Unleashed (A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance) (208 page)

Tina Azume is beaming at me, and I feel the welcome flutter of pride in my chest and belly.

Before me, she holds up the imitation skin, a bespoke fabric designed to emulate real skin for tattoo artists to practice on.

Of course, nothing is the same as real skin. Nothing is the same as inking a living, breathing human who bleeds, whose temperature changes, who sweats, who feels pain.

But damn it if I haven’t done a good job. Tina had me draw that optical illusion where everybody is walking up and down steps, but there’s no way to tell which way is the right way up. It’s a visual trick; the lines are dishonest, but that we can’t make total sense of that reveals the brain’s willingness to try and interpret
anything
, and to mold information into something understandable.

Like with spelling errors, the brain can usually skip over them, automatically fill in the blanks. The same is true for perspective.

The point of the exercise was to evaluate my
feel
for perspective, to see if I easily confuse, or if I can orient myself quickly. The optical illusion is, of course, a cheat. But at first glance, it looks like a window into some weird dimension.

“It’s perfect,” Tina says, grinning. “Even on my first go I couldn’t emulate it right.”

“The needle sometimes stuck a little,” I tell her. “There was some, I don’t know, drag?”

“Well, if people clam up you’ll definitely experience some of that. Different people have different skin, too. You wouldn’t know it on the outside, but I’ve tattooed two people who looked basically the same in terms of their skin, but one was far more difficult than the other.”

Tina gestures for me to sit down, and she comes over to the small sofa we’ve got. When she sits next to me, she doesn’t fall into it like I do. Even the way she sits is precise, practiced, and, fittingly, severe. She crosses a leg, her back is straight as can be, and her shoulders are pulled back.

Tina looks like the kind of woman who never, ever is unprepared. She’s confident, not because she’s cocky, but because she understands… well, everything.

I want to be like that. I want to be in charge of my own domain, successful, judgers be damned. The tattoo industry, like most others, is still dominated by men. Women are only just finding their foothold, only just reclaiming back territory that should have been theirs for the taking.

Tina is the top female artist, and one of the top overall artists in the world, and she knows it. More than that, she has the respect of all the male artists. They fawn over her, defer to her. She’s a fucking superstar.

I want that. My ambition won’t let me settle for anything less.

“Look,” she says, showing me one of her tattoo books. It’s so clients can see tattoos she’s done on others, or otherwise reference designs. Tina flicks through to a girl with a shaved head. There’s a tattoo of a tribal-ish dragon on the back of her neck.

“For some reason, with Claire here—”

“You remembered her name? This photo is four years ago.” I point at the small date stamp.

“I expect you to remember all our clients’ names, too.”

“Right.”

“Anyway,” Tina explains. “The ink just wouldn’t take to the back of her neck. It was the skin type. It took me forever just to get the outline.”

“But she’s so pale,” I say. “And her skin looks really soft.”

“Exactly.” Tina quickly flips through the book. “Now this was another client I worked on. Her skin looks practically identical, right?”