Chapter 16
RIGGS
Iwould never admit it to Damon’s face, but the artists he’d set up interviews with were all amazing. He’d also—probably deliberately—given me a mix of old school and new school tattooers of varying genders so I couldn’t tell him anything had been lacking.
Wednesday night after finishing up my last appointment, I slid my stool back toward the window and took stock of the shop.
He was right, two would fit easy, three if I downsized my own area which I wasn’t necessarily inclined to do.
It was my shop, after all, and I had given up so much to make it possible.
Bringing in new artists wasn’t a necessity, but it would make my life easier.
I deserved that, didn’t I?
“Just make a decision,” I told myself, sliding back over to the counter where I had all the potential artists portfolios spread across the top.
Flipping open the black leather cover of the first one, I traced my fingertip over the ornate script work on the front page spelling out the artist’s name, Merrick.
The second page of his book was a burst of sharp and bright colors, a huge dragon wrapping from his client’s elbow to shoulder.
The proportions were on point, the lines clean, and the color solid.
Halfway through his book, my phone buzzed against my thigh.
It took some work to fish it out of the pocket of my skinny jeans, but I managed.
My heart immediately lodged in my throat at the sight of Smith’s name on the screen.
Memories of Saturday night assaulted me, the hot thickness of his cock in my hand, the needy way he whimpered when he came between my thighs.
Smith was the perfect submissive, and he didn’t even know it, barely even understood what it meant.
He was so touch-starved and needy for attention, giving mine to him had been like pouring water into drought-cracked dirt.
Smith had sucked it all up and asked for more, but I worried he wouldn’t know when—or how—to stop himself.
I worried I didn’t know how to stop myself.
Scarier still, I didn’t know why I wanted him so much.
I’d talked to Damon about it on Sunday, at length, and I hadn’t gotten any closer to an answer.
As far as I could tell, there wasn’t anything particularly special about Smith besides everything about him.
More concerning, my interest in him, and how that would or would not play out if things between us went further.
It had been easy with Ev to explain that I was some confusing kind of asexual I wasn’t sure there was a label for.
Not repulsed but ambivalent. More focused on the pleasure of my partner than my own.
Erections—when I managed them—rarely ended in orgasm for me, and I was never the one who had an issue with that.
Other men, other partners, they were the ones who viewed my participation…
my enjoyment, as a requirement for theirs.
“Pull the bandage off,” Damon had told me on Sunday. “Make sure he knows what he’s getting into with you before he gets into it.”
It was the responsible thing to do. Even if I wasn’t ace, I was a responsible dom and that involved clear communication and concise boundaries with my partners. Smith deserved that, and so did I.
Swiping across the screen, I read his message, not realizing how much I’d wanted it until it was there.
Smith
I’m afterglow free.
Can I come over?
Licking my lips, I pulled them between my teeth to fight back a smile.
Come over for what?
I want to talk about being something different than I was.
Than I am.
I didn’t want Smith to be anything different, but I was willing to have the conversation with him.
I’m here.
I’ll see you soon.
I shoved my phone back into my pocket so it didn’t turn into an embarrassing kind of no, you hang up conversation.
Turning my attention back to Merrick’s portfolio, I tried to focus on his art, but there wasn’t anything to see I hadn’t already noticed on the first pass.
He lived in Hollywood, and he’d been tattooing for seven years.
The owner of the shop he’d been at passed, and he didn’t want to work for the guy’s son, so he’d decided to look for something else.
Ink and Ember would be a perfect fit for him and his art, and before I could talk myself out of it, I slid his book toward the edge of the counter, making it my unofficial yes pile.
The next book up was a young thing, barely out of an apprenticeship at a shop that wasn’t going to be a good long-term fit for somebody still learning the ropes.
Colton was sweet, but he’d been more nervous than I wanted for my shop, so I slid him into a no pile.
At the end of the review, I had four in the yes pile and two in the no pile, and I hated how well Damon knew me.
Going from four to two was not going to be easy, and I decided that was a problem for tomorrow-Riggs when the bells on the front door jingled.
A gust of cool air whipped into the shop, and I glanced up to find Smith had arrived.
He looked completely different from how I’d seen him last, dressed for work with a pair of khaki pants cuffed at the ankles and a tucked in white button-up.
He wore a camel-colored pea coat and white sneakers.
Smith looked like the kind of man who didn’t belong anywhere near a tattoo shop, let alone near a man like me.
But he does.
“Hey,” I said, shoving the leatherbound books to the side.
His mouth quirked into a nervous smile as the door swung closed behind him.
“Hi. Do you want me to lock it?”
“Yeah.”
Smith engaged the lock and flipped the sign from open to closed, then approached the pass-thru, his mouth still fighting the smile.
“Can I come back?”
“Always,” I told him before I could think better of it.
He lifted the door and came through, smelling a lot like old houses and pencil lead. He was so close to me, and I wanted to kiss him. Lord, I wanted to kiss him.
“How are you?” I asked him instead.
“Good,” he answered. “But I left my lotion at work and my arm is really tight. Do you have any I can use?”
I swallowed hard and nodded, jerking my head toward my station.
He followed after me and shrugged out of his pea coat before sitting down on the chair.
Instead of holding out his hand for the bottle, he held out his entire arm.
The instruction was as much an order as any submissive had ever given, and I sat down on the stool and slid up to him.
Taking his wrist in one hand, I gave a careful check to the tattoo to make sure everything was healing well.
It looked great, only a little irritated where the cuff of his coat had rubbed against it.
I squirted some lotion into my hand and gently smeared it up the length of his forearm.
Smith sucked in a breath when my fingers curled around his muscle, stroking up toward his elbow and back down again.
