The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 4 Page 2

“That design’s going to take a while.” His voice carried a faint but pleasant Texas accent.

  “How many times will I have to come in?”

  Again, that appraising look. His eyes were agelessly dark. Bird’s eyes at once naïve and wise. “Maybe four or five. Is this your first tattoo?”

  She glimpsed the flash of a bead as he spoke. A pierced tongue. The sight intrigued her. She shrugged. “What you see is what you get.” Her ears weren’t even pierced. He leaned back, plainly surprised. Well, she supposed, I don’t really look the type, do I?

  “Ma’am, that’s a big tattoo, for the first time.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. She’d expected this. She didn’t want to try it and she didn’t want to start small. She wanted her wings. “When can we start?”

  He ran a hand over his near-naked skull. “Umm. Thursday afternoon? If I put you in at close, we can spend more time at it, no interruptions. I don’t want to rush.”

  “Yes. At close. I’d like that.”

  He nodded and pulled up a daily planner, flipped it ahead a few pages, and hesitated, pen needling the page. “I’m sorry. Your name?”

  “Sara.”

  He grinned, and it transformed his face. He was very handsome, beneath the twenty-first-century-primitive gloss of beads and rings. Sara felt silly for not having seen it before. “I’m John.”

  She’d looked at samples, of course, in the studio and online. John’s work was more than that of a competent copyist with a tattoo gun. His designs lived. Breathed. Which was why it surprised her that this lip-pierced puppy with his faint Texas drawl and his old/young eyes had produced them. He looked no more than twenty-two.

  They agreed on a price, and she left the design with him. She told her husband over the take-out she grabbed on the way back from the studio. “I’m getting my wings. Thursday.”

  Alex looked sidelong at her through his fringe of hair. He was thirty-five, just starting to go gray. She liked it. “You went?” She nodded mutely, already afraid. He smiled at her. “I know you want them. And I can’t wait to see. Those big black wings under all those good-girl clothes.”

  “I can’t wait either.” But her smile was dry.

  “You can do it, Sara. You’ve wanted this.”

  She hugged herself. Her husband didn’t have any tattoos. Not one. No earrings, no hidden piercings. Alex was an accountant, for God’s sake. He was normal. He couldn’t tell her what to expect.

  When she didn’t answer, he came over and kissed her softly, running his fingers through the uncoiling black spirals of her mane. “Come on, baby. What’re you scared of? These are your wings.”

  “I don’t know how to fly.”

  They both laughed, but Sara had her doubts, rooted deep, and pricking her like quills.

  On Wednesday night, as they made love, Alex turned her over, pressed her down into the blankets, and ran his fingers over the flawless skin of Sara’s back. The touch raced down her spine like liquid light, cold and hot. She felt his cock brush the back of her thighs and she expected him to enter her, but he didn’t. He bent, instead, mouthing the channel of Sara’s spine, tasting her sweat, savoring the smooth, unmarked skin. As Alex kissed from her shoulders to her hips, she caught the scent of her own fear.

  Alex’s fingers rubbed at the very core of her, stroking, skilled. His tongue drew darts over Sara’s marzipan skin. When she felt Alex’s strong arm snake about her waist and pull her back, when she felt his lips describing the delta of her tailbone and the smooth split-peach furrow of her backside, when she felt Alex’s darting tongue press against her asshole, then lower, to the sticky paradise of her pussy, it was John she thought of.

  She grabbed Alex’s hair as though clutching at an anchor, and ground back. This moment mattered, not the future, a week, a day, an hour from now. And certainly not that boy ten years her junior, with his gifted workman’s hands and his silver-tipped tongue. Alex twisted to his back and settled Sara over his face, leaned up as though thirsting for her. Sara ground down, leaning on the brass headboard for support and panting through clenched teeth. Alex’s clever, probing fingers and wicked tongue made her feel the aching hollowness of her body. Sara caught herself thinking of John again, and what he’d do to her. The needle. The touch of his hands. Dreading the pain, and longing for it. Longing for her wings.

