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4
Dmitry
Iknew Manya had been expecting a tattoo parlor; I’d gathered as much on the drive to the other side of the city where The Artist put up shop. I just hadn’t been in a rush to clear her preconceived notions. It was a more relaxed afternoon than I had been anticipating, in large part due to being able to fuck her six ways from Sunday before leaving the hotel.
I could blame it on the inside-out dress, or our charged conversation, or even on the way she so prettily flushed red, reminding me that her chest tended to flush as well . . .but I’d be lying if I did. I had just wanted to fuck her. And I could because she was my wife, so I had.
Afterwards, she’d allowed me to select an outfit for her from the wardrobe while she showered, and the drive there had been almost therapeutic in a strange way. She’d recognized the more obvious landmarks as they passed, remarking on some vague memory from her childhood.
But she hadn’t grown up in the city like I had. I knew every street and every sixth that stood on the corner of them, pedaling any number of illicit items to their regulars. They were the silent eyes of the city, some seen and some not, like fixtures among the many roads and buildings. I pointed out to her each passing location that meant something, but I was caught off-guard by her questions.
I had never spoken of my childhood to anyone before, not because of any scarring from it, but because anyone who knew me had either been there or was uninterested. To explain things to Manya now, with her many questions peppered between, was like opening a door to a part of myself I’d never explored.
It was refreshing.
Between us was growing another sort of partnership, another sort of trust that I’d never had with anyone else.It was strange and intoxicating, frightening yet all too easy.
“This is a house,” Manya hissed from my side, her black eyes darting around the entryway that we had been let into. I helped her shrug from the mink coat that she had gathered so tightly around her and handed it off with my own coat to the man standing next to the entrance.
“Da,” I answered, not offering anything further.
I could see her irritation with that, and she was clearly unwilling to respond the way she would have done in private.I delighted in it. Perhaps it had been an unconscious test of my own, baiting her so, but if it had been, she had exceeded my expectations. Her eyes flashed with the promise of violence, but when the slight man with milk-colored hair and eyes even darker than hers came into the room, she smiled prettily at him all the same.
“Dmitry Koalistia,” The Artist greeted, his voice higher pitched than even his appearance would indicate. He was a slight man, maybe no more than five feet tall, with a thin waist and bony wrists. He was almost androgynous looking, high cheek bones, and his clear skin the most remarkable feature on him, bright and luminescent even next to the blue-black bags that looked like bruises beneath his eyes.
“Tanner Stepanov,” I replied in turn, not chastising him for his familiarity.
His pale pink lips shifted in what might have been a smile or a grimace. His fingers lifted to daintily wave both Manya and I through the grand archway he had just come through.
The room beyond was all marble and glass, bathed in charcoal black and stone gray, down to the black leather tattoo chair with professional grade equipment that sat in the middle of the room. “Come,” Tanner instructed, boredom covering the one word like a heavy scarf. “Sit. Two Spy, da? Congratulations.” He spoke in a monotone, no one word more emotive than the last.
I didn’t hesitate to follow his instruction, pulling Manya with me.
“You’re The Artist?” Manya asked dubiously, the question leaving her so quickly I knew she hadn’t meant to ask it aloud.
Tanner stopped mid-movement, the tattoo gun he had just picked up hanging limply in his hands. He looked up at her blankly. “Who are you?” he asked simply, his monotone still stretching the words longer than necessary.
“Manya Koalistia,” I cut in, answering for her. My voice was absent of any reproach, but I made sure my last name hung in the air for a moment longer than I otherwise would have. Hoping to move the situation along, I settled into the tattoo chair and shrugged out of my shirt. Manya’s gaze flickered between my torso and Tanner almost as unconsciously as she’d spouted her previous question.
“Eezveeneete,” Manya muttered, dipping her chin slightly as she slid into the stool on my right-hand side. “I didn’t mean any disrespect. I only . . . well, I was expecting someone with more tattoos than Shura, to be honest. Not. . .” she trailed off, looking to me with an uncomfortable pull of her lips.
“Not someone without tattoos,” Tanner answered, his lips flashing briefly in a dead-looking grin. It was the most emotion he’d shown yet, making me feel slightly more at ease as he turned back to readying his station and warming up the machine. Its gentle buzz filled the space as he pulled the already portioned out ink towards him. “I am an artist. Why then would I let some other’s needles touch my skin? I am the best, da? I cannot do to me what I can do to others, so why would I advertise subpar work? My skin is empty because I am better. That is all. Nothing more, nothing less.”
He bent without further preamble over the left-hand side of my chest, the needle pushing into the skin with such a light touch I barely felt anything at all.
I could, however, feel Manya leaning into the chair, looking up and over so that she could watch the lines being etched into my chest, her teeth dragging along her lower lip.Was this turning her on? That was a possibility I hadn’t considered.
“You like tattoos, Manya?” Tanner asked suddenly.
“I . . . well, I like the way they look. At least your work—you are the only one who inked Dmitry, right?” She hesitated until he nodded, a grin breaking over her features. “Then, yes, I like the way they look. And it looks . . . interesting, right now. . .” she trailed off again, her fingers idly running along the top of my arm nearest her. I doubted she even knew that she was doing it, almost like she was petting me.
“But you do not have any of your own?” Tanner probed, eyebrows furrowing.
“Well, I’m not ranked, and—”
Tanner scoffed audibly, rolling his eyes. “Not every tattoo is about ranking,” he said dismissively. He added more ink to the end of his needle before going back to the crown on my chest. “I do tattoos for love, for marriage, for new babies and old . . . tattoos for important dates, for memories, for promises made into the flesh to make you not forget. Tattoos are a story, inked out along a person’s skin. They are art made life blood. . .” His voice rose and fell, emotion bleeding into his words in a way that I’d never witnessed before.
“Would you . . . when you were done with Dmitry, would you tattoo me?” Manya asked suddenly, her rapt attention moving back and forth between him and I as if to make sure I wasn’t upset.
