by Nicole Thorn
“It tickles,” I said.
And he smiled back at me. Really smiled, then went on with his work. He didn’t drift too far from my shoulders and the bottom of my collarbones. Could have been that he didn’t need to, or maybe he didn’t want to cross a line. I felt like I’d made it clear that it wasn’t a problem but he was a polite boy. One that was mine for the rest of the night. I would have kept him for longer if I could have.
Much, much longer.
Chapter Thirteen
A Peek of Sunlight
Becket
Her skin took the ink better than I thought it would. Colors splayed across pale flesh and shone in dull moonlight before drying. I set designs across her shoulders and over the tops of her breasts. Manny looked perfectly relaxed, laying back in the grass, her eyes staring up at the stars. The movements of the pen didn’t bother her in the least.
I sketched out a face on her shoulder, careful to make it bright and happy so that she wouldn’t have to see anything sad or ugly. She deserved to see only good things, so everything I put on her would be gorgeous.
Soon, I ran out of skin on her shoulders and chest. Disappointment writhed through me. I liked watching her face while I laid the ink down. I liked watching her eyes brighten and darken. I liked watching her mouth open so slightly that it was hard to see in the dark. I liked the play of emotions the best.
They were so subtle – or perhaps I was bad at reading them – that I had to pay close attention. Goosebumps would raise on her skin when I brushed her the right way, and she’d shiver when I pressed the pen into certain areas. Her eyes were half closed when I had to stop drawing.
She sat up partway. “Are you done?” she asked.
I shook my head and moved down her body. The slide of her skin against my clothes had her shivering again, and her eyes opened a little wider. She laid down, staring back up at the stars. “Okay.”
Before I set my pen between her breasts, I leaned down, laying my lips against the soft, warm skin. Her heart beat hard enough that I could sense it. The flow of power in her body. The movement of blood just beneath her flesh. The heat as she flushed. I looked up the line of her chest with my lips still pressed to her.
The beat of her pulse throbbed in her throat. The blood rushed in her veins, and I enjoyed the feel of it. She shivered, refusing to look at me. I slid my lips against her skin, closer to one of her breasts. I watched as the nipple hardened into an inviting peak...
And then I stopped. She had told me before to stop when something got too intimate, so I had to assume that she would want me to stop this time as well. I brushed my fingers down her side, over her hip, and then I set the pen back to her. I’d draw a sword, I decided. Down her chest, stopping at her stomach. I’d add adornments all around it so that it wouldn’t stick out too much.
I rifled through my pens until I found one that could act as the steel for the sword, and then went back to work. The moon overhead moved steadily across the sky while I applied pen to flesh. Manny’s eyes closed but she did not sleep. Her hands moved on occasion.
When I got to her stomach, where the hilt of the sword would go, she shivered hard enough that I looked up. My chin was aligned with her hip. One of her hands moved loosely in the air for a second before coming to rest on my head. Fingers burrowed through my hair but I didn’t mind. I went back to work. Around the sword, I drew flowers, blood, vines, and death.
I worked until her entire torso had been covered in a story that only I knew. Until most of my pens were either empty or almost empty. I worked until my eyes grew heavy, and I knew that I could not put another design on her skin. Then I laid down next to her. The smell of ink filled the air. It coated my hands, and Manny had been turned into a display of color.
Her eyes opened, and she stretched. I couldn’t tell if she had been asleep or not. “Are you done?” she asked.
I nodded, then paused. “No,” I said. “Can you sit up?”
She did so without hesitating. My eyes crawled all over her, and I had to move slowly, for fear that I would startle her in some way. My pens all laid next to me, and I rifled through them until I found the black pen. It had just enough ink left for this. And the red, running almost dry, had a scant amount as well.
“Lean forward?” I asked.
Without hesitation, she did. When I reached for her face, her eyelids drifted down. I touched the tip of the pen against the corner of her eyes, and drew so carefully, so slowly. This was her face. I didn’t want to put something there that would embarrass her. The heart formed quickly. I drew it upside down, so that the tip of the heart could touch the corner of her left eye. I filled it in haphazardly because I thought it would look better that way. When it was finished, I took up the black pen, and went to her right eye. That drawing took a little more care, and had to be filled in with my white pen. The eye sockets proved to be the hardest but in hardly any time at all, I had a little skull, almost upside down, stretching from that eye.
I sat back, capping the pens. Manny opened her eyes and blinked at me. A second later, she pulled her bag towards her. She didn’t have a mirror, so she used her phone to check out what I had done to her face. I braced myself for some kind of rejection or irritation. Instead of either, she smiled at me.
“Do you like it?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I like this?” Before I could answer, she held her hand up. “Never mind. I don’t want to ruin the moment with murderous thoughts towards your father.”
I set my pens down, frowning. “He’s not bad, Manny.”
She looked at me with clear doubt.
“He’s not worse than your parents,” I told her, and that made her blink. “I trust him, and he’s never done anything but what was right for me.”
“Becket...” Manny said, and sighed. That’s when she looked down the front of her body, seeing what I had drawn. She examined herself for several minutes, and each second felt like slow torture for me. I waited for her to say that I had done something wrong, that it would take her days to remove all of this. Instead, she touched the pommel of the sword with so much care, careful not to smudge it, and whispered, “You made me beautiful.”
