“Yeah, Missy, what time?” Rabbit caught on.
“That’s enough out of both of you,” I said, blushing. “The truth is – early, probably.”
“What? Why?” my mother cranked. “Rabbit – get,” she demanded, and my son thundered off again, back to whatever game I’d called him away from before. “Angela,” my mother began anew, in her woman-to-woman tone, “There’s no reason to come home early, if you catch my drift.”
“I do. It’s just that –“ I’d thought about it the entire way home from Dark Ink. If Gray knew about Rabbit – then it was only a matter of time till he found out about Mark. And the Pack – the pack was territorial.
So tonight I needed to break up with Mark for his sake. My mother didn’t have any idea about Gray or his letters, and I probably should tell her, but I didn’t want to lose the last few days of this – us teasing one another, acting like a normal family, warts and all. Mark – he hadn’t signed on for this. I needed to cut him loose.
But before I could begin to attempt to explain any of that to my mother, the doorbell rang.
* * *
I walked over, able to beat my mother’s scootering handedly, and opened the door. “Hey handsome,” I said, unable not to grin.
“Hey yourself,” Mark said, giving me an appreciative once-over. I was wearing a cream colored button down cashmere sweater, gold skirt not much longer than the sweater was, gold heels, and gold everything else – hoop earrings and a series of bangles that began just under the sweater’s three-quarter length sleeves.
Whereas Mark? He could give Captain America a run for his money, if Captain America had a little Italian in him. He had a square jaw, piercing eyes that wanted to be amber, and a five-o-clock shadow, no matter the time of day.
“I’ll call if I’m late,” I called back.
“Don’t bother!” My mother shouted back. “Have fun!”
I flushed, grabbed my clutch off the coat rack and closed the door. Before I could take two steps toward him, Mark brought his big hands up. “Let me fix that for you,” he said, unbuttoning the top two buttons on my sweater so the dark rose tattoos over each of my breasts could peek out.
“Mark – it’s winter,” I protested.
“Don’t worry, I promise we’re going someplace warm.”
I slid my arm through his and let him guide us both down the apartment stairs.
* * *
I was clinging to him by the time we reached his BMW. The desert froze at night, and out here in the suburbs you didn’t have the buildings to cut down the breeze. I stared out the window as he drove, catching myself in reflection.
The real reason I wanted those buttons high – and that I was showing enough leg to almost be indecent as a trade-off – was that when I did break up with him – something I would manage any minute now, really – I wanted my tattoos covered. Sometimes when you hurt someone – even for their own safety -- they wanted to hurt you back. And I’d been called enough things because of my tattoos, had enough assumptions made about the boundaries of my body – I’d learned in tough scrapes it was far better to show blank skin.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Mark said, reaching over and putting a hand on my knee.
“Sorry. Just feeling sentimental.”
He groaned playfully. “Did I miss an anniversary?”
“Not that I recall.”
He let go of my knee for precisely long enough to change gears, and then his hand came back. It felt like it belonged there. “What is it?”
One last night. One last time to be normal, with a normal man. Even Cinderella got till midnight, didn’t she?
“Nothing,” I said, and reached out to pull his hand a little higher up my thigh, and give it a squeeze.
Chapter 4
I rocked back on my stool and turned around, fully prepared to tell someone to check out the flash while they waited their turn – but instead I found Bella, wearing one of her off-the-shoulder peasant dresses with sandals that laced up to her knees. Bella the-wanna-be-witch was the only woman I slept with even less committal than I was, and some part of me loved her for that, with abidingly deep irony.
“Hey,” I said, standing up and stepping back. “Give me a minute, will you?” I told the girls, snapped my gloves into the trash, and sauntered through the saloon doors.
“Hey yourself,” Bella said as I neared, holding her arms out for me. I stepped into them and wrapped my arms around her waist, pulling her near. Her hair somehow always smelled like chocolate, and I remembered the taste of her skin too easily.
“How’s my aura?” I asked when we pulled back without parting.
