Snowbound Ink

by Veronica Tower

  “Yeah, I think so too,” Ron agreed. “I had a porterhouse that had to be four inches thick. It practically melted in my mouth—just wonderful!”

  If they were talking about anything other than the possibility that Ron was moving to the east coast, Kara would have smiled at the image. Ron really enjoyed his steak and she could easily visualize him chewing on an expensive cut of beef. She briefly considered telling him what she’d had at Houlihan’s but her mind was stuck on the job offer he had mentioned. Hopefully they were just flattering Ron and hadn’t offered enough to make relocating tempting. “Mmmm, sounds good,” she said to make certain her next question sounded casual. “How much did they offer you?”

  “Twenty thousand dollars over my current salary.”

  Kara sat down hard on the couch. Ron and she had made love on this couch so many times that she’d had to flip the cushions to hide the stains. She’d always feared that Mama would come over one day, turn them back over, and discover the evidence of their passion. Funny the things you think of when your world is starting to collapse.

  “Twenty thousand dollars?” she repeated. She’d been expecting a number maybe three or five thousand higher than his current income—not twenty!

  “Yeah,” Ron said. “Almost insulting, isn’t it?”

  “Insulting, it’s—”She forced herself to break off her statement because she didn’t want to sound like she was encouraging Ron to consider the offer.

  “I know,” Ron said. Evidently he was completely misinterpreting the concern that he had obviously heard in her voice. “It would be a net loss of pay,” Ron interrupted.

  “A net loss…” Kara repeated. Her brain must be moving very slowly because she didn’t immediately see what he was talking about. “But…”

  “Yeah, it makes you think, doesn’t it? The cost of living in D.C. is sky high compared to Detroit. Housing costs alone are more than fifty percent higher for comparable dwellings and everything else is a hell of a lot more expensive too.”

  Kara’s accountant brain began running numbers in her head. She had no idea what the difference in the cost of living was between Detroit and the nation’s capital, but whatever the number, for Ron to find a twenty thousand dollar increase a net loss he had to be making a heck of a lot more than she’d thought he was. “Twenty thousand dollars,” she repeated. “Ron, just how much do you make?”

  She cringed when she realized that Ron would have to interpret this to mean she thought he should pursue the offer.

  On the other end of the phone call, Ron laughed at her question. He obviously felt very good about his evening and now that Kara had brought one of their taboo subjects to the table, he was clearly happy to fill in the details of a question she’d always been hesitant to ask. “Just over a hundred and ten, plus bonuses of course.”

  Kara felt her eyes go wide. One hundred and ten thousand dollars was thirty or forty more than her upper estimate of Ron’s wealth. He was only twenty-six, for God’s sake. She knew he had an important position in his company, but one hundred and ten thousand dollars? That was over thirty more than she was making after twenty years in her field. “I…wow! I hadn’t realized,” Kara said.

  But perhaps she should have realized. Ron spent heavily, but he talked about the importance of savings all the time. Obviously he was doing more saving than she’d realized.

  “It’s a good job,” Ron agreed. “It pays well and I enjoy the challenges.”

  Kara couldn’t quite get past the numbers. “And this new company is willing to pay you one hundred and thirty thousand?”

  “It sounds like a lot of money when you say it that way,” Ron said, “but remember, this is Washington D.C. we’re talking about. You’ve got all of those politicians and high-level government bureaucrats in the region. Nothing is cheap out here. Believe me, if I took this job, we’d lose money, even if you found something comparable to your current position right away.”

  Kara began to relax ever so slightly. Even though Ron was excited about the job offer, he clearly wasn’t jumping to accept it. Just as importantly to Kara, his last statement made it obvious that he was thinking and planning for them as a couple. This job offer wasn’t an excuse to end their relationship. Of course, it would be nice if he asked her if she wanted to move across the country, but since he obviously wasn’t leaning toward taking the job, perhaps he felt that discussion was unnecessary.

