Dark Ink Tattoo: Ep 3

by Cassie Alexander

  “Sure thing, baby, I’ll be right back.”

  I went downstairs and found my mother and Mark in deep conversation, waved to show I wasn’t done yet, grabbed the silver, and raced back upstairs to give Rabbit his eyedropper full. He still didn’t like them, but he liked being babied by me, he was still my little boy. I smooched his head, and turned his light off, and listened at the door until I was sure he’d stayed in bed.

  When I came back down the stairs my mother made a show of being tired, out-stretched arms, oversized yawns and all, taking herself off to her room to sleep, as I settled down in a chair.

  “Could she be any more obvious?”

  “I like her. I like him.” He reached for the bottle and poured me a glass. I eyed the bottle to see how far ahead of me he was, if my mother had driven him to drink. “Your mother told me where these were,” he said, pushing one over. “And now that we both have glasses, I want to propose a toast.”

  “Oh?”

  “Cento di questi giorni,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “To a hundred days like this.”

  I looked over at Mark, appearing content inside my kitchen. “Indeed.” I clinked my glass to his, and sipped.

  Chapter 5

  The night air didn’t phase me. I lay down on the stripmall’s roof, staring up at the clear Vegas sky, lit by the belly of the moon. Murphy was still behind me, pacing, smoking, pacing again – I’d always know where he was as long as I could smell him and his cigar.

  Had there been a cigar scent at Bella’s? No. But I was okay with creating some collateral terror as I worked my way back to killing the right Pack boss. To my mind, all of them had been involved.

  I watched the stars turn until my flesh was almost as cold as the night itself, when I heard Murphy prepare to leave, saying as much to a subordinate. Then I leapt up, and raced for the far end of the roof where I’d parked my car. I turned my engine over as he turned his, masking my sound with his own, and as his motorcycle pulled out from the thinned herd of chrome, I followed.

  I wanted to see which way he was going first – I knew crime paid well enough, but I was curious if Murphy would let that show – nothing like buying too nice a house to interest the IRS. Instead of driving into Vegas, he drove out, toward the surrounding desert. Maybe he wanted to commune with his conscience under the moonlight. I followed at a distance without headlights, but when he pulled over, I turned them on and drove up, slowing down, blocking his bike in with my car.

  I stopped, opened my car door to stand halfway out, and pretended to be companionable. “Did you break down?”

  My arrival startled him. Whatever he’d been doing – something involving the front of his shirt – he stopped and looked guilty. “I’m fine – go away.”

  “Afraid I can’t.” I propelled myself over the hood of my car to land feet first on the other side. “Does the name Bella ring any bells?”

  “Shit –“ He tossed a leg over his motorcycle – I ran up and kicked his back tire, hard enough to bend his rim. He didn’t let it fall though, he fought my momentum, holding it upright. His hands went to bags as I leaned in to punch him.

  The man had a jaw like a piece of granite. And my punch should’ve taken him down – but all it did was knock him off his bike. He stumbled backwards but didn’t fall, even as his motorcycle tipped over. “Who the fuck are you?” he said, holding his jaw.

  “A concerned friend.” I kicked his motorcycle out of the way, sending it ten feet out into the scree. “What happened to her? What’d she want with you?”

  He looked from his bike to me. “How the fuck – who are you?”

  “What happened to her,” I repeated in a low growl, bringing the full force of my whammy to bear.

  He blinked, momentarily mesmerized. “We had her for months. She never mentioned a boyfriend.”

  “Had?” I asked archly, still using my powers. His answer would determine how many of his bones I broke before killing him.

  Then he shook himself. I didn’t think he should’ve been able to, but he did. No matter, there were other ways of getting information.

  I jumped him.

  Neither of us were pretty fighters, none of the graceful shit you see on TV. We were bred for the pits, and acted like it. I was taller than he was and had better reach, but he was fucking sturdy in a way I’d never seen. Blows that would’ve incapacitated a normal man did nothing to him, while he rained heavy fists on me any time he got close. I just needed to get him down into a headlock – I saw an opening and took it, but he punched back, just in time. I dodged it, but a rock slid out from under my boot, making me drop my guard. His next punch landed hard, and I felt ribs snap.