  Alex pulled her down, strong hands on the smoothness of her hips, and she mounted him, rode him hard. Her fingers traced the scratchy stubble on his cheeks and chin, her nails raked at the hair on his chest as she pushed herself down on him. And again, thoughts of the studio boy intruded, his firm young body, his strong neck. She’d seen tattoos under his shirt, like the tails of long, black snakes.

  She finally bent back and parted her thighs wide, affording Alex a glimpse at his cock as it disappeared into her wet folds. She licked a finger and pressed it down through the narrow line of her pubic hair, pressed it to the top of his shaft, then rubbed at her own burning button. She arched, thrusting her hips out, riding him, offering him the sight of her own lovely, shameless body mounted atop him. Her breasts bounced as she drove down, and when Alex reached up to stroke them, she forced herself into his hands, urging him on with rough little cries.

  Ambushed by her own pleasure, she arched, breasts thrown out, shoulders back, her nails digging into Alex’s belly as a swan song forced its way out of her throat in one long, silvery cry. For a brief, fluttering moment, she hung between earth and sky. Then Alex overturned her, pinning her, nailing her to the mattress, his sweat sliding against her skin, her body opening and yielding to him even as her mind wandered away, wandered over smooth, black-painted skin. Alex came inside her, kissing her, but her mouth was lax beneath his. Her mind was off, wandering. Guiltily, she called it back.

  When they lay beside one another, cradled like kittens, Alex kissed Sara’s shoulder. “I thought you were going to take off.”

  “I nearly did,” Sara replied, taking Alex’s hand and kissing his fingers, tasting herself. She sighed, tired but restless, and annoyed with herself for her fantasies. She closed her eyes and wriggled back against Alex. “I love you.”

  The electronic bell beeped twice. The reception area was empty and silent but for the hum of the Coke machine. Her first time in, Sara had expected blacklight posters and incense, but the inside of the minimalist studio smelled only faintly of glass cleaner and new carpet, and was more meticulously clean than a doctor’s office. It scared her a little.

  John came out of a door behind the counter and blinked at her. This time he wore a short-sleeved shirt, white, and she could clearly see the thorned vines of tribal designs crawling from beneath his sleeves and up the back of his neck. The sight heated her.

  “Hi,” she said. “We’re still on, right?”

  “You bet,” he said, stepping around the counter. “If you’re ready, I’m ready.”

  “Didn’t think I’d show?”

  He shrugged. “A lot of people lose it at the last minute.” Then he grinned at her sidelong, an unsettlingly disarming grin. “I knew you’d show, though. I could see it in your eyes. You’re not scared.”

  “Yes, I am,” she said, correcting him with a slight laugh.

  He smiled with those eyes. “You only think you are.” He opened a door on one side of the waiting-room and gestured her inside.

  This room was better. A big padded table with a headrest, like the ones used by chiropractors or masseuses, dominated the floor. Beside it was a comfortable stool, and a standing stainless-steel tray. The room was obviously a renovated clinic, complete with cabinets and drawers, but some attempt had been made to make it look colorful. Sheets of tattoo flash covered the walls – everything from fifties cheesecake to modern biomechanical. And other furniture: a copy machine, a stereo, the little oven of the autoclave.

  Beside the stool crouched the air compressor, its snakelike tube winding up to the tray. The tattoo gun looked like a sci-fi prop, all black and silver, a cross between an airbrush and a hypode
rmic gun.

  John lay a couple of towels over the table. “You can put your shirt there,” he gestured to a clothing rack just behind the door. “I’ll give you a minute to relax.” He left her to wrestle with her fear as he prepared his tools to the sound of Paul Oakenfold. Her last chance to back out.

  She stripped her shirt off and stepped out of her shoes. He looked up, grinned once at her, the skin at the corners of his eyes wrinkling, so friendly, and she felt a sudden dread go through her like a knife at the thought of what he was about to do to her. She swallowed.

  “You can leave that on if you want,” he said of her black satin bra. “Just unsnap it in back.”

  “No,” she said. “I won’t be able to drive back in it.”

  He stole another glance at her – and why shouldn’t he? – but didn’t stare. She lay face down on the table and fidgeted. When John showed her the unopened package with the needles in it, she nodded, lips pressed tight. He lay them out and fitted the first into the gun. The ink, as he poured it into tiny, disposable wells, smelled heady and strangely organic.

