Alex let her be. Sara was spacey, distant, from the endorphins. He understood. She didn’t. She kept feeling John’s hands on her body every time she closed her eyes. His weight on her back. His smell covered her, close as her own skin. That night, her sleep was broken, uncomfortable. She lay on her belly, the sheet piled around her hips, and dreamed of tongues sharp as scorpion stings, of fingers that pricked like thorns.
The last session, three more hours of pain. She lay on the bench, trembling already. John said nearly nothing. He seemed strangely tense. Sara felt on edge as well. The smell of the ink this time was like ozone in a storm. And when he filled in the last feather, close in near her spine, it felt as though her wings were made of fire.
“That’s it,” he said. “You’re done.”
She rose shakily, half-fell. He caught her with one arm, careful not to touch her back. Her breasts pressed against him. She righted herself. “Sorry.”
“Why don’t you rest here for a while before you try to drive?” he suggested. She nodded woozily. He let her lie on the table while he cleaned up and closed the shop, turned off the lights outside and in the outer rooms. He brought her some juice from the machine.
“Here. The sugar will help.”
She drank greedily. And when she felt she could rise, she did. Her shirt scratched over the taped-down bandaging and she winced. “Thank you.”
He only smiled.
“They’re beautiful,” she added, knowing it was true, even though they were hidden.
“Yes,” he agreed. “They are.”
She stepped up, drunk with endorphins, and felt the piercing in the hollow of his lower lip with two fingers. He shied, but she quickly kissed him, parting his lips with her tongue, moving her hand to the side of his neck, which was warm and firm and very smooth. She dug her thumbnail against the flesh of his throat and explored his mouth. His tongue rose to meet hers and she felt the little ball on its post pressing firmly against her tongue, her lips. She licked it, caught it in her teeth and sucked at it as he made a brief, surprised sound of protest. Then he laughed, his fingers grazing her belly, and pressed his mouth firmly to hers.
“I won’t see you again,” she said, breaking the kiss. She touched her back, lightly. “These – were all I wanted.”
“Yeah,” he agreed after a moment. “I think they’re all you need.”
“But I’ll remember you. Thank you. For giving me my wings.”
He grinned. She let go of him and left.
“Two weeks?” Alex sounded incredulous. Sara shook her head. She should’ve told him over the phone, so he’d have time to get used to the idea before coming home. “Darling, you don’t have to wait!”
“I want to,” she said. “It hurts, right now. But even later – I can’t do it on my back, and I don’t want you to have to look at it while it’s peeling.”
“They’re your wings. They’re gorgeous and I want to see them. Peeling or not.”
“Please, Alex. I’d rather wait.” She rubbed a hand over her face, then smiled through her fingers abruptly. “I want to save it. Surprise you.”
Playful. Playful he could apparently handle. “I don’t get to see before then?”
She bit her lip, shook her head so that her hair rained down into her face. “Nope.”
“What about doing it in the dark?”
“Cheating.”
“Witch,” he said, grinning. “My balls will fall off.”
“I never said you had to keep your clothes on,” she whispered. “My mouth is fair game. Just watch the shoulders.”
He laughed, richly, warm. Oh, she loved him. Absolutely.
And every day of those two weeks she took his cock in her mouth and pressed her hands to him, imagining smooth, black-inked skin beneath her fingers. An idle fantasy. It kept her hunger keen, like a hawk’s. Alex’s thighs bore the marks of her talons.
But alone, alone it was another story. In the dark, her husband asleep, she’d squeeze her thighs together and think of him, and think of her wings. At night, surrounded by shadows, it seemed they enfolded her. Superstitiously, she did not even pleasure herself. Her denial sharpened her other senses. Denied satisfaction, she found continual desire.
After two weeks to the day, her skin began to peel. The punished flesh lifted in tissue layers and dropped to the floor of the bath as she ran the sponge over herself. Like the shedding of a snake’s skin. She molted every last, clinging tatter. And when she looked in the mirror at her new skin, she gasped.
