Uncaged (An MMA Stepbrother Romance) (28 page)

His smell, just faint, reaches my senses. I try to ignore it.

Carefully, I trace the inside line of the jellyfish’s main outline with the machine. I’m holding it about an inch above his skin, but getting a feel for the device, how long the needle extends, the weight in my hands, the balance. There are a great many models of tattoo machines, and little standardization because of the industry’s taboo nature. Understanding the weight and balance is crucial.

It’s a good machine, well-made, and light-weight. It pulls a little up – the back is heavier than the front – but that’s the way you want it to be. Better for the machine to fall out of your hands backwards away from the client’s skin, rather than forward into it.

“Okay,” I say, and look at Tina. “Where’s the reference design.”

She nods her head at the corkboard behind Pierce, and I notice it for the first time. There’s a cocktail napkin pinned to it.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say to Pierce. “You designed this on a
napkin?
”

“And only during my date’s bathroom trips,” he says.

“What jellyfish is that?”

“Portuguese Man of War.” He smiles at me. “Tentacles go back dozens of feet, like the net cast off by a trawler. The fin-like thing you see? At distance, if you see it, it just looks like the fin of a dead fish. Difficult to notice if you’re in the water with it.”

“You go on a Discovery Channel binge, or something?”

I notice that Tina stiffens, but still she says nothing.

“Best guy I ever fought got tangled up in one while surfing.”

I suck in a breath of air, and feel instantly embarrassed and terrible. “I’m sorry.”

“He didn’t die. But he’ll never fight again. Too much nerve and muscle damage.”

Behind me I hear Tina sigh.

“Why are you getting this tattoo?”

“Because I haven’t fought a guy who challenged me as much. I miss it.” The tone of his voice has changed. He’s become less… well, posturing.

“Alright. Tina, what are we doing first?”

She traces the outline of the fin that sits on top of the jellyfish’s body, and then tells me that the fin actually undulates – like a seashell. I know exactly what she means, and take another look at the drawing on the napkin, and figure out what Pierce was trying to do. He got the angles of the shadowing wrong. The guy can’t draw for the life of him.

“Alright,” I say. I look at him one last time, and when I meet his snowy eyes, it’s like I’ve been injected with adrenaline. I’ve suddenly got a buzz. I’m bordering on shaking.

I never expected this kind of exhilaration when giving a tattoo. I hope it never fades.

“Are you sure about this? You want me to try?”

“Getting cold feet?”

“No. But I’m not so full of myself that I can’t admit I might make a mistake… unlike you.”

“What can I say? I’m a risk taker.”

I sigh. “Fine. But seriously, this will hurt.”

“Nah. It won’t.”

A moment later I press it into his skin. He doesn’t even flinch, and despite knowing I shouldn’t, I press it in a little harder.

“Woah, Pen, take it easy!”

“Relax,” I say. “It’s not your first time.”

“But it
is
yours… among other things.”

“Not so hard,” Tina interjects. She puts her hands on mine, guides me. “Just like this. The skin here is very delicate, very easy to mark. Not like a hand or top of the arm.”

“I understand, Tina.”

I begin shadowing on the fin, and to my great satisfaction, I feel his body temperature begin to rise through my palm steadying his knee.

“Sure it doesn’t hurt?” I say, sneering, but not breaking concentration. “Your body temperature is increasing; this is typically a sign of physical distress, or pain.” I say it in as smug a voice I can.

“Nah,” he says. I know he’s grinning. I can hear it in his voice. “I just think you look really hot like this, head down in my lap.”

Appalled, I turn my eyes to him, and that’s when I notice that his penis is starting to get hard.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I cry, slapping the tattoo machine down on the metal tray and pushing my chair back. I get up, and walk away, and stand at the window, shaking my head. “You’re
such
an asshole, Pierce.”

“Hey!” he says, voice all
don’t-blame-me.
“It’s you. You do it to me.”

“This session is over now, Pierce,” I hear Tina say. Her voice is calm, but there’s venom in it. “Please leave and come back tomorrow when you can control yourself. If you can’t control yourself, you’ll never be welcome here again.”

