Dark Ink Tattoo: Episode 4

by Cassie Alexander

  “I wouldn’t dare,” Thea said.

  “You’d best not,” she said and pulled back, leaving the shimmering curtain shaking behind.

  I exhaled a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “How can someone so pretty be so frightening?” Thea wondered aloud.

  I had so many answers for that right now, but she turned towards me before I could say anything. “Sorry, that was my boss,” she said, wriggling off of me.

  It was too late. Despite all my best intentions and thinking of anything but her butt, she’d given me a raging hard on – and she knew it. She probably had a telepathic sense for them, a kind of professional ESP.

  “Sorry. Not always such a gentleman,” I apologized.

  The corners of her sparkling lips pulled up into a conquering smile. “A gentleman doesn’t have to be a saint.”

  Before I could ask her what that meant – if anything – she stood up. “Rosalie’s right – I gotta get back out there, you know how it is.”

  “Yeah, totally.” I stood and nodded eagerly, taking my out. “It was good seeing you, Thea.”

  “You too, Jack.” Her accent had been crawling back all evening, as if brought out by my own. “I miss Texas out here.”

  “Hell, I’ve only been here for three days, and I miss it.”

  “You won’t say, uh –“ she said with a shrug, to indicate the rest of everything.

  “Not a word.” The few friends I’d stayed in touch with after high school, either they wouldn’t believe me or they didn’t deserve to know. I reached out and pulled the curtain aside, and she seemed surprised.

  “Ladies first,” I explained.

  “Thanks,” she said, giving me a genuine smile, then walked out back into the bar.

  * * *

  I inhaled deeply and followed her at a respectful distance. Who would’ve thought I’d have a more meaningful conversation with the object of my teenaged lust at a strip club than I’d managed through-out all of high school? And gotten a kind of closure for one of the worst periods in my life? That’d been a hundred dollars well spent. With the money I hadn’t given other strippers, I had plenty left for a cab. As I neared the door I cast one last look back, hoping to see Thea there somewhere, even if it was with another guy – when a different girl teetered up.

  “I’m sorry, I’m leaving –“ I held up my hands like she was a mugger.

  “I know – take this,” she said, handing me a slip of paper. I did, and walked out into the night, unfolding it under a sign with the club’s name: Vermillion. And just when I thought the night couldn’t get any more unbelievable, it did.

  3346 Brandlin Way, Apt D, 5 AM – T

  Chapter 2

  I went to a diner, my mind reeling. Why would she want to see me? I knew what I hoped – and I knew what I shouldn’t be hoping, at the same time. Still though, God, at the thought of those legs that’d wrapped around that pole, wrapping around me instead? An urgent, almost electric, need flowed through my body from stem to stern.

  I texted Bruce to let him know that I might not see him until late tomorrow. He was still awake, probably in the bowels of a casino, and he texted me back a high-five. At about four thirty I caught a cab and wound up standing outside of what I could only assume was Thea’s apartment building by 4:45. To pace or not to pace, that was the question. I didn’t want anyone to call me in as a possible burglar but I also didn’t want to be waiting right outside her door.

  The arrival of a small four-door made everything moot as Thea got out of it and grinned at me. “Eager much?”

  “Politely punctual.” I said, smiling back. She was wearing slip-ons, a tank top, and yoga pants now, hauling all of her gear in a huge bag at her side. “Can I take that?”

  “Please,” she said, handing it over to me. “God, how I have missed southern men.”

  “Is it all that different out here? Or just an occupational hazard?”

  “Bit of both, I suppose,” she said, as I followed her up a flight of stairs outdoors. She unlocked her door and let me in.

  Her apartment was cozy, full of warm-colored overstuffed furniture and a nice entertainment system. “Make yourself at home,” she said, before taking her bag from me and disappearing into the back, where I assumed her bedroom was. I heard water running and sat down on her couch. I currently had a strange definition of home, sleeping in a closet-like studio over the tattoo shop – I preferred this one much more to that.

