Love & Ink

by JD Hawkins

  I suck down some beer and look at the wall as if I might see what she sees there.

  “Tattoos are permanent. Homes aren’t.”

  Ash turns to me, scrutinizing me as if reading between the lines of my lips.

  “That’s such a strange thing to say.”

  “It’s true—in my experience,” I say, punctuating it with another slug. “I’ve slept in too many beds to ever think of one as mine, heard too many stories with bad twists in them to think of anything as my own. Anything can go, in a second. Your house, your job, friends, money—hell, I even try not to get too attached to my bikes. All I know for sure is that, in the end, the only thing you can count on having is your body. And maybe—maybe—the shirt on your back.”

  Ash thinks about it for a second, then gives me a look like she’s thinking dirty thoughts. She moves near and winds her hands around my waist, pulling herself up against me.

  “Good thing you’ve got such a nice body then,” she says, tongue flickering between her teeth. “Though I’m gonna make sure you lose the shirt real soon.”

  I half smile as I lean in to press my tongue against hers but she dances away from me, snatching the beer from my hand and swaying a little to the music in her head as she moves back. She takes a sip and I nod for her to follow me.

  “At least let me show you the bedroom first.”

  I lead her upstairs to the large master bedroom, French doors along one wall leading out to a balcony.

  “Wow,” Ash says, sipping my beer as she casts her eyes over the messy bed, guitar leaning up against the wall, record player on the floor beside the armchair, LPs scattered around it. “It’s like a fourteen-year-old boy’s dream home.”

  She circles the room slowly, and I find myself hypnotized by her hips. She walks like most women dance, captivating and thrilling. Her body so incredible that even the slightest movement seems charged with erotic energy.

  I move to the French doors and open them, stepping out onto the balcony, leaning on the rail. Ash follows and leans beside me, breathing deep the smell of the ocean, the cool air of night.

  We stay like that for a while, lazily watching the reflection of the moonlight on the shifting waves. A police siren sounds in the distance, a few car horns and shouts, faint and fading, carried only by the emptiness of the night. Somehow it makes standing out here on the balcony feel even more intimate.

  I grab the beer back from Ash, finish it and put it down as she smiles at me. She turns around to lean back against the railing, arching her body back as she looks up at the sky, then turns to me, eyes lost in thought.

  “You know…I guess that cliché is true. About opposites attracting,” she says, dreamily.

  “Who says we’re opposites?”

  She thinks for a while, then says, “Well, it’s like, you’ve spent most of your life going from place to place, trying to find a home, some stability. And here I am trying to break free of the path that would be so easy to follow. Trying to make my own way instead of the one my dad wanted to hand to me, trying to take some risks at work, instead of just doing what people ask and taking home a check for it.”

  I don’t say anything for a while, the conversation a little too close to the bone, a little too close to that question I still can’t answer for her. Why did you leave? I try to think of how to change the subject, try to think of something I can say or do that’ll stop us from thinking about the past, about all those years without each other—but I can’t. Everything, from the way the moon hangs above us, to the distant sound of the water pushing and receding, seems determined to push us into thinking about the past.

  “Maybe…” Ash says, a quiver in her voice now, trailing off as if retreating into herself. “Maybe I should have gone with you, Teo. Back then…when you asked me to run off with you. Maybe I should have just—”

  I don’t let her finish—I can’t. I pull her toward me and kiss her, soft and deep. I squeeze her body to mine like I’m afraid it might disappear into the night, kiss her to show how much I don’t care about the past, to stop her from thinking about it, to show her that all I care about is right now, right here, together. A kiss to show I’m not lying. A kiss that says I love her.

  Our bodies melt together, our lips locked tight. I hold her close enough to feel the tremulous shivers run down her back, the swelling breaths pushing her breasts against me, the weakness of her knees. Her back against the railing, our torsos leaning over the edge of the balcony, it almost feels like we’re floating in the ether, out of time and out of space. Her jacket slips from her shoulders, my shirt comes off, then hers, then her bra—both of us acting in perfect unison to remove all the barriers between us, until it’s skin against skin. Softening breasts against my hard chest, her delicate neck against my taut jaw, her pure, shivering, moonlit skin against my tattooed, rough, flexed muscles.

