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“I want wings,” Sara said, laying the sheet of paper on the glass. “Black ones.” The case held glittering rows of body jewelry, and pierced anatomical models like strange orchids. The man behind the counter looked at her design, the swords of the black feathers slashing down the paper, stark and gorgeous, then turned an experienced eye to Sara. He, with his several facial piercings and close-shaven head, looked like he belonged here. Sara, in her work clothes with her black hair pinned up smartly, did not. She returned his stare evenly. “That design’s going to take a while.” His voice carried a faint but pleasant Texas accent. “How many times will I have to come in?” Again, that appraising look. His eyes were agelessly dark. Bird’s eyes at once naïve and wise. “Maybe four or five. Is this your first tattoo?” She glimpsed the flash of a bead as he spoke. A pierced tongue. The sight intrigued her. She shrugged. “What you see is what you get.” Her ears weren’t even pierced. He leaned back, plainly surprised. Well, she supposed, I don’t really look the type, do I? “Ma’am, that’s a big tattoo, for the first time.” “Yes,” she agreed. She’d expected this. She didn’t want to try it and she didn’t want to start small. She wanted her wings. “When can we start?” He ran a hand over his near-naked skull. “Umm. Thursday afternoon? If I put you in at close, we can spend more time at it, no interruptions. I don’t want to rush.” “Yes. At close. I’d like that.” He nodded and pulled up a daily planner, flipped it ahead a few pages, and hesitated, pen needling the page. “I’m sorry. Your name?” “Sara.” He grinned, and it transformed his face. He was very handsome, beneath the twenty-first-century-primitive gloss of beads and rings. Sara felt silly for not having seen it before. “I’m John.” *** She’d looked at samples, of course, in the studio and online. John’s work was more than that of a competent copyist with a tattoo gun. His designs lived. Breathed. Which was why it surprised her that this lip-pierced puppy with his faint Texas drawl and his old/young eyes had produced them. He looked no more than twenty-two. They agreed on a price, and she left the design with him. She told her husband over the take-out she grabbed on the way back from the studio. “I’m getting my wings. Thursday.” Alex looked sidelong at her through his fringe of hair. He was thirty-five, just starting to go gray. She liked it. “You went?” She nodded mutely, already afraid. He smiled at her. “I know you want them. And I can’t wait to see. Those big black wings under all those good-girl clothes.” “I can’t wait, either.” But her smile was dry. “You can do it, Sara. You’ve wanted this.” She hugged herself. Her husband didn’t have any tattoos. Not one. No earrings, no hidden piercings. Alex was an accountant, for God’s sake. He was normal. He couldn’t tell her what to expect. When she didn’t answer, he came over and kissed her softly, running his fingers through the uncoiling black spirals of her mane. “Come on, baby. What’re you scared of? These are your wings.” “I don’t know how to fly.” They both laughed, but Sara had her doubts, rooted deep, and pricking her like quills. On Wednesday night, as they made love, Alex turned her over, pressed her down into the blankets, and ran his fingers over the flawless skin of Sara’s back. The touch raced down her spine like liquid light, cold and hot. She felt his cock brush the back of her thighs and she expected him to enter her, but he didn’t. He bent, instead, mouthing the channel of Sara’s spine, tasting her sweat, savoring the smooth, unmarked skin. As Alex kissed from her shoulders to her hips, she caught the scent of her own fear. Alex’s fingers rubbed at the very core of her, stroking, skilled. His tongue drew darts over Sara’s marzipan skin. When she felt Alex’s strong arm snake about her waist and pull her back, when she felt his lips describing the delta of her tailbone and the smooth split-peach furrow of her backside, when she felt Alex’s darting tongue press against her asshole, then lower, to the sticky paradise of her pussy, it was John she thought of. She grabbed Alex’s hair as though clutching at an anchor, and ground back. This moment mattered, not the future a week, a day, an hour from now. And certainly not that boy ten years her junior, with his gifted workman’s hands and his silver-tipped tongue. Alex twisted to his back and settled Sara over his face, leaned up as though thirsting for her. Sara ground down, leaning on the brass headboard for support and panting through clenched teeth. Alex’s clever, probing fingers and wicked tongue made her feel the aching hollowness of her body. Sara caught herself thinking of John again, and what he’d do to her. The needle. The