  I clutched a hand to my chest. As a vampire, I’d never had anyone hurt me before. What the fuck are you??? I wanted to ask him – then I realized if I kept staying alive, he’d ask the same of me. He turned and ran –

  “Oh no you don’t –“ I said and leapt for him – as he dove for his bags and brought a sawed off shotgun up. I had time for the weapon to register, right before he shot me. Catching a chest full of lead, I fell.

  * * *

  I…was injured. Not dying, but…hurt. It was an entirely new sensation for me. I rose up onto my elbows and looked down at myself. Blood, precious blood – mostly other people’s – leaking out, scattershot on my chest, literally. I didn’t know what to do – should I pretend to be mortally wounded? Would he know what I was if I didn’t? Would he come and try to finish the job?

  How come I hadn’t finished him?

  Rage boiled in me then, even as blood sieved out. I wanted him to die – and I needed to drink him, to make up for what I’d lost. I stood up and lurched forward. He tried to shoot me again, but he’d used his last shot. Must’ve missed reloading day at Biker Boy Scouts. He was breathing hard, like I was – I’d hurt him more than he’d let on, one eye swelling shut, blood dripping from where I’d broken his nose, his free hand wrapped around to guard his liver. A wind struck up, wafted the scent of his fear to me, and I laughed. Vampirism offered few true joys, but getting to occasionally be exceptionally creepy and laugh like a maniac was one of them.

  I smiled at him wickedly. “Tell me what happened to Bella, or I’ll pull you apart and suck the marrow from your bones.”

  His eyes widened, and he stumbled up. I’d been in fights like this before. He’d fight erratically now, too panicked to defend. All of them ended in only one delicious way.

  But instead of coming for me – he turned tail and ran. Not toward his bike or my car, but out into the desert. I lunged after him – and felt things grind inside, bone on bone – and my hunger that’d been kept in abeyance by Paco’s blood and sex exploded, now that I was several quarts low. I could use that energy to chase after him – but I couldn’t guarantee what condition I’d be in when I caught up. If it took over -- the hunger was savage, and I wanted answers, not to just cover myself in blood and make his corpse look like it’d been dropped from 500 feet up.

  Goddammit!

  I stumbled back to my car, popped the trunk, grabbed a trash bag, and threw it over the driver’s seat like someone who’d had to do this more than once before, and got in.

  Chapter 6

  “I’m glad you have a driver,” I told Mark. We’d almost reached the bottle’s end. Neither one of us had brought up the elephant in the room – what’d happened this morning, and what Mark was presumably going to do about it. Maybe had already set in motion. I sent my finger swirling along the rim of my wine glass, wondering if I wanted to ask.

  He finished off his glass and set it back down. “Did you do what I told you to do?”

  I looked up at him and then down again, flushing, not just from the wine. I’d thought about it, twice, when the panic had started to rise – picturing myself in his office again, my thighs pressed against the sharp edge of his desk as he took my ass, something we hadn’t yet done, imagining feeling myself filled by him someplace new. “Yes,” I a
nswered, a truthful whisper.

  “Did it help?”

  I nodded faintly.

  “Good.”

  I’d had enough wine to feel a little spinny, but not so much as to make bad decisions, and I knew that as I looked over at him. “Would you like to spend the night?”

  A knowing smile spread across his face. “I would.”

  At that, I put one finger to my lips for quiet, and stood and took his hand.

  * * *

  Halfway up the stairs, his hands were on my ass. I slapped them away, then finished pulling him to my room, past Rabbit’s and the bathroom’s door. My bedroom was not set up for company, I had dresses all over a decorating screen, a vanity full of potions, and my queen didn’t look big enough for the both of us. He walked in and looked around, naturally gravitating toward the bed.

  “I feel like I’m in high school.”

  “Me too.” I felt like I’d just snuck a boy in. “I’ve never brought anyone home before. So, uh, welcome to me.” I spun around, indicating my four walls.