  She bites my neck, pulling away to gasp slowly in my ear.

  “Don’t leave me again, Teo.”

  My tongue traces the outside of her ear and I whisper inside it, “I promise.

  The whispers and inhalations of the ocean match our own, half-breaths and groans over the soft rustle of our jeans, the swish of cool night air on warming skin. She throws her head back, arching over the railing again, and I run my tongue up the softness of her neck, fingers dancing down her spine. I stop under her jaw, where the scent of her hair mixes with the smell of her skin, where I can feel the stuttered breaths rise and fall in her throat, moans vibrating against my lips and setting my own pulse racing. At the nape of her neck I suck softly, running my tongue gently across her skin, making her fingers turn to nails on my back, scratching and digging in as if clinging on to reality.

  “Teo…” she whispers up at the moon, as I kiss and blow my way across her chest, tasting my way across that perfect terrain, leaving a hot trail that’s now sensitive to the soft sea breezes that unfurl over us. My hand under her jeans, finger between her ass cheeks, teeth grazing across her breasts, as if leaving her no room to pull away now, fixing her in my reach, my desire. I curl my tongue around her hard nipples, blow softly and feel her convulse in my grip, breasts shaking under my mouth. First one, then the other, where I bite softly and tug with gentle teeth until she can take it no more. Her hands in my hair, pulling me away—then realizing it’s even more unbearable without, and pulling me onto her chest again.

  Her legs wind themselves around my waist, arms around my neck, clinging to me. I turn and carry her back inside, lay her down on the bed and pull away, pausing a moment to drink her in. Soft and pliable, she slips out of her jeans easily, as I undo mine and pull a condom from them, rolling it on as she watches, writhing a little in anticipation, her finger in her mouth.

  “I could look at you forever…” I say, solemn as a prayer, as I kneel on the edge of the bed and pick up her foot. I run my tongue slowly down the side of her calf, enjoying the way she squirms and twists, kissing softly at the back of her knee. “Every inch of you as perfect as I remember…” I say, parting her knees as I move my tongue up the inside of her thigh, sucking softly, darting kisses, cool breaths mixing with the gusts of ocean air that make the drapes dance. “The smell of you…” I say, brushing my nose across her thigh. “The feel of you…” I say, reaching up across her taut stomach to take her breast in my palm. “The taste of you…” I say, holding back until she shivers in anticipation. A moment of glorious expectation, where the feel of my breath against her pussy makes her moan through closed lips, makes her squeeze her thighs around my head, fistfuls of pillow, urging me to her.

  My tongue is light, a brush stroke working its way up her pussy, agonizingly slow. I watch her in the dimness of the night all the way, her face contorting, losing control, gaze tipping backward. When I’m almost there, at the clit, she looks down and meets my eyes, suddenly throwing her head back again in a spasm of joy, an outburst of heat that I feel rush over me. I take it into my mouth, soft and full, curl my tongue around it and flick it to the rhythm of her conv
ulsing back, always a little slower than she wants, making her ache for me, making her beg on unresolved sighs and desperate moans.

  “Don’t stop,” she pants.

  I kiss and suck, tongue and lips and teeth working her clit until she’s senseless, until her toes curl and her grip is almost tearing my pillows apart, almost pulling my hair out, until her body is surging with bliss, hammering intensely with every movement of my tongue, my lips, my teeth. Until I can ignore my own lust no longer, condensed and hard enough to explode, until waiting a second longer would send me permanently insane.

  I kneel in front of her spread legs, finally feeling the blood thumping through my muscles like tribal drums, the jaw-clenching rush of testosterone, the cock-aching sight of her wet and writhing in front of me.