touch of his hands. Dreading the pain, and longing for it. Longing for her wings. Alex pulled her down, strong hands on the smoothness of her hips, and she mounted him, rode him hard. Her fingers traced the scratchy stubble on his cheeks and chin, her nails raked at the hair on his chest as she pushed herself down on him. And again, thoughts of the studio boy intruded, his firm young body, his strong neck. She’d seen tattoos under his shirt, like the tails of long, black snakes. She finally bent back and parted her thighs wide, affording Alex a glimpse at his cock as it disappeared into her wet folds. She licked a finger and pressed it down through the narrow line of her pubic hair, pressed it to the top of his shaft, then rubbed at her own burning button. She arched, thrusting her hips out, riding him, offering him the sight of her own lovely, shameless body mounted atop him. Her breasts bounced as she drove down, and when Alex reached up to stroke them, she forced herself into his hands, urging him on with rough little cries. Ambushed by her own pleasure, she arched, breasts thrown out, shoulders back, her nails digging into Alex’s belly as a swan song forced its way out of her throat in one long, silvery cry. For a brief, fluttering moment, she hung between earth and sky. Then Alex overturned her, pinning her, nailing her to the mattress, his sweat sliding against her skin, her body opening and yielding to him even as her mind wandered away, wandered over smooth, black-painted skin. Alex came inside her, kissing her, but her mouth was lax beneath his. Her mind was off, wandering. Guiltily, she called it back. When they lay beside one another, cradled like kittens, Alex kissed Sara’s shoulder. “I thought you were going to take off.” “I nearly did,” Sara replied, taking Alex’s hand and kissing his fingers, tasting herself. She sighed, tired but restless, and annoyed with herself for her fantasies. She closed her eyes and wriggled back against Alex. “I love you.” *** The electronic bell beeped twice. The reception area was empty and silent but for the hum of the Coke machine. Her first time in, Sara had expected blacklight posters and incense, but the inside of the minimalist studio smelled only faintly of glass cleaner and new carpet, and was more meticulously clean than a doctor’s office. It scared her a little. John came out of a door behind the counter and blinked at her. This time he wore a short-sleeved shirt, white, and she could clearly see the thorned vines of tribal designs crawling from beneath his sleeves and up the back of his neck. The sight heated her. “Hi,” she said. “We’re still on, right?” “You bet,” he said, stepping around the counter. “If you’re ready, I’m ready.” “Didn’t think I’d show?” He shrugged. “A lot of people lose it at the last minute.” Then he grinned at her sidelong, an unsettlingly disarming grin. “I knew you’d show, though. I could see it in your eyes. You’re not scared.” “Yes, I am,” she said, correcting him with a slight laugh. He smiled with those eyes. “You only think you are.” He opened a door on one side of the waiting room and gestured her inside. This room was better. A big padded table with a headrest, like the ones used by chiropractors or masseuses, dominated the floor. Beside it was a comfortable stool, and a standing stainless-steel tray. The room was obviously a renovated clinic, complete with cabinets and drawers, but some attempt had been made to make it look colorful. Sheets of tattoo flash covered the walls –everything from fifties cheesecake to modern biomechanical. And other furniture: a copy machine, a stereo, the little oven of the autoclave. Beside the stool crouched the air compressor, its snakelike tube winding up to the tray. The tattoo gun looked like a sci-fi prop, all black and silver, a cross between an airbrush and a hypodermic gun. John lay a couple of towels over the table. “You can put your shirt there,” he gestured to a clothing rack just behind the door. “I’ll give you a minute to relax.” He left her to wrestle with her fear as he prepared his tools to the sound of Paul Oakenfold. Her last chance to back out. She stripped her shirt off and stepped out of her shoes. He looked up, grinned once at her, the skin at the corners of his eyes wrinkling, so friendly, and she felt a sudden dread go through her like a knife at the thought of what he was about to do to her. She swallowed. “You can leave that on if you want,” he said of her black satin bra. “Just unsnap it in back.” “No,” she said. “I won’t be able to drive back in it.” He stole another glance at her –and why shouldn’t he? –but didn’t stare. She lay facedown on the table and fidgeted. When John showed her the unopened package with the needles in it, she nodded, lips pressed tight. He lay them out