by Haley Monroe
Her heart pounded and she sucked in an icy breath of the March wind. “Are you going to get a tattoo, too?” She asked in a soft voice, hoping to change the subject and forget about the electric tingles she felt when his lips touched her skin.
“And mess up this beautiful body?” His hands ran down his hard pecks and his head shook. “Hell, no.”
“Pfftt,” She blew a raspberry of mock disbelief. “It’s not that great.” A smile was tugging at her mouth with the lie she knew she had just told but she was able to keep her lips in a straight line until he stopped walking and grabbed the center of his sweatshirt. In a quick motion, he pulled the sweatshirt and his tee shirt up to his pecs, revealing eight perfectly defined abdominals set in smooth tanned skin. Her mouth watered and her feet stumbled just little. Thankfully, he didn’t see her stumble. He was looking down at his midsection and rubbing his free hand over the ridges and bumps in his stomach.
“Oh yeah?” His cocky grin showed he knew she couldn’t deny the truth. Jade blinked a few times and then pushed on his hand holding his shirt up.
“Enough, you egotistical maniac. Cover yourself up before we get arrested for indecent exposure!” They both laughed and David allowed her hand to lower his shirt. He wished she would have caressed his heated skin with her cold hands or that he could take a snap shot of the look in her telling eyes when she was taking in the sight of him.
The neon lights for the tattoo shop lit up the frosted sidewalk before them and Jade squeaked anxiously. “Oh, my God.” Her tiny hands gripped at his forearm and she tried to shake him. “I’m really going to do this.”
“You don’t have to.” He told her honestly, his hand folding over hers on his arm. “We can walk back to my house and pretend like you never brought it up.” He waited for her to look at him. Anxious energy burning in her pretty eyes. “I’ll even let you watch more of Jasey Jay instead of that history documentary that I really want to watch.” She stared up at him for a little longer and took a slow breath.
“No!” Jade’s right sneaker stomped into the concrete hard enough to crack a thin layer of ice covering a shallowly frozen puddle under the rubber of her shoe. “I want a tattoo and I’m going to get one.”
“Okay, okay, Jesus.” He huffed with a soft laugh. “Has anyone told you that you have the attitude of a six-year-old?” David moved around her to pull open the tattoo shop door and held it open for Jade to enter before him.
“Just you.” She smiled like she hadn’t just thrown a small fit. “And my Mom.” She added as she waltzed into the shop and right up to the counter. A girl about the same age as Jade sat behind the desk with bright purple hair and so many piercings in her face that David wondered how she could stand to smile. But smile she did.
“Hey guys!” The girl beamed happily at each of them. “I’m Tasha, how can I help you?”
“I want to get my first tattoo.” Jade smiled right back at her. “I’m kinda nervous.”
“Great, do you know what you want?”
“A shamrock.” Jade answered softly and David couldn’t help the satisfied smirk that took over his face. When they met, Jade was only fourteen and he was seventeen. He saw her in the courtyard of their high school, sitting under a tree crying. Her head was braced on her knees and all of her beautiful brownish red hair covered her face. Her back shook as she cried hard, all alone in a space filled with people and he couldn’t just walk away from such a sweet creature clearly in pain.
He walked over and sat next to her, leaning his back against the truck of the giant tree that offered them shade from the hot sun. His hands had run through the clover at the base of the tree as he waited for her to speak first and he just happened to pluck a small clover from the bunch. He gently nudged her knee with his hand and she peeked up, pushing her hair back from her eyes.
“What?” She’d snapped at him. He watched the streaks her tears had left on her cheeks as they caught the sunlight. His confused teenage body didn’t understand how he could want to wipe them away and be the cause that would make fresh tear lines in her face at the same time.
“Why’s such a sweet girl like you crying in all this clover?” He offered her the little green leafed stem.
“I’m not sweet.” She sniffled but took the clover he offered. She twisted it between her fingers, the top twirling in quick circles as they both watched. “And why would I want this? It doesn’t even have four leaves. This one is bad luck.” The back of her hand wiped at her eyes and David smiled.
