“Begging?” she teased, corner of her mouth hiking up into a playful smile. “Very submissive of you, Smith, and I won’t lie, that’s not surprising in the slightest.”
Later that night, I went home and masturbated so hard I came all over the bathroom mirror. With one hand braced against the edge of the sink and the other strangling my dick, it took me what felt like forever to catch my breath again. I took one look at my reflection, mirror me’s cheeks streaked with cum, before swiping the mirror with my sweaty palm and climbing into the shower.
CHAPTER 4
RIGGS
One week after I tattooed Damon’s knee, the swelling had gone down enough for him to come back into the shop and harass me into scheduling interviews to hire at least one new artist. I conceded only so that he would stop pestering me about it, but he’d left me a stack of portfolios that were all really good candidates. The fact of the matter, though, was I hadn’t thought enough about rental terms to even have something to offer anyone yet, so I put it on my mental list of things to do and filed it away for the future. Damon wasn’t hanging around so he wouldn’t even know I’d decided to save it for another day.
It was Monday, just after dinner, and though I hadn’t been terribly hungry, I was picking my way through a carton of fries when I caught sight of a man lingering on the sidewalk. He was young, but dressed pretty smartly with pressed khaki’s and a white button-up. The sleeves were rolled up, the top button undone, and he looked up with a tight frown at the hand-painted shop logo across my front window. I didn’t know him, but I knew he definitely wasn’t my next appointment.
I didn’t imagine there was much fault for him to find with the name or the logo; I’d designed and painted them both myself.Rather, someone else had started the drawing…I’d only finished it, but all the ideas had been mine. Ink and Ember, etched across the glass in a brushed bronze shade of brown and shadowed with black, the shop was the best parts of my life and that was the biggest reason I was hesitant to let anyone else be a part of it.
I turned my attention back to my fries, only looking up again when the bells on my front door jingled. The man from outside was now inside, the same frown on his plush lips as before. Wiping salt and fat on the front of my jeans, I stood up from my stool behind the counter and met him there. He was considerably shorter than me, also plenty young.
“Hey. You looking to get a tattoo?” I asked him in greeting.
“I don’t have any,” he muttered.
“Neither did I once,” I said, scratching the back of my neck and shrugging my shoulders. I had on a white V-neck and black jeans, but I knew the shirt was thin enough that if someone stared hard they’d be able to see the colored outlines of tattoos across my chest and not only my arms. My art also spanned the length and width of my back and covered most of my legs as well…my ribs, my stomach, my throat. There wasn’t much skin left untouched on my body, and I liked it that way.
My statement earned me a flash of a smile, and I stepped back a little ways from the counter, not wanting to crowd him.
“I’m Riggs, by the way,” I said.
“Smith,” he said back to me, chin tucked against his chest.
I traced the bottom of my teeth with the tip of my tongue, appreciating the way Smith’s name felt against the roof of my mouth.
“Do you have any idea what you wanted to get today?” I asked. “Did you want to getanythingtoday?”
“It’s kind of abstract.” His dark eyes flickered away from my face and down to the black leather-bound portfolio on the counter. It was already open from earlier when Damon had beenflipping through it while I pretended to look at the books of the potential new artists he’d brought my way.
“I can do abstract.”
Smith turned a few pages and glanced down at his forearm. “Can you do it here?”
I watched him turn his forearm between us, watched the corded muscles bulge with each twist of his wrist, then impassively, I turned my attention back to his face.
“You’ll have to tell me whatitis first.”
His cheeks turned a very breathtaking shade of pink. “Oh, right.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cellphone, swiping across the screen before setting it on the counter and shoving it toward me. I leaned forward so I could see his screen, a picture of trees pasted against an imposing brick building. I cocked my head to the side, eyes narrowed.
“Explain,” I said.
A darker pink.
“Like, a movie almost… the trees then they kind of fade into the buildings and then on the other side, the buildings turn back into the trees again.”
It wasn’t anything like a movie, but Smith was quite possibly the most endearing potential client that had ever walked into my shop so I wasn’t going to correct him. He was all nerves and jitters, but I had no idea what had him feeling out of sorts. Was it the prospect of getting a tattoo or was it me?
“I can definitely do it,” I told him, holding out my hand.
He shuffled closer to his side of the counter and set his arm into my palm. His skin was warmer than my hand, smoother, paler, unblemished. Without much thought, I stroked my thumb across his wrist bone and inspected the offered canvas. My fingers closed entirely around his wrist, and Smith drew in a sharp intake of breath.
“Not tonight, though,” I said. “I’ll draw something up for you, and you’ll need to come in the morning or early afternoon.”