and fitted the first into the gun. The ink, as he poured it into tiny, disposable wells, smelled heady and strangely organic. “Can you pull this down?” he asked, tugging gently at the waist of her velvet skirt with two gloved fingers. The wings’ lowest points would come almost to her sacral dimples. She bared more flesh, felt him looking at her, though he said nothing. He transferred the design to her very carefully, smoothing the onionskin paper to her dampened flesh. When he peeled it away, she looked at the outline in the full-length mirror, using a hand-held glass to see over her shoulder. John’s reflection regarded her with dark eyes. His gloved hand rested on the gun. Was he thinking of her, the way her body looked just now under the harsh light, or was he, too, seeing her as she would be, when he was done? Sara nodded. “It’ll look fantastic.” She settled onto her belly again. “Let’s do it.” The air compressor snarled, and the sound of the gun as he depressed the button was a sharp, ratcheting buzz. He let her get used to the sound before he began. “I’m going to lean against you with my left arm a little.” His voice was smooth and soothing. “Are you ready?” She took a deep breath. “Yeah. Give me my wings.” She glimpsed his smile as he leaned over, his weight comfortable across her lower back, and then she felt his breath across her shoulder, cool on her skin, still damp from the disinfectant. The gun purred behind her ear. He spread the fingers of his left hand, drawing the skin taut between his thumb and forefinger. His right hand hovered above her. “Here we go.” The first line stung. The second burned. “Is that all?” she whispered, surprised by how little it hurt. “Yes,” he whispered back, over the needle’s wasplike drone. “That’s all.” And he inked her in lines of fire, the music spiraling and dancing behind the burr of the compressor. Sara watched John’s face in the big mirror as he bent over her. Once, he slid a curling lock of her hair off the design, and she watched his face grow serious as he ran a gloved thumb quite deliberately up the nape of her neck. The contact was like a shock to her. He went right back to work, eyes intent, utterly absorbed. His voice came as a surprise. “This is a really beautiful design.” “Thank you,” she said. “It’s my work. I paint, when I’m not typing.” “You could do flash, you know. You have an eye for it.” His needle blazed a stop-starting scarlet trail over her shoulder and down, down, down. The arch of the alula, down the coverts, then the long, knifing burn of the left wing’s first primary. She gasped. The flesh on her lower back was so much more sensitive. He put a gentle hand on the small of her back, just above her tailbone. “Easy.” “It’s worse, there,” she gasped, her throat tight. “It is,” he agreed. But he spread the pain out, to help her manage it. He spent a long time outlining the delicate feathers high on the wings before he traced the second primary and back up, a sizzling cut across her naked skin that sent tingles racing to her fingertips. She panted a little. Her shoulders were one burning mass, as though she wore a coat of fire. He dabbed at her side with a bit of gauze. “Am I bleeding?” He showed her. “It’s only ink. Your skin is taking it really well. I think you were meant to have these.” She could hear the smile. “I was,” she said. The hum and buzz lulled her, and she could feel the steady vibrations through his arm or hand as he leaned on her. It soothed her, the weight of his body against hers, the gentle touch. She could feel him breathing, slow and calm. By the time the music ended, she was nearly drowsy. It’s the endorphins, she thought dreamily, but when he stopped for a break, she found herself alert. She took the water he offered her, sitting up on her forearm to do it. Her nipples dragged the rough towel. John stretched. “Do you need to quit for the evening?” she asked as he changed gloves and dried his hands. The gun looked heavy. He shrugged. “I’m all right for a while, yet. You know, you’re handling this well.” She looked at him. “It doesn’t hurt as bad as I thought.” “Nope,” he agreed, with a smile as lopsided as her wings. She smiled back. “Keep going.” *** The outline alone took three hours. But they finished both sides in one night. “How do you feel?” he asked, taping gauze over the burning, incomplete pinions. She smiled. “Good,” she said, the words woefully inadequate. How to explain how it felt –the smooth lull of the gun, the constant burn of the needle? That it freed her, somehow? She looked at his upper arms, the gorgeous tribal spirals. She didn’t have to explain, she suddenly understood. She didn’t have to say anything. He knew. “Can I see them?” she asked softly, embarrassed. She was holding her shirt over her breasts, feeling at once