“The four-leaf ones might be the most popular but I don’t like those so much.”
“You don’t?” She had blinked at him and he nodded.
“No, see the four-leaf clover is hidden in the beauty of the three leafed clovers. It’s hard to find because the eye is distracted by the simple beauty of these plain flowers and some people think its special but its these ones, the three leafed ones, that bring us all our luck.”
“I’ve never heard it that way. It doesn’t even make sense.” She gave him a ghost of a smile and he nodded a little. “How can something so ordinary bring luck? It takes something special to be lucky, not something you can see everywhere.” She tried to question his logic but he was happy that at least she had stopped crying.
“Ordinary?” He picked another clover that matched the one she twirled between her fingers. “To you it may seem commonplace but to me it’s comforting. I can always count on the clovers to be the same. They are a soft place to sit when the world is hard.” He traced the soft petals along the side of her forearm and goosebumps rose in her skin. She turned her hand over as the clover came down across the delicate veins in her wrist. He drew the clover over the lines in her palm. “That’s why I used to like them, at least, but now that I know,” he spoke quietly, forcing her to lean in a little to hear him over the noise of the high schoolers around them. “That they are the same color as your eyes, from now on, that’ll be the reason why I like these ordinary clovers best.” She’d flushed under his compliment but threw the clover in her hand at his chest.
“You’re crazy.” She let a nervous laugh slip from her lips then pushed herself up to her feet, dusting her hands over her ass and shaking her head. He stood as well and gave her the clover he had been holding.
“Crazy is only a matter of living fully and embracing life. Let me walk you to class.” She couldn’t find a reason to say no and had let him lead her to her next class. He walked her to class the next day, too. Then they had lunch together again under the tree where they met and every day after that. He was easy to talk to and she had a lot to say.
She was a complicated girl with emotions she didn’t know how to handle. Just as she does now, her mother and her would battle over things big and small. They’d known each other a week before she ran to him before the first bell. Crying again. Tears that came from deep in her tortured soul.
“No one gets me.” She bawled into his chest. “No one understands.” He didn’t know what was wrong or how to make it right but he didn’t know enough to try at that point. He was still learning about himself and who he would be as man. Instead of becoming her superman who crushed all her enemies, he turned her hand over and traced the shape of the clover into her palm.
“No one needs to Jade.” He murmured into her hair and listened to her tears until she couldn’t cry any more. When the bell had rung, his shirt was wet with her pain but she seemed drained of the feelings. He walked her to class without ever asking what had caused her to break down. He didn’t need to know. He just knew that he would always be the person she could share her pretty tears with.
David smiled through the memory and felt touched that she’d pick the symbol of their friendship as the first of what he guessed would be many colorful tattoos that would one day adorn her little body.
“Great, popular choice around this time of year. Where do you want it?” Tasha asked as she stood up and turned to a rack of clip art hanging on the wall in large portrait frames.
“This
time of year?” Jade’s tone caught David’s attention and he placed his hand on her back. Just firmly enough for her to feel him beside her.
“Yeah. Lots of people get St. Paddy’s day tats.” Tash said as she flipped through the pictures until she found an image of a shamrock and pointed to it. “How’s this one?”
“Oh, I didn’t know a lot of people got tattoos for it. Like, I didn’t even think it was a real holiday. Just an excuse to get drunk.” She looked to David with concern on her face.
“It doesn’t matter why other people get it, Jay. If you have a reason to put it on your body, then that’s all you need. Or you can pick something else. Hell, you can even not get a damn tattoo.” Jade huffed at him and nodded.
“I love that one.” She spoke to Tasha with a finger pointed to a clover to the right of where Tasha held her hand. “I want it on the back of my hip, I think?” She sounded unsure and turned to David again. “Do you think that’s a good place?”
“It’s awful close to a tramp stamp,” David joked but Tasha scoffed, seemingly offended by his humor.