  He made a show of pacing the room, stopping in front of a framed 12 x 12 painting of a curled and sleeping rabbit, so perfect that only brush strokes proved it wasn’t a photo. “That’s lovely – is it your work?”

  “Jack made it for me,” I said. “A long time ago.”

  “Ahhh.” He surveyed everything else in silence, stopping only to close the blinds on my windows. I knew what he meant by it – he didn’t want anyone to see us fuck – but I still didn’t know what I was hoping for. I got the sex. I’d always gotten the sex. But him, here, really knowing me? Except for the werewolf part….

  The wine made me do it. “Mark -- why me?”

  He turned back from his inspection of my belongings, looking over a shelf of clay animals that Rabbit’d crafted and I’d kept. “What?”

  “I mean – I’m a hassle.”

  He smiled. “A sexy hassle.”

  “This is Vegas. It’s pretty easy to find hassle-free sex here.”

  His head tilted as he considered me. “I want to help you.”

  “I know you do. But before all that, and before this morning. I know why I want to be with you – you’re smart and handsome, you make me laugh, and we are epic in bed. But -- why would someone like you want to be with me?”

  He sat down on my bed in front of me. “I’ve been here for a while, ever since my uncle told me to come out here and go to law school.” He put his hands behind him, leaning back into my unmade bed. “I spent a long time doing things I shouldn’t have. Things I thought would make me happy. I had a really fierce coke habit. Not because I even really liked it, but because of who I was and who I hung with, it was expected of me. After I flunked out of school though – I don’t know, I realized I wasn’t happy. I stopped the coke, switched schools and started studying. It took me awhile longer to get over my showgirl habit, but I kicked them too.” His lips curved into a gentle smile. “All day long I talk to people who have something to prove, guys who want to chest bump me, and women who live plastic lives. And you? You’re like this whirlwind of reality. You get what’s important in life. I love that your kid matters to you, more than anything – more than me. That you care about, and take care of, your mom. I don’t want to take you away from all this – I just want to add to it.”

  My heart swelled to bursting. And he pushed himself forward, I thought to stand, but instead he went down on his knees.

  “Come here,” he said, and I did, stepping forward.

  He knelt, his hands starting at my calves, running down them to unlace my sandals, helping me to kick them off, one by one, and then he began to touch me. His hands trailed slowly, like he was a sculptor, molding me, stroking my calves one by one, then tracing the backs of my knees, before coming around to push up my thighs, his thumbs coming dangerously close, before he pushed back to palm curve of my ass and reach up up up to finger the waistband of my underwear and tug.

  He pulled the cotton down with just as much care as he’d stroked up, deliberately, like he was unwrapping a present the old fashioned way, saving the wrapping paper. I wanted to help him, to shuck it off and skip to what I hoped was coming – but I loved how he was taking his time. I shifted from foot to foot, helping him free myself from the thin cotton chain, then he looked up.

  “Pull your skirt up for me, Angie.”

  I whispered the word, Okay, and I held my skirt up like a peasant girl stepping over a puddle, as he leaned forward to kiss the insides of my thighs.

  I gasped lightly – I’d known this was coming, and yet – I spread my legs to make more room, to show him more of me. He took one of my thighs in both of his hands and started kissing, nuzzling me up from my knee. I could feel the roughness of his beard’s shadow chasing after the heat of his breath from each kiss as his hands crawled up, moving now to push my thighs apart. I arched toward him, and he murmured his assent into my thigh, creeping ever higher until he was looking up at me, his amber eyes dark, and my pussy aching. One hand reached up to press up my stomach and stretch me up, the other held a thigh. Pinned between his hands, his mouth came up and kissed.

  Mark slid the flat of his tongue across my clit, forward and back, rolling it out from under its hood. If he could just keep doing that, stay there like some delicious machine made for my pleasure – I went weak in the knees and moaned softly.

