Skin (44 Chapters #1)

by B. B. Easton

  While I writhed and moaned, two gloved hands grabbed me by the waist and yanked my body down the length of the chair until my ass was hanging off. Then Knight rolled me onto my belly. As soon as my feet touched the tile floor, he slammed into me from behind.

  His hands gripped my hips, and I gripped the edges of the chair for support. Knight growled into my neck with every thrust, and my newly pierced clit throbbed with every beat of my racing heart. The moment I felt Knight’s teeth sink into my shoulder, his fingers dig into my hips, and his cock stiffen inside me, I was a goner.

  When it was over, I watched Knight out of the corner of my eye as he gathered all of the clear plastic things to be thrown away—needle and jewelry packaging, plastic wrap, gloves, the condom—and one skinny metal needle. Just before dropping it all in the trashcan, Knight licked it clean.

  “How do you work around so much blood when…you know?” I asked, my cheek pressed into the vinyl, my body wrung out and unable to move.

  “I don’t know. It’s almost like it calms me down when I’m at work. Unless it’s you. When I pierced your nipples, I was so hard I thought I might come in my fucking pants. I even licked your blood off my glove when you weren’t looking. That shit was torture.”

  “No fucking way!” I laughed, finally mustering the strength to push myself up. “I thought you were so professional!”

  “What about this time?” he smirked.

  “I think I was the one getting tortured this time. And, by the way, that better not be standard practice around here or you’re gonna be looking for a new job.”

  Knight laughed and handed me a small mirror so that I could see his handiwork. There it was. A slightly curved barbell, right through the left side of my hood.

  Fuck yeah.

  As Knight cleaned me up and helped me get dressed he explained all the do’s and don’t’s of a clit piercing. We couldn’t get body fluids on it for four-to-six weeks. No oral without plastic wrap. No sex without a condom. And when we did have sex, doggie-style was best.

  Condoms. That reminded me…

  “I think I’m gonna get on birth control.”

  “Really?” Knight asked, helping me out of the chair.

  “Yeah,” I said as we walked to the back door for a cigarette. Slowly. “Those condoms look like they hurt. And they smell weird. And if I get on the pill soon, then by the time my piercing is healed we shouldn’t have to use them anymore.”

  Knight grabbed my jacket out of the break room and beamed at me as he wrapped it around my shoulders. “I fucking love you,” he said, leaning in to kiss me. “I’ll go with you to your doctor’s appointment, if you want.”

  Sweet psycho.

  Outside the air was freezing. Knight lit my cigarette while I rubbed my hands together and mustered the courage to ask him the question that had been plaguing me for months. “Knight?”

  “Yeah?” he asked, flipping the hood of his sweatshirt up to stay warm. Knight had a flight jacket of his own, but he never wore it. The cold didn’t seem to bother him like it bothered me.

  I swallowed. “I was just wondering, how do you know so much…about sex? I mean, I’ve never seen you with anybody at school, like a girlfriend.”

  Who have you been fucking? How old were they? How many were there? May I please have their names and addresses? Did you love them? Were they better than me? Where are they now? Buried in those woods over there?

  Knight looked past me into the alley and took a drag from his cigarette. Just when I thought he was going to ignore my question altogether he said, “There’s a bar around the corner, called Spirit of Sixty-Nine. It’s where all the Atlanta skins hang out. The bartenders are all regulars here, and they used to pay me to come by after-hours to help clean up. Whenever I went it always seemed like there was some drunk as fuck skin chick waiting around to take me home.”

  It made my stomach turn to think of him with other girls. Women. And skinhead bitches at that. I must have seemed so inexperienced compared to them. I could feel my face get hot with self-consciousness and jealousy, but I pressed on.

  “Did you date any of them?”

  Am I your first girlfriend, Knight? Am I special?

  “After the shit I did to them?” Knight snorted and exhaled a puff of smoke through his nose. “Fuck no.”

  Dread settled into my belly.

  “Wh-why? What did you do to them?”

  Knight flashed me a look that said he was done with my little line of questioning, but he answered me anyway. “I did what I do,” he said, exhaling through his nose. “I made them bleed.”

