Dylan shifted his head just enough for me to glimpse the curve of an eye. He swallowed. “I’m okay.” A slight pull came to the corner of his mouth. “They say I’ve still got some sand in the glass, so don’t you worry!” I kissed the gold and yellow koi that perpetually swam down his other shoulder, then turned back to my gun. “Are you hitting on me again?”
“Yea, right! You just keep dreaming, Bucko!”
“Tell me something, CJ? Have you joined the club yet?”
Everyone called me CJ—even the sign out front said so, leaving many to approach the door before realizing the nature of my little business. Some would wander in then later come back as customers. The first months in my two-story house and business had been slow, but word soon got around. Things picked up and I hired Larry, who, good in his own right, brought even more business. I was one of only a few female ink-slingers in the state who ran her own shop. Some said I was the best. That always struck me as kind of funny, since I thought I was just meticulous—perhaps obsessively so.
“Which club is that? You’re gonna have to be a little more specific.”
“The ‘More Than One Tat’ club,” Dylan said with a smile.
“The one I have is just fine.”
“Oh, come on! What kind of inker only has one tattoo?”
“My kind,” I answered. “I’m the artist, not the canvas.” I loaded the needle and buzzed off the excess.
“Uh-huh. So, when are you gonna let me see it?”
“Fuck you,” I said, pushing him forward a little. “How many times you gonna ask me that? Now get comfy, and quit moving.” He snickered. I started on the whiskers of his second koi—this one to be a wealth of dazzling blues to offset the other. I wondered if, perhaps, he were entrusting them to carry him downstream—that part of him they were able to move—to a pond somewhere beyond the fear that had become his life.
Joey, the high school kid on work release, popped his head in. “CJ? There’s someone out front who wants a tat. He’s asking for you.”
“Did you tell him I’m booked solid for two months?”
“Yea, but he seems kinda particular about it.”
I blinked a few times. “How you doing, Dylan? Can you hang?”
“I’m good either way.”
“I’ll be out in ten minutes.” Joey moved off and I went back to the design on Dylan’s shoulder, soon losing myself in the fine lines of the scales. Pause, dab, reload and resume—the gentle curves, one after another, upon another, over and over. During one such pause, I heard Dylan whisper back to me.
“Have you talked to Vi?”
My world shifted, insides trembling upon that solitary word.
Vi…
Violet.
“Shouldn’t be too difficult. Who would you like to do it?”
Her long black hair rested against her shoulders as she turned her head, green eyes looking first down the hall, then back to me. “I think I’d rather…I’d prefer your hands, if that’s all right with you? I’m sorry, I—I know it’s getting late, but I’d really like to do it now. I don’t want to chicken out again!”
She was a real looker; Larry’s eyes were almost popping out as I led her back to my station. “Lower back, right? How low would you like it?”
“Very,” she said in a whisper. Knowing what that meant, I cut Larry loose, promising to pay him for the extra hour and a half. “Damn,” he whispered, shaking his head and smiling as he walked past me. I locked the door and flipped the sign to CLOSED. She waited patiently as I made a copy of her drawing—a beautiful V in Edwardian script with some sort of flower on either side.
“Could you bring a little vine near the sides of the V, kind of curling around a little, with a violet on each end? Sorry I didn‘t draw mine very well.”
“That’s okay. Well, let’s see what I can find.” I pulled up some good pictures on my laptop. She watched as I worked it up on paper. “You know, I could fill in the V in light blue, and graduate the color through different shades of violet as I go down, finishing in the deepest?” I sketched it out in colored pastel pencils, blended some of them and showed her.
“Wow, that’s it! That’s perfect!”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely!”
I smiled back, worked up a final stencil and gave her the consent and care forms to sign.
“Why don’t you get comfortable, and try to relax,” I said. “I can change the chair into a table, if you prefer to lie down? Totally up to you.”
“I can sit. I mean, you know—kinda straddle the chair.”
“Okay. You’ll have to hike down the jeans a little.”
