But it’d been the tattoo down the man’s spine that kicked Sionn’s brain into high gear.
Damien stripped off his shirt and bared the single most irrefutable piece of evidence he had of his existence to a man who’d kissed him senseless, then let him go.
But oh, that ink.
The tattoo was a piece of Sinner’s Gin legend even a casual listener would have known. Used as the cover sleeve on the band’s second album, Damien Mitchell’s back had been splashed all over magazines and music feeds. Having it displayed in front of him was like finding a pair of cairn-terrier-chewed, red-sequined pumps in his luggage.
Shocking, unexpected, and oddly familiar.
It seemed amazing that the accident that left the man in front of him dead to the world somehow did not touch the elaborate, brilliant tattoo etched into the man’s skin. A kirin pranced on, untouched by the damage done to its wearer. Surrounded by maple leaves caught in fall coloring, the dragon-deer snarled with a fierce pride from its canvas. In the flesh, the creature’s crimson and emerald body practically vibrated with movement on his pale skin, its tail and mane a fiery flow of orange and golds curving along the lines of the man’s body. Its backward arching horn, an unexpected antlered prong in Sionn’s mind, sprang forth from the kirin’s skull, a pearly splay of wealth among the already rich ink.
When Damien shed his shirt and turned to display his tattoo, Sionn was left almost speechless.
Almost.
It was certainly proof. Compared to the album cover, nearly irrefutable, especially since the guitarist had a spray of beauty spots over his right shoulder identical to those of the man in the photo.
“Fuck me, boyo. You’ve got to be him.” He nearly didn’t want to say it out loud. The man sitting across from him was dead, his body torn apart by chunks of steel and rubber after an awards show, but the tattoo… and that face… were crystal clear evidence the world had been subject to a vicious and cruel prank. “You’re Damien Mitchell.”
Mitchell looked older, wearier, as if he’d racked up more than a few years of living in the time since his supposed death, but when Sionn compared the man to the images and videos he’d pulled up, there was no denying who Sionn had in the loft with him.
“Maybe,” Damien gave Sionn a wry smirk, one that hinted of whiskey and sin. “I can’t… remember shit. If there was any fucking time I’d wished someone would have published an unauthorized biography, it’s right fucking now. I need like a Damien Mitchell for Dummies right now, with what’s left of my brain.”
Stripped of the cowboy hat and shrouded lies, Damien Mitchell was too much sex and sin for Sionn to take. His long-lashed eyes and strong cheekbones were no match for the man’s sinful mouth. And when Damien’s laugh exposed his broad white teeth, Sionn could only imagine what it would be like to have the man’s canines sink into his nape while he was spread out under Damien’s tall, muscular body.
While the kirin appeared to emerge unscathed, the same couldn’t be said about its wearer. Damien’s scars were visible when he raked his fingers through his hair. They were angry looking, nearly ropy from long stitches, and scarlet pink. A thicker scar ran down his chest, the skin pulling in at the sides when he moved, the remnant of some surgery Damien couldn’t remember. Patches of skin along the man’s sides were marbled, as if he’d been burned or dragged across concrete, but Damien couldn’t tell him much about those either.
It was as if his entire life prior to Skywood had been shredded, and he was trying to piece together something solid out of the strands, taping things up in the hopes that something… anything… would eventually make sense. And then he could go back to being the man he thought he’d been in the past.
The coffee did little to stave off Damien’s exhaustion. One moment he was murmuring something about his band; then Sionn heard him snuffling, fast asleep in the curve of the couch.
He’d maneuvered Damien around until the man was lying down, and the soft knitted afghan his aunt’d given him one Christmas had been tucked up around his too-slender form. Either the blanket was too warm or Damien felt confined because, after pulling it up over Damien’s body for the third time, Sionn left it pooled around the man’s slim waist.
“Suppose I should be happy you’ve got it over your legs at least,” Sionn muttered over the laptop screen at the sleeping guitarist.
Another peek under his lashes gave Sionn a mouthwatering view of the young man’s firm shoulders and lightly muscled back. The dip of his spine created a shadow along Damien’s long torso, and Sionn’s mind wandered off with his tongue, leaving him to wonder how the man’s skin would taste in the back of his throat. Biting his lower lip, Sionn used the pain to refocus his attention to his reading, ignoring the erotic smell of slightly sweaty boy and the idea of coffee-flavored kisses.