  “They didn’t like it?” I hated the way I sounded—so young and naïve. Knight had made me bleed plenty of times, and sure, it scared me at first, but the way he did it was just so…sexy. Was I not supposed to like it? If those skin chicks didn’t like it, did that make me a freak?

  Knight narrowed his eyes and evaluated me. It was as if he were trying to decide whether or not he could trust me with some secret. I felt like I was about to be turned into either an accomplice or a vampire, but I was okay with either one as long as it meant I was special.

  “I didn’t want them to like it,” he said.

  Oh.

  “You hurt them,” I whispered.

  Knight clenched his jaw and nodded, staring straight ahead.

  “Because somebody hurt you.”

  Knight shot me a severe look. His pupils were huge in the darkness—as black as whatever lurked inside him. He didn’t have to tell me what happened. He let me peer in and see it for myself.

  “You don’t want to hurt me though.”

  My words were gentle but firm. I phrased it as a statement to let him know that I didn’t question it. I knew. Sure, he’d cut me and bitten me and stabbed me with needles, but that was Knight’s way. He wasn’t trying to hurt me. He was trying to make me feel good.

  And he was really fucking good at it.

  Knight shook his head slightly. It was like he wanted to shut down, but some tiny part inside him was forcing him to answer me. To stay open.

  “Because you love me,” I said.

  Knight’s expression softened. His eyebrows lifted a little bit, and he nodded again.

  I smiled and took a step forward. Wrapping my hands around the back of his neck, I said in a sing-songy voice, trying desperately to lighten the mood, “Because you want to marry me.”

  Knight’s hands came down around my hips and he pulled me into him, closing the distance between us. His eyes still black, his face sincere, Knight didn’t smile when he leaned down to my ear and said, “I do.”

  His voice was gruff and the texture changed my skin from smooth to rough on contact.

  “You…do?” I whispered back.

  Knight nodded, burying his face in the bend of my neck. I pushed his hood off and rubbed my cheek against his fuzzy blond head. “You know,” I murmured with closed eyes, “fifteen-year-olds can get married in the state of Georgia as long as they have a note from their parents.”

  I felt Knight smile against my neck as his hands shifted from my hips to my ass. He scooped me up in one fluid motion and I wrapped my legs around his waist in response. The movement caused my tender new piercing to scream in protest, but I didn’t listen. I couldn’t. I was too busy feeling Knight’s tongue slide across mine, tasting his vices, which were the same as mine, delighting in his velveteen softness under my fingers, and admiring the way his pulse synchronized with mine—the way it always did when our hearts were pressed together.

  When Knight tilted his head back to look at me his pupils were still huge, but when I peered inside I didn’t see darkness anymore. I saw my own reflection smiling back.

  “Since you want to marry me and all, does that mean you’ll give me that tattoo now?”

  Knight chuckled. “Goddamn, you don’t give up, do you?”

  I beamed and shook my head as he lowered me back down onto my feet.

  “Okay, fine—but on one condition. You have to let me put
it on the inside of your finger.”

  I nodded and clapped and jumped up and down as Knight led the way back to his tattoo chair.

  I guess I was right when I’d assumed that I’d be engaged before the end of tenth grade. I just didn’t realize it would be to Skeletor the motherfucking Skinhead.

  DEAR BB,

  HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY.

  I HAD THESE SPECIAL ORDERED, BUT I NEVER ACTUALLY THOUGHT YOU'D STICK AROUND LONG ENOUGH FOR ME TO GIVE THEM TO YOU.

  EVERY DAY I WAKE UP THINKING I'M EITHER GOING TO FUCK THIS UP OR FIND OUT THAT IT WAS ALL JUST A DREAM. BUT FOR SOME REASON, YOU'RE STILL HERE.

  I DON'T KNOW WHY. I'M A FUCKING ASSHOLE. I'M POOR. I HAVE NO FRIENDS. AND I HATE MY OWN FAMILY. BUT I LOVE YOU. I LOVE YOU SO MUCH IT SCARES ME. I'M SCARED I'M GOING TO HURT YOU. I'M SCARED THAT WHEN I DO, YOU WON'T LEAVE. AND I'M SCARED THAT I'M KEEPING YOU FROM FINDING SOMEONE BETTER.

