Permanent Ink by Avon Gale and Piper Vaughn
Series: Art & Soul, #1
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Release Date (Print & Ebook): August 7, 2017
Length (Print & Ebook): 68K
Subgenre: Contemporary
This book includes: Daddy kink and an age gap
Book Blurb
At twenty-three, Poe Montgomery is going nowhere. He still lives in his father’s basement and spends most of his time tagging with his friends. When an arrest lands him in debt, Poe accepts the front desk job at Permanent Ink, the tattoo shop owned by his father’s best friend, Jericho McAslan. Jericho is nearly twice Poe’s age, but with his ink and prematurely graying hair, he quickly takes the starring role in Poe’s hottest fantasies.
Jericho is known for his ability to transform poorly designed tattoos into works of art, but he was once as aimless and misdirected as Poe. Wanting to pay it forward the way someone once did for him, Jericho makes Poe his apprentice and is determined to keep things strictly professional. Easier said than done when Poe makes his interest—and his daddy kink—abundantly clear.
Jericho can’t resist Poe or their intense chemistry for long. But between the age gap, tension with Poe’s father, and Poe’s best friend calling him a sellout, they’ll need to ensure they’re both on the same page before they can rewrite their rocky start into something permanent.
Piper Vaughn and Avon Gale have this to say: we hope people enjoy spending time with our characters as much as we do!
Buy links
Riptide Publishing | Amazon
What Others are Saying
After reading Permanent Ink, I wanted to get tattooed and go on a graffiti mural tour, but not before rereading the sex scenes. This writing duo is dynamite, and the chemistry between the characters becomes explosive the further you read. Not to be missed!
-Santino Hassell, RITA nominated author of the Five Boroughs and Cyberlove series
Select Brief Quotes from the Book
I wanted to touch him so bad it was as if my hands had turned to iron and his skin had suddenly been magnetized. It felt like a fucking compulsion.
***
I couldn’t help it—the more Poe toed the line, the more I was aware of his physical attributes and how goddamn hot he was when he wasn’t running that sulky mouth of his.
Excerpt
I took another pull from my beer, letting my tongue linger on the lip of the bottle.
Jericho’s eyes darkened. He stared for a second before making a noticeable effort to tear his attention away. His gaze slid to the side, and his brows knitted together. I wouldn’t let him ignore me, though. I stepped closer, invading his personal space, and he met my stare again.
“That means a lot coming from you. I know how good you are.” I meant the words, even if my motivation for saying them wasn’t entirely pure. I smiled at him, peering up through the dark fall of my hair, letting my interest show.
His lips quirked.
This close, I could feel his heat through the thin material of his navy T-shirt. This close, I could see the green striations in his hazel irises. This close, I could smell soap and musk and the faint scent of beer on his breath.
I wanted to touch him so bad it was as if my hands had turned to iron and his skin had suddenly been magnetized. It felt like a fucking compulsion.
Without thinking, I kissed him.
Jericho froze at the contact. But I surged forward, crowding him back against the counter and licking at the seam of his lips, inviting his tongue out to play. Jericho gave into me with a quiet sound, a muffled groan that made my cock stiffen.
I got enough of his taste to make me crave more, enough time to think “hell yeah” and start to consider humping his hard thigh—before a loud, shattering noise broke the silence and made us jump apart.
I realized I’d dropped the beer bottle and a puddle of golden liquid was spreading across the linoleum at our feet. “Oh shit.”
Jericho stared at me, his mouth still wet from mine. “Fuck.” His gaze went from me to the broken glass on the floor. “Fuck. That should not have happened.” He snatched the roll of paper towels from the holder on the counter and started spreading a few on the floor to sop up the beer.
I watched him, trying to swallow past the sudden tightness in my throat. He was so focused on the mess it was obvious he didn’t want to look at me.
“I’ll go get the cleaning stuff,” I announced.
Jericho’s jerky nod was my only answer.
I went to the small utility closet across the hall and briefly thudded my forehead against the wood.
“Shit.”
I hoped I hadn’t just fucked up my apprenticeship.
I hoped I hadn’t made things super fucking awkward.
And more than that, in spite of knowing it was probably wrong to want him—he was my boss, my mentor, my dad’s best friend—I wished I hadn’t dropped that stupid bottle.
3 of 5 Stars
This was a decent start to the series, but nothing to rave about for me thus the 3 star rating.
Poe was a bit of a punk at the beginning of the story. He did go through some maturation but we got some glimpses of the punk kid throughout the story. There weren’t many times he seemed like an adult to me. I like Jericho and think he’s the positive influence Poe needs. I love that he wants to pay forward the break he got when he was a kid.
I was surprised that with Poe’s inner dialog about being a sub, the kink he liked and the rough, forced sex that there wasn’t more focus on that. There were hints of it but not as much as I expected after reading his preferences and I was disappointed in that. I’m not a huge fan of the ‘daddy’ kink and it really didn’t work for me in this instance with Jericho being good friends with Poe’s actual father. I wanted a bit more romance between them and development of their relationship. Their story seemed a bit incomplete to me.
We get a lot from the side characters. It sounds like Blue and Callum will get a book…probably next. I think that will be tough to get through because Blue was not likable at all in this book. There were hints of his troubled childhood so I’m guessing that will play a part. The authors have the potential for an amazing bdsm book with Blue’s need to be taken in hand and Callum’s penchant for being in charge. It also sounds like Landon will get a book…potentially with his new employee although we didn’t get too much foreshadowing on that yet, just a hint.
Authors Bios
Avon Gale was once the mayor on Foursquare of Jazzercise and Lollicup, which should tell you all you need to know about her as a person. She likes road trips, rock concerts, drinking Kentucky bourbon and yelling at hockey. She’s a displaced southerner living in a liberal midwestern college town, and she never gets tired of people and their stories—either real or the ones she makes up in her head.
Avon is represented by Courtney Miller-Callihan at Handspun Literary Agency.
Connect with Avon: Twitter | Facebook | Newsletter | Instagram Website
Piper Vaughn wrote her first love story at eleven and never looked back. Since then, she’s known that writing in some form was exactly what she wanted to do. A reader at the core, Piper loves nothing more than getting lost in a great book—fantasy, young adult, romance, sci-fi, she loves them all (and has a three-thousand-book library to prove it!).
As a bisexual and Latinx person, Piper takes great pride in her heritage. She grew up in an ethnically diverse neighborhood and strives to put faces and characters of every ethnicity in her stories, so her fictional worlds are as colorful as the real one. Above all, she believes that everyone needs a little true love in their life … even if it’s only in a book.
Connect with Piper: Twitter | Facebook | Pinterest | Instagram | Website | Blog
Giveaway: Win 2 e-copies of PERMANENT INK!