“Black as ever, Jack.” Her eyes flashed over my shoulder at the girls behind me. “I see you’re keeping busy.”
“Gotta pay the rent. And what can I say, you haven’t been around lately.”
She shrugged one shoulder without apology. “I’m here now. And I need attention.”
I pushed one lock of her dark wavy hair back, exposing the glory of her naked neck, and inside my jeans my cock throbbed. Blood was better than sex – unless the sex was really, really, good. With Bella…. “Time and place. Name it.”
“Two am – my house, tonight. And don’t you dare be late. My life depends on it.”
“Really?” I made sure to hide my smirk. Bella had a shop a few blocks off the strip, a devoted clientele, and she really did believe she was psychic. I made the mistake of letting her read my palm once – saying she was intense was an understatement, which was probably why the sex was so hot.
“Really. That gives you plenty of time to finish up here.” Her hand sank between us and rubbed at me through the denim. “Just make sure you save some for me, okay?”
“Always.”
She took a step back and whirled, my audience over, and walked straight back out Dark Ink’s doors.
I watched her go, because how could I not, hoping my hard-on would subside. When it didn’t, I gave up and walked back to the girls I’d abandoned and sat down. Work would straighten me out, like always.
“Sorry about that,” I said while pulling on fresh gloves.
“Girlfriend?” the brunette asked.
“It’s complicated.”
“Oh,” said the blonde, daring a glance below my belt.
Precisely. “You ready?” I asked both of them, since the blonde’s tattoo seemed like a team sport.
“Yeah,” Brunette answered, and took the Blonde’s hand. “Come on, Karm – you can do this.”
Bolstered by the brunette’s encouragement, blonde chimed back, “Yeah – I can.” Except for when I set my gun hand on her she let out a high pitched shriek – and once I pressed the pedal and the gun started roaring, so did she. Consent paperwork be damned, anyone that walked into the shop right now would think I was killing someone.
I knew first-hand what that sounded like.
I rocked off the pedal, staring at the blonde over the plane of her pale stomach, meeting eyes briefly with her best friend, before looking at her again.
“Look, can you take this? Or do you want me to stop?”
Blonde Karm – short for the Karma I’d seen on her license, which I’d copied to prove her age – nodded vigorously.
She wanted too. And I wanted money. But unless she’d let me actually tattoo her, we were at an impasse. I could use my whammy – it was the Jedi mind-trick vampires had that got people to do things for them, like open doors and invite them in – but it wasn’t very strong or useful yet – not like my Mistress’s. It’d gotten Angela an extra hundred bucks for her touch-up, earlier, but I’d seen the way that MMA fighter was also looking at her ass – I’d just charged him an ass-tax was all. But using it to get someone to sit still for a tattoo that I wasn’t sure they were really into wasn’t worthwhile.
“Why do you want it? What are you commemorating anyhow?”
Karma pushed herself up on her elbows. “I just – wanted to prove that I was here, you know? It’s my first time out o
f ‘Bama.”
I knew I knew that accent. And I knew all about how easy it was to get stuck in the south – and how hard it was to leave behind, no matter how hard you tried.
“I might not get to make this trip again,” she went on, looking up at me with wide and innocent eyes. “I want to make it special.”
And there it was. Everyone who came to Vegas was looking for the same thing – to go home with a good story.
I sat there quietly for a moment, lips smugly curved, looking from one to the other of them. I could feel the tension building between us, almost thick enough to feed off of. “If you don’t want to get a tattoo, I can think of several other things to do that you’ll remember forever instead,” I said, offering everything they thought I was.
Karma’s lips parted as she inhaled a gasp, then her eyes darted to the brunette, as if asking permission. The brunette’s eyes flickered over me and she subtly nodded, and then Karma nodded too, more strongly.
“All right then,” I purred, and made it my mission to get Karma to scream again.
I raised the chair she was in to be head height to my stool, and wheeled myself up between her legs. I pushed the paper away, and pulled the cotton line of her panties to one side. I could feel her eyes on me, both of them scared but entranced.