  “God damn you’re incredible,” I growl, taking her leg on my shoulder, opening her up to push myself between those wet lips, to press myself into her warm tightness. I savor it, go as slowly as I can, to relish every squeeze of her pussy walls, the music of each drawn-out moan, the magnificent sight of her breasts shaking in front of me as I pound into her deeper and harder with every thrust. I savor it, until my body won’t let me anymore, until every fiber of my being wants to be inside her, wants to be one with her, wants to fuck her so good it’ll leave a mark on her essence, to push her so far into ecstasy she’ll know she’s forever mine.

  “Yes…yes…fuck me,” she whimpers over her own wails and groans.

  Clinging to the bed as if afraid to let go, we find the rhythm of our bodies together, slowly building up the synchronicity of our desires. The slow and steady push inside of her gathering like waves before a storm, turning into a hard, forceful rumble, a quake that shakes her bones, that makes the sweat pour. I lean over her, her leg still on my shoulder, never deep enough, never hard enough. Fucking her until her entire body is almost vibrating, and the screams sound like a whole crowd is making them. Each thrust lighting the fire in our bodies, pushing us closer to burning up, to flaring one final time.

  “Ash…”

  Her name comes out like a low roar, as I look down at her one last time, the sight of her raptured face, of her shaking body, finally too much for me to handle. Explosions going off in my body, the hardness of my lust breaking down into the tender form of her juddering body.

  I fall beside her on the bed, spent but for the waves of relief that tingle throughout my muscles, ultra-sensitive to the breeze coming past the curtains. I hear her laugh softly and turn my head to see her, squirming herself into the bed covers as she looks at me.

  “How did I live without that for so long?” she says.

  I roll toward her, brush a lock of hair from her forehead and kiss her.

  “You didn’t.”

  For hours I lay awake, looking down the length of our bodies out at the night. Ash sleeps against my chest, squirming occasionally in comfort, until she starts hunching a little and I draw a thin sheet over her. It’s quiet enough that I can hear her breathe, and I stay still, in case a rustling movement might wake her up and spoil this perfection.

  It feels pure. Good. An end—a happy ever after. A perfection that makes sense when I think about all the suffering and turns that brought us both here, to this night. The top of a mountain we both spent a lifetime climbing. For the first time in my life I don’t want anything else—couldn’t think of anything that would make me happier. Her slow breath running across my chest, her sleepy hums when I stroke her messy hair—this is it. This is everything.

  But life doesn’t stop when you get what you want—and getting it means that I’ve got something to lose now. My thoughts turn dark, even as the moon sinks and the pitch black of night turns almost imperceptibly blue, warning for dawn. I can sense it, like a sudden drop in temperature preceding a storm. Nothing this good comes easy, without a fight, without earning it.

  I tell myself I’m being paranoid. That years of looking over my shoulder, of thinking about tomorrow, have made me unable to relax and enjoy this. I tell myself I just need to get used to this new normal, to let myself be ‘open to everything that’s going right’ like Esther said a few weeks back, but it feels like a lie.

  My cell rings, vibrating against the side table like a jackhammer in the silence. Ash groans and lifts her head.

  “Shh,” I say, stroking her head to coax her back to sleep as I reach over to grab my phone and answer it. She sinks back into my chest, shifts her naked body a little and is out almost before I get the phone to my ear.

  “Teo?”

  It’s Ginger.

  “Yeah,” I mutter, quietly.

  “Did I wake you up?”

  “No,” I say, putting a little urgency in my voice to show I don’t want to talk. “What is it?”

  “Damndest thing. See, I was crashing at the shop tonight, just me and that Rose there—you remember Rose? Big chick? One I had my eye on since the bike rally last month?”

  “Get on with it,” I say, looking down to check that Ash can’t hear.

  “Well,” Ginger says, his voice slowing to an even more southern drawl. More serious, his tone a warning. “’Bout half an hour ago somebody starts slamming on the shutters like they think they’re congas, so I get up—half-naked, so you—”

  “Faster, Ginger.”