  “There,” she announced, returning without make-up and her hair back in a tousled bun. “Sorry if the magic’s gone.”

  “Hardly,” I said. If anything, her willingness to be casual amplified it.

  She walked past me and into her kitchen, opening the fridge up. “It’s not too late, is it?” she asked, leaning over the door to offer me a beer.

  “Haven’t you already had forty of those tonight?”

  “Ha. Only if apple juice counts as whiskey.”

  “Then I’ll take one.” She brought it back to me and sat on the end of the couch, close enough to touch, but still far enough to make it hard.

  “Thanks,” I said, popping it open and looking again at the room and her, trying to hide my frank disbelief that I was here and this was happening. “How’d the rest of your night go?”

  Thea looked surprised. “You really want to know?”

  “Yeah. What’s it like? I mean I knew you always loved to dance –“

  “Yeah.” She gave her beer a shy look. “It’s – it’s different then what you see on TV. No one shows the back stage stuff. My boss – well, you saw her. She’s her own kind of scary. But I guess you have to be when half the girls are high – there’s so much bullshit back stage.” She took a long swig of her beer, definitely her first of the evening. “Girls arguing about which guys are their marks – which songs belong to them – figuring out which girls are desperate enough to work a group before Rosalie assigns you anyhow – it’s a lot of drama. But where else can you make a couple hundred bucks a night with no degree?”

  “Tattooing? But only if you’re very very good, and lucky, and willing to work every Friday and Saturday and your clients are smart enough to leave tips.”

  “Oh my God. Clients,” she said, making air-quotes around the word. “This guy tonight, tried to show me photos of his wife and kids.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “I know, right? Sometime they just want to pay you to listen about their day. If you’re topless, all the better.”

  “You’d think therapy would be cheaper and smell less like cherry lotion.”

  She laughed. “Also, like come on. We are covered in glitter. If you’re going home and your wife still does your laundry, she either knows and doesn’t care, or she’s got her own thing on the side.”

  “Maybe they just ‘lose’ their luggage at the airport before they go home.”

  “Maybe,” she said with a grin, then shook her head. “I can’t believe that you’re not mad at me, Jack.”

  “I’m not exactly a zen monk – but all that was in the past. I like who I am now. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

  I didn’t know it was true until I’d spoken the words, but it was. Ever since Bruce’d taken me under his wing, I had cash on hand and a way to get more. Even better, I had respect, from others and from myself, something high school had been far better at taking away from me than creating.

  Thea sank back into her couch. “Man, if I could go back -- there’s so much I would change.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  She over looked at me. “You really want to know?”

  “Of course,” I answered, then added, “I want to know everything you’re thinking.” I felt foolish for saying it the second the words left my mouth, but it was too late at night for me to be on my guard, and I’d meant it besides. I’d wanted to know what was going on inside Thea’s head, since seventh grade.

  Instead of laughing as I instantly feared, she seemed taken aback, and I watched her set her drink down in a
deliberate fashion, before reaching up to undo her bun, like the ‘librarian’ in so many music videos. “I would change this,” she said, crawling over the distance between us on her couch.

  I stayed still as the answer to a thousand teenaged prayers unspooled like a film reel in my mind. She was on all fours, and came close enough I could feel her breath. “I never should’ve –“ she started to apologize – the apology that I’d waited years for, only now I didn’t want to hear it anymore. I leaned forward and kissed her instead.

  Her lips were as soft as I’d always dreamed they’d be. My head tilted and she leaned in. It was natural for our lips to part, for our tongues to taste, and I reached a tentative hand up to touch her cheek as she crawled forward, moving to sit in my lap.

  There was no way not to be hard. Four years of watching her, and all the events of tonight – no amount of thinking about baseball or horror films could cure me. I wound my hands around her waist, finding where her shirt ended to touch silky skin – but I needed to ask where this was going before we went on. I pulled my head back, taking her lower-lip with me in between my teeth, tugging her closer to me as her hands ran up my chest and neck and into my hair to bring me back.