“It’s a great place actually.” Tasha sneered at him. “You should put it wherever you want it, not where your boyfriend thinks is best. It will be on your body not his.”
“Oh, yeah, no.” Jade laughed and slapped David’s shoulder. “He’s no boyfriend. Just my best friend.” Her words stung him in a way he never would have anticipated but he kept his face unreadable.
“Sorry about that. You wouldn’t believe how many chicks come in her letting their man push them around and make them get tat’s they end up hating.”
“I can imagine.” Jade nodded like she understood.
“I just need to scan your I.D. and then you can come on back and we’ll set you up.” Tasha grinned at Jade, now ignoring the best friend.
“Can he come, too?” Jade hesitated and pointed beside her to David.
“If you want him to,” Tasha shrugged. “It’s up to you.” Jade dug her license out of the butt pocket of her jeans and handed it to the grouchy tattoo artist who looked it over and then turned to place it in her scanner. The printer combo machine started to cough and grind as it worked. She pushed a clipboard over the counter toward Jade. “Sign on the bottom line please. It gives me permission to do the tattoo and we’ll go over tattoo care once we’ve finished or we can chat about it while I’m inking you.”
Jade nodded and scrawled her name across the bottom of the sheet after a quick perusal over the text then spun on her heels and grabbed David’s wrist, pulling his hand out of his jeans front pocket and clutching it to her chest. “Will you hold my hand through it? Please, David, please.” She begged him in a whisper so Tasha wouldn’t hear.
“I’ll always hold your hand.”
Chapter Two.
David watched Tasha’s purple hair as she began setting up her station. Jade had straddled the black leather chair that seemed to be able to bend and twist into many positions needed for tattooing. He was having a hard time controlling his body’s reaction to the thoughts her position had him thinking. Jade’s ass poked back as she leaned forward and she hiked up her shirt. David sat on a stool just behind the chair trying not to watch Jade as she prepared herself. Her eyes met his as she unbuttoned her jeans and wiggled the back hem of them down until just the top of her pale cheeks peeked from the denim. “I’m getting nervous now.” She whispered towards him and rested her chest on the back rest of the chair, her cheek leaning into the side of the leather allowing her to look at him from around the edge.
“You can still back out.” He used his feet to roll the stool closer to her and took her hand in both of his. He rubbed his palms over her cold fingers and wished she would agree to leaving without doing this. He felt blood trying to rush to his cock and forced himself to focus on her emotions not how she would feel if she straddled him in the same fashion as the chair she was in.
“Everything’s all set, I’m just gonna trace up your shamrock and we’ll place it where I think you want it. I’ll show it to you so we can make sure you love it before we start, okay?” Tasha interrupted, pulling David’s focus to her instead of Jade and he was slightly grateful that her purple hair deflated anything rising in his pants. He glanced back at Jade who looked at Tasha over her shoulder.
“Sure, that sounds good.” When she looked back at David she pressed her cheek against the leather again and shifted her ass even further back. He forced himself not to think about digging his fingers into her open thighs while she backed her ass up. Purple hair left them alone for a minute and he turned Jade’s hand over in his. He traced the lines in her palm and she exhaled. “That always calms me down.”
“I know.” He grinned. “I’m serious though Jade, if you are second guessing this we can still leave.”
“I’m fine. It’s normal to be nervous. I mean, she is going to be stabbing a ton of needles basically in my ass.” Her eyes glittered with the thrill that her anxiety was causing her and he pressed his elbow into his thigh to distract his cock from swelling again.
She was a perfect fit for him, she liked pain and he ached to show her just how pleasing a small sting of pain could really be when delivered just right. He opened his mouth to speak, to tell her he could give her this kind of rush if only she would ask him for it but the tattoo artist strolled back into the room and sat on the other stool. She scooted herself right up behind Jade and brushed her finger over the exposed skin of Jade’s right hip.
