by JA Huss
If I squint, I can just make it out.
This picture is not why her profile was flagged. It’s the stuff she’s got inside the profile that has her in my ban folder today. Three videos of herself, naked from waist to neck. Her breasts are large and so are her nipples. Perfect, tightly bunched, nipples.
Just the way I remember them.
I click play on the first video before I can stop myself.
She comes to life, one hand reaching over to pick up a paintbrush.
Jesus Christ. She’s gonna perform for me.
The paintbrush leaves the frame, then returns, covered in black ink. She draws in a breath and lets it out. And even though there is no sound, I think I can hear her.
She touches the brush to her body and begins to write.
“Sit still, darlin’,” I say, the tattoo machine hovering over her shoulder. “Don’t make me fuck up.”
Her eyes dance with excitement and that sexy tongue darts out of her mouth, caressing her upper lip.
I know there’s no more time for sexy stuff though. She is leaving tonight. Would be gone already if I hadn’t talked her into coming over to Sick Boyz with me at two in the morning.
I touch the needle to her scarred skin, expecting her to wince, or tremble, or maybe even jerk away.
But not my girl. She doesn’t even grit her teeth.
I draw the letters. Just seven of them. Just two words.
I do it again on her ribs, just a few inches below her armpit. A very tender spot for a tattoo. Then again over her hip. The scar tissue here is thick and I have to drag that needle through it to get those final seven letters.
The rest she has to lie down for. I write it deep down on her lower abdomen. There is no scar tissue to cover, it’s just a simple claim of what I consider to be mine.
You express me better than I express myself.
You shall be more to me than my poem.
I return to the present and sigh. Why is she back? I wonder. Why her? Why now? Why me?
It wasn’t a relationship. Not at all. But it was several months of regular dates. I was… what? Twenty-four? The Mister shit was well behind me, the dating site was just picking up steam, and for the first time in my adult life I had plenty of money that I didn’t feel obligated to spend wisely because it hadn’t come from my parents.
Katya.
God, I liked her. She was so…
Young.
I actually laugh out loud as the word pops into my head.
She was seventeen. For a while I thought she was lying about her age because she did not look seventeen.
I didn’t care anyway. Even after all that Mister bullshit, I didn’t care.
I took one look at her and fell pretty hard.
I didn’t understand how a girl so small, and so young, and so smart could be wrapped up in that kind of life. I wanted to take her away the first time I laid eyes on her. I wanted to fuck that guy up and whisk her away. To Tahiti, or Grand Cayman, or Monaco. Some luxury five-star palace. Drive her around in an Aston Martin with the wind in her hair, laughing. I wanted to drink champagne with her until we were sick, and gamble all our money away at the roulette table, then collapse on top of her naked body, kissing her up and down, promising to get more money so we could do it again.
Even though Katya Kalashova was soft on the outside, she was all edges. Everything about her was hard angles and sleek lines. Like she was engineered and perpetually on the cusp of something… fame, and fortune, and a long, fascinatingly charmed life.
But then she said… Harvard. She had plans, and dreams, and a wild imagination that was both conventional and exotic at the same time.
Why did I ever let her get away?
How did I ever get involved with her in the first place?
I check the other videos, but they are all similar versions of the first one. Her, Katya, sitting with only her torso and shoulders visible in the frame. Her full tits taunting me as she paints her body with words.
How many people have seen this, for fuck’s sake? Is she trying to get me jealous? Piss me off? Make me… but then I see a little red icon in the lower left corner of her stats.
Private.
I glance down at her print-out and read the pink sticky note in Ariel’s handwriting. No one has complained. Yet. But she’s bad news. Ban her before she makes her profile public.
She’s bad news. Just an off-the-cuff comment from my sister, but so fucking true.
Katya Kalashova is some of the worst news I’ve ever had the pleasure of fucking. This girl is dragging a lot of baggage around behind her.
My hand is on my dick before I can think. I’m tugging on the button, then the zipper. One hand lifts up my shirt to bare my stomach while the other hand presses play on the video. I push record on the webcam as she resumes her erotic art. Her paintbrush is spelling out commands I already want to follow. Kiss me here, it spells. And here, it spells. And here.
My cock lengthens, hardens. I fist it, leaning back in the chair, closing my eyes so I can pretend she’s not onscreen, but right here in the room with me. I start breathing harder as I imagine her the way she was the last night we spent together. We were fucking at my place for most of it. I took her from behind, her face pushed up against the wall. Her tits bouncing, my balls smacking her with each thrust. That erotic sound of skin on skin that echoed up into the high ceilings of my construction-zone of a house.
I jerk myself a little faster, my hand slamming down to the base of my shaft, then rising again until my thumb peaks over the tip of my cock. Again, and again as I picture her that last night. Standing naked in the moonlight as I tried to convince myself. That my part in her life was over. That I would not miss her.
It was a lie. And that’s why she ended up with those tattoos.
I fucked her at Sick Boyz that night too. It was late—or early, depends how you think of the night. I had her in the chair. She was wearing a skirt and she was topless. I fucked her mouth, I fucked her pussy, I fucked her ass.
