AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What?” I asked dumbly.
“Are you in pain?” Conor asked once more, patiently, slowly.
“No,” I replied, shifting a little uncomfortably on the tattoo chair, the backs of my thighs sticking from the heat. “No, I don’t think so.”
Conor’s eyes assessed mine. Then he assessed my body. I noticed then, too, that I was tensed once more. My hands were back around the sides of the chair, my fingernails digging into the leather on the underside. My breathing was back to being ragged, uneven, breaths held for too long, the air around me somehow thinner than it should have been. The muscles of my inner thighs were shaking uncontrollably. My back was again stiff as a board as if Conor had sent not ink into my flesh but high voltages of electricity, again and again and again.
I didn’t understand what was happening to me. It wasn’t fear that was making me react like this. Or at least I didn’t think it was. I didn’t feel pain. Or at least not pain like I usually felt pain. It wasn’t the sting of torn skin or the dull ache of a bruise or the quick white heat of a cut from a too sharp kitchen knife.
The pain was an ache, a needing, between my legs. I tried to release the tension in my body, but it remained. Outside my control. Completely outside my control.
“Are you sure?” Conor asked, his eyes returning to mine before looking at the half-finished tattoo. “Because the skin here…”
He touched the pale skin where the white lotus was still to go. God, so close to the edge of my panties. A shiver went down my spine. Between my legs throbbed like a heartbeat.
“…the skin here can be very sensitive,” he explained. “Many people find it painful… Especially for their first time… When they don’t know what to expect…”
Conor looked at me and I saw it again. The way his gaze kept drawing to my inner thighs. The flush to his cheeks, the hitch in his breath. He was remembering. Remembering what it felt like to kiss that sensitive skin. How I arched my back against his tongue. How I came undone for him.
“We can stop,” he said, pulling his hand from my hip, dragging it through his hair. Was his breath ragged, too? Was the air around us thin for him like it was thin for me? Was he having just as hard of a time getting anything, anything at all into his starved lungs as I was?
“We can stop and continue later,” Conor said as I watched his chest, watched his lungs beneath the thin material that now clung to him, stuck to his body like my bare legs stuck to the leather chair. He continued more to himself than to me, “We should stop. We shouldn’t go any further.”
My hand was on his before he could put the tattoo gun away.
“Keep going. Please,” I said. “I’m not in pain.”
His eyes met mine and I could see he believed me. I could also see that it was the answer he was not hoping for but fearing. I could see that this was exactly what he hadn’t wanted to hear. I could see that things would have been simpler for him, for me, for us, if I had just said, “It hurts.” If I had just said, “It hurts and I want to stop.” If I had just said, “Please stop.”
I said the opposite. I begged the opposite.
“Please,” I said, the word desperate on my tongue, “don’t stop.”
Conor ran his hand over his mouth.
“If I continue,” he said, slowly and with hesitation, “if I continue, we’ll see it to the end.”
I did not look away as he watched me in the dim, pink-hazed light.
“Is that what you want?” he asked.
I sucked in what air I could and said, softly but firmly, “Yes, I want it.”
There was that something else again in Conor’s eyes. There was that something more. I only caught a passing glimpse of it as he picked back up the gun and again leaned over my bare thigh. I had hardly any time to stare at it, to puzzle at it, to try to piece it together. But it left a spot on my vision like the sun. A blackness. A strange void. I tried to cling to it before I blinked it away. Before it disappeared and I could no longer remember what it looked like at all. I tried to name it. To name it.
Relief?
Fear?
Lust?
I had little time to think more on it because it wasn’t long before the steady hum of the tattoo gun and Conor’s intense focus on me had once again dragged me under like a tide. Soon it was all I could think about: the pain/pleasure of the needle against my skin moving higher and higher, Conor’s fingers sweeping along my flesh higher and higher, his eyes focused on nothing but my bare skin. Higher and higher.
All I could think of was that night he had me laid out naked and spread out before him. The way his hair tickled my inner thighs. The way his fingers coaxed out even more and more pleasure from me.
Maybe it was seconds after that or maybe it was hours after that, but at some point I wasn’t even thinking at all.
I knew nothing but instinct and desperation. All I could do was try to hold on. Conor said if we continued we would see it to the end and he seemed intent on it now. He held the thigh he was tattooing firmly, even as the rest of me squirmed. My heel dug into the leather. My skin was slick with sweat so I could find no purchase, but still I tried.
