Luukas
I wiped the blood and gunk off the thigh I was tattooing and tilted my head to see if I needed to fix anything. “Looks good to me,” I murmured, then lifted my gaze to meet Lauren’s. “What do you think?”
She stared at the image of a fox wrapped in a trans pride flag and smiled. Her eyes filled with tears as she nodded. “Fuck, it’s like a photo,” she choked out. “It’s a good thing I didn’t wear makeup for this.”
I chuckled and nudged her knee with my elbow. “Just let it out, girlie. I know you’ve been waiting for this for a while now.”
She made another one of those choked up sounds and reached to the side where I had a box of tissue for this sort of stuff.
I finished cleaning and putting a Saniderm sheet on top of it. To each their own, but as soon as there was an alternative to cling film, I’d started to use it. “Need any reminders?” I asked Lauren, who had other tattoos, both mine and from other people.
“Nah, but thanks.”
I cleaned my station while she got out of the chair and went to the mirror. The ink looked vibrant even through the clear film now covering it.
“I can’t believe how you do colors, Luke.” She turned around to beam at me.
I chuckled. “Thanks, honey.”
Her phone beeped, and then mine did within a few seconds. I waved her off and she went to the front to pay for the ink and to do whatever her phone dictated.
Mine had a voice message from Master Allen. I grimaced. The man never contacted me unless he needed help with an event or a problem he had with this submissive or that. I wasn’t a fucking sub-whisperer, and my place wasn’t a halfway house for submissives. Not anymore.
I sighed and pressed play.
“Luukas,” he started, using as correct a pronunciation of my name as I’d heard any American use, ever. “I have a big ask.” He sighed, and I fought echoing it. “I promise this will be the last one. I know you hate these things. Could you go to Carl’s house tonight at eight thirty for me? I can’t explain, I want your genuine reaction to something and….” He sighed again, longer, deeper, the sound weary as fuck. “Please.”
I hung my head and breathed for a moment. Then I pressed the little mic icon and recorded my own message. “I’ll be there.” Then, “This is the last time, Allen.”
I was six years old when my family moved from Finland to Colorado after my dad got an amazing job opportunity there. I was a fast learner, so the language stuff wasn’t hard for me. My sister who was three years older had a harder time. She just didn’t have the brain for languages, she’d always say. Of course, she did fine once she used English for everything, just like I did, because speaking a language was the best way to learn it.
At first there was talk of us moving back to Finland in a few years, but then Dad got a promotion, Mom got a job at the local high school in administration, and eventually both Anni and I were enrolled in that school as students.
By the time I graduated, everyone knew we wouldn’t be leaving this country, and by then I’d made my peace with it.
In the fifteen years since graduation, I’d first gotten half a useless art degree, then three years of apprenticeship at a tattoo studio, and the rest was history.
At thirty-three, I had made a name for myself in the tattoo circles both here in the States and in Europe where I still tried to travel yearly for different conventions and to get away for a while.
I had a tattoo studio in Seattle’s Capitol Hill area and lived in a two-bedroom apartment only a fifteen-minute walk away. I rented the apartment from my parents who had done some investing over the years, and I knew I was privileged as fuck in that regard.
Being a tattoo artist paid decently, it was just that I’d chosen to stay in a city that was anything but cheap. I dreamed of retiring somewhere in Europe, if I was honest. My parents were planning the same thing.
As I sat in the Uber on my way to Carl’s multi-million house in Denny-Blaine, I tried my best to guess what was going on. Allen was my mentor, not in tattooing but in BDSM. I’d met him about a decade ago through his then partner who had been tattooed by Oscar who I was apprenticing for.
Allen liked to say he’d seen the “natural Dominant” in me, and that’s why he’d taken me under his wing. I would never deny the effect the man had had on me as a person and as a Dominant, but we were two very different kinds of people, him and me.
Allen was a high protocol old guard kind of Dom. He was a good man with a short temper and high expectations. He was also a caring man, which was why he was sending me to Carl.
Carl had been a splinter under Allen’s fingernail for years now. The man thought he was Super Dom, and while we’d never caught him abusing anyone, some of his submissives had been… less than happy with him. Allen liked to say that he went through boys and girls like they were reusable goods to be passed on to someone else while he was done with them.
I’d helped a couple of subs in my time. Allen said he relied on me because I was much younger than him and many of the other Doms in the Seattle scene. Well, that had been five years ago; I had gotten older, but so had Allen and his circle of friends.
My musings were cut off by the car stopping at Carl’s house. I got out and steeled myself. Allen wouldn’t send me for nothing.
I walked up the path and rang the doorbell. I was a few minutes early, but that was pure luck. The traffic had been better than I’d expected.
The door opened, and I saw a dark-haired young man who kept his eyes at the level of my chest. His eyes were shining with obvious tears and his cheeks were red. His lips were swollen in a way that told me he’d just been used as a fuck hole. Something was wrong with how he looked, but I couldn’t put my finger on it yet.