self-conscious and stupid for feeling that way, when what he’d done to her was far more intimate than a simple look at her naked body. “Mine? Oh. Sure.” He pulled his shirt off, not shy in the least about this act of exposure. The designs were exquisite, though perhaps not as exquisite as the young and healthy muscle beneath. His skin was very smooth, only slightly tanned. A mantle of black interlace covered his shoulders, nearly as large as her own design. More wound down his upper arms. The small of his back echoed the design on his shoulders, disappearing under the worn-white rim of his jeans. Another, smaller design started just beneath his navel and slid down. She could barely see the top of it. The sight of it sent a pulse through her, and her nipples hardened traitorously. How must he have looked as it was being applied, holding himself still, trying not to arch under the gun? How had his face contorted? And would his face look the same in the grip of pleasure? “So beautiful,” she whispered. Beneath her skirt, her sex was wet. And her skin burned. She paid him in full that first night. There was never any question. She’d come back. *** Two weeks later the itchy welts had faded, leaving her with the tracery of feathers like lacework splayed to either side of her spine. Alex spent an hour following them with his finger once it was safe to touch them. And when they made love that night, Sara thought of John again, had to bite her fingers to distract herself from thoughts of his face as Alex bent over her, all his attention bent to her burning, itching skin. He mounted her from behind, this time, sliding into her roughly, taking her. He wanted to touch her feathers, but she stopped him. The pain was still too recent, too new, the memory too intense. His touch, reminding her of it, threatened to cheat her of her pleasure. So he clung to her hips and crashed against her as she gazed back at him, her black hair tossing as though in a wind. When her orgasm broke upon her, she reached back and tugged sharply on the hair above his cock, and he used her even more fiercely. “No,” she rasped, her voice husky with her cries. “I want to taste it.” So he fed it to her, and she took his length down, lapping herself from him, driving her tongue into the slit at the end of his cock to gather the sea-salt drops that welled out there. She let him jerk it into her mouth, and when he came she let the bitter fluids collect there so that she could swallow it all at once. She looked up at him, and he drew a line up her spine with one finger. “I love them already,” he whispered. “Big, beautiful wings.” “I love them too,” Sara replied. “Am I your angel?” “A fallen one,” Alex replied, smiling. She smiled back. “Not yet.” *** The next time, she wasn’t at all shy. She removed her shirt and lay on the table, watching John as he completed the little rituals without which the ceremony would not be complete. “Those are hawk wings,” he said, pressing his hand over the tracery of her primaries. “Or eagle wings. Like fingers.” “Yes,” she agreed. “I’m no dove.” He laughed and took the gun in one gloved hand. “Let’s make them black.” The fill needle was a cluster of small points bound into a group, and it felt less like being scratched than being branded. It was a raking, grating pain, and this time she dug her fingers into the sides of the table. “Should I stop?” John asked immediately. “No,” she grunted. “No. Keep going. It –it burns.” He raked her again. Did he take pleasure in this part of it? her suffering for his art? “It’s not going in as deep, you know. Most people say the fill needles hurt less.” “I don’t.” Sara gritted her teeth. He burned her, seared her black. When he was done inking each feather, she felt it, whole and distinct. She knew exactly where they all were. She could count them. Like real wings, indeed. When he gave her a break, she found herself sweating. Her arm was stuck to the vinyl of the table where it hung over the towel. “You’re doing great.” “How much further?” He showed her. “I want you to finish that one tonight.” “That’s a lot.” “I want it done. And tomorrow –the other one. I want them to heal evenly.” She knew she was pushing, but he did it. Three hours went by, the seconds inked in fire. He taped gauze over it in squares when he was done, working gingerly around the screaming-sore flesh. She drove home leaning forward in the seat, feeling the pain less than the phantom weight of his touch. It seemed she floated somewhere between street and sky. *** Alex let her be. Sara was spacey, distant, from the endorphins. He understood. She didn’t. She kept feeling John’s hands on her body every time she closed her eyes. His weight on her back. His smell covered her, close as her own skin. That night, her sleep was broken, uncomfortable. She