Kieran #2
“What’s it about?” I asked, pinching the screen to zoom in a bit so I could whip up a few little feather details. I wanted him to say it out loud, that he wanted the wings because that’s what I call him. I needed him to say it.
Maybe that was why he could express everything so easily, and admit things that I would have died before ever being able to say out loud. Because that was what I always needed.
“I want your mark on me,” he said simply, like it was nothing.
The double entendre, something I think I’d been subconsciously avoiding until that moment drilled into my ears like an ice pick, sending adrenaline roaring through my veins.
My muscles clenched, my heart rate soaring up like a rocket going to space.
“And… I love it when you call me angel. I love that you look at me like that. I want to be your pretty little angel and make you happy.”
“You are,” I said, my voice coming out quiet and rough, even though I didn’t mean it to. “You make me so fucking happy I can’t even explain it.”
“You don’t have to,” he assured me. “I know. And I know I make you miserable, too.”
“It’s not you. It’s everyone else.”
“That part’s going to get better,” he said, his words doing nothing to quiet the thrashing of my emotions. Reminding myself to keep my eyes down on my tablet, I made a noise of assent, but didn’t otherwise answer.
I didn’t know what to say or what to think.
I knew what he was implying. I knew what he meant when he said he wanted my mark on him.
Could he really mean that? I’d forced myself to believe that he was only infatuated with me in the beginning, but…
I’d only been lying to myself. It was obvious now that he didn’t have some shallow, childish crush on me.
He saw me as his comfort, his protector…
His alpha. He seemed to love everything about me, even the parts I was so desperate to keep hidden away from him.
He wanted me, and everything that entailed.
But first, he wanted a different mark from me. Something only I could give him. That part, I knew I could do.
He was quiet until I finished, but when I handed him the tablet to get his approval on the sketch, he let out this unbearably adorable little gasp.
“Oh, Kieran, it’s so pretty.”
“I wasn’t going to put something ugly on you,” I said, feeling my face get hot. His unencumbered praise always did that to me.
“You really are amazing,” he gushed, as I ran the drawing through the thermal printer to make a stencil. “I just love the way you draw.”
He said he loved my art, but it sounded like he was saying he loved me. But if I lingered on that thought too much I’d start hyperventilating.
“Alright, you can, uh…” I was used to taking his clothes off by now, but doing it at my work in a sort of professional context felt awkward and somehow illegal. And after hearing all that devoted adoration in his voice, I was starting to get turned on.
He shifted, laughing at me with his eyes. “Are you getting shy on me, Kieran James?”
“Just take your pants off,” I amended quickly, trying to suppress a grin at his playful tone. Sinful little brat.
“Don’t say it like that,” he said, giving me a mock pout as he flicked open the button of his jeans, peeling them down his legs in a way that made it obvious he wanted me to be thinking about fucking him. “You’re going to get me all horny.”
“You’re not going to feel that way for long,” I promised, gently guiding him down into a laying position. “Hipbone is not really a placement I’d recommend for a tattoo virgin.”
“It’s going to hurt, right?”
“Yeah,” I confirmed, feeling a little bad already. “But I’ll be gentle. And you can tell me if you need a break.”
Shrugging off my own jacket, I draped it over his lower half like a blanket so he wouldn’t get cold, and also so I wouldn’t keep imagining spreading his legs and pushing my dick inside him.
When I popped on a pair of gloves, Jordy gave me a stupidly suggestive look, wiggling his eyebrows.
Shaking my head, I rolled my eyes. He was so good at making intense things feel light and bearable.
Without him doing that all the time, I might have already died from a stress aneurysm at some point in my 21 years.
Pushing the jacket I’d laid on him to the side so I had access to his hip, I poked at the spot he’d touched out in the lobby with Barbie. “You want it here, right?”
“Yeah,” he said, glancing down at where I touched him. “You like it there?”
“It’s not for me,” I said automatically. I was used to saying that to customers when they asked for guidance on placement or preference. “It’s for you.”
