Chapter 29
DAN
The shop has been dead today. That’s partly because it’s summer, when business naturally slows without all the students around, but there’s also a tattoo convention happening downtown.
All the shop’s other artists are there. I volunteered to hold down the fort because crowds like that are my own personal hell.
But Drake called twenty minutes ago and told Rosie, who’s working the front desk, to close up.
While she shuts everything down out front, I stay back in my booth, my iPad in hand.
I’m not in a hurry to get back to Carson’s, not with her mother around.
She seems like a nice enough lady, but I hate the way she talks to Carson, her criticism veiled as support.
I can see the way it picks at Carson, slipping under her skin until she folds in on herself.
It’s not a side of her I’d seen before her mother showed up unexpectedly.
It’s only because I didn’t want to make trouble for her that I managed to keep my mouth shut as Mrs. Webber threw little barbs at her.
That’s why I escaped to the shop today and why I plan to stay here sketching even though we’re closing up.
That doesn’t make it easy to be away from her, though. That moment in the hall last night? It took every bit of control I have not to fuck her against the bathroom door. I want her so badly I can taste it, the phantom flavor of strawberry ice cream on my tongue.
It’s hard to focus on sketching, but I try. I gave a guy a thistle tattoo earlier today, and it made me want to expand my portfolio of weeds. But a scuffle outside my booth, the sound of footsteps hurrying down the hall, breaks my concentration.
“We’re actually closing,” Rosie calls just as Carson turns the corner and appears at the entrance to my booth.
She’s in a pair of sinfully short black spandex shorts and a cropped T-shirt, her hair in two disheveled braids down her shoulders.
She’s sweaty and smiling, and she’s never looked more beautiful, my gorgeous little bruiser.
“Hey,” she breathes, a wide smile on her face.
Rosie looks from me to Carson and back again. “Did you finally make a friend?” she asks.
“No,” I say, then cross the floor in two strides, take Carson’s round, flushed cheeks in my hands, and kiss her. She sinks into me with a soft moan that I devour with my tongue, the sound going straight to my cock.
“Hey,” I whisper against her pretty pink lips, then glance up at Rosie. “It’s okay. She can stay.”
“Whatever, I’m out,” Rosie says, turning to head back to the front. “I’ll lock the door. Make good choices!”
Carson laughs.
“What are you doing here?” I ask. I’m still crowding her, unwilling to let even an inch of extra space come between us. I’m dizzyingly aware of how close we came last night and how soon we’ll be alone.
“I want a tattoo,” she says.
Well, that’s a surprise. “I’m sorry?”
She takes out her phone, tapping the screen to pull up an image of her lemon wallpaper.
“This. I want this, right here.” She taps her left forearm, the skin soft and smooth and free of any marks. “And I want you to do it.”
I glance at the pattern, my brain already formulating an image. “You sure?”
She nods. “I want you to give me my first tattoo.”
Oh fuck. That is way hotter than it should be.
I kiss her again, tugging on her braids and letting my hands roam down to her hips. Getting to tattoo her, to be the first to mark her skin…the prospect is too good. I want to devour her, swallow her whole.
Instead, I take her by the shoulders and walk her backward toward the large chair in the center of my booth. I press her down into it. “Let me draw for a second,” I say.
I drop onto my stool and reach for the iPad.
I feel her watching me, and my attention is torn between her and the drawing.
The image comes together quickly, because I’m more familiar with those lemons than I’d like to admit.
Ever since she showed me that wallpaper, I’ve been doodling them in every spare moment.
But I haven’t put a single one of those sketches on a flash sheet. It’s like I was saving them for her.
“This look good?” I flip the iPad around to show her the bisected lemon, a leaf peeking out from behind it. “I can take the leaf off if you want, just do the lemon.”
She shakes her head. “No. It’s perfect.”
“Color or black and white?”
Her nose wrinkles as she debates. “Color? I don’t know. What do you think?”
“It’s your body, but for what it’s worth, you’ve always been full shining color to me.”
She smiles. “Okay. Color it is.”
I print the image onto a stencil and set about preparing my station.
I could do this setup in my sleep, but I find myself taking extra time now, checking the needle and the ink, laying out all my supplies, wrapping my machine in grip tape.
I want her to feel at ease, but I also want to be sure that I take good care of her.
I think too many people have been a little too careless with Carson.