I watch as she sticks a plastic covering over his tattoo, adhesive on all sides to cover it.

“Don’t get this wet,” she says.

“I know the drill, Tina.”

“Really?” she says, eyes flashing anger. “Because just now it seemed you didn’t.”

“Hey,” he says. “I can’t fucking control my body. Your apprentice is hot. I like her.”

Despite myself, I feel a tightening in my belly. I don’t know exactly if it’s because I like hearing that, or because I hate him for saying that, for using that.

At this point, it doesn’t really matter.

“See you tomorrow,” he says, swaggering out of the shop.

I turn to Tina, and she just sighs, eyeing me.

“This going to be a problem?” she asks. “Because if it is, take a day tomorrow.”

I balk. “That wasn’t my fault!”

“Penelope.” She’s shorter than me, way smaller in frame than I am, and yet somehow I’m terrified of her. I shrink completely.

“In our line of work, we sometimes encounter troublesome clients. Perhaps, some might say, more often than in other lines of work.”

I nod.

“You have no idea how many men I’ve tattooed who became tumescent during the process.”

“Any who were naked?” I counter.

“Yes,” she says, nodding. “Very many. I’ve also tattooed women on their inner thighs, pubic region, even labia, who became
very
obviously aroused, too. This is an awkward setting for everybody involved. You can’t react the way you did, no matter how uncomfortable you find it. Now, I know it’s not the case with Pierce, but if you make a client uncomfortable for an involuntary reaction, then we may lose them as a customer. There is a certain level of trust and intimacy between artist and client, Penelope. You need to make them feel free from judgment.”

“He was doing it on purpose!”

“No,” she says, “He wasn’t. All that joking was just a cover for a reaction he couldn’t control. And that’s not the point. Look, I’m not trying to get you in trouble or lecture you, but you really can’t freak out like that. When nurses do prostate exams, men can get erections, even ejaculate. Some women are aroused when they see their gynecologist, and even achieve orgasm. Most of it is
just
a result of physical stimulation, paired with an intensely awkward situation. The brain processes things in strange ways, and stress can often be displaced into arousal.”

I bunch my brow. “How do you know this?”

“I read a book by a psychologist who became a tattoo artist. Plus, twenty years of industry experience. Anyway, if those doctors or nurses were to freak out in those situations—”

“I didn’t freak out.”

“You did,” she says. “You totally did. You shattered the ink vial.”

I look toward the metal tray, and there I see the tattoo machine sitting in a puddle of black ink.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’ll pay for that.”

“It’s fine,” Tina says, putting up a hand. “Listen, you and him got a history?”

“No!”

She eyes me hard, and I wilt.

“We kissed last night. I don’t know. I don’t like him at all. He’s just so… irritating.”

“Look, if he’s too close—”

“For a tattoo?” I blurt.

“For
this
tattoo, Penelope.”

I swallow. “If he can control himself tomorrow, I can do it.”

“Fine, but you’re not doing the shadowing. That was a mistake on my part.”

“Tina,” I say, holding my voice steady. “I can do the shadowing. I have the skills. You’ve seen the tattoos I administered to myself.”

“No. Tomorrow you’ll just be watching me. I’m sorry, but I can’t ethically allow you to do even a portion of the tattoo. That was wrong of me.”

“Tina—”

“He had us both going in there, Penelope. Played you like a fiddle, goaded you into doing the tattoo,
and
me into letting you. No, you can just watch.”

“Okay,” I say.

She pauses for a moment. It seems like she’s hesitating to say something. A moment later I find out what it is.

“Do you like him?”

I take my time. I wonder if I should react with false indignation. I decide to just be honest with her.

“I don’t know. I know that I dislike him.”

“Sometimes the two are hard to separate.”

At first I think that she may be patronizing me, but from her expression, I know that she’s not.

“
He
likes you,” she says.

“No he doesn’t.”

“Judging from what just happened, I’d say he definitely does.”

“His erection?” I say, shaking my head. “No, he’s just a dog.”

“Not his erection,” she says. “His eyes. He couldn’t take them off you.”