  “Can you pull this down?” he asked, tugging gently at the waist of her velvet skirt with two gloved fingers. The wings’ lowest points would come almost to her sacral dimples. She bared more flesh, felt him looking at her, though he said nothing.

  He transferred the design to her very carefully, smoothing the onion-skin paper to her dampened flesh. When he peeled it away, she looked at the outline in the full-length mirror, using a hand-held glass to see over her shoulder. John’s reflection regarded her with dark eyes. His gloved hand rested on the gun. Was he thinking of her, the way her body looked just now under the harsh light, or was he, too, seeing her as she would be, when he was done?

  Sara nodded. “It’ll look fantastic.” She settled onto her belly again. “Let’s do it.”

  The air compressor snarled, and the sound of the gun as he depressed the button was a sharp, ratcheting buzz. He let her get used to the sound before he began. “I’m going to lean against you with my left arm a little.” His voice was smooth and soothing. “Are you ready?”

  She took a deep breath. “Yeah. Give me my wings.”

  She glimpsed his smile as he leaned over, his weight comfortable across her lower back, and then she felt his breath across her shoulder, cool on her skin, still damp from the disinfectant. The gun purred behind her ear. He spread the fingers of his left hand, drawing the skin taut between his thumb and forefinger. His right hand hovered above her.

  “Here we go.”

  The first line stung. The second burned. “Is that all?” she whispered, surprised by how little it hurt.

  “Yes,” he whispered back, over the needle’s wasplike drone. “That’s all.”

  And he inked her in lines of fire, the music spiraling and dancing behind the burr of the compressor. Sara watched John’s face in the big mirror as he bent over her. Once, he slid a curling lock of her hair off the design and she watched his face grow serious as he ran a gloved thumb quite deliberately up the nape of her neck. The contact was like a shock to her. He went right back to work, eyes intent, utterly absorbed. His voice came as a surprise.

  “This is a really beautiful design.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “It’s my work. I paint, when I’m not typing.”

  “You could do flash, you know. You have an eye for it.”

  His needle blazed a stop-starting scarlet trail over her shoulder and down, down, down. The arch of the alula, down the coverts, then the long, knifing burn of the left wing’s first primary. She gasped. The flesh on her lower back was so much more sensitive. He put a gentle hand on the small of her back, just above her tailbone. “Easy.”

  “It’s worse, there,” she gasped, her throat tight.

  “It is,” he agreed.

  But he spread the pain out, to help her manage it. He spent a long time outlining the delicate feathers high on the wings before he traced the second primary and back up, a sizzling cut across her naked skin that sent tingles racing to her fingertips. She panted a little. Her shoulders were one burning mass, as though she wore a coat of fire. He dabbed at her side with a bit of gauze.

  “Am I bleeding?”

  He showed her. “It’s only ink. Your skin is taking it really well. I think you were meant to have these.” She could hear the smile.

  “I was,” she said.

  The hum and buzz lulled her, and she could feel the steady vibrations through his arm or hand as he leaned on her. It soothed her, the weight of his body against hers, the gentle touch. She could feel him breathing, slow and calm. By the time the music ended, she was nearly drowsy. It’s the endorphins, she thought dreamily, but when he stopped for a break, she found herself alert.

  She took the water he offered her, sitting up on her forearm to do it. Her nipples dragged the rough towel. John stretched.

  “Do you need to quit for the evening?” she asked as he changed gloves and dried his hands. The gun looked heavy.

  He shrugged. “I’m all right for a while, yet. You know, you’re handling this well.”

  She looked at him. “It doesn’t hurt as bad as I thought.”

  “Nope,” he agreed, with a smile as lopsided as her wings.

  She smiled back. “Keep going.”

  The outline alone took three hours. But they finished both sides in one night. “How do you feel?” he asked, taping gauze over the burning, incomplete pinions.

  She smiled. “Good,” she said, the word woefully inadequate. How to explain how it felt – the smooth lull of the gun, the constant burn of the needle? That it freed her, somehow? She looked at his upper arms, the gorgeous tribal spirals. She didn’t have to explain, she suddenly understood. She didn’t have to say anything. He knew.