“Yeah, but… I want you to like it,” he said, peering up at me through his long lashes, looking impossibly beautiful and eager to please. So much for not getting turned on. “You’ll like it, right?”
“Yeah,” I answered quietly, stroking my thumb over his skin. I was going to fucking love it.
My angel, so smooth and pale and perfectly unmarred, with this secret little stamp that I only knew about, a stamp that symbolized his devotion to me, and how much he loved belonging to me.
It was almost too much to take, like something I couldn’t have conjured up in even my most pathetic, lovesick fantasies about him.
Wiping down the spot with an alcohol wipe before applying the stencil solution, I ordered him to be still while I carefully positioned the stencil on him, pressing down long enough for the ink to transfer onto his skin.
Gently peeling it off, I blotted it a bit before glancing back up into his face.
“Now we have to let it dry.”
“Is that going to take long?” He wondered, and the light nerves in his voice had my alpha instincts jumping to life inside me, urging me to make sure he was comfortable.
“Just a few minutes,” I promised. “Be patient.”
Leaning forward a few inches, I gently blew a stream of cool air onto the damp patch of skin, making him squirm on the table.
“Kieran,” he whined, giving me a pouty look.
“Just trying to speed it up,” I murmured, grinning a little at his expression. Not exactly my most professional moment, but at least he didn’t look nervous anymore.
When the stencil dried and I was hovering over him with my tattoo machine, I gave his thigh a quick squeeze to calm his nerves, but also mine. I hadn’t been nervous about doing a tattoo for a long time, but with Jordy it was a completely different experience.
When I dipped the needle into my black ink pot and it touched down into his skin the first time, he winced, but nothing so extreme that I wanted to die of guilt for hurting him.
Hurting his feelings was one thing, but the idea of actually causing him physical pain was agonizing for me.
To my extreme relief, he took in a deep breath, slowly letting it out before giving me a tiny nod.
“It’s okay,” he assured me, his gorgeous eyes radiating absolute trust and love and adoration for me. Fuck. He was so fucking good at that.
Pressing down on the pedal and wiping off the excess ink as I made my way around the simple outline, it started to take form.
Glancing up at Jordy periodically to make sure he was okay, the slavishly devoted look on his face assured me that he was my omega, and as far as he was concerned, there was nothing I could do to him that he wouldn’t allow.
It was ridiculous and insane and embarrassing, but I was aching with need for him, yearning to take him somewhere private and worship his body so he knew how much I cherished him.
Luckily, my stiff cock straining against my zipper didn’t distract me so much as it kept me hyper-focused on him as I switched to a bigger needle, moving it in tiny circles over his skin to fill in the outline with shading and color.
“So people get addicted to how this feels?” He finally asked, after a long stretch of silence, as I finished up the details and little highlights.
“That’s what they say.”
“Do you feel that way?” He wondered. “Do you like the pain part of it?”
“No,” I said immediately, shaking my head. “I like the finished product, and having the art on me forever. But I…” I stopped, and hesitated.
The words that wanted to come out weren’t casual, like the way he’d asked the question. I had the sudden urge to be vulnerable with him, like the way he was vulnerable to me now, bare and at my mercy.
“I don’t like the pain,” I finished. “I’ve kind of had enough of that, from when I was a kid.”
There, I’d said it, and the urge was gone, leaving me with an itchy, nervous anticipation of his response. I was aware he already knew about what my childhood had been like before we’d ever met, but we’d never exactly had a conversation about it.
He waited for me to lift the tattoo machine off him before he reached out, laying his fingers on the back of my gloved hand, the light touch sending warmth and comfort spiraling through me, even through the barrier.
“And you turned out so thoughtful and generous and caring, even with all that you went through. I’m so lucky.”
“You’re lucky?” I asked incredulously, the words tumbling out before I had a chance to consider them.
His assessment of me was humbling and thrilling and made me feel like the fucking king of the world.