They stretched from her nape down to her hips, long drapes of shadow, her black hair a curling cloud above. How lovely they were. Truly alive. She ran her fingers over them, shivered. They shrouded her, black as the pinions of Lilith herself. She went to bed in an old shirt, as she had for the weeks before, and didn’t tell Alex. She kept her secret under the jersey knit, where nobody could see. Just for tonight, it would be hers. Just for tonight.
She climbed into the Rover parked outside the firm’s downtown office, ducking the rain. Her shoulders were tense from long hours of deskwork, as though her wings were trying to push free. She shrugged her shoulders and started the car, then let it idle, the wipers flicking back and forth.
Temple Tattoos’ carport dripped rain. She ran into the little airlock of a room between the parking and the reception areas, shook herself like a damp crow. The place looked empty, as usual, but the muted TV in the corner played a cooking show, staticky with the rain. She pushed her way inside, the beeper dinging into the silence.
“John?” Her voice sounded too loud.
“Yo,” came the reply from behind the closed door. “Just a minute.”
She waited, hands clutched in front of her, in her black slacks and sensible shoes. She should’ve redone her makeup. Her hair was kinked and frizzy from the rain.
He came out after a moment, unsnapping a pair of latex gloves and dumping them into the trashcan by the door. He seemed surprised to see her. A twenty-something boy with roached, purple hair and a cup of water in one hand followed John, looking pained and thoughtful.
“Sara. Let me give him his care sheet and I’ll be with you.”
He took the boy to the counter and discussed aftercare for oral piercings with him, but his eyes strayed to Sara. She had not moved, or spoken. After about a minute, she went into the side room, expecting John to call out after her. He didn’t.
She sat on the table, feeling its padding slowly sink beneath her weight. Her fingers dug into the vinyl. The room’s smells, the tick of the wall-clock, all reminded her. Her hands trembled with the memory of pain. How quickly she’d made the association, like a trained animal. She flexed her fingers and waited.
The door beeped, thumped closed. John came in a few moments later. “Hi,” he said, like an old friend. “It’s good to see you back.”
She looked at him, in his black shirt and ratty blue jeans.
“Is something wrong? How’s the tattoo?” He sounded anxious, now. An artist afraid for his work.
She hugged her shoulders with both hands. “I dreamed about them, you know,” she said, softly, looking at the spotlessly clean floor. “Before. I dreamed of flying when I was a little girl. And then I dreamed the tattoos, a year ago. It was so real.”
“Is it – is it what you wanted?”
Again, a long silence. He came a step or two closer. She looked up at him through thick lashes, let her hands slide down her arms. “It’s what I needed. I wanted to thank you. It’s why I came back. And you should get a chance to see them, I think. They’re so lovely.”
She stood, saw him put one foot back as though to step away. Was he afraid? No. He was reaching for something – a camera, an Olympus digital. “Please?”
Rain drummed outside, long trance rhythms. She nodded.
She shed her coat, left it piled on the floor like a castoff skin. She unbuttoned her red blouse slowly, not looking at him, then pulled it off. When she looked up, he was staring. She grinned, then turned and flicked he
r hair over her shoulder. Her slacks hid the tips of the primaries, so she pushed those down, too, stepped out of them and her shoes at once. The bra she removed impatiently, and the panties. She stood naked, her skin pale and smooth, save for the char-black wings. She looked over her shoulder at him as he took the pictures. He stared hungrily, jaw clenched, and when the last one had been stored in digital limbo, he set the camera back on the counter-top and stepped within arm’s reach. Sara snared him, hooking an arm around his neck and pulling him in. Warmth radiated off him, nearly burning her. His hands found her breasts, cupped them, squeezed. With ungentle fingers, he pinched her nipples and hauled her against him, bent to her suddenly open mouth as she gasped. He licked at her, the bead on his tongue tap-tapping hers, or clicking against her teeth, pressing under her lip, under her tongue. She caught it longwise, holding him prisoner, his breath panting into her open mouth as she forced her hand down the front of his jeans, grasping. His cock was hard, hot in her fist, like an iron bar. She squeezed it, felt it throb.