  “Can I see them?” she asked softly, embarrassed. She was holding her shirt over her breasts, feeling at once self-conscious and stupid for feeling that way, when what he’d done to her was far more intimate than a simple look at her naked body.

  “Mine? Oh. Sure.”

  He pulled his shirt off, not shy in the least about this act of exposure. The designs were exquisite, though perhaps not as exquisite as the young and healthy muscle beneath. His skin was very smooth, only slightly tanned. A mantle of black interlace covered his shoulders, nearly as large as her own design. More wound down his upper arms. The small of his back echoed the design on his shoulders, disappearing under the worn-white rim of his jeans. Another, smaller design started just beneath his navel and slid down. She could barely see the top of it.

  The sight of it sent a pulse through her, and her nipples hardened traitorously. How must he have looked as it was being applied, holding himself still, trying not to arch under the gun? How had his face contorted? And would his face look the same in the grip of pleasure?

  “So beautiful,” she whispered. Beneath her skirt, her sex was wet. And her skin burned.

  She paid him in full that first night. There was never any question. She’d come back.

  Two weeks later the itchy welts had faded, leaving her with the tracery of feathers like lacework splayed to either side of her spine. Alex spent an hour following them with his finger once it was safe to touch them.

  And when they made love that night, Sara thought of John again, had to bite her fingers to distract herself from thoughts of his face as Alex bent over her, all his attention bent to her burning, itching skin. He mounted her from behind, this time, sliding into her roughly, taking her. He wanted to touch her feathers, but she stopped him. The pain was still too recent, too new, the memory too intense. His touch, reminding her of it, threatened to cheat her of her pleasure. So he clung to her hips and crashed against her as she gazed back at him, her black hair tossing as though in a wind. When her orgasm broke upon her, she reached back and tugged sharply on the hair above his cock, and he used her even more fiercely. “No,” she rasped, her voice husky with her cries. “I want to taste it.”

  So he fed it to her, and she took hi
s length down, lapping herself from him, driving her tongue into the slit at the end of his cock to gather the sea-salt drops that welled out there. She let him jerk it into her mouth, and when he came she let the bitter fluids collect there so that she could swallow it all at once. She looked up at him, and he drew a line up her spine with one finger.

  “I love them already,” he whispered. “Big, beautiful wings.”

  “I love them too,” Sara replied. “Am I your angel?”

  “A fallen one,” Alex replied, smiling.

  She smiled back. “Not yet.”

  The next time, she wasn’t at all shy. She removed her shirt and lay on the table, watching John as he completed the little rituals without which the ceremony would not be complete.

  “Those are hawk wings,” he said, pressing his hand over the tracery of her primaries. “Or eagle wings. Like fingers.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “I’m no dove.”

  He laughed and took the gun in one gloved hand. “Let’s make them black.”

  The fill needle was a cluster of small points bound into a group, and it felt less like being scratched than being branded. It was a raking, grating pain, and this time she dug her fingers into the sides of the table.

  “Should I stop?” John asked immediately.

  “No,” she grunted. “No. Keep going. It – it burns.”

  He raked her again. Did he take pleasure in this part of it? her suffering for his art? “It’s not going in as deep, you know. Most people say the fill needles hurt less.”

  “I don’t.”

  Sara gritted her teeth. He burned her, seared her black. When he was done inking each feather, she felt it, whole and distinct. She knew exactly where they all were. She could count them. Like real wings, indeed. When he gave her a break, she found herself sweating. Her arm was stuck to the vinyl of the table where it hung over the towel.

  “You’re doing great.”

  “How much further?”

  He showed her.

  “I want you to finish that one tonight.”

  “That’s a lot.”

  “I want it done. And tomorrow – the other one. I want them to heal evenly.” She knew she was pushing, but he did it. Three hours went by, the seconds inked in fire. He taped gauze over it in squares when he was done, working gingerly around the screaming-sore flesh. She drove home leaning forward in the seat, feeling the pain less than the phantom weight of his touch. It seemed she floated somewhere between street and sky.