  “Do you fuck as good as you kiss?” she whispered.

  “Absolutely. But,” I said, and she leaned back, her beautiful lips pulling into a pout. “I don’t want apology sex, Thea. So if that’s what this is, it’s late – let me go home and jack off in peace.”

  She gave me a thoughtful look and then moved in a very conscious way, grinding slowly against me, relishing taking the power I pretended to have over myself back. “Is ‘friend I haven’t seen in a few years’ sex okay? Or what about ‘sex with hot guy who turns me on?’”

  “Either of those will do,” I said, and caught her hair with one hand, while I sent the other underneath her shirt. I wound her hair into my fist and pulled her mouth to mine again. Her hands fluttered for a second – then started undoing the buttons at my neck, as my other hand – it sank under the elastic of her bra and reached beneath, bunching up her shirt, so my thumb could graze her nipple. “Too much clothing,” I complained, releasing her hair and pulling up her shirt as she twisted to let me, and then she was sitting half-naked on my lap. I was awestruck by her, for a second – and then I brought my hands up to maul her, firmly grasping every piece I could touch of her lovely smooth skin – then I bowed her forward so that I could kiss her, from her collar bone down – I had to taste her breasts, it was an animalistic need.

  She moaned as my mouth reached her nipple and played one hand in my hair – the other she tried to shove between us, to get further down my chest, at what was hidden in my jeans. I sucked on her and nuzzled her with my now 5-am-o-clock shadow, trying to eat her, smell her, feel her all at once. Her nipples went hard as erasers and I gently bit one while pulling at the other.

  “Oh, yeah,” she breathed, and I felt her hips rise as her ass clenched against my thighs, as though she were fucking an imaginary cock.

  I was dying to give her the real thing -- but I wanted to give her so much more, first.

  “Stand up.”

  “What?” She lolled forward, eyes a little cloudy.

  “Stand up and take those pants off.”

  She made a disappointed groan but then got up and stood a few feet away. “These pants?” she said, hitching her thumbs into the waistband.

  “You heard me,” I said.

  She turned so her ass was facing me and looked over her shoulder. “Are you sure?” she asked, pressing them slowly down, revealing an inch of creamy skin and the beginnings of a pink thong.

  “Very,” I said, in a tone that broached no teasing.

  She swung her hips from side to side, slippery-slipping them off as slowly as she could.

  “All the way?” she asked, bending forward, so that I could see the satin veiled promise between her thighs.

  “Everything,” I commanded.

  She took her time with the thong, making the moment last – then turned around more slowly, shyly, to show her body off. She was small and tight and only the thinnest line of fur ran down toward her clit like a suggestive arrow – like her body already knew exactly what I meant to do to her.

  “Come here,” I said, gesturing her closer. She came nearer – and it took a moment and some manhandling for me to make myself clear, making her stand over me, a foot on either side of my hips, so that the space between her thighs was directly in front of my face.

  “Jack –“ she breathed.

  “Shhhhh –“ I said, and anything else I was going to say was buried against her pussy.

  Between the softness of the couch and how short she was, she was the perfect height for this – so I leaned in, and felt her brace herself with her hands against the wall above. Her folds opened for me, already dripping with wetness, it was easy for me to play my tongue in and up, to taste her more. She made a soft noise as I lapped forward and a louder moan as my lips found her clit to suck in, rolling it against my tongue.

  She thrust then, her dancer’s hips giving way, and I followed her with my head. One of her hands came down to grab into my hair as both of mine reached up to cup her perfect ass, all the better to follow it.

  I pushed my tongue up, in, out, sucked, again and again, tasting every part of her that I could reach, and then she sped up so fast I couldn’t follow and I didn’t want to slow her down -- I just left my tongue out and let her ride on it, feeling her ass clench and release above me in endless waves.

  If she was going to come this way, so be it, but I needed to come too – I let go of her to pull out my cock and started stroking it below her, looking up at her fabulous body, the bottom curve of her breasts, as her head rolled back and – she pushed herself off the wall with obvious effort, to stare down the flat plain of her stomach at me.

