of liked it.
I had to admit there was a part of me, buried way deep down, that had wanted his eyes on my bare flesh.
The look in his eyes…
…was very nearly worshipful.
Whether it was the tattoos, or the tatas, I wasn’t sure.
“STOP!” I moaned to myself, scrubbing my face with both hands in frustration. “Stop thinking about him.”
Focus on work. On the law.
Not on art. Not on tattoos. And not on Remington.
And then I remembered.
“He has my note,” I said out loud to myself. “And you know he’s going to read it.”
7
Remington
I wasn’t going to open it.
Nope.
Definitely not.
Snatching her little note or whatever it was and keeping it was a way of teasing her, taunting her. But actually reading it would be an invasion of her privacy.
It was in my wallet in my left hip pocket, and it was burning a hole in my leg. Somehow, I knew it was about me. She wouldn’t be so upset about me taking it if it was just a random reminder to herself, or a grocery list, or something. No, that little square of folded yellow paper was definitely about me.
Doodling my name? Drawing cocks?
Ha, no. Not likely. Did girls draw dicks? Somehow, I didn’t think so.
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