“You’re – you’re going straight down there?” Karma whispered. Her hair was trimmed in a neat landing strip – what a shame that someone who groomed themselves so neatly couldn’t call it pussy.
“I am,” I said. “Because she’s going to start kissing you.”
Karma looked to her friend, whose name I didn’t know, but the brunette leaned in and tried. Their lips mismatched, they laughed, and then tried again, this time with better outcome and I watched Karma’s breasts heave.
I didn’t need to whammy them, they just needed a little orchestration – it was likely the first time they’d done this sort of thing, muchless together. Wanting to do my part for the tourism industry, I put a warning hand on the inside of both of Karma’s soft-skinned thighs and then lowered my mouth down.
She was wet, she was warm, and I slid my tongue between her folds just tasting her as she moaned into the brunette’s mouth. The brunette slid a hand under Karm’s shirt and underneath her bra, and I could see her kneading Karm’s breasts while I licked up toward her mound. I was warming her up, warming all of her, kissing everything, rubbing in with my lips and chin, I wanted her to know that I was here and I was into her and then I opened my mouth wide to suck on her clit, that way that women liked, that most men never learned.
She started to make high pitched sounds between kisses, and I saw the brunette’s hand find her nipple and pinch, and then Karm’s hand was reaching out between them until it found a home between the brunette’s thighs – she rose up from kissing, panting, pushing her own skirt down so that she could stand with her legs straddled enough to give Karma’s hand room.
I sucked on her clit, rolling it under my tongue, rocking my head forward to give my gloved hand space to rise. I put two fingers into the warmth of her vagina, but didn’t press them in – instead I pulled down, so she would feel stretched and empty and yearning. Karma rolled between our attentions, her free hand clenching onto my tattoo chair’s side, her hips rocking beneath my ministrations, the brunette pulling down her shirt and bra at last to kiss Karma’s perfect breasts.
“Oh my God, y’all – oh my God!” Karma shouted, and felt I her tense, her thighs trapping my head, as I kept sucking, and then I slid my fingers in and – “Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!” she kept shouting as her orgasm shuddered though her, up and down, her hips spasming, her stomach pumping, her breasts bouncing with the force of it, until she finally sagged back with a final whispered, “Oh my God.”
Her thighs relented and I pushed back, my face covered in her juices, eyes blurred with a contact high. I fed better when I did more fucking, but life was life, and she had come hard, giving everything to me.
The brunette stood, panting, her legs still tight around Karma’s hand, and cast darkly inviting eyes my way.
I stood so there was no way she couldn’t see my hard-on straining. “Do you want a story too?” I asked, my voice like gravel. She reached for my belt buckle without answering.
She – she knew what was going on. She’d done this before – I could tell – from the way she rubbed at my cock with her hand through the fabric of my jeans, then after she’d unzipped the fly, the way she reached in to feel it again, as though weighing it, comparing it to some unmatched part of herself. I groaned until she undid the top button and let my cock fall out, aching.
If I’d known her better – at all – I would have run my hands into her hair and brought her mouth toward me – I wanted to seat myself, through her lips, against her tongue, down her throat – but as it was I had to wait till she got there herself. She knelt slowly, stroking my shaft, until her lips were at height and – she looked up, and licked them, then parted for me, taking my head into her perfect little mouth, before working her way higher.
As she started riding my cock with her mouth I shuddered. Sex – made me hungry – and here I was so close to blood – but – no – hands were in my hair – Karma, back from the dead and standing, pulling my mouth to hers, kissing me. I ran my hands over her soft skin, clawing fingers up her back, pulling her against me as my hips fucked her friend’s mouth, until I found her nipples, pinched, and pulled – then the brunette rocked back.
I looked down at her, my cock still ramrod straight – and she whispered up. “Do you have a condom?”
I moved Karma aside and pulled one out of a station drawer, opened it and set it over my cock with practiced hands. Then, the brunette stood. Her hair was in disarray, which gave her a chance to hide behind it as she asked. “I want you to fuck me – but I have to stay a virgin.”