I work methodically through the steps, explaining everything as I go. And before I know it, I’m next to her, tattoo machine in hand, needle hovering over her skin.
“Ready?” I ask.
She bites her lip, the first indication that she’s nervous. But before I can try to put her at ease, my sweet girl sucks in a deep breath. She closes her eyes and blows it out slowly. I watch her take control of the moment, of herself. Then she opens her eyes, her pupils wide, and nods.
“Ready,” she says, and fuck, if I weren’t gloved up and sterile, I’d thread my fingers into the curls at the nape of her neck and pull her in for the kind of kiss that leads to other things.
But she wants a tattoo.
And I’m going to give it to her.
“Let me know if you want to stop. We can take a break at any point. There’s no rush, okay? We’re literally the only ones here.”
“Okay,” she says, her eyes on me.
“Okay.” I tap my foot on the floor pedal, making the machine buzz to life, and begin the first line.
When the needle bites into her skin, she doesn’t jump or hiss. She doesn’t even wince. If anything, the pain just makes her more stoic. More determined.
She’s more in control than I am, that’s for sure.
I’m fighting for my life over here, because the feeling of tattooing her—permanently marking her with my art—is entirely too erotic.
Every stroke of the needle feels like a stroke of my tongue on her skin, a claim.
The needle vibrates, and my brain hears mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine.
“Talk to me,” I say, trying to interrupt my filthy thought spirals. “If you can.”
She laughs. “I’m fine. This isn’t that bad. Just sort of…uncomfortable? Irritating?”
“That sounds about right,” I tell her.
“Who was the first person you ever tattooed?” she asks. “Other than yourself, I mean.”
“Eamon, the guy who taught me how to do this. I put a spade on his arm.”
“Were you nervous?”
“Not really. Tattooing relaxes me. Same as getting tattooed.”
“You find this relaxing?” She glances down at the needle marking her skin, then quickly looks away.
“I find the whole thing meditative. The rhythm, the pain, the art of it. It requires you to be incredibly present in your body and the moment. You have to leave all your anxieties at the door and focus on what’s happening in front of you. That’s relaxing. Certainly more so than my other job.”
“Do you even like working in finance?”
“I was good at it,” I tell her, then notice I’ve used the past tense.
“You understand that that’s not the same thing, right?” she asks, then winces. I pause the machine, thinking she needs a break, but she shakes her head. “Sorry, you don’t have to answer—”
I laugh and start the machine up again. Of course she’s worried about her questions and not the needle driving into her skin several hundred times a minute.
“It’s cute how you always feel like you need conversational consent,” I say, glad to be able to pivot away from her questions about my former career and what happened to it.
“I’m sorry! I worry that my questions bother you. You’re not a very talkative person.”
“I don’t really like to talk,” I say, my eyes on my work. “But I love hearing your voice.”
She sucks in a breath, and for a moment I worry I’ve hurt her—more than I’m supposed to, anyway. But when I look up, her lips are parted and curved, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
Fuck, I want to kiss her so bad.
“Can I ask you a question?” I try, bringing my focus back to the tattoo. I’m so lucky I get to do this. I absolutely cannot fuck it up.
“I mean, you’re certainly owed a few,” she says.
“What made you come here today?”
She sighs. “I’ve been on my own for nine months, and I felt like I was just starting my real life.
I joined the roller derby team. I skinny-dipped.
I told a terrible date to go fuck himself.
I was making progress. But then my mom showed up, and suddenly I felt sixteen again.
It was like nothing had changed. I just stood by silently while she kindly, sweetly, in that supportive mom way, took me apart piece by piece. ”
My grip on the tattoo machine tightens, my molars grinding. The rage I feel that anyone has made her feel this way turns me feral.
“But then I went to practice, and Dan? I kicked ass. Literally. I laid skaters out using my body. The very one my mom is always telling me I need to change, hide, minimize. Like I should be embarrassed about who I am and what I look like. And I want to commemorate that feeling I had on the track today. I want to remember that I can do this. That I can be tough and strong just as I am.”
“I’m honored that you came to me,” I tell her, putting the finishing touches on the shading. I set the machine down on the tray, wipe away the excess blood and ink so she can see the final product, and look up at her.
She gazes down at the tattoo, her bottom lip between her teeth as she fights a grin.
“I love it, Dan,” she says, and dammit, the sound of the word love falling from her lips does dangerous things to me. Then she reaches up and takes a fistful of my shirt, pulling me down to her lips.