  BUT I CAN'T LET YOU GO. SO UNTIL YOU FIGURE OUT WHAT A PIECE OF SHIT I AM, I'M GOING TO BE THE HAPPIEST PIECE OF SHIT ON EARTH.

  LOVE,

  KNIGHT

  I leaned across the barn wood table, almost every square inch covered with people’s names and initials, and kissed my boyfriend. My sweet, self-loathing, psychopathic boyfriend. Knight had surprised me for Valentine’s Day by taking me to my favorite restaurant in Little Five Points, The Yacht Club. It was a shitty dive bar with a fancy name—the place my mom and I used to go where they let people carve stuff into the tables. I had already found three BBs since we’d been there.

  After sitting back down, I looked down into my left hand. The tiny Ziploc bag that had fallen out of Knight’s note sat in my palm, while the black silhouette of a jousting knight on horseback sat on the inside of my ring finger. Both made me smile like a lunatic.

  There were two small surgical steel hearts inside the clear pouch, each with an arrow-shaped barbell jutting through it. Some guys give their girlfriends earrings for Valentine’s day. Mine gave me nipple rings.

  “These are cool as shit!” I said, holding up the clear plastic pouch. “I can’t wait to put them in! Thank you so fucking much!”

  “I can’t wait to help you put them in,” Knight said with a smirk.

  “I got you something too,” I said. Reaching into my cavernous purse, I pulled out a Pier 1 gift-wrapped special.

  Knight eyed me suspiciously, but took the gift. While he was busy tearing through all fifteen curly ribbons I’d tied around it, I quickly slid most of my chicken fingers and fries into the napkin on my lap. Knight wasn’t above force feeding me, so I’d learned to be more covert.

  Once Knight had made it past my King Tut-worthy wrapping job, he slid the lid off the box and gently removed a simple black picture frame I’d stolen from work. Inside was a photo of the two of us, taken by my mom, standing in front of an artificial Christmas tree dripping with homemade ornaments.

  “I noticed that you don’t have any pictures in your room,” I said, gesturing toward the frame.

  Knight looked at me with wide, ghostly eyes. His lips parted, but he said nothing.

  “Knight?”

  Looking back down at the picture, Knight sat in silence. Shit. I hoped I hadn’t triggered something traumatic. Since Knight wouldn’t talk about his past, I had no idea what might set him off. Well, I knew that drugs were off limits. And animals dying. And confronting him about the way he dressed. And anything having to do with his parents. I was learning, I guess, but I was learning the hard way.

  Eventually Knight swallowed and choked out, “Can I…have more?”

  “More what? Pictures?”

  Knight nodded and looked back up at me, sincerity shining out of his icy blue irises. “Yeah. I want one for my station at work.”

  “Sure, baby. I can print another—”

  “…and I need one for my wallet, too. And my truck. And my locker,” Knight interrupted, completely serious.

  Sweet fucking psycho.

  I set my fried food-filled napkin on the seat next to me and slid into the booth on the other side of the table, next to Knight. Draping my arms around his neck, I kissed his chiseled mouth at least four times—once for each of the photos he’d requested. Then I squealed as Knight scooped me up off the bench and set my ass down sideways in his lap.

  After kissing me back until a bulge began to press against my hip, Knight said, “I love you so fucking much.”

  “Oh really?” I asked, my lips brushing against his. “Then why don’t I see any Knight loves BB hearts on this table?”

  Before I could blink Knight had flipped and twirled and swished his blade out and set to work.

  Some guys carved their initials into trees, mine carved ours into the table of a dive bar named The Yacht Club.

  When we left the restaurant and headed back toward Terminus City Tattoo it was already pitch black outside. All of the assorted potted trees in the square were wrapped in white lights—left over from the holidays—and the effect was stunning. Although the temperature was dropping fast, I was willing to risk frostbite to bask in the romance of it all for just a few more minutes.

  “C’mere,” I said, pulling Knight by the hand toward a turquoise bench under the skeleton of a once purple crepe myrtle tree. “Sit with me.”

