King stood in the door way. “And if I hear you ever talk shit about her again, I’ll find you and take that butterfly tattoo back.”
“Oh yeah?” she shouted, stopping on the landing. “How the fuck are you going to do that?”
King was in the doorway one second and an inch from her face the next. “I’ll tell you how,” he seethed. “I’m going to find you, and then I’m going to take my time carving those fucking butterfly wings from that nasty pussy of yours with my knife. Sleep on that before you decide to open that good for nothing dick-sucker of yours again.”
Her eyes went wide with fear. She couldn’t move fast enough as she rushed out of the house, slamming the door behind her. The gravel spun under the tires of her car as she sped down the driveway.
“Clean up,” King ordered. He grabbed one of the beers from my arms as he passed me in the hallway and went back into his studio. I stood with my mouth open for a full minute before following him.
“What the hell was that?” I asked, putting the rest of the drinks into the cooler by the door.
“It was nothing. Clean up. We aren’t done yet.” King chugged the beer, crushed the can in his hands and tossed it into the trash bin.
The clock above the door read three am.
The next client was a man named Neil who King had being doing a full sleeve for before he went to prison. Neil had waited three years for King to be released so he could finish it. He said he just didn’t trust anyone else to do it right.
I sat on the leather couch and watched King as he scrunched his face up in concentration. How could someone so talented also be so menacing?
You already know how talented his hands are.
I bit my lip and remembered the way his fingers felt inside me. My face flushed.
“I can feel you staring at me,” King said, snapping me out of my daydream. Neil had a huge set of red headphones on with his eyes closed. He was either engrossed in the music or fast asleep.
“I’m kind of bored,” I admitted, embarrassed I’d been caught staring.
King stood and removed a glove. He opened another drawer on the toolbox and removed something, tossing it over to me. A sketchbook landed next to me on the couch, followed by a box of colored pencils.
“Maybe, this will help you stop fucking fidgeting,” he said. “It always helped me.”
Then, he turned up the volume on the iPod docking station before picking up his tattoo gun and diving back into his work.
I opened the sketchbook, which wasn’t blank. The first few sketches were variations of the orange tree tattoo I’d seen King tattoo on the redhead earlier. Each one better than the next until I got to the one he used as a template for her tattoo.
Several pages of stunning artwork later, a beautiful dragon, a skull made completely of flowers, and a pin-up girl dressed as a nurse, and I was finally at a blank page. Doodling, I quickly found, was a much better way to pass the time than wondering about the man who made my head spin, and other parts of me throb.
I drew happy faces and stick figures at first. But then I started shading and one of the stick figures started to look like a person. I wasn’t actually drawing. It felt more like I could already see the completed design in my mind and was just filling in what was already on the page.
When I finished, I was staring into the chestnut eyes from my dream. I looked up at King, who was still engrossed in his work. I quietly tore the page from the book and folded it up, shoving it deep between the cushions of the couch. Part of me was hiding it so I could come back to it later and maybe add to it. Another part of me wanted to keep this one thing that I knew was somehow connected to my past to myself.
I then decided to sketch the bird I saw earlier flying over the water. I visualized it just as I had with the eyes I’d just drawn. Before I knew it, my pencil was flying over the page. I wasn’t just drawing. I was shading, smudging, and contouring.
When I was done, it wasn’t exactly the bird I’d seen earlier, but a more exotic version of it. Dark. Fierce. Its feathers were ruffled wildly, and the snake dangling from his beak had it’s mouth open with it’s fangs exposed. I created smoke billowing out of the small nostrils on the bird’s beak, as if he could breathe fire. But then I decided that he looked too harsh, too intimidating, so I gave the bird a broken wing, and in the reflection of his eye, I drew the snake before he’d killed it, swallowing a mouse. The final product was both brilliant beauty and vulnerability. Tears formed in my eyes, and I wiped them away before they could spill onto my cheek.
I can draw.
Not only could I draw, but I could draw well. It came as naturally as breathing.