I sensed her green eyes following me to the copy machine, her sweet perfume teasing my senses. Shake it off, CJ, I told myself. She’s not like that, and besides, she’s a customer. She’s putting her trust in you, so knock it off. I went back with the working stencil and found her sitting in just her little top, panties and socks, jeans folded on the corner chair, sneakers beneath. I pulled my eyes away long enough to glance at the release and her driver’s license.
“Your name’s Violet? I suppose that helped when choosing the flower!”
“Yeah, I’m kinda stuck with it.”
I explained that I had to shave the area so that errant hairs, no matter how small, wouldn’t be pushed back into the skin.
“So, how low can you go with it? I’d like it to be totally hidden beneath my panty line, if you could?”
“I can go as low as you want. Just so you know, it’s gonna light you up. The lower you go, the more sensitive it gets.”
She nodded, stood up and started easing her panties down. Then, as a ballerina might, she drew a leg almost vertically out one side, then the other. Nothing—not a solitary hair around the soft crease that vanished between her legs. Violet tossed the panties atop her jeans, smiled slightly and straddled the chair. After lathering, shaving her lower back and patting her dry, I handed her a mirror and asked her to stand. I began to locate the stencil.
“How’s that?”
“Can you go lower?” I fought against the trembling of my fingertips and moved it down, then down again. She opened her legs slightly and I lowered it farther, the bottom tip of the V sitting just at the crack of her buttocks. “There,” she whispered. “Right there. Is that okay, or is it too low?”
I pulled on a pair of latex gloves and, taking into account the slight shaking of my hands, chose my heavier BSI Trident over the standard, lighter Sidekick. She put a leg on either side of the chair and leaned forward, moving her ass toward me. My eyes drank in her curvaceous cheeks, the taut little hole, the soft pink lips and the hint of her tight belly where it met the towel. I set a hand on her left cheek and drew closer.
She let out a gasp as the needle hit. I bit my lip, blinked a few times, then started the slow and methodical process of outlining the stencil. She made little noises every now and then, drawing breaths against the pain. The thin black lines rose up slightly as I moved, surrounded by a slight blush. After about fifteen minutes, I had finished the outline and all the black highlights on the left side. As I gently dabbed her with a cool washcloth, she let out a combined moan and sigh.
“I’m going to start the other side now, then fill in the colors on the flowers and tendrils. We’ll do the V last, okay?”
“Okay,” she answered, panting slightly. “Can I…can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
She threw her black hair aside and looked over her shoulder. “What does ‘CJ’ stand for?”
I blinked a few times and leaned closer. “Carmen,” I said softly. “My name is Carmen Jansen.”
Her eyes traveled down the front of my shirt. “Beautiful,” she whispered, then met my gaze again. “That’s a beautiful name. Nice to meet you, Carmen.”
I swallowed against a lump that had taken hold within my throat, and fleetingly worried that my chin was quivering. “Nice to meet you, Violet.” She smiled and rested her head on the pil
low.
After edging, highlighting and coloring both sides, I started outlining the V. Her gasps grew stronger. I moved the light closer and leaned in. As I went lower, following the letter to its bottom tip, I could smell her. She was wet. Her womanly sweetness moved into me, permeating me, making my senses tingle as they never had before. God, how I wanted her—to touch and taste her, know every inch of her soft skin. I wanted to hear her moan and scream. My mind flashed an image of her head thrown back, hands grabbing my hair and holding me against the aching delight of her clit. My breath came quicker, and I knew she could feel it landing upon her tender flesh.
Finishing the outline, I ripped open a sterile three-point needle. She watched over her shoulder, mouth slightly open as I mixed a variety of blue and purple shades in the dipping tray.
By the time I neared filling in the letter, her gasps had turned to moans. Violet’s face, pressed sideways against the pillow by the arching of her back, was covered with a scattering of hair and tiny beads of sweat. Her left hand was atop mine as I held her buttocks apart. Her right was tucked beneath her stomach. Two of her fingers were making frantic circles before disappearing. They emerged, slick and shiny, to race over her clit again and again.