He nodded, keeping his eyes locked on mine, keeping his fingers resting on me. “I’m the lucky one.”
He looked pleased by my response, turning just a bit pink as he fluttered his lashes at me. It was like he had a superpower, looking as alluring as possible all the time, no matter what was going on.
When I finished, just a minute or two later, I put down my machine and cleaned it up, admiring my work as I did. It was perfect for him. Pretty and bright with crisp, clean lines, a colorful little sticker on his sexy hipbone. And no one would ever even know it was there except us.
When I helped him up off the table and let him stand in front of the mirror to look at it, his eyes lit up like a fireworks show, and he grasped at my arm.
“Oh my gosh, Kieran!” He sounded breathless and in awe, delighted with what I’d done for him. “I love it. I really, really love it.”
“Yeah,” I answered, only because I was afraid to say all the sappy, disgusting shit I really wanted to say. He hadn’t noticed my throbbing boner yet, or I’d be in real trouble. “It looks good.”
My angel, pretty and delicate and shiny. I wouldn’t let anyone take him from me. I wouldn’t let anyone hurt him.
He listened intently as I gave the aftercare instructions, covering it with ointment and popping the protective adhesive on top.
I didn’t bother pretending not to stare as he wriggled his tight jeans back up his legs, or pretending I didn’t notice how perfectly they hugged his bubble butt. We were a little past that phase of our dynamic.
As the adrenaline of tattooing him started to ebb, just a bit, I realized the gravity of what we’d done. He’d asked for me to put something on him that would be there forever, something that directly related to me and my feelings for him.
He didn’t want another alpha, ever. He’d told me over and over but my stubborn brain, terrified of being discarded and abandoned, had tried to keep me safe by making me believe he hadn’t meant it.
But Jordy Nolan wasn’t the type of person to make gestures casually.
He’d gotten the tattoo to show me that he was mine, and he always wanted to be mine.
I didn’t have to be afraid of losing him.
“Hey,” I said quietly, and he instantly turned, the rough intensity in my voice alerting him to my high emotions.
“Yeah?” He asked, his brows drawing together as he looked up into my eyes, like he was trying to decode how I was feeling so he could fix it. Like he couldn’t stand to let me feel unhappy or upset for even a minute.
“I… Um…”
I wanted to let him know I understood what he’d done, and how much it meant to me.
How it felt like my heart was swelling in my chest, splintering and warping into something new, stronger and sturdier.
How incredibly grateful I was to have someone like him, who truly understood me and what I needed, and how completely fucking miserable I would be without him.
But I didn’t have a clue how. Or if my tongue would even cooperate and let me form my jumbled thoughts into understandable English.
Reaching out for him, I gripped him around his waist, nudging him closer until he was pressed up against me. As always, he snaked his arms around my neck, allowing me to lift him up into my arms so he could snuggle into me.
It was normal and expected for him to like being picked up by me. It demonstrated my biological size and strength over him, and implied that I could be his protector if needed. But it still always made my ego go crazy when he made those happy little purring noises against my neck.
“I just want to say…” I stopped, letting out a light groan of frustration. Why was this so damn hard? “Thank you.”
I waited for him to ask what I was thanking him for, before I remembered who I was talking to.
“You’re welcome,” he murmured, the feel of his lips moving against me as he spoke making me shiver. “I’m really, really happy.”
“Me too.”
“Kieran?” He asked, after a stretch of silence where we’d just breathed each other in. “You love me, right?”
My breath rushed out, catching in my throat. It had been too hard for me to say, even though I’d desperately wanted to. He’d known I’d needed his help.
“Yeah.” The sheer relief of expressing it, the release of all those knots and scars that kept me pinned down under my own self-loathing, almost had tears forming in my eyes. “I do.”
“I love you, too,” he said.
We hadn’t taken the most traditional avenue to get to those words, and maybe other people wouldn’t understand how I felt in that moment and why it was crashing over me so strongly. But I knew he understood, and that was all that mattered to me.