“Is here where you want it?” She was focusing on Jade’s skin and Jade’s head tipped to the side a little like she was thinking really hard.
“Can we push it a little more to the left? I want it to peek out from my jeans just a little bit when I bend over but low enough that it’s not always hanging out.” The artist moved it slightly over to fit Jade’s description and Jade smiled at David when it felt like the paper was in the right place. “That’s perfect. Yeah, right there.”
“Great.” Tasha laid a piece of what looked like parchment paper over Jade’s hip and rubbed it to complete the transfer. When she peeled it off, David rolled his chair forward wanting to see the temporary mark.
“How’s it look, D?” Jade asked with hopeful excitement in her voice.
“Sexy.” He answered honestly. It wasn’t his name marking her skin but it might as well have been. The little clover was how they met and every year on her birthday he gifted her with a clover shaped piece of jewelry. Whether she would admit it or not, he knew she picked the tattoo to honor him.
“Awesome.” She smiled and accepted the hand-held mirror the artist handed her. She lifted it up while Tasha held another mirror positioned at her soon to be tattoo. David wasn’t sure she could see it that well but she’d take his word anyway. She always did, eventually. “It looks perfect! That’s just what I had in mind.” Jade bounced a little in the chair and passed the little mirror over her shoulder to give it back to Tasha. David rolled his stool a few feet back to where he had been and reclaimed Jade’s hand.
“Ready?” The purple haired artist asked, holding her machine in her black gloved hand.
“As ready as I’ll ever be.” Jade replied and rested her cheek back against the chair while her top teeth sunk into her lower lip.
“Just try to be still. Tell me if you need a break, okay?”
“Yeah.” Jade closed her eyes and squeezed David’s big hand with her small one. The artist stepped on a foot pedal and the machine buzzed to life. He watched as she dipped her needles in a dark green thimble of ink and bent to aim it at Jade’s hip. The first stroke of the needles skipping over Jade’s skin made her eyes pop open. “Oh, my God.” She mused. She pressed her lips together and let out a moan that made David’s body tense. “It’s not that bad. It actually feels kind of,” she giggled lightly. “Good.”
David took a deep inhale through his nose. If she liked that, he couldn’t imagine how much she would like him swinging a flogger over her ass with a Hitachi wand shoved against her sweet puss
y. “Ow.” She squeaked sweetly through a breathy moan. He pushed the image out of his mind to try to focus on her in the here and now, not the her in his dreams. The Jade who performed perfectly as his bratty little sub who liked every spanking she forced him to give her.
“Are you alright?” He ground the words out.
“The tattoo doesn’t hurt but your death grip on my hand does.” They both looked down at his hand tightly gripping hers and he coughed an awkward laugh.
“Sorry.” He loosened his grip and turned her hand over. Tracing the life line etched in her palm not only calmed her but it settled him, too. He watched his finger move up and down the curved line under her thumb as she began discussing her after care with the tattoo artist. He listened to the sounds of their words but not the meanings and let himself sink back into his own thoughts.
He thought about how well she knew him and yet how much she didn’t know him at all. He’d never told her about his secret sex life in the BDSM community that was very active in the area. He had a reputation for being a bit of a confusing mix. He was a somewhat sadistic, Daddy Dominant that had little submissives pining for his attention. He would play with them at munches and meetings when he felt an attraction but he never laid claim on any of them. He only wanted one woman to be his little and until she knew about and agreed to the lifestyle, he planned on staying unattached.
The club downtown welcomed him with open arms when he discovered that he got off on causing pain to others. Learning the truth had scared him. He knew it was wrong to hurt people and thought something might he wrong with him. He had told himself he would simply keep that part of him hidden and never talk about it until one of his booty calls had asked him to choke her during sex. When his hands wrapped around her delicate throat and her hazel eyes bulged as her pussy strangled his cock he felt unleashed. It was then that he had discovered a need inside his soul that only her strangled cries had filled. He searched for an answer online after she left his home and there he found the address to club Dirty Fetish.