lay on her belly, the sheet piled around her hips, and dreamed of tongues sharp as scorpion stings, of fingers that pricked like thorns. The last session, three more hours of pain. She lay on the bench, trembling already. John said nearly nothing. He seemed strangely tense. Sara felt on edge as well. The smell of the ink this time was like ozone in a storm. And when he filled in the last feather, close in near her spine, it felt as though her wings were made of fire. “That’s it,” he said. “You’re done.” She rose shakily, half-fell. He caught her with one arm, careful not to touch her back. Her breasts pressed against him. She righted herself. “Sorry.” “Why don’t you rest here for a while before you try to drive?” he suggested. She nodded woozily. He let her lie on the table while he cleaned up and closed the shop, turned off the lights outside and in the outer rooms. He brought her some juice from the machine. “Here. The sugar will help.” She drank greedily. And when she felt she could rise, she did. Her shirt scratched over the taped-down bandaging and she winced. “Thank you.” He only smiled. “They’re beautiful,” she added, knowing it was true, even though they were hidden. “Yes,” he agreed. “They are.” She stepped up, drunk with endorphins, and felt the piercing in the hollow of his lower lip with two fingers. He shied, but she quickly kissed him, parting his lips with her tongue, moving her hand to the side of his neck, which was warm and firm and very smooth. She dug her thumbnail against the flesh of his throat and explored his mouth. His tongue rose to meet hers and she felt the little ball on its post pressing firmly against her tongue, her lips. She licked it, caught it in her teeth and sucked at it as he made a brief, surprised sound of protest. Then he laughed, his fingers grazing her belly, and pressed his mouth firmly to hers. “I won’t see you again,” she said, breaking the kiss. She touched her back, lightly. “These –were all I wanted.” “Yeah,” he agreed after a moment. “I think they’re all you need.” “But I’ll remember you. Thank you. For giving me my wings.” He grinned. She let go of him and left. *** “Two weeks?” Alex sounded incredulous. Sara shook her head. She should’ve told him over the phone, so he’d have time to get used to the idea before coming home. “Darling, you don’t have to wait!” “I want to,” she said. “It hurts, right now. But even later –I can’t do it on my back, and I don’t want you to have to look at it while it’s peeling.” “They’re your wings. They’re gorgeous and I want to see them. Peeling or not.” “Please, Alex. I’d rather wait.” She rubbed a hand over her face, then smiled through her fingers abruptly. “I want to save it. Surprise you.” Playful. Playful he could apparently handle. “I don’t get to see before then?” She bit her lip, shook her head so that her hair rained down into her face. “Nope.” “What about doing it in the dark?” “Cheating.” “Witch,” he said, grinning. “My balls will fall off.” “I never said you had to keep your clothes on,” she whispered. “My mouth is fair game. Just watch the shoulders.” He laughed, richly, warm. Oh, she loved him. Absolutely. And every day of those two weeks she took his cock in her mouth and pressed her hands to him, imagining smooth, black-inked skin beneath her fingers. An idle fantasy. It kept her hunger keen, like a hawk’s. Alex’s thighs bore the marks of her talons. But alone, alone it was another story. In the dark, her husband asleep, she’d squeeze her thighs together and think of him, and think of her wings. At night, surrounded by shadows, it seemed they enfolded her. Superstitiously, she did not even pleasure herself. Her denial sharpened her other senses. Denied satisfaction, she found continual desire. After two weeks to the day, her skin began to peel. The punished flesh lifted in tissue layers and dropped to the floor of the bath as she ran the sponge over herself. Like the shedding of a snake’s skin. She molted every last, clinging tatter. And when she looked in the mirror at her new skin, she gasped. They stretched from her nape down to her hips, long drapes of shadow, her black hair a curling cloud above. How lovely they were. Truly alive. She ran her fingers over them, shivered. They shrouded her, black as the pinions of Lilith herself. She went to bed in an old shirt, as she had for the weeks before, and didn’t tell Alex. She kept her secret under the jersey knit, where nobody could see. Just for tonight, it would be hers. Just for tonight. *** She climbed into the Rover parked outside the firm’s downtown office, ducking the rain. Her shoulders were tense from long hours of deskwork, as though her wings were trying to push free. She shrugged her shoulders and started the car, then let it idle, the wipers flicking back