Chapter Two #2
“Elodie?” Nadia’s voice comes from somewhere distant.
I can’t look away. Those blue eyes pin me in place, liquid heat pooling between my thighs, my pulse thundering in my ears. I’m aware of my own lips parting, of the sudden sensitivity of my skin. The way my nipples have tightened against my bra without my permission.
“Elodie,” Nadia says again, sharper now.
I blink, the room rushing back in a wave of mortification.
“Oh, I—I’m sorry. I didn’t hear,” I stutter, my cheeks hot.
Nadia watches me with knowing brown eyes. And Raiden still stares at me with a penetrating gaze that seems to see straight through my clothes, my composure, and my carefully constructed walls.
My face burns. I drop my head, staring at the black-and-white checkered floor, wishing I could dissolve into it.
“I’ll take it from here, Nadia.” His voice draws my attention and gaze back to him. “Follow me.”
I don’t hear Nadia leave. His voice is like smoke and gravel, pulling me, and it sends a shiver down my spine. It settles into a heavy and insistent ache between my legs.
I follow, acutely aware of every step. All I can think about is that he’ll soon have his hands on my bare skin. The thought alone makes me wet, makes me squeeze my thighs together as I walk, seeking friction that isn’t there.
No one has ever made me feel this raw, helpless heat that turns my thoughts to static and my knees to water. His tattoo room is small, intimate. A black leather chair dominates the center, surrounded by equipment and supplies.
He closes the door behind us, and the click of the latch seems to echo in the sudden privacy. He turns to look directly at me, and I realize I’ve been staring.
Heat floods my face. “Oh.” I look down immediately. “I’m sorry.”
A low chuckle reaches my ears. “Let me see it.”
I unfold the paper and hand it to him, suddenly aware of how soft the creases have gone from all the times I've opened it today. A tiny lavender sprig. My mother grew lavender in pots on the back porch of every house we ever rented, and it was the only thing she never managed to kill. Sarah let me choose. For a second, I smile, suddenly reminded of the reason I’m here. The significance of my choices.
He studies it far longer than I expect. “You draw this?”
“I tried. That’s the fourth attempt.”
“It’s good.” He carries it to a machine on the counter and feeds it through, and something inside it warms and whirs. “Sizing it down. Then I'll pull a stencil.”
He holds the transfer up a minute later. The lavender again, reversed, in dark purple.
“Is this right?” he asks.
I nod. “Yes.”
Our gazes connect, and everything soon quickly disappears. All except the intensity of his sharp gaze and how deeply I’m affected. He breaks the connection first.
“Shoulder blade?”
I nod, unable to speak, and reach for the hem of my shirt with trembling fingers. Raiden turns, giving me his back, and I nearly whimper at the courtesy. I strip quickly, folding my arms across my chest in my bra, feeling exposed and vulnerable and desperately aroused.
“Ready,” I manage, my voice barely above a whisper.
He turns, and his gaze drops to my bare shoulders and crossed arms. Something flares in those sharp eyes—hunger, dark and unmistakable. “On the chair,” he commands. “Face away from me.”
My core clenches in response to his demanding tone. Grateful, I settle onto the leather, cool against my heated skin.
“Strap down.”
I slide it off my shoulder, and there’s nothing to do with my hands afterward except hold the cups against myself and stare at the wall.
I hear him tear something open. Then a razor moves across my shoulder blade in short, unhurried strokes, and I have never in my life been so aware of a piece of my own skin. There’s no hair there worth removing. He does it anyway…and takes his time about it.
“Standard,” he says, like he heard me thinking.
Coldness covers the area next. An alcohol wipe, and I gasp before I can stop myself. He doesn’t say anything at all. Then something slick and cool spread in a thin layer across the same patch, his gloved fingers working it out to the edges.
“Don’t move.”
The stencil presses down. He holds it there with the flat of his hand, longer than seems necessary, his palm warm through the paper and his other hand resting against my ribs to keep me still. When he peels it away, it’s slow, from one corner, and I feel every millimeter of it lift.
He angles a hand mirror over my shoulder. The lavender sits there in purple, exactly where I’d imagined it.
“Happy?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now we wait.” He rolls his stool back a foot. “Twenty minutes, minimum. It needs to be bone dry before I start.”
“Twenty minutes?”