“You were already that,” I said. “You aren’t upset?”
She lifted her eyes to me. “Of course not. If I didn’t want you to draw something, I wouldn’t have let you.”
I thought for a few seconds before saying, “You trust too easily. I could have done anything. Could have taken away from your beauty.”
“I wasn’t beautiful before this.”
“You were,” I said. “Are. Always will be, even if I had messed this up somehow.” I dragged my fingers carefully down the side of the drawing, so as not to smudge it. The pens were good, though. They wouldn’t smear once dried. The ink would take time to come off in the shower, too, so that my drawing would last for days. It made me happy.
Manny leaped to her feet. The motion was so abrupt that I pulled back. She handed me the phone, and turned around. Can you take a picture of what you drew on my back?
I lifted the camera and settled her back into view. The tower that I had drawn on her back had delicate lines that curved with her body. It could have easily looked masculine but with her curves and soft coloring, I had been able to make it feminine. Something that she wouldn’t hate. I snapped the picture, then stepped back from Manny. When she saw the photo, a smile spread across her face.
“Now the front,” she ordered.
I did as she asked without hesitation. She took her phone from me when I finished, and then her fingers laced with mine. Standing on her tiptoes, she kissed my cheek. “Thanks, Becket.”
“For what?” I asked as she started to pull her dress up. I helped, moving the straps over her shoulders and zipping it for her. I pushed the blond strands of her hair out of the way, rocking back on my heels.
She stared up at me. Her eyes appeared lost. “Everything.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.<
br />
“I know you don’t. C’mon. We’ve got school tomorrow, and we’ve only got four hours to sleep.” She took my hand, leading me away from her special spot. I fell into step beside her, still confused about what she meant. I stopped worrying about it as we walked, though.
The silence of the streets was pleasant, and let my thoughts mirror that quiet. No storm should bring me down from this night. It had been... nice. Everything about it had been nice, after I left the house. I didn’t care for my father making Manny hurt that man but it had been worth it, to me. To spend time with Manny, anything was worth it.
Once we got to her house, I had to sneak into her room the same way I had before. She was using the front door, so I got inside shortly after she did, when she propped the window open for me.
I could hear noises from upstairs. Shouting of some kind. I looked up at her ceiling, counting the voices. Her mother and father, for sure but I thought her brother shouted as well.
Manny tugged on my hands, drawing my attention away from the noise and the insults. “Let’s go bed,” she said. I removed my shoes, sitting on the edge of her bed while she went over to her dresser. She pulled clothes out, and then looked at me with a smirk. “I suppose there’s no reason for me to change in the bathroom, is there?”
I cocked my head. “If you want to, then that’s what you should do. I’d hate for you to be uncomfortable.”
Thoughts played across her face and in her eyes. I wondered if she would share them with me but she didn’t. She shook her head, undoing the zipper on her dress. It hit the floor in a pool, leaving her only in her panties. The pictures I had drawn stood out starkly on her skin, made more apparent by the bareness of her legs. If my pens lasted longer, I could have taken care of that. I could have drawn a woman and her enemy, facing each other.
Manny pulled a large shirt over her head and climbed into a pair of shorts. Then she came over to me. I laid down first, over the sheets, and she shuffled under the sheets a second later. “You can join me under here, you know?” Manny said.
I shook my head. “I shouldn’t.”
“Why?” she asked.
My hand found her hip over the blanket, and I traced my fingers over her skin. Then across her stomach. I pulled her against me as gently as I could, tucking my face into her hair. “If you do not want us touching in more ways than this, then I cannot get under the covers,” I said.
“Oh,” Manny responded.
I waited for a few seconds, as she struggled with her thoughts. Then I brushed my hand down her cheek, over her jaw and throat. “Do not worry about tonight, Manny. Go to sleep.”
She listened, although somewhat reluctantly. Shortly after her breathing evened out, I allowed myself to drift off as well.
X
The next morning, I snuck out the window and waited on the curb for her to join me so we could walk to school. Her parents had been none the wiser. The school day itself passed fairly quickly. The one class I had without Manny was so slow that I almost walked out. Since Mrs. Flannigan didn’t trust me with grading papers or anything, it wasn’t like I would have been missed.
I didn’t because the promise of seeing Manny at lunch was enough to keep me seated.
Hel and her friends watched us from across the cafeteria. The entire group seemed too focused on us but Manny said they were just jealous. When I asked of what, she patted my chest, telling me to sit down and eat. I still didn’t understand anything that happened to them.
From the other side of the cafeteria, Julian and his friends watched us as well. It felt like standing boldly in the middle of a crossfire. Any second, someone would get hurt, and I didn’t want that to be Manny.
“Don’t worry about it,” she whispered to me, leaning forward so that I could hear her. “They’ve been giving us issues since day one, and it still hasn’t escalated into something to be concerned over. If it does, then I will take care of it.” I felt a phantom hand on my arm, and knew that was Manny’s power.