I fucked her like I would never fuck her again.
She left for the East Coast the next morning, Harvard, she said, and I felt sick about it. I felt sick about letting her go. I felt sick about the time we spent together. And I felt sick about how we met.
Why we met.
“Katya…” I moan, just before my release. “Why did you come back? I know it’s you,” I say. “Katya Kalashova. I really never thought I’d see you again.”
I laugh. Not because it’s funny. But because it’s so damn ironic. “Well, I can’t see you yet, can I? But you’re here for a reason.” I pause. “I will see you and if you try to leave town again, sneak away like a fucking coward…”
I stop talking and just concentrate on the image of her in my mind. On how I wish it was her hand jerking me off instead of mine. Hot, sticky semen spurts out of my cock and becomes a pool of thick, white come on my stomach.
“Uh…” a voice says from the stairwell. “Knock, knock, you fucking pervert. And who the hell is Katya? Don’t tell me, you finally got a girlfriend?”
I open my eyes, stare at the asshole who just interrupted the best fantasy jerk-off I’d had in years, and reach for one of the promotional Zombie Run t-shirts on my desk. I wipe myself off as he comes further into my office
“Well, well, well,” I say, tossing the shirt aside and putting my dick away. “Look who it is. What the fuck are you doing in my town, Mr. Corporate?”
Chapter Two - KATYA
From my top-floor apartment in the sleek new building in downtown Fort Collins I can see his whole world. His office, two buildings down from mine. The Fort Collins Theater, the tattoo shop, and the bike shop. I don’t usually get a look at so many of his family members all at once, so today is special.
I pull the sheer white curtains aside just an inch when he approaches the window—his posture telling me he has things on his mind—and my heart begins to gallop.
So tall. Six foot two, it says in his dossier.
One hundred ninety-five pounds. But those two descriptors say nothing about his body. Not in any real sense. He is all muscle, always has been since I can remember. His blond hair is newly cut. Not shaved, not exactly. But very closely cropped. Like a cage fighter trying to limit the liability that comes with long locks.
I can’t see his eyes from here but I know they are blue. Not some romantic blue, not some tropical-island blue, not some sapphire blue. But gray-blue. Like the clouds off in the distance, hanging over the mountains as rain pours down in buckets.
I know he likes to wear jeans. Well-worn denim with holes and those little white strings. His everyday shirts always come with a message. Shrike Bikes or Hook-Me-Up or Sick Boyz, Inc. He likes long sleeves because he’s hiding what’s underneath. Even in the summer he wears thermals instead of t-shirts. His boots are always dark brown, the leather well-worn, scuffed and cracked. The classic engineer buckles are unseen under his pant leg, but just knowing they’re there makes him more manly.
He is high-end blue-collar on most days.
But when he dresses for an occasion—a meeting, a wedding, a night out—he has the whitest of collars. The most impeccably tailored bespoke suits—always requiring an extended trip to London to be fitted in person on Savile Row—that make his cut muscles disappear into straight lines and sharp edges that draw the eye down—or up, depending where you start—until you realize that this is not just a man wearing clothing… he’s a work of art.
If you are lucky enough to see him bare—and that really requires the kind of luck you only find hidden inside four-leaf clovers or right-side-up horseshoes—you realize what he is through and through.
Oliver Shrike. The Modern Gentleman.
My heart pounds faster inside my chest when he turns away from the window. I will wait here for many minutes to see if I can catch another glimpse. But no amount of seeing him from afar will suffice.
I need to make contact.
He doesn’t come back. He’s a busy man, after all. How many spare minutes does he have in his day to gaze out a window?
I turn away as well. Withdraw back into my apartment filled with custom-made furniture and the art I have created over the past four years. I take a seat on the couch, my legs off to the side, fluffing my long hair and striking my pose as I hold the remote control in my hand.
Click.
I take a picture.
I like to have a still to start things out. Maybe I can sell it later?
But then my thumb finds the right button on the remote and the red light flashes on the camera mounted on the tripod several feet away.
“Hello,” I say, looking into the lens. I start every video with a hello. It’s good manners to greet people when you first make contact. “It has been more than four years since I last saw you.”
I stop to lick my lips. Not to be seductive. He won’t see that gesture because I am framed only from waist to shoulders. But just because of the nervous feeling that overtakes me each time I do this.
“Yesterday was…” I stop to smile. “Surprising, tantalizing, and almost unbearable.”
I saw him up close yesterday. He was coming out of the coffee shop at the Fort Collins Theater, cardboard paper cup in hand, and he was whistling the way only country boys know how. Boys who had a lot of time on their hands growing up. Boys who spent their days outside trying to mimic birdsongs. Who skipped rocks across a river and picked weedy purple flowers for their mothers before they went home for dinner.
I wasn’t even following him. I was walking home after picking up some bread from Anna Amici’s, the little Italian restaurant and bakery down near Laurel Street. There was a crowd of people in my way, but once the image of Oliver Shrike is burned into your brain, it stays there. I picked him out of that crowd immediately. Maybe it was his white Shrike Bikes thermal, or the way his body moves when he walks—that long stride or the tipped-up chin—that alerted me.