Squirming upon my stool, I came twice just watching her.
“CJ?…CJ?”
I drew a breath. “What?”
“Sorry. Uhhh, it’s been almost half an hour,” Joey said. “That guy is still waiting.” I told Dylan we’d take a break and made my way to the front.
He seemed average enough, as if anyone in this world could be considered so, though nervous, the way squirrels are. Uncomfortable and twitchy. I apologized and asked what I could do for him. He flipped through a book of flash on the counter. He eventually pointed to a torn chest, ribs exposed through jagged, bleeding flesh.
“I was thinking about something like this?”
“Just like that, as it is, or do you want something similar? Can’t afford to be vague when it comes to a tattoo.” He stammered and shifted for a moment. I sent Joey in back to check on the autoclave and see if anyone wanted a bite to eat. “Okay. Tell me exactly what you’re looking for.”
He blinked a few times and lifted his T-shirt. Across his chest were four diagonal red lines, with a fifth slightly offset, which was thinner and shorter. They looked three-dimensional and I reached out to see how they had been drawn. He flinched slightly. Parts of the lines had scabbed over.
“Have you been picking at these? If you keep doing that, they’ll probably end up scarring.”
“I don’t want them as scars,” he said in a whisper. “I want them to bleed.”
While an apprentice inker, I quickly learned that people want what they want. You don’t ask them why; you just ask them if they’re sure. This guy was sure and, when I asked him a second time, he was certain again. I bit my lip and broke the unwritten rule.
“Tell me.”
After a couple of false starts, he began recounting how he and his girlfriend had gotten into an argument, some sort of big scream fest involving another girl. He didn’t go into specifics, though the dropping of his head and avoiding my eyes told me all there was to know. The argument got worse, he said, and she began to freak out. She cried and screamed and hit him—finally reaching the point where she gouged her fingers into his chest and raked him open. She ran from the house, squealing tires as she raced away. After twenty minutes and unable to think of anything else, he went after her.
When he came upon the scene, the rescue squad was using a pneumatic expander—trying to free her from the wreckage curled around a tree.
“Glass and metal everywhere and…I don’t expect you to understand,” he said. “I did that to her. I wasn’t driving, but I did it all the same. And this is all I have left. She’d still be in my arms if only I’d… I’ll pull the scabs off every day, if I have to. I just want you to help me to never forget. I’ll be left with nothing, if it fades.”
This guy would eat his own heart if he could yank it from his chest. I looked at his shirt, knowing what lay beneath, then back to him.
“I’m sorry, I can’t. No, what I mean is, I won’t.”
He stared at me, his face a blank.
“Sorry,” I said again, softly. “I’m afraid you’ll have to find someone else to do it.”
He stood there for a moment, then nodded. He rubbed his nose and, with eyes blank, shuffled out.
My gaze wandered down to the notebook before me. A chill lingered at the center of my spine as I drew the image from the plastic sleeve. It was in several crumpled pieces by the time it hit the bottom of the trash can.
When I got back to my station, Larry was putting the finishing touches on the walk-in and Dylan was leafing through a magazine. The smell of a cigarette lingered upon him.
“Are you kidding me? You haven’t even quit smoking?”
He smiled and shrugged, favoring the shoulder I’d been working on. “What can I tell you, CJ? Can’t help myself, I guess!”
“Turn around! Just turn around and assume the position!” He let out a little chuckle. Damn it, Dylan, I thought, reaching for a new pair of gloves.
After closing the shop, I went upstairs and popped a frozen dinner in the microwave. Twelve days had passed; twelve days since I had told her that I needed to be sure of myself. The only thing I was certain of was that I was little more than a shadow of who I’d been. I turned on the television, quietly beseeching it to numb me. I thought of that guy, wanting his cuts to be everlasting. Then memories of Vi flowed into my mind, as I knew they would.
“Hi CJ! Would you mind checking my tattoo? I can’t see it very well, and I want to make sure it’s healing okay.”
“Why don’t we go upstairs? Want some coffee?”
“Sure!”