  Knight didn’t ask any questions. He simply flipped up his hood, lit a cigarette, and held my hand as we walked over to my special place.

  I sat as close to him as I could get, soaking up his body heat.

  “I sat here and watched the sun rise the morning after you pierced my nipples,” I said, blushing at the memory. “You were still sleeping, so I went to get you breakfast. I saw this bench and…it was weird. I just sat here and watched the sun come up. Like I was home or something.”

  “I wasn’t asleep,” Knight said in a gruff voice. “I stayed awake all night thinking about what you said…about not wanting to see me get hurt.” Knight looked away and took a drag off his cigarette. I knew that pause. He was preparing himself to say something difficult.

  Meeting my gaze again Knight took a deep breath and said, “That was the first time anyone had ever acted like they gave a shit whether I lived or died. And it had come from Brooke Fucking Bradley—the girl I’d been in love with since elementary school.”

  He talked about me the way I used to talk about Lance. I knew that kind of longing. It broke my heart to think that Knight had felt it for me all those years and I never knew, but I was also overjoyed for him. Knight had succeeded where I had failed. He made me love him. He fucking did it.

  “All night I told myself not to get too excited, that I’d probably ruined whatever chance I had with you by being such an asshole the night before. So when I heard you get up and leave the next morning, I just assumed you were sneaking out. I didn’t even try to go after you. I just laid there hating myself.”

  Knight looked away and went to take another drag off his cigarette, but I caught his face in my icy hands and turned it back toward me. After kissing his mouth at least a hundred times I finally pulled back and said, “I’m so sorry, baby. I had no idea.”

  Knight smiled a little, as much as he could with my hands still on his cheeks, and said, “Don’t be sorry. When you came back it was the happiest moment of my pathetic fucking life.”

  I let go of Knight’s face and watched his smile morph from sweet to sinister. “Then you looked so fucking hot making breakfast in my jacket that I had to go jerk off in the bathroom just to be able to function around you for the rest of the morning.”

  “Eww!” I shrieked and elbowed him in the ribs. “I don’t wanna know about that! I thought you were in there brushing your teeth!”

  “That too,” Knight said with a grin, his features softened by the white lights all around us.

  “How much do you think it would cost to rent a place down here?” I asked. “If making you breakfast is that much of a turn-on I want to do it every morning.”

  “A shitload,” Knight said. “I’d definitely have to get a roommate. Re
nt in the city is fucking insane.”

  “What if I were your roommate?” I asked, hopeful.

  “Punk…I would love nothing more than to get a place with you, but we don’t have any mon—”

  “Shh,” I whispered, touching my fingertips to his lips. “Just pretend. Okay? If we weren’t so fucking broke, if I weren’t so fucking young, where would you want to live?”

  Knight exhaled a stream of smoke and looked at me with a playful gleam in his eye. “Honestly?” he asked, as if he needed permission to share his secret desires with me. Looking behind me Knight took a deep breath and pointed to something over my shoulder. “There.”

  I turned and looked in the direction of his outstretched finger. The road darkened on the other side of the five-way intersection, but I could vaguely make out the outline of an old Victorian-style two-story house in disrepair.

  “Hell yeah,” I said. “We could fix it up on the weekends. Paint it gray. That’s my favorite color.”

  “Ugh. Like the Counting Crows song?” Knight asked, feigning disgust.

  “You know the Counting Crows?” I laughed.

  “Don’t tell anybody,” Knight said, nudging me.

  I giggled. “It would be perfect. You could walk to work and I could take your truck to schoo—”

  Before I’d even finished my thought Knight had burst out laughing. “You can’t even get into the damn thing by yourself!”

  “Shut up. Yes, I can,” I snapped. “Anyway,” I said, pegging him with a watch-your-ass glare, “I’d come home from school, go to work…” I looked around, then pointed a freezing cold finger in the direction of a building with a giant skull for an entrance, “at Trash…so I could get a discount on clothes, and when we both got off work we could meet somewhere for dinner!”

  “You’re not going to cook for me every night?” Knight asked, pretending to sound surprised.

  Now it was my turn to burst out laughing.