  “So you…didn’t take the job?” Kara asked.

  Ron chuckled. “Of course not,” he said.

  The remaining tension Ron’s announcement had generated in Kara began to fade away. “Good, I—”

  “You know you never take the first offer in negotiations.”

  Suddenly Kara didn’t feel quite so easy anymore. “So you might be interested in it?”

  “I certainly want to know how high they’re willing to go. Negotiating is exciting! Maybe I should have been a lawyer.” Ron suddenly changed the subject. “So tell me something, beautiful, what are you wearing tonight?”

  Kara was too nervous over Ron’s talk of a move to Washington to want to engage in phone sex with him. She was also much too sore down below, but how to tell him that without seeming to blow him off?

  “I’m sorry, Sweety,” she lied, “but I had enchiladas tonight when I went out with Thea and Liz and they’re not really agreeing with me. Could we put off fooling around until tomorrow night?”

  “Oh,” Ron said. “I didn’t realize. You want to call it an early night?”

  Kara immediately felt bad. He’d had something pretty wonderful happen tonight and he wanted to celebrate, but she really didn’t think with her brand new tattoo and piercing that she was physically capable of masturbating tonight, and even if she were, all of this talk of moving to Washington had put her far from the proper playful mood. “Would you mind, Sweety?” she asked. “I’ll make it up to you tomorrow. Promise!”

  Ron definitely sounded disappointed even as he said all the right things. “Of course not, why don’t you take a nice hot shower and go to bed early. We’ll talk again tomorrow morning.”

  After they said goodbye and hung up the phone, Kara realized that while she might be too sore to play with herself, there was really no reason she couldn’t have helped Ron get off.

  She wondered what it said about her that she hadn’t even tried.

  Chapter Six

  Secrets

  Liz

  “I’ve got a secret, I’ve got a secret!” Liz chanted into the phone. While she had no intention of actually telling Travis what she’d done, that didn’t mean she wanted to lose the opportunity to tease him over it.

  “Great!” Travis exclaimed. She could tell from the sound of his voice that he was going to try and turn the tables on her. “I love secrets! When you tell me yours, I’ll have two!”

  There was nothing Liz loved more than a bit of one-ups-man banter. “What do you mean, two?” she teased. “What are you doing keeping secrets from me?”

  “Who says I’m keeping it from you?” Travis asked. If he weren’t laughing, the question might have sounded genuine. “Maybe I’m keeping it from my other girlfriend. Ooops! That was supposed to be a secret too.”

  Liz considered bringing Tony into this, but it seemed to her that that ammunition might be too high a caliber for this stage of the banter. Besides she didn’t want to give Travis any hints at what her own secret was. She started to cross her legs in front of her, but the motion caused a bit too much friction against her new tattoo so she left both feet on the floor. “Do you mean secret t-o-o or secret number two?” she asked.

  “Well let me think about that,” Travis said. “Maybe I mean both. Another girlfriend would be a secret, but I’d have to keep you secret from her as well so that would be a secret that was actually two secrets. Neither of you would know my newest secret so that would make three secrets, but is a secret kept from two people actually one secret or two?”

  “Stop it!” Liz laughed. “This is becoming
complicated! I’m a lawyer, not an accountant. Just tell me your secret and then you’ll only have to worry about keeping it from the other girlfriend.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Travis said. “Maybe you should tell me your secret first. Then I could trade you my secret and we’d be back to having the open, trusting relationship I thought we had before you called me tonight.”

  “Open and trusting?” Liz repeated. She squirmed a bit on the couch, trying to find a more comfortable position. She hadn’t expected the new tattoo to be as tender as this and it was frankly annoying her. “This from the man telling me he’s keeping secrets from both his girlfriends?”

  “Oh, now I’m hurt!” Travis exclaimed with mock indication. “To think you don’t think I’m open and trusting.”

  He actually was both of those things, Liz conceded mentally, and she decided to tell him that even though it risked breaking the playful mood. “Yes, you are, honey. Thank you.”

