They hugged, and Sam bandaged the tattoo so Kelly could take a much-needed pee.
As soon as she was alone, the evening’s stakes felt painfully apparent again. Sam dug her nails into her palms, trying to contain the adrenaline pulsing in her veins. What she wanted more than anything right now was fifteen minutes with a guy who knew exactly how to spank her. The pleasurable burn would be so cathartic, so distracting. But there was no chance of that. Maybe if she won, she’d muster up the enthusiasm to re-activate her Kinkworld account—the only social media platform to which she was a member. She’d never had success on there before, but there had to besomeoneon there who wasn’t a pillock…
She looked around for Tabby and saw only unfamiliar people, taking in her body, her tattoos, her face. None of them were smiling so she kept her own expression cool as she bent over to pack away her gear.
She glanced around at the other tattooists as she worked. None of them would meet her gaze. There were always rivalries between tattoo parlours, but comps like this were on a whole other level. The guys she was up against tonight were kings of their trade, well-known artists from Melbourne, Sydney and the Gold Coast. Marias Blanco had even flown in from Toronto. It was well worth the effort. Whoever won tonight would get two thousand bucks, free advertising and a guaranteed position at Fadeout Festival.
Fadeout’s Grand Master Tattooist comp always drew big crowds but this year it would also be filmed for streaming on Netflix. You couldn’t buy the kind of publicity winning Fadeout would bring and that was good, because she couldn’t afford to buy any kind of publicity right now.
“Sammity-Sam!” Tabby burst out of nowhere, an explosion of pale skin and blue hair. She wrapped her arms around her middle. “Nice work! You’ve got this thing in the bag!”
“Cheers.” Sam could smell cider on her sister’s breath and wondered if she’d drunk the entirety of her TAB. “What did you think of the shading? It wasn’t too dark?”
“It was great.”
“What about Adam’s eyes? I was worried he looked a bit Manson and you know—”
“Don’t think on it.” Tabby waved her phone in Sam’s face. “Where’s Kelly? We should post a good picture of you guys now, at least on the business’ storyline. That way when you win and everyone gets on our hype train we’ll already have snaps up.”
“Okay.” Sam’s insides gave another serpentine wriggle. “I think Kelly was just peeing, she should be back soon.”
“She’s already back. She’s over there talking to Scotty!”
“Talking to…?” Sam followed her sisters’ gaze and her mouth went dry. It hadn’t been a coincidence. Scott Sanderson was here, in a suit, flirting his ass off with her tattoo model. Well she was flirting her ass off with him at any rate—she looked ready to seize the back of his head and plunge him face-first into her cleavage.
“What the hell is he doing here?” she asked Tabby. “He should be back in London.”
“Yeah, about that, he lives in Melbourne now!”
Sam gaped at her sister. “How do you know?”
“Because he told me. He showed up at the shop today to apologise for his mental dad and we got chatting and long story short, we came here.”
“Right…he wouldn’t have given you a lift, would he?”
“Maybe,” Tabby said with faux innocence. “You know, he’s gotten buff.Andhe drives a schmick car.Andhe has a nice accent. Do you think it gets even posher when he’s…?” she raised and lowered her eyebrows at an alarming rate.
Sam scowled at her sister. “Don’t you fucking start.”
“Jealous, eh? Well don’t take your issues up with me. Take it up with Kelly, she’s the one trying to back him into her labia.”
That was true, but Sam hated letting men come between friends. Besides, who was she to demand dibs on Scott Sanderson? Because she’d known him the longest? Because she’d terrorized him as a child? That should have given herlessof a right to go near him, but Tabby was right, she was jealous. Actually, she felt a hundred things, but jealous was the largest and most easily identified emotion.
“He’s still into you,” Tabby said. “The whole time you were working, he didn’t take his eyes off you.”
Sam felt a deep stab of something. Longing maybe, or maybe just loneliness. “You shouldn’t have brought him here. I don’t want to see him.”
“Why not?”
There were a million reasons, none of which Sam felt like confiding to her sister. Luckily she knew exactly how to get Tabby off her tail. “Want to go into the VIP section?”
Her sister’s eyes lit up. “Do I?Do I?”
So Sam steered Tabby to the fancy reserved room, away from Kelly and away from Scott Sanderson. The two of them hooking up would do nothing but good for all parties involved, despite whatever her heart and stomach kept saying.
Chapter 9
Scott knew hewas being ungrateful, that any number of men would love to be standing where he was standing and being chatted up by who he was getting chatted up by, but he wasn’t listening to a word Kelly was saying. His attention was in his peripherals, desperately trying to locate Samantha. He couldn’t get his head around what he’d just seen, the way she’d transmitted a beautiful image onto another person’s skin in the time it took to watch a couple of movies. It had been like magic. She’d looked so gorgeous doing it, too, her eyes narrowed in supreme concentration, her red lips slightly parted…