It was all I could do not to laugh. “Southern girls,” I said aloud. I kicked off the rest of my clothing and grabbed the Vaseline from my drawer and brought it near. We used it on fresh tattoos, but it’d do for lube – and the condom was for them, not me, besides. The upshots of being a vampire included no babies, and no STIs.
I settled myself onto the chair, face out, hips up, aching cock still at attention. The brunette gave me a quizzical look, which was a shame -- after the virgin quip, I wouldn’t have thought she suffered from a lack of imagination. “Come here,” I said, grabbing her bodily and pulling her up to lie on top of me, her back against my chest, her legs splayed wide, dangling on either side of my hips.
I pushed her hair away to nuzzle her neck and brought my hands around, one to cup a breast, the other pushing down through her dark fur to stroke at her.
She was helpless on me. I was bigger than she was and totally in control, and I could feel her torn between fighting that and giving in. I used the wetness Karma had already inspired to rub her labia gently, feeling them part, then pulling up to find the space where they connected at her hood. And I started slowly arching my hips, sending my trapped cock rubbing against the cleft of her ass.
“Just don’t – go in there – okay?” she whispered, setting one hand on top of mine on her pussy to guard it, and bringing her free hand up to play with her other breast.
“Karma, can you do me a favor?”
“Uh huh,” Karma said, watching everything with rapt attention.
“Take some of that,” I said, jerking my chin at the Vaseline, “and get it all over my cock.”
She breathed a yes, and went to do as she was told – then paused in front of us, looking down at where we almost met, at both of us, and I wondered how much, if anything, she’d learned in sex ed – or if she’d ever gone to the dark side of the internet.
Then she reached in and pulled out my still condomed cock and slicked it up and down with Vaseline thoroughly.
“Okay,” I told the two of them, pulling the brunette higher up my chest. “You ready?”
She nodded and I started my slide, pushing her slowly dow
n as my hips arched my cock up. Her hips bobbed in time with my other hand, but when she realized what I was doing, where I was going, she started to move to find me. I was pressed against her in a moment, the head of my cock throbbing against her tight asshole, and then I whispered, “Breathe for me.”
She did, I thrust, and I pushed my tip inside her. She moaned and I went still. I could feel her throbbing around me, then felt her try to go lower, to push herself deeper onto me. I growled in her ear and helped her down, bracing myself so that she could control her decent as she pushed up against me, taking my slicked cock in.
She was tight, God she was tight, and it was hard to just wait for her to find her own rhythm – but before I could break she did, and started arcing on me, back and forth, sliding me in out – never all the way out, and taking more and more of me in each time.
“Christ,” I growled, as her ass started working me. She may not have done this much before – but she was good – so good -- I opened my eyes and saw disheveled Karma, watching us intently.
“How can I help?” she asked.
I reached both hands over the brunette’s body, spreading her legs even wider, showing Karma her full sex. “Sit down on the stool – and lick her right here,” I said, showing her where with a finger.
The brunette paused in anticipation of Karma’s mouth and then afterwards let out a low moan. She lay between us, pinned and twitching, scared of moving too much and knocking anyone off.
“I can’t – decide – it all feels – so good –“ she panted out against me.
“What feels good? This?” I said and arced up, making her take all of me at last, feeling her stretch around the thickest part of my shaft.
“Ohhhhh!” she agreed with a high pitched squeal.
“Or this,” Karma said, getting into the spirit of things, licking harder, taking more of the brunette’s pussy inside her mouth.
I decided to take control of the ride then – just because I was technically immortal didn’t mean I wanted to play all night long – and I had other dates besides. I curled up, taking the brunette with me, pushing her down, feeling her welcoming ass take me in to the hilt, and I twitched inside her, arching my ass up, rocking myself just barely in and out of her as her whole ass clenched me tight, making each small thrust feel like the first time.
Dark Ink Tattoo: Episode 1 Page 2