Yeah, she thought.Me. How doyoulike it, sweetness?
He held for a second and they were there together. Satisfied and safe. Then, panting like a wounded bull, he gently removed himself from her. She watched as he tied the condom in a knot, his broad chest rising and falling like waves. He was such a man now. A grown-up. She studied his scarlet face and sweaty tangle of hair and felt a strange turning in her chest.
Who are you?she thought.Who am I? What is this?
Realising she was still very much bent over with her ass out, she sat back on her heels and rubbed her eyes, groaning as her knuckles came away black. Unsurprisingly, all the sweat and tears had ruined the makeup Neve had so carefully put on her face.
“What?” Toby asked.
“I must look like a horror villain. Like Pearl in the movie where she’s all old and shit.”
“X?” Toby asked. “I liked that one.”
“Me too. Have you ever heard Mia Goth talk in real life? She sounds nuts.”
“Like Bubbles fromThe Powerpuff Girls?”
“Yeah, it’s crazy. She can do, like, a million voices, and that’s the one she settled on.” Tabby returned her gaze to the floor. It was cleanish, but still, obviously, a place people walked on with shoes. She wondered how fucked up her formerly white dress was. Somewhere between ‘ruined’ and ‘utterly destroyed,’ but that was probably the point. Toby had bought something pretty just to trash it. The dress and the woman she’d been in the bar.
His front door was still wide open, and she listened to the rushing wind and the faint roll of the ocean. Her brain was ticking but in a placid, inoffensive way, still too full of feel-good chemicals to worry about much of anything.
“So,” Toby said, sounding awkward for the first time all night. “What should… do you wanna hang out…?”
Tabby laughed, and the feeling of it bubbling through her was like pure confidence winding around her arms and looping her thighs. She might have come, begging, with fingers that had recently been in her ass inside her mouth, but that was okay. That was sex. She was still her. She stood slowly and saw her duffle was still parked by the door. “Why don’t we multi-task? We could hang out while I do a couple of hours on your tattoo?”
Toby blinked up from the floor, his mussy hair and open shirt giving him a sweet, rakish air. “You sure?”
She shrugged. “Why not? Just point me to a bathroom, and I’ll try to de-Pearl myself first.”
* * *
She and Tobywere back in his living room, him on the massage table, Nina Archives playing through her JBL Clip. Wind battered the trees lining Toby’s house, branches smacking into the windows, but its cold fingers couldn’t reach them in the heated space they occupied. Tabby moved her tattooing needle across the upper arm of the guy who’d just fucked her senseless. She was still in her white gown, which had held up amazingly well considering the evening. Her makeup wasn’t too bad either. The copious amount of setting spray Neve had sprayed directly into her face had done its job, and a couple of damp wads of toilet paper were enough to remove the fallout. Mopsy, newly injected with pain medication, was snoozing on the couch nearby. Tabby had almost cried when the aging cocker spaniel had clambered slowly into her arms.
“She seems so much older,” she had told Toby. “She used to be so energetic!”
“Yeah, the years have caught up with her. I’ll just give her meds before we get started?”
She’d watched as Toby fed Mopsy slices of ham before injecting her backside. She’d given a slight whimper but licked her owner’s nose as soon as he was finished.
“Good girl,” Toby crooned, rubbing her ears. “You’re such a brave girl, Mops.”
Tabby had found herself turning away, jealous of a dog and embarrassed to be so, but as Toby settled, shirtless, onto the massage table, she felt oddly gentle toward him. Mopsy had been there in the old days, and one more person knowing they were hanging out, even if that person was a dog, made everything feel different. There was an accountability there, a feeling that it wasn’t just the two of them trapped in a bubble.
But there was also the power shift. She was in control now, her tattoo gun in hand, causing him pain. Toby was at her mercy, semi-naked, his free wrist thrown over his eyes as she drove the needle into his skin over and over. Sadistic as it was, it felt good to have a little leverage—something to compensate for her willing humiliation at Prism and Toby’s wide-open foyer.
She moved the needle into a fresh patch of skin beside his elbow, and Toby winced. “Hurts more this time. It’s manageable, though.”
Tabby smiled at his bravado. “I’d say ‘get a drink,’ but that thins your blood. That’s probably why it’s a bit tougher now. The champagne.”
“Fucking champagne,” Toby groaned. “I can handle it, though. Keep going.”
“I will,” she said, squinting down at the stag. It was coming together nicely. It would be over half finished if she could last another hour or so.
Toby uncovered his eyes, and she felt him study her face and hair. “I can’t believe you went brunette. It looks fucking superb.”
She kept her gaze on the deer, though her face heated. Did he think she’d done it for him? To be more of a conventionally attractive plaything?Wasthat why she’d done it? “Thanks. Good to keep people guessing, I s’pose.”
“Think Sam and Nix’ll freak?”