  “Put a condom on.”

  “Yes Ma’am,” I said, reaching into the back pocket of my jeans. I’d never pulled one on so fast before, but I was ready as her hips came down.

  It was like she was sliding down an imaginary pole. She put both her hands on my shoulders and lowered herself, letting me manage any issues with aiming, while she watched – because she wanted to see the look on my face at the moment when –

  “God,” I whispered, as my cock dipped inside her.

  With strength I knew I didn’t possess, Thea hovered there, atop me, pulsing up and down, tormenting me with only an inch of her heat, leaving me powerless, willing her to give me more.

  Slowly, so slowly, she did, making me appreciate each and every moment of her slide. She was tight around me, I could feel myself filling her, and from the sounds she made I knew she could feel it too. She changed from feet to knees and then we were sealed at the hips, her pussy tight against me, my hard cock inside her up to its hilt.

  “This feels so good,” I murmured, cupping her ass to me as I went to kiss her breast.

  “I know,” she said, “I know –“ She made a soft sound then, and caught her breath, beginning to rock on me.

  I tried to thrust – I really did – but the way her eyes closed as her head rolled back and her hips began to pulse -- I’d been with enough women to know that sometimes the moment belonged to them, and as she started bouncing I realized there was nothing I should do, could do, except let her use me. I put my hands at her waist and leaned back into her couch to arch up for her pleasure, and as I did that, she opened her eyes.

  “Oh -- Jack,” she whispered, grinding herself against me.

  “Fuck yes,” I growled, moving my hands to hold her ass tightly.

  Her hands clasped my shoulders tight as she started rocking harder, whipping my cock in and out of her with tiny thrusts, making it fill her and then leave her empty. I watched in amazement, but didn’t interrupt – it wasn’t every day a woman used you this fiercely, and I wanted to let her ride. I could see her winding up to come, in the way her mouth opened, hear it in the roughness of her breath, feel it as her pussy gr
asped around me.

  “Oh, fuck yes,” I breathed, encouraging her, her perfect breasts bobbing. Her stomach curled against mine, grinding her clit into me with each push. I could feel the glory of her ass tightening and pulling – and above all else I could feel her pussy – the pussy that I’d longed to be in, ever since high school, the one I’d stroked myself imagining being inside at night – it fit my cock like a glove. Every time she squirmed and pulled and pushed and rocked it made me harder and more ready --

  “Oh oh oh –“ she warned, impossibly fast now, squirming atop me, pinned by my cock. I grabbed her hips hard and pulled her toward me, shoving myself deep inside her. “Oh! Yes! Jack!” she said and starting shaking, spasming, from her head down to her toes and every part in between –

  “God, yes,” I growled, as her pussy’s waves of orgasm grabbed hold of me. “Yes – yes –“ I used my hands to make her hips fuck me for another crucial moment and then shot my cum deep inside with a guttural sound, my own hips rising and falling, making hers ride along, until both our bodies sank.

  Thea rocked back, making long sighs of pleasure, still swirling her hips over me, one lazy hand stroking her own breast, until she sat back, moving incrementally until my spent cock slid out. Then she fell over on the couch beside me, seemingly exhausted. “Oh, Jack, if you were that good in high school, I missed out.”

  “You and a lot of other girls,” I said, pulling off the condom as I pushed myself back inside my jeans. I hadn’t even gotten to take any of my clothing off. All the better to go stumble out and get a cab.

  As if reading my mind she rose up on her elbows. “If you think you’re going home tonight, tomorrow, whatever the fuck day this is now – you’re sadly mistaken.”

  I stared at her. I’d already lived the dream and made peace with the fact that despite what she’d said it could still be apology sex. But round two wouldn’t be, for sure. “Yeah?” I asked her, all of my high school hopes and insecurities rushing up.

  She nodded eagerly with a soft smile. “Oh yeah.”