and forth. Temple Tattoos’ carport dripped rain. She ran into the little airlock of a room between the parking and the reception areas, shook herself like a damp crow. The place looked empty, as usual, but the muted TV in the corner played a cooking show, staticky with the rain. She pushed her way inside, the beeper dinging into the silence. “John?” Her voice sounded too loud. “Yo,” came the reply from behind the closed door. “Just a minute.” She waited, hands clutched in front of her, in her black slacks and sensible shoes. She should’ve redone her makeup. Her hair was kinked and frizzy from the rain. He came out after a moment, unsnapping a pair of latex gloves and dumping them into the trashcan by the door. He seemed surprised to see her. A twenty-something boy with roached, purple hair and a cup of water in one hand followed John, looking pained and thoughtful. “Sara. Let me give him his care sheet and I’ll be with you.” He took the boy to the counter and discussed aftercare for oral piercings with him, but his eyes strayed to Sara. She had not moved, or spoken. After about a minute, she went into the side room, expecting John to call out after her. He didn’t. She sat on the table, feeling its padding slowly sink beneath her weight. Her fingers dug into the vinyl. The room’s smells, the tick of the wall-clock, all reminded her. Her hands trembled with the memory of pain. How quickly she’d made the association, like a trained animal. She flexed her fingers and waited. The door beeped, thumped closed. John came in a few moments later. “Hi,” he said, like an old friend. “It’s good to see you back.” She looked at him, in his black shirt and ratty blue jeans. “Is something wrong? How’s the tattoo?” He sounded anxious, now. An artist afraid for his work. She hugged her shoulders with both hands. “I dreamed about them, you know,” she said, softly, looking at the spotlessly clean floor. “Before. I dreamed of flying when I was a little girl. And then I dreamed the tattoos, a year ago. It was so real.” “Is it –is it what you wanted?” Again, a long silence. He came a step or two closer. She looked up at him through thick lashes, let her hands slide down her arms. “It’s what I needed. I wanted to thank you. It’s why I came back. And you should get a chance to see them, I think. They’re so lovely.” She stood, saw him put one foot back as though to step away. Was he afraid? No. He was reaching for something –a camera, an Olympus digital. “Please?” Rain drummed outside, long trance rhythms. She nodded. She shed her coat, left it piled on the floor like a castoff skin. She unbuttoned her red blouse slowly, not looking at him, then pulled it off. When she looked up, he was staring. She grinned, then turned and flicked her hair over her shoulder. Her slacks hid the tips of the primaries, so she pushed those down, too, stepped out of them and her shoes at once. The bra she removed impatiently, and the panties. She stood naked, her skin pale and smooth, save for the char-black wings. She looked over her shoulder at him as he took the pictures. He stared hungrily, jaw clenched, and when the last one had been stored in digital limbo, he set the camera back on the countertop and stepped within arm’s reach. Sara snared him, hooking an arm around his neck and pulling him in. Warmth radiated off him, nearly burning her. His hands found her breasts, cupped them, squeezed. With ungentle fingers, he pinched her nipples and hauled her against him, bent to her suddenly open mouth as she gasped. He licked at her, the bead on his tongue tap-tapping hers, or clicking against her teeth, pressing under her lip, under her tongue. She caught it longwise, holding him prisoner, his breath panting into her open mouth as she forced her hand down the front of his jeans, grasping. His cock was hard, hot in her fist, like an iron bar. She squeezed it, felt it throb. “Get these clothes off right now.” Her voice came out husky. She leaned back against the table, taking in the sight of him as he shed his clothing, young, strong, no scars or blemishes beyond the ornaments he wore. And there was something innocent in that, too. A wholehearted belief in, but not vanity of, his beauty. The tattoo under his navel, an inverted tribal arc, stopped just above his patch of darkish pubic hair. His cock stood up at a stiff forty-five degree angle, strongly-veined. A horseshoe-shaped barbell thrust up through the frenum and out the tip. The hanging beads gleamed like droplets of quicksilver. “Turn around,” she whispered, and sat up on the table to watch. He colored slightly, perhaps not used to being ordered, but he did it. His shoulders belonged on a sculpture. The firm column of his back, deeply furrowed by his spine, shamed anything she’d ever seen. And the black darts of his