  Travis seemed confused by the abrupt change in tone of their conversation. “I’m what?”

  “You’re trustworthy,” Liz told him. In fact, Travis was a very upfront, honest, and introspective man. Comfortable with himself in ways that few people Liz had met ever really were. She could joke with him about his keeping another girlfriend because the idea was so utterly implausible to her. And while she knew that this was the sort of naiveté that got a lot of women into trouble, she honestly believed that if Travis ever grew unhappy with their relationship, he’d do the honorable thing and break up with her before he moved on. No cheating, no two-timing like Thea’s sister’s husband has done for all of those years. And it wouldn’t even be that hard for him if it came to that. He’d sit down and tell her what he was feeling, give her a chance to shout and scream at him, and then go back to his home on the outskirts of Flint, more than an hour to the north of Detroit.

  It was one of the advantages of having a long distance relationship. The only advantage, as far as Liz could tell.

  “Well, thanks,” Travis said. He still didn’t appear to understand what had shifted the tone of their conversation and he clearly wanted to get the playful atmosphere back. “Does this mean you’ll share your new secret with me?”

  “Maybe I’ll let you tease it out of me when you come down to see me this weekend,” Thea told him.

  “Oh, it’s that kind of secret is it?” Travis asked.

  Thea wondered what exactly he meant by that, but decided not to immediately pursue the question in case it was a ruse to trick her into giving too much away. “That’s right,” she told him, “it’s that kind!” It seemed a safe enough response. After all, that could mean pretty much anything.

  She eased open her jeans and undid the zipper, releasing quite a lot of the pressure on her newly tattooed flesh. “Now how exactly are you planning to tease me?” Liz asked.

  “Maybe I’m the one who should be teased,” Travis suggested. “Remember the days when I still had the brace on my knee and couldn’t get around so well. Oh to be taken care of like that again…”

  Liz snorted with amusement. It was an unladylike sound she wished she could stop making, but Travis had never given any indication he minded. “I think you already get all the blowjobs a man could desire,” she told him, “and quite skillful ones too, if I do say so myself.”

  Travis laughed into the phone. “I will concede,” he agreed, “that you have a natural talent in the ancient and important art of fellatio. But as for getting enough head? No man has ever gotten enough of that.”

  “You do realize,” Liz told him, “that you’re not actually helping yourself earn another world class blowjob.”

  “That may be so,” Travis acknowledged, “but without that blowjob you have no chance of learning my secret.”

  He finally succeeded in piquing her curiosity. She slipped her fingertips beneath the top of her panties and felt the slightly gooey coating of A&D ointment that peaked out from beneath the gauze covering her new tattoo. “Oh, so you want me to believe you really have a secret?”

  “Oh, I have a secret,” Travis assured her, “and it’s going to rock your world!”

  Liz sat up a little straighter on the couch. She loved secrets! Or at least she loved prying them out of people. “Really?”

  “Of course, I do,” Travis told her. “Did you think I was lying?”

  “No, I thought you were trying to trick me into letting you know my secret for free.”

  “You did think I was lying!” Travis accused her. “I can’t begin to tell you how shocked I am that you could think so poorly of me.” Before Liz could begin to worry that maybe he actually was insulted, he slyly added, “You know, I think it may be time for me to give you a good spanking!”

  Liz felt her eyes open wide with surprise and…something else. She thought it should be outrage, but from the tingling she was feeling between her legs right now that might not be the most accurate description of her response. “And why would I deserve a spanking?” she wanted to know.

  “Oh, I can think of all sorts of reasons,” Travis told her. “We’ve been dating for a year now, after all. I’ve had plenty of time to ferret out your little tricks and naughty ways. Not only are you a flirtatious little minx, but you’re outright depraved between the sheets—chock full of unnatural urges and desires.”

  Now Liz knew she was outraged, in a sexy sort of I-can’t-believe-Travis-was-saying-this sort of way. “I can’t believe you just said that!” she told him. “I do all of those depraved things for you! And you taught me half of them yourself.”

