Indelible Feelings
His brain reeled with the contrasting emotions. On one hand, it wanted the pain to stop, which was logical. On the other hand, he wanted the hour of painful eternity to be exactly that, as an eternity of pain was still an eternity in her company; and what delightful company it was.
She spoke eloquently and intelligently about a myriad of topics, and she seemed more enamored and flirtatious the more he matched her wit, jibe for jibe and joke for joke. He could see she was as taken by him as he was by her, and when she shifted his arm to get closer to the area by the crease of his elbow, she pulled his hand closer to her chest, so close in fact, that he brushed it.
He froze, watching carefully to see if she had felt what he had, but she gave no hint that she had. Slowly, gingerly, he opened his fingers, and froze again as she seemed to flinch. She had only stopped for a microsecond though, before resuming the painful buzz. He opened his fingers further and turned his hand, cupping her chest and feeling the heaviness of it with an almost imperceptible squeeze.
This time she didn’t stop, but he did notice a small smile at the corner of her lips, between the fall of hair against her cheek as she leaned over him.
He squeezed again, and this time she did stop.
She raised her head up, placed the tattoo gun on the table beside her, and looked down at his hand and then full into his face; her eyes daring him to squeeze again.
He did, and her cheeky smile encouraged him, but with her hands in her lap and not a single movement more she was a statue. He wasn’t sure why but his confidence grew and he lifted his thumb, drawing lazy half circles higher across her chest, his eyes never leaving hers.
As he traced higher, and his thumb caught on a hard protuberance under her shirt, he watched her lips part slightly as she sucked in a shocked breath.
He didn’t let her rosebud mouth close though, as he leant forward and ran his tongue over her lips and into the small gap between them, feeling her wet tongue dart out to meet his. Her hands broke loose from her lap and wove themselves through his hair, hungrily pulling his face closer to hers.
Their breaths mingled ecstatically, and the pain of the fresh ink on his forearm was not the only thing that throbbed between them.
When they finally managed to extricate themselves from each other’s arms, and pick their clothes up from the floor, the Fleetwood Mac had been replaced by The Waterboys. He was happy and satisfied, and although he would need to return to have the tattoo finished, he hoped that maybe that appointment would also be waylaid.
Lauren finally opened the door, looked back at him over her shoulder as she shrugged her shirt on, and smiled a melancholy smile before saying: “You’ll obviously need to come back so we can finish that piece.”