“Twenty minutes.” A pause. “You can’t lean back. You can’t put your shirt on. You can’t touch it. And I can’t touch you because anything I do to that stencil, I do to your tattoo.”
I sit there in my bra with my back to him and my hands full of my own chest. I understand exactly what he’s told me, but he’s just three feet away. He’s going to look at me for twenty minutes, and neither of us is allowed to do a single thing about it.
The silence stretches. I hear him inhale. Once, deliberately, in a way that isn’t quite steady.
“Raiden—”
“Don’t.” His voice has dropped into gravel. “Not until it’s dry.”
It is the longest twenty minutes of my life.
When it finally ends, I hear gloves snap. Then his fingers brush my shoulder. A whisper of touch, and my breath stills.
“It’ll sting, but it’s manageable,” he says gently, his voice sliding over my skin.
I nod, as the ache between my legs continues to grow. The tattoo machine hums to life, a low buzz that vibrates through my bones. The first needle contact is sharp, burning, but my mind goes elsewhere. Specifically, the heat radiating from his body so close to mine.
The occasional brush of his knuckles against my spine. The way my arousal has made me slick and swollen and empty. The pain becomes distant, almost irrelevant, swallowed by the throbbing need between my thighs.
I want his hands everywhere. I want to turn around and see if he is affected, if his pupils are blown wide, if the front of his jeans shows evidence of wanting me too. The shame of it burns almost as hot as the desire.
Time loses meaning. The buzz of the machine, the occasional murmur of his voice explaining what he’s doing, and the wet sound of him wiping away ink and blood—all of it weaves into a haze of sensation that leaves me dizzy and aching.
What’s happening to me?. I’ve never been attracted to a man or felt this intense an attraction before. I know I’m acting out of character, but I can’t stop.
“Almost done,” he says, and his breath ghosts over my neck.
I shudder, unable to stop it, and hear his low intake of breath in response.
Then the machine goes silent. He sets it aside, and I feel the fresh snap of a clean glove before his fingers smooth something cool over my burning skin.
Even through the latex, the touch is electric, intimate, and I tremble before I can stop myself.
“Easy,” he murmurs, and the word feels like a caress.
He offers me a hand, and I take it, sliding off the chair.
My legs betray me. I stumble forward, and his hands catch me, one at my waist, one against my bare back, pulling me against him.
His chest is hard against my breasts, his thighs solid against mine.
And through the thin layers separating us, I feel him thick and hard and unmistakably interested.
I look up, gasping, and find his eyes dark now, blown wide with the same hunger I’ve been swimming in. The air between us crackles, heavy and charged, and I can’t look away. He lowers his head. I rise on my toes to meet him.
His mouth is hot and demanding, and I melt into it. He slides his tongue against mine, and that’s when I feel it. The coolness of a metal piercing sliding over my tongue, sending pulsating currents through me.
I moan low in my throat, and he pulls me closer, until I feel every inch of his arousal pressed against my stomach. I whimper into his mouth, clutching his shoulders, and he swallows the sound like he’s starving for it.
A knock shatters the moment. “Elodie? You almost done?” Sarah’s voice, bright and oblivious, comes from the other side of the door.
I jump back, my hand flying to my swollen lips, my face flaming.
I kissed a stranger. I let him touch me, hold me.
I was ready to let him do anything, and I don’t even know his last name.
I’ve been kissed before, at school dances and once badly at a graduation party.
But nothing that ever made me forget where I was standing.
Raiden’s chest heaves, his eyes still locked on mine, dark and fierce. “Come back,” he says, his voice rough. “In a few days. I need to check the healing.”
The idea of seeing him again, knowing his hands will be on my skin again, sends a fresh wave of heat through me. I nod, unable to speak, and pull my shirt back on with shaking hands.
???
The next afternoon reminds me why I love teaching. The end of the school day is always chaotic.
Children hug me goodbye, backpacks seem to multiply out of nowhere, and at least three students have already started campaigning about who gets to take the classroom turtle this weekend.
Yet it doesn’t stop my mind from wandering. Every few minutes, my thoughts drift back to the tattoo shop. Back to Raiden. To those impossible blue eyes and the way he looked at me. The memory warms my chest every time.
“Have a good night, Miss Doyle!”
“You too, Emma.”