The second thing connecting me to her.
When I put the book down, I looked up, and King’s client was gone. King sat on his stool alone, watching me. “You were in the zone,” he said. “You looked so fucking cute sitting there concentrating.”
I swallowed hard, “I…uuuhhh…got caught up.”
His words took me by surprise. I visualized stalking over to him and climbing onto his lap. His big strong hands coming around my back and resting underneath my shirt on my bare skin. I thought about what it would be like to let him do more than what he’d done before.
What would it be like if he used more than his fingers?
I shuddered.
“Bring it here,” King said, holding out his hand, snapping me out of my own imagination where I was naked and writhing underneath him.
“No, you don’t want to see it. I was just messing around. I’ll just put it back in the drawer and clean up now.” I walked over to the sink with the book under my arm. King reached out and snatched it away from me, flipping the pages in search of my sketch.
“Holy Go-go-Gadget arms,” I quipped. I’d clearly underestimated King’s reach.
“How do you know that?” He asked.
“What do you mean? How do I know what?” I asked.
“The ‘Go-go gadget’ thing. That’s a reference to a cartoon. Have you ever even seen it?”
“Um…I think so. It’s this guy who wears a trench coat and has a billion little gadgets all over the place that usually don’t work the way he wants them to.”
“I know who it is. What I want to know is have you watched it since you lost your memory?”
“No, I haven’t watched any TV until earlier tonight when Preppy put on something called American Ninja Warrior.” I stepped back and leaned against the counter. “What are you trying to get at? I thought you believed me.”
“That’s not it. I’m just trying to figure it out. Help me understand.” King leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “If you haven’t watched it, then it’s something that carries over from before. How exactly does that work?”
“I’m not really sure. When I was living in the group home, I saw a psychologist or a psychiatrist or one of those. He told me that memory loss works differently for everyone. For me, it wiped out all personal information. Names, faces, memories. But I can still walk and talk, so I retained all my functions. I also know facts. Like, I know who the president is, and I can sing to you the jingle for Harry’s House of Falafel’s commercial. I just don’t know HOW I know those things.”
King nodded. I bit my lip.
“You know, you’re the only person besides the psychologist guy who’s even asked me about it,” I added.
King turned a page in the book and found my sketch. He studied it for several minutes. Time seemed to tick by slower and slower. I grew restless wondering what he thought of it. He was probably trying to figure out how to tell me it was complete crap. But then again I didn’t take him for someone who would go out of his way in order to avoid offending anyone.
So, what the hell was he staring at for so long?
And why the hell did I need his approval so badly?
“Are you done for the night?” I asked, trying to draw his attention away from the sketch. If he hated it, I’d rather just not talk about it at all. He lifted his eyes from my sketch just long enough to give my body a slow once over, like he was looking at me for the very first time. His gaze ignited my skin as if he’d actually touched me.
“Am I done?” he repeated my question. King ran the underside of his tongue across his bottom lip, leaving a sheen where he’d made it wet. “I’m not sure. I’m thinking I could just be getting started.”
Holy Shit.
The familiar redness burned its way up my neck and my ears grew hot.
The clock read 4:45am, and although I should have been tired due to the time, I was more alert than ever. The caffeine and sugar from the four Red Bulls I’d drunk felt like it could keep me awake for days, but I needed to get away from King because I felt myself starting to forget all the reasons why letting him strip me down and have his way with me would be a bad idea.
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“It means that I’m done with clients. But it also means that I’m not done with you.” King grabbed my wrist and dragged me onto his lap, the very place I’d just fantasized about being.
I gasped.
The hard muscles of his thighs rippled under mine. His smell—a light mixture of soap and sweat—was intoxicating. He fisted a handful of my hair and yanked my head sideways, exposing my neck to him. He breathed me in, running his nose along my neck, followed by a long leisurely lick from my collarbone to the sensitive spot on the back of my ear. I moaned, and he chuckled. I could feel it vibrate through his body and into mine. “Oh, pup. How much fun this is going to be.”