  He rose up and came closer, to kiss more of me, to move his tongue more roughly as his lips sucked and pulled me open. His chin ground up and in and I was not ladylike in the way I pressed down to give him more. I couldn’t help but watch him – my strong and dangerous giant, tamed enough to kneel to take me. No, not tamed, but confident. To know that he knew what I wanted, and how best to give it to me. I shuddered with a sudden release of power, feeling safe, feeling – possessed – and – I dropped my skirt and wound both my hands into his hair and started to ride. He grabbed hold of my ass, the strength of his grip betraying his urgency.

  I – I started to use his mouth like I might a toy, thinking only of myself. I closed my eyes and pulled him harder onto me, grinding my clit against his tongue, listening to him purr as my wetness flowed down around his chin, his stubble pressing perfectly against me, with making him struggle to hold on. One of his hands pulled down and set a thumb into my pussy, giving me both more and less leverage as I rocked.

  I was using him shamelessly – and he liked it. Every throb, every rock, every lick that pushed me closer to the cliff – his mouth and hands worked in synchrony, me and my body just holding on. He knew exactly what he was doing and was going to keep on doing it until -- I rose up on my toes again, this time my ass clenched and wouldn’t stop tensing and everything in me narrowed to one shining spot that he claimed with his tongue and -- my hands clenched in his hair. “Mark,” I hissed low, bucking my clit against his tongue as I came. “Mark –“ I said, even louder, then bit my lips to stay quiet, as my orgasm made me reel. I shuddered over him, hips twitching, me trying to stifle small sounds as my body tensed and released over and over again. When the last of it was wrung out of me, he leaned back looking smug, and I sagged, slumping down as he caught me, my skirt billowing innocently out.

  He held me against his chest, in his lap, me breathless. His face was half-wet, and I knew that sensitive parts of me would have beard-burn tomorrow. I leaned up to kiss him, and he kissed me back, true and deep, before I fell back again in exhaustion, and he moved to lean us both against my bed.

  “I like it when you taste like me,” I murmured into his chest, dreamily.

  “Since I like tasting you, that works out nicely.”

  “I’m not sure what I did to deserve you.”

  He brushed my hair back and kissed my forehead. “You let the right stranger buy you a drink?”

  “I didn’t even want to go out that night. But my mom told me I shouldn’t miss Jenny’s party –“

  I heard his chest rumble as he chuckled, and slowly I inhabited my body again. I was curled up against him
– it was easy for me to wriggle my hand down between us just right – and his breath hitched as my hand grazed the seam of his slacks.

  “As much as I want to desecrate your bedroom, in all sorts of ways –“ he pushed me forward. “I can’t stay here tonight.”

  I pursed my lips and gave him a challenging glare. “Is that how long you think it’d take me?”

  His resolve melted, as I felt him get hard. I crawled out of his lap without moving my hand, as if breaking my connection might give him permission to go. Then I arranged myself in front of him, kneeling down, like a cross between a supplicant and a cat, and with skillful fingers, undid his belt, the latch of his slacks, and zipped everything down.

  His cock came out. I’d seen it at least fifty times now, and yet every time I saw it still felt new. I loved everything about it: the way it fit in me like a key to a lock, the solid weight of it when he rammed it between my thighs, how its skin was soft, the way I could touch it and know what he was thinking. I leaned forward on elbows and breathed over it without touching, promising him more.

  For his part, he was still – as still as I had been earlier, when he’d been touching me – the same disbelief I’d felt, mirrored in his eyes. We were both bad at this, at the softer things in life, at trusting. But we both wanted to. I knew I did – and I knew he did, as I kissed the smooth underbelly of his cock and he sighed and closed his eyes.

  I covered it in a thousand tender kisses, feeling it bob and sway, like a snake looking for purchase up a cliff. I had all the time in the world to give it all the attention, and listening to Mark gasp and groan was music to my ears. And just when I thought he wouldn’t take anymore, when my delicacy would drive him literally wild, I brought my lips down to kiss his head.

  I swirled my tongue in ever widening circles, lowering my mouth onto him, taking his head in, as he whispered, “Oh Angela,” harshly. I could see his hands winding in my sheets, as he held onto either side of my bed like a prisoner, trying to stop himself from grabbing my hair and forcing me down.