But I like to think we have this connection. Some kind of string that binds us together. Signals or vibrations that are attuned to the Law of Attraction. Because he looked right at me. Saw though me, thank God, but right at me.
I stopped walking and a child bumped into me from behind, my sudden stillness catching him off guard. The world kept going, his face disappeared, reappeared briefly as he reached for the door to the old bank building, and then disappeared again as he went inside.
I sigh for the camera. “When will you see me for real again?”
I say it with longing. And I do long for that day, which—God, my heart is beating so fast—could be today. But the possibility makes me so nervous.
He will have questions and he will want answers.
“Yesterday,” I say, forcing myself back on track, “I worked, as usual. And you’ll be happy to know that it was all legitimate business. A patron came to my online gallery and wanted the original self-portrait I did that last time we were together. Is that a good sign or a bad sign? I can’t decide. I only put it up for sale three days ago. No,” I say, smiling at him in the lens. “Don’t worry. I don’t need the money. That’s not why I did it. I just…” My words trail off. “I would just like a fresh start. And I’m tired of looking back, you know? So why keep it? I don’t display it. I mean, good God!” I laugh. “My walls do not need my naked body on them. And I didn’t keep it because of modesty, either. My face is hidden. I still do them that way, as you can see. Shoulders down, only. But out with the old, right? It’s all too much. It weighs me down.”
I look at the window again, knowing that one side of my body will be cast in shadow. Makes the whole thing more dramatic. My fingertips stroke circles around my nipples, then I pinch them, making them bunch up like hard, little spikes.
The wetness pools between my legs when I picture him watching this.
Stay focused, Kat. “So that was a good start. They paid in full. I spent most of the day packing it up properly. I sold the frame too. It’s an odd size, remember? So the frame is custom. They go together like marriage partners. And then I took it down to the post office.”
I stop to think of the war I waged inside my head as I stood in line for postage, insurance, and tracking. Should I pop in to the Fort Collins Theater and get dinner? Maybe bump into him again? Or one of his people? But no, I decided no. A chance encounter is not how I want our reunion to take place.
It needs to be tightly controlled.
“And then I went home and cooked linguini with shrimp for dinner.” I stare into the camera. “I wonder what you did. What does your day look like? Who do you talk to regularly?” A sudden stab of jealousy courses through my blood. All those people who get to hear his voice, see his face, be near him, if only to talk about receipts, or web security, or whatever.
They are all so much nearer than me.
My body slumps, just slightly. Shoulders rounded in defeat. Head down, hands clasped together in my lap. “I want to see you again,” I whisper.
And then I straighten up and look at the camera.
“Well, I guess I need to get to work. Maybe today will be the day?”
I click the button on the remote and the flashing red light disappears.
The phone in the kitchen rings. I smile, knowing who that is, and then unfold my legs and stand up, grabbing the robe draped over the chair and putting it on. I tie the sash as I walk to the kitchen and pick up the phone on the third ring, just before it hits voicemail.
“Hey,” I say into the receiver.
“Oh, my God. I’m so tired. I was up all night working on this stupid mid-term project. I have this huge presentation this afternoon and my partner was late for every single meeting we had. She’s so lazy. Why do I have to always get stuck with the unmotivated ones, Katya? Why do people even come to college if they don’t want to give a hundred percent? Coffee? I really need some.”
My sister makes me smile. She’s dramatic and serious. Brilliant and tenacious. And her life has been nothing like mine. “Sure,” I say. “Starbucks in the student cent
er?”
A knock at my door makes me jump.
“I’m here.” She laughs. “We can go across the street to the theater coffee shop. We never get to go there.”
I think about that for a minute.
“Are you gonna let me in? Or will I have to stand out here until one of your uptight neighbors calls security?”
“Yes,” I say, snapping out of the panic. “One sec.”
I rush over to the door and pull it open. My sister is there, dark blonde hair spilling out from under a thick wool hat, her hands tucked inside her coat pockets, backpack over one shoulder.
I step aside to let her in and she rushes past me. “Come on, let’s go. They have that new cinnamon-flavor drink. Have you tried it yet?” She’s still talking into her phone for a few words before she remembers to end the call.
“I just got up,” I say, looking both ways in the hallway real fast before closing the door. “Can you give me twenty minutes?”
“Sis,” she whines. “I have class in thirty. We won’t have time.”
“Well, I wasn’t expecting you to show up here so early.”
“I know but I neeeeeed coffee. Just throw on jeans and a hoodie. You can come right back home in twenty minutes.” She tugs on my hand. “Come on. Come on, come on, come on.”
I want to gulp down the fear inside me at the thought of going into the theater coffee shop, but Lily is very in my face right now. “OK, just give me a sec.”
I rush off down the hallway and throw on some light-wash jeans, a gray blouse with a ruffled hem, and a belted pink jacket to pull me together.
My feet slip into a comfortable pair of gray felt clogs and I grab my purse off the nightstand as I make my way back into the living room.