tattoos, the patterns like tangled thorns and bones, accenting his outline, beautifying him. She sighed. “Come to me.” And he came, witched into her spell. He stepped up and took her knee, forced her thighs apart. She leaned back, mouth open, gladly showed herself to him. The glossy thatch of hair cresting her mound, no more than a feather-stroke above the firm little lips, still closed about their secret. His hand, so eager, went to her sex and pinched it, squeezing the lips tight together until Sara felt moisture trickling out. He trapped the firm pink berry of her clitoris between her folds and worked his fingers back and forth, until it slipped like a bead under the skin. She spread her legs wider with a little moan and he pulled her sex wide with both thumbs, opening her to the room and the air and his own dark and bottomless hungry gaze. He leaned in and kissed her, and only then did she think of Alex, a brief guilty flash that ended when John pushed his middle finger into her, thrusting it deep so that it tapped the entrance to her womb. After what they’d shared, she the canvas, he the magician wielding the burning brush, these physical intimacies seemed inevitable. Wings fluttered in her belly and she uttered a wordless cry, bucking her hips against his hand until he pushed another finger into her, curling them both up to cradle the bone and rub against that bitterly tender place inside her, the one she never seemed to reach alone. She felt her wetness welling out over his fingers, felt her heart pounding. His tongue ravaged her mouth. His free hand roamed over the smooth hills of her breasts, over her rippled belly, her taut flanks. At his touch on her spine, she shuddered away from his grip, which only pushed her against him. He dropped his mouth to her collarbones, her breasts, his tongue and teeth punishing her nipples. She arched into his mouth, and his fingers pressed against her spine, stroking her firmly, stroking the feathers so new they still felt embossed on the skin itself. Sara reached down and wrapped her fingers about his shaft. It throbbed in her grip and she moaned, pressed her thumb to the bead on the end of his cock, then thumbed the lower bead, working the shaft of the barbell in his flesh until he bit her lip in frustration, shoving against her hand. She pushed with her thumb in the space between the beads, pushed so hard she felt the steel shaft move under her fingers, and he gasped helplessly. Slowly, drawn down by the weight of her lust, she slid from the table, folded to her knees on the hard floor. Her fist she kept carefully clamped around his cock, pumping it, the skin sliding along under her fingers. Eager, curious, she bent her head and pressed her tongue to the pierced flesh of his cock. It was hot, soft under her tongue, and salty already with the fluids leaking from the tip. She sucked at the end, sucked at the warm bead. The shaft slid more freely now, wet from her tongue. She dug her tongue in around the piercings, under his cock, where the flesh was so soft and tender, then around the slit in the end. He was hard as slate, and his thighs trembled under her touch. His cock throbbed between her lips and she let it fill her mouth, loving the salty taste of him, and the smell, all man. His fingers brushed her shoulders. When she looked up, she saw him staring down at her wings as they spread beneath him. She used her mouth, incarcerating him, drawing at him mercilessly. Even when he tried to warn her, to urge her away with small sounds, with his hands on her neck, her shoulders, she did not cease until he erupted into her mouth, surprising him as much as her with the force of it. Most of it she swallowed. She pulled back, leaving a hanging thread to drop from his piercing. For a moment, she sat on her haunches and looked up at him, then she rose and pressed her body against his, feeling the sweat that’d sprung to his skin. He bore her back against the table’s tacky edge, his fingers seeking the core of her, pressing through the hair and between her lips, opening her again. She sucked at the piercing in his lip, tugged at it with her teeth. His cock was coming hard again against her thigh. She moaned, spread herself out, needing him. A wild thing’s growl built in his throat as he looked at her smooth, well-fleshed body lying before him. He turned her by the hips and shoved her belly-down against the edge of the table. His thigh nudged hers together, the heel of his hand slid up her spine and stopped between her wings, held her down firmly as he sank himself into her in three rough strokes. Her wetness spread quickly over him and down, slicking her thighs where they pressed tight together. She gasped and would’ve ridden back against him but he held her still, forced himself into her