Everything about it was suggestive, even though it was innocent, and the air in the shop grew thick and heavy with his want.
Yeah, I definitely had to have the conversation with him.
“Better?” I asked, clearing my throat and propelling myself far enough away from him that I could breathe again.
“Yeah. Yes.” He studied his arm, smiled. “Thank you.”
“So, you wanted to talk about the other night?” I asked.
“I wanted to talk about another night,” he corrected. “But yes.”
With Smith on the massage chair and me on my stool, he had physical leverage over me, and I rubbed my hands on my knees to steady myself for what I was about to say.
Years of knowing myself hadn’t made the conversation any easier to have, but I had found the best approach was straightforward and truthful.
“Before that, there’s something I have to be honest about.”
His stare flickered wide, and he shifted his weight. The leather beneath his ass creaked, and I didn’t miss the way he winced. He must still have bruises, and fuck if that wasn’t the hottest thing ever.
“Do you have an STI?” he asked
I chuckled, scratching my ear. “No.”
“I wouldn’t care if you did,” he said quickly. “It’s…there’s so many ways to be safe.”
“I don’t have an STI,” I told him again. “Do you?”
“No. Not that I know of.”
“Okay.” I nodded, trying to fight back the way I wanted to scoop him into a bridal carry and take him upstairs and never let him out of my sight.
Smith was a breath of fresh air, not only with his preference for submission but also his innocence.
He was obviously not sheltered, but he was so new he wasn’t anywhere near jaded.
Not like me.
“You look like you want to get hit by a bus,” he observed, and I laughed at the statement.
“It’s not that serious, I promise.” I cracked my knuckles, cracked my neck. “I’m normally much better about having control of a situation—”
“I know.”
“I just…I’ll be honest. I think I like you, and I don’t want this to be a dealbreaker.”
Smith’s brow furrowed and he cocked his head to the side. “Just tell me,” he said softly.
Sitting before this man I was genuinely interested in, it was hard to not see the face of the people who had come before him, the people before and between him and Ev.
So much wasted time and heartache over people who couldn’t see beyond their own purview of the world, couldn’t even entertain my affections for them because my body didn’t respond the way they wanted.
Fuck.
I hated feeling off base. I needed to say it and get it over with so my skin stopped feeling like it was ten sizes too small.
“I’m asexual,” I finally told him, clearing my throat. “Gray ace, rather. Kind of.”
If Smith was surprised, he didn’t show it.
“What does that look like for you?” he asked.
“It looks like personal ambivalence,” I answered. “I would rather you be the focus.”
His cheeks darkened and he tucked his chin down toward his chest. “I noticed that on Saturday.”
I nodded.
“Does this mean you don’t like to have sex? That you don’t get off?” he asked next.
“I’ve had sex before. I get off sometimes, but if I don’t, it’s not the end of the world for me. Like, I didn’t feel like I’d lost out on anything by not also getting off with you on Saturday.”
He bit the inside of his cheek, and I asked the question that had always been the final nail in the coffin, “Did you feel like you’d lost out on anything because of it?”
He made a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat and shrugged one shoulder. “No, I mean, not really. I worried you didn’t enjoy yourself because you didn’t come, but if you didn’t want to come, then…” he trailed off, shoulder sagging back down to match the other one.
“This is normally a dealbreaker,” I told him.
“For you?”
I chuckled, scrubbing a hand down my face. “No, for everyone else.”
“That seems silly,” he said. “If I can trust you to do some of the things you did to me on Saturday, I can trust you to have a handle on your own pleasure.”
The hit I’d been bracing for didn’t come, and it took me some time to realize it. Smith sat patiently on the chair, fingers tapping a silent beat against his kneecap. There was no sound in the shop except for my heart in my ears and the creak of the wheel on my stool when I shifted my weight.
“It doesn’t bother you that if we continue on together, we might never have sex?” I asked.
“I think you’ve already proven we don’t need to have sex for you to make me feel better than anyone else ever has.” He paused, brow knitting together again. “I have a question, though.”
“Of course,” I rasped, still a little in shock things were going so well.
“Does this mean you don’t…God, this is going to sound so crass.”
“I can handle it.”
“Does this mean you don’t like to be touched at all? Like, you wouldn’t want me to jerk your cock or suck it?”
I swayed toward him. “I very much enjoy being touched, and I would welcome you doing those things…as long as you understand the ending of it might look different for me than it does for you. It doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy being with you.”
“And penetrative sex?”
“I don’t feel strongly about it,” I told him. “I’ve done it, but there’s ways I would rather spend my time.”
“And people have had an issue with this?” he asked.
“Often.”
“That seems…I know I said it already, but silly. I don’t understand why people would care about it.”
I laughed, a sound coming out of my mouth that almost felt like relief, even if I didn’t trust it all the way. “I’m glad you think so.”
“I get it if they can’t see past their own pleasure, but I think that, like…I think that getting off from pain sort of already puts me past that normal view of sex, right?”
“That’s not for me to say,” I murmured.
“I don’t think what you’ve told me makes you any less.” He rubbed at his throat as he said the words, forearm muscle bulging and twisting.
God, I couldn’t wait for his tattoo to heal so I could put him into rope.
“Good,” I told him, still nervous but feeling better…
feeling more myself. I stood up to my full height, giving me the leverage I needed to steady myself back in my body.
I liked that Smith caught me off-guard. He’d done it the day he’d come to get tattooed, and he’d done it Saturday, and he’d done it again now.
The only predictable thing about Smith Covington was that there wasn’t a predictable thing about him.
“Now that we have that out of the way, we can talk about another night.”