  “And where did you learn the other half?” Travis teased. “I’ll bet you have your hand in your panties right now! Did I tell you to touch yourself while you’re talking to me?”

  Liz’s fingers froze. They were indeed touching herself—not the part of her anatomy Travis was thinking of—but a portion of her flesh beneath her panties just the same.

  “You are!” Travis accused. The delight in his voice could not be feigned. “Admit it, Liz! You are touching yourself!”

  “You caught me!” Liz confessed. She pulled the gauze free and ran her fingertips ever so lightly across the tender flesh of her new tattoo. She imagined she could feel the contours of her little honeybee beneath the A&D ointment. It was going to be so much fun the first time Travis peeled down her panties and found her little ornament staring back at him.

  “Are your panties even still on?” Travis wanted to know.

  “Uh-huh,” Liz told him.

  “Well take them off for me right now!” Travis told her.

  Liz had been intending to do that, but she was contrarian by nature. She just had to give Travis a hard time. “I don’t know if I want to do that,” she told him.

  “Well, you’re never going to learn my secret if you aren’t willing to do as you’re told,” Travis informed her.

  Liz thought it was a rather weak comeback.

  “I tell you what,” she said. “Why don’t you hop in your car and drive down here and take them off me?”

  She knew that Tony had told her to avoid sex for twenty-four hours, but heck, he was a tattoo artist—not a doctor. What did he really know about it?

  “You think I won’t do that, don’t you?” Travis said.

  “Uh-huh,” Liz agreed. “After all, tomorrow is a school day. What would all your little high school students do if Mr. Lawton isn’t in class tomorrow?”

  “That’s assuming I have to sleep tonight. What is it now, nine-seventeen? If I get dressed now I can be down to my car by say nine-thirty or nine-forty. This time of night the roads should be clear, so if I speed I should be able to get down there by ten forty-five. That gives me plenty of time to fool around and still get back to Flint before the first bell rings.”

  Now that Travis was upping the ante, Liz wasn’t certain that she really wanted him to come down tonight. Her new tattoo aside, there were practical considerations to worry about. She had to appear in court tomorrow morning and it really wasn’t a good idea t
o go before the judge without getting a decent night’s sleep. She decided to divert Travis from driving. “You’re not dressed?”

  “No, I was getting ready to step in the shower before you called.”

  “So that’s your story, is it?” Liz teased him.

  “Well, that’s the excuse,” Travis chuckled. “Are your panties still on?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your blouse and your bra?”

  “Of course,” Liz laughed. “I’m not as depraved as you are! Maybe you’re the one who needs to be spanked.”

  This made Travis laugh as well. “I don’t think that’s very likely now, do you?”

  “I think I’d rather enjoy it,” Liz told him.

  Travis began to laugh harder. “I’m absolutely certain you would, but the question here is would I enjoy giving you that level of control?”

  Liz didn’t actually think that Travis would enjoy it. While he wasn’t exactly a dominating man, he was very self-contained. The sort of guy who was very comfortable letting Liz be herself, but wasn’t likely to surrender his own control either. But of course, it wouldn’t be fun to admit any of that. “I think you’re crying out inside for a strong woman to dominate you,” Liz teased. “The next time you come down here, I think I’ll tie you up and do all sorts of depraved things to your body.”

  Travis tried to turn the tables back on her. “You seem to be intent on strengthening my argument that you need a good spanking.”

  Liz was really enjoying herself now. She finished shucking her jeans off over her sock-covered feet, twisted around on the couch so that her head could sit on the armrest, and shoved her panties down to mid thigh. The gauze had absorbed a lot of the ointment over her new tattoo, but enough remained to make her flesh glisten in the lamp light when she pulled the bandage off. For the first time she realized that the way Tony had drawn her design made it look as if her cute little honeybee was preparing to buzz her clitoris. Tony really was an artist.