  This time Ginger takes a few seconds before he speaks, mentally editing to get to the point.

  “Your dad was here, Teo. Looking for you. And it seemed like he wasn’t about to give up until he finds you.” He waits a few breaths for my response, gets none. “Teo?”

  “I gotta go.”

  I hang up and look down at Ash, hoping that she can’t feel the coursing heat of frustration that’s growing inside of me. I sensed right.

  And something tells me my dad is just the beginning of my problems.

  15

  Ash

  Teo picks me up from work the next afternoon, waiting on his motorcycle that’s so clean the chrome glistens and sparkles in the sun. It’s been a couple of days since I first slept over—or rather, a couple of nights, because we’ve slept at each other’s places each one. Every moment together feels like it’s filled with something, a sense of meaning and purpose—even when we’re just hanging out in the back of his tattoo shop eating takeout and listening to Ginger tell stories behind his worst tattoos. I spend quite a bit of my free time (limited though it is) at Mandala now, waiting for him to finish working, or just passing time until we head home.

  Even when he’s not there, spending time at Mandala makes me understand so much more about him. The way they never seem to judge anyone or anything, the way they can hear the wildest, craziest stories and not bat an eyelid. The general atmosphere of non-judgmental, easygoing acceptance of life’s problems and strangeness, and the self-assurance that comes from finally overcoming so much of it. The way Kayla treats Teo like an older brother, and the way customers treat him like some kind of rock star. I feel like I get it, finally. I get why Teo finally stopped running, now that he has this. Everyone around him so fiercely loyal, everything he does so passionately dedicated—as if anything less than this wouldn’t be worth sticking around for.

  In a funny kind of way, my own life seems to start making sense, too. Like Teo was some final piece of the puzzle, and I can look at the bigger picture now. I don’t get off work and spend hours twisting myself in knots about it still. I don’t have that insidious sense of resentment for myself when I realize I’m not quite where I want to be in my career. The bills and responsibilities, Candace holding me back and Carlos treating me like his PA, they don’t take the spotlight in my thoughts anymore, they’re no longer the center of my life. And when they do start to get under my skin, a little time with Teo is all I need to forget it all.

  Even with everything going so well, though, I still feel the weight of some nagging thought, like a chore that needs to be done. That question I know Teo is afraid I’ll ask again. It looms sometimes, in the silences, and even though I’m quick to change the mood
, the subject—to let him know I’m in no rush to ask—there’s a sense of inevitability about it. Despite what he said that night in the alley, about the truth hurting us and doing irreparable damage. Because if we’re going to be together, he needs to tell me. No matter how bad it is, how hurt I might feel, I know we can get through it. He just needs to come clean.

  Not now, though. For now this is too good to risk, too good to ruin.

  He takes me down to Long Beach, and we barely say a word as we get off the bike, slipping off our shoes and taking each other’s hand to draw a slow path of scuffed steps across the sand, lazily gazing out to take in the ocean and each other. There’s always plenty to talk about, but we know we have plenty of time.

  Eventually, Teo asks, “How’s work? You still filming stuff on your own?”

  “Yeah, I am,” I sigh.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “No… Well…you remember it was about that yoga studio that all the celebrities love, right?”

  “Of course. You told me all about it last week.”

  She bites her lip before continuing. “Well, I was supposed to get some interviews with some of the celebs—you know, really make the segment sensational. It’s great as it is, but to really get the guys at Hollywood Night to sit up and take notice, I need some big names. The problem is, they’ve all fallen through. Dylan Marlowe and Gwen Rubens are filming up in Canada for the next few months. Michael Deore’s publicist is advising him not to do it, and Kristy Monte keeps saying she’s unsure until I get other confirmations. The only celebrity I have now is Sam Jennings.”

  “Who’s Sam Jennings?”

  I look up at him with dismay.

  “Exactly.”

  “Damn,” Teo says, putting an arm around me and pulling me to him sympathetically.