We went up and I flipped the switch on the coffee machine. “Let’s take a peek.”
Violet unbuttoned her jeans and turned toward the countertop, placing both hands upon it. Looking over at me, she smiled faintly and raised one of her wonderfully arched eyebrows. I walked to her and, standing behind, eased the zipper down. Her jeans followed and, with the tips of my fingers, I gently pulled back and lowered her panties. Her flowers, vines and initial, kept moist with a thin layer of Tattoo Goo and a patch of plastic wrap, slowly revealed itself.
“Beautiful,” I whispered in her ear. She turned around and, cupping my face in her hands, brought her lips to mine. Long and slow we kissed, and I soon forgot what it was to breathe.
“Come back tonight,” I whispered.
She did.
I have known heat, and the few women I’ve been with have brought me to understand hunger. But like so many things about her, Violet’s lips were different. There was yearning, but also softness and exhilaration, fear and freedom. Fingers touched necks and shoulders, as my kisses moved from her lips to the underside of her chin. One of her hands set gently upon my breast. Her fingernail traced around my nipple, then left it to strain against my T-shirt as she drew me close. Her other hand ran through my hair as I began nibbling the soft skin beneath her ear. She moaned and held me against her even tighter. Struggling through stolen breaths, we soon found our way to the bed.
Since I’m usually the aggressive one, I was surprised to find myself on my back. She crawled atop and kissed me, lightly at first, then with more passion. More urgency. Violet’s tongue danced with my own as I felt her hands moving to the bottom of my T-shirt. She straddled me and, with a smile, pulled it up. As soon as my head came into view, she twisted it around my arms and held them lightly in place. Her eyes drank in my little breasts.
She kissed me once, long and deep, then quickly set upon one of my nipples. Her tongue played over it softly, sending little shivers racing down my spine. After flicking it hard a few times, she pulled it gently upward with her teeth. Without realizing, I was arching my back to keep her mouth on me. I ached to reach out and hold her head exactly where it was, but as soon as she felt movement, her grip on my
shirt tightened. Violet shifted from one breast to the other, sweetly tormenting that nipple as well. With the pulsation moving outward from my core, I ground my hips against her stomach.
She released her grip, took off her top and bra, then leaned forward to feed me one of her breasts. Warm and soft in my hands, I played upon her nipples in much the way she had mine. Within moments, she was kissing my forehead and reaching down to rub a hand between my jean-clad legs. The wetness quickly began to move outward.
Moments later, Violet turned herself around and lowered her warm and hairless flesh within easy reach. She planted soft kisses all around my slit, licked the wetness she found there and began to flick at my bud with her tongue.
I pulled her hips slightly downward until her clit pressed against my ready and wanting mouth. We delved into each other with fingers and tongues, the trembling of hips and spasms of pressed bellies telegraphing every new sensation.
Fingers deep within each other, we licked, kissed and nibbled. Time, memories, worry—everything beyond the softness of her flesh seemed to dissolve and float away into the dim light of the room.
I urged Violet onto her back and positioned our legs. We moved and pressed against each other, quickly finding a rhythm to match the flow of desire that rose from within. With her head thrown back, she seized my hips and began to press her clit hard against my own. Several quick gasps escaped her and she pulled me in tightly. All of our lips merged. My orgasm raced to its bursting point just as a long moan escaped her. As she shuddered and shook with release, her voice shifted into a scream muffled against my neck. The grinding became gentle movement, then stillness. I pulled the sheets over us, kisses taking in the sweet sheen from each other’s necks and faces.
A few nights later, we fell into each other again. And again. Daylight became something that kept us from the moon, from our true selves, though we soon conquered that as well. Weeks became three months. Sometimes she stopped in the parlor, dropping off hoagies and soup while I worked on Dylan’s first koi. The semicircles of its many scales became, in my wandering mind, the curves of her body and the arc of her smile. Larry had noticed the change within my face, smiled and said nothing. Dylan picked up on it as well. “She’s good for you,” he whispered.
Best Lesbian Erotica 2013 Page 2