urgently. Her back arched, her fingers sank into the sticky padding of the table’s sides. A grating cry ripped free of her throat, jarred loose by his thrusting. He took handfuls of her black hair, stilled its furious tossing and yanked her head back. She arched like a bow, bent by the force of him. He bit the side of her neck. Hot breath panted harsh against her throat. She turned to mouth his lips, her kisses drunken with lust, his mouth soft under hers. His hands, hands capable of such delicacy and skill, snaked around, described her belly, her breasts, and instead of pain gave pleasure, teasing until the aching lilt of orgasm began, turning her to pulsing fire where she engulfed him. She shrieked when it broke like a storm over her, leaving her trembling and alarmed. When had it ever come so quickly or so hard? She’d slid forward on the table, which was slick with her sweat. He pulled free and shoved her up further, until she had hold of the headrest and watched nervously behind her as he climbed up. Yes, there was room for two. He forced her hips down until she was glued to the tabletop, and he entered her like that, her legs stretched back, him straddling one of her thighs, rubbing full-length against her like a snake. His lips caressed the roots of her wings even as his hand twisted cruelly in her hair, forcing her head down. When he leaned back to run his hands over them, she squeezed, bent and pushed against him, every muscle in her body tensing, trying to lift him along on the ever-rising crest of her own passion. The days of healing, of pain, had sensitized her. His fingers on her skin burned white fire down her spine. She ground herself back against him, his touch pure electric torment. His fingers dug into her shoulders, raked down the tingling welts of her wings, and she came again, mastered by her pleasure, lost in it, and yet somehow riding the storm, floating above it. He lost his rhythm, thrown off by her own desperate grinding. His sweat dripped onto her back, his panting was harsh and jagged, painful-sounding. He was going to come. “Out,” she gasped. “I want it all over me. I want to feel it.” He made a sound somewhere between a whimper and a snarl, then slipped from her, leaving her gasping and empty. She twisted her head around to look as he jerked his shaft. When he came, it splashed all over her, the white streams interrupted, broken by the piercing. It fell on her in droplets like hot rain, sizzling her skin, filling the channel of her spine and running to puddle between her wings. Its smell, rich and animal, reminded her of the smell of tattoo ink. She smiled under the curtain of her hair. He fell down beside her on one hand, panting. She sighed, murmured, wordless sounds of need fulfilled. His fingers stroked her back, then rubbed, working his semen into the black lashes of her wings. Her skin shuddered, and she felt as though her pinions were stretched wide, limp and trembling after bearing her through the storm. *** “Don’t you want another one?” Alex asked, stroking her back. He was still breathless. It had been a good romp. Sara flexed her shoulders. “What? Another tattoo?” “Some people get addicted. Go back again and again.” “Oh,” she buried her face in the crook of her arm and smiled. “No. I’m done. I have what I needed. Sorry to disappoint.” But three weeks later she walked in again, the beeper announcing her. John was cleaning the glass cases. The hiss of the spray-bottle ceased when Sara walked in, as if he knew. He turned, and their gazes locked. “Back for more?” he asked, smiling that smile at her. “You do piercings, too,” she said, a statement, not a question. He nodded, standing. She tapped the glass case with her nail, indicating a pierced latex model of the female labia. A bright gold post went through the clitoral hood, one bead resting firmly against the clitoris itself. Her smile threatened to crack her face. “I want that one.” He grinned. “Good choice. How about Tuesday?” “No,” she said. “Now.” |
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12.07.06: Scarlet Letters -- in case it isn't glaringly obvious -- is currently
on an extended hiatus. The web has changed, we've changed, and
we're trying to figure out how we both fit together now, which isn't a process we want to rush. If you're looking for more current SL-related content, you can
have check out upcoming books from editor Heather Corinna and previous co-editor Hanne Blank, check out Heather's current sexuality sites, or explore sites through the femmerotic network. We hope to be back with you soon, as fresh, challenging and
unexpected as ever.
In the meantime, by all means, enjoy our years of past content,
all of which still remain in the public and subscription areas.
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