She could do more than hurt with her magic, just like I could. Enough pressure here or there, and anything could happen. I smiled at Manny and said, “I’m not worried about them doing something to me. I just don’t want you to get hurt either.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said dismissively.
“Don’t do that,” I said.
She lifted her head to stare at me with a surprised expression. There was a little hurt in her eyes too, and I wanted to make that go away but knew that I couldn’t. Not without ruining my point. “Do what?”
“You’re the only person I have other my father,” I said. “Don’t act like that means nothing.”
She sat back in her chair, frowning. “I didn’t.”
“You did. When you said that you’d be fine. You don’t assume that they won’t hurt you. You just don’t care if they do but I care. It would hurt me if something happened to you.”
Her brows puckered while she tried to puzzle her way through that. The rest of lunch was silent while she worked her way through my line of logic. I worried that I had done something I shouldn’t have, and that she would be furious with me. I didn’t have enough people in my life that I could afford to lose the few that I did have.
Halfway through Government, though, she leaned over. Like all our other classes, Manny had moved her seat so that she could sit with me, and the teachers had to deal with it. “Okay,” she whispered. “You’re right. I’ll try to be more careful next time. I promise.”
I looked at her, smiling. The drawings on the corners of her eyes had lasted better in the shower, and it drew attention to those bright green orbs. The teacher yelled at us to work, and we turned our attention back to the books in front of us.
After class, Manny and I left together. “I’ll walk you home,” I offered.
She turned her face towards me with a smile. “Sure. Or I could walk you home. Either way works.”
I didn’t want her around my father again. Not so soon after what he did. She hadn’t deserved to be treated like that but I couldn’t express why. He did the same thing to me, and it was fine. Manny was a different story. She should be treated better than I was. Like a queen.
“That’s all right,” I said. “I don’t know if my father has clients right now, and I wouldn’t want you to have to deal with them.”
“You aren’t allowed around his clients, though. If he has someone over, what are you going to do?”
“I usually hide in my room, or walk around,” I said.
A decision flared in her eyes but I never got to find out what it was. Something hit me square in the back, right over the freshly acquired wound. Pain exploded along my shoulders, and my vision went white for a second. I staggered forward before gaining my feet again. Manny had her hands on my shoulder. I heard her call my name.
I blinked, then turned around to see Julian. His little group had expanded past his two friends, to Hel and her friends. There were seven of them all together, and they laughed at me. I could feel the blood trying to leak out of my wound, so I spared some power to stop it. I couldn’t let Manny find out about it.
“What’s wrong, creep?” Julian called. He picked up the baseball that he had thrown at me, bouncing it in his hands. “A love tap too much for you? I should have suspected that you were a wimp as well as a creep.”
Manny went to take a step forward but I stopped her with a hand on her stomach. I could handle being hit with a baseball but I didn’t think I could handle seeing the same happen to her. Something in my head would shatter, and I feared the person that would be left in the ruins.
“Aw, look at that,” Hel said with a laugh. She still had a bandage wrapped around her ankle but a flesh worker at the hospital had probably repaired all the damage. “All protective of his freak slut. Ain’t that cute?” She made ‘cute’ two syllables, and laughed hard enough that I worried about her ability to breathe.
Manny didn’t react at all but heat washed over my skin. Irritation, I thought. It was foreign en
ough that it took me a second too long to realize that Julian’s friend had picked up a rock. He chucked it at me, and it smacked into my mouth. The skin split, and I instinctively kept blood from tricking down my chin.
“Hey!” Manny shouted. Her power brushed over my face, and the skin sealed back up before I could feel more than a twinge of pain. She went to take another step but I stopped her a second time.
“It’s fine,” I said. “It barely hurt.”
“It’s not fine,” Manny snarled, attempting to lunge at the group. Only my arm around her middle stopped her. They did not deserve to be severely injured for this, and I knew on some level that Manny did not intend to warn them away. If she left them all bleeding in a pile, then she would get in trouble. She could get arrested and whisked away.
I didn’t want that.
“Looks like it’s more than protective,” Crimson said, wandering a step closer. “It looks like he’s holding her back. What do you think you can do, Manny?” she asked. “You’re nothing without your last named tacked onto your first.”
Slowly, all the kids moved until they could stand in a circle around us. I didn’t understand their thought process. If either Manny or I wanted it, we could kill them. It took nothing to work flesh and blood into a weapon. Together, we could have everyone dead in under a second. Apart, it might take half a minute.
“If we weren’t all so worried about getting in trouble with your family, we would have driven you over the edge long ago,” Crimson continued. “You think you’re so much better than us, don’t you?”
Manny hung limply in my arms, glaring at the girl. If I let go, that would have been it. They wouldn’t have all backed away, I thought.
“Put me down, Becket,” Manny said. “I won’t hurt them, and you holding me can’t keep me from hurting them.”
She was right, so I set her on her feet. She stood straight, staring venomously at Crimson. “What? Are you so hard up that one rejection throws your entire world off balance?” Manny asked. Her voice was low, malicious. Hearing her speak that way made heat crawl across my skin. I wanted to touch her. “Can’t get anyone else to have a go at you? Doesn’t surprise me. Probably like fucking a corpse, right?”