“Get these clothes off right now.” Her voice came out husky. She leaned back against the table, taking in the sight of him as he shed his clothing, young, strong, no scars or blemishes beyond the ornaments he wore. And there was something innocent in that, too. A wholehearted belief in, but not vanity of, his beauty. The tattoo under his navel, an inverted tribal are, stopped just above his patch of darkish pubic hair. His cock stood up at a stiff forty-five degree angle, strongly-veined. A horseshoe-shaped barbell thrust up through the frenum and out the tip. The hanging beads gleamed like droplets of quicksilver.
“Turn around,” she whispered, and sat up on the table to watch.
He colored slightly, perhaps not used to being ordered, but he did it. His shoulders belonged on a sculpture. The firm column of his back, deeply furrowed by his spine, shamed anything she’d ever seen. And the black darts of his tattoos, the patterns like tangled thorns and bones, accenting his outline, beautifying him.
She sighed. “Come to me.”
And he came, witched into her spell. He stepped up and took her knee, forced her thighs apart. She leaned back, mouth open, gladly showed herself to him. The glossy thatch of hair cresting her mound, no more than a feather-stroke above the firm little lips, still closed about their secret. His hand, so eager, went to her sex and pinched it, squeezing the lips tight together until Sara felt moisture trickling out. He trapped the firm pink berry of her clitoris between her folds and worked his fingers back and forth, until it slipped like a bead under the skin. She spread her legs wider with a little moan and he pulled her sex wide with both thumbs, opening her to the room and the air and his own dark and bottomless hungry gaze.
He leaned in and kissed her, and only then did she think of Alex, a brief guilty flash that ended when John pushed his middle finger into her, thrusting it deep so that it tapped the entrance to her womb. After what they’d shared, she the canvas, he the magician wielding the burning brush, these physical intimacies seemed inevitable.
Wings fluttered in her belly and she uttered a wordless cry, bucking her hips against his hand until he pushed another finger into her, curling them both up to cradle the bone and rub against that bitterly tender place inside her, the one she never seemed to reach alone. She felt her wetness welling out over his fingers, felt her heart pounding.
His tongue ravaged her mouth. His free hand roamed over the smooth hills of her breasts, over her rippled belly, her taut flanks. At his touch on her spine, she shuddered away from his grip, which only pushed her against him. He dropped his mouth to her collarbones, her breasts, his tongue and teeth punishing her nipples. She arched into his mouth, and his fingers pressed against her spine, stroking her firmly, stroking the feathers so new they still felt embossed on the skin itself.
Sara reached down and wrapped her fingers about his shaft. It throbbed in her grip and she moaned, pressed her thumb to the bead on the end of his cock, then thumbed the lower bead, working the shaft of the barbell in his flesh until he bit her lip in frustration, shoving against her hand. She pushed with her thumb in the space between the beads, pushed so hard she felt the steel shaft move under her fingers, and he gasped helplessly.
Slowly, drawn down by the weight of her lust, she slid from the table, folded to her knees on the hard floor. Her fist she kept carefully clamped around his cock, pumping it, the skin sliding along under her fingers. Eager, curious, she bent her head and pressed her tongue to the pierced flesh of his cock. It was hot, soft under her tongue, and salty already with the fluids leaking from the tip. She sucked at the end, sucked at the warm bead. The shaft slid more freely now, wet from her tongue. She dug her tongue in around the piercings, under his cock, where the flesh was so soft and tender, then around the slit in the end. He was hard as slate, and his thighs trembled under her touch. His cock throbbed between her lips and she let it fill her mouth, loving the salty taste of him, and the smell, all man.
His fingers brushed her shoulders. When she looked up, she saw him staring down at her wings as they spread beneath him. She used her mouth, incarcerating him, drawing at him mercilessly. Even when he tried to warn her, to urge her away with small sounds, with his hands on her neck, her shoulders, she did not cease until he erupted into her mouth, surprising him as much as her with the force of it. Most of it she swallowed. She pulled back, leaving a hanging thread to drop from his piercing. For a moment, she sat on her haunches and looked up at him, then she rose and pressed her body against his, feeling the sweat that’d sprung to his skin.
He bore her back against the table’s tacky edge, his fingers seeking the core of her, pressing through the hair and between her lips, opening her again. She sucked at the piercing in his lip, tugged at it with her teeth. His cock was coming hard again against her thigh. She moaned, spread herself out, needing him. A wild thing’s growl built in his throat as he looked at her smooth, well-fleshed body lying before him. He turned her by the hips and shoved her belly-down against the edge of the table. His thigh nudged hers together, the heel of his hand slid up her spine and stopped between her wings, held her down firmly as he sank himself into her in three rough strokes. Her wetness spread quickly over him and down, slicking her thighs where they pressed tight together. She gasped and would’ve ridden back against him but he held her still, forced himself into her urgently. Her back arched, her fingers sank into the sticky padding of the table’s sides. A grating cry ripped free of her throat, jarred loose by his thrusting.
He took handfuls of her black hair, stilled its furious tossing and yanked her head back. She arched like a bow, bent by the force of him. He bit the side of her neck. Hot breath panted harsh against her throat. She turned to mouth his lips, her kisses drunken with lust, his mouth soft under hers. His hands, hands capable of such delicacy and skill, snaked around, described her belly, her breasts, and instead of pain gave pleasure, teasing until the aching lilt of orgasm began, turning her to pulsing fire where she engulfed him. She shrieked when it broke like a storm over her, leaving her trembling and alarmed. When had it ever come so quickly or so hard?
She’d slid forward on the table, which was slick with her sweat. He pulled free and shoved her up further, until she had hold of the headrest and watched nervously behind her as he climbed up. Yes, there was room for two. He forced her hips down until she was glued to the tabletop, and he entered her like that, her legs stretched back, him straddling one of her thighs, rubbing full-length against her like a snake. His lips caressed the roots of her wings even as his hand twisted cruelly in her hair, forcing her head down.
When he leaned back to run his hands over them, she squeezed, bent and pushed against him, every muscle in her body tensing, trying to lift him along on the ever-rising crest of her own passion. The days of healing, of pain, had sensitized her. His fingers on her skin burned white fire down her spine. She ground herself back against him, his touch pure electric torment. His fingers dug into her shoulders, raked down the tingling welts of her wings, and she c
ame again, mastered by her pleasure, lost in it, and yet somehow riding the storm, floating above it.
He lost his rhythm, thrown off by her own desperate grinding. His sweat dripped onto her back, his panting was harsh and jagged, painful-sounding. He was going to come.
“Out,” she gasped. “I want it all over me. I want to feel it.”
He made a sound somewhere between a whimper and a snarl, then slipped from her, leaving her gasping and empty. She twisted her head around to look as he jerked his shaft. When he came, it splashed all over her, the white streams interrupted, broken by the piercing. It fell on her in droplets like hot rain, sizzling her skin, filling the channel of her spine and running to puddle between her wings. Its smell, rich and animal, reminded her of the smell of tattoo ink. She smiled under the curtain of her hair.
He fell down beside her on one hand, panting. She sighed, murmured, wordless sounds of need fulfilled. His fingers stroked her back, then rubbed, working his semen into the black lashes of her wings. Her skin shuddered, and she felt as though her pinions were stretched wide, limp and trembling after bearing her through the storm.
“Don’t you want another one?” Alex asked, stroking her back. He was still breathless. It had been a good romp. Sara flexed her shoulders.
“What? Another tattoo?”
“Some people get addicted. Go back again and again.”
“Oh,” she buried her face in the crook of her arm and smiled. “No. I’m done. I have what I needed. Sorry to disappoint.”
But three weeks later she walked in again, the beeper announcing her. John was cleaning the glass cases. The hiss of the spray-bottle ceased when Sara walked in, as if he knew. He turned, and their gazes locked.
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