Snowbound Ink Read online

  Kara was relieved that Thea had returned so she could change the subject. “Did you find a picture you like?” she asked her cousin.

  “I think so,” Thea happily announced. “Show them, John.”

  John held out the book showing the classic icon of the theater—a laughing mask side by side with a crying one.

  Kara wasn’t thrilled with the image, but Thea clearly loved it.

  “We’re going to have to talk about these games of yours,” Liz told her. “There’s clearly a lot more to you than I ever imagined.”

  “Why don’t we get started then?” Tony suggested. “I have some paperwork for you to sign before we start the tattoo and we take payment in advance.”

  Thea hesitated a moment before saying, “Okay, let’s do this.”

  Liz had a more substantive concern. “Paperwork?” she asked. Her lawyer’s brain went into overdrive.

  “It’s a standard release from liability in case there are any differences between the artist’s work and your preconceived vision of how the tattoo will look,” Tony explained.

  Liz nodded tentatively, suggesting she had been expecting this document. “I’ll have to read it first,” she said.

  “Of course,” Tony told her and led them over to his counter with the cash register. He took two copies of a document out from beneath the counter and handed one to Liz and one to Thea.

  Thea didn’t even glance at hers, waiting for Liz to tell her if it was okay to sign.

  Liz took her time with the document, reading every word carefully without any hint of impatience. It took so long that for the first time Tony began to look uncomfortable, as if he were starting to wonder what Liz could be finding that caused her such concern. But when she finally looked up, she expressed no reservations. “Pen?” she asked.

  Tony felt his back pockets, didn’t find one, and hunted around beneath the counter before he produced one he’d gotten from the bank.

  Liz signed her name and dated the document, then handed the pen to her cousin. Thea started to sign, but Liz stopped her. “I better make sure it’s the same document,” she teased Tony before quickly comparing the two texts.

  “I’m sorry about this,” Kara told the storeowner. “She does this with all our documentation.”

  “Don’t apologize,” Tony said. “Just convince her to leave her card. I may well call her the next time I need a lawyer.”

  Liz permitted Thea to sign the waiver. “So how do we do this?” she asked Tony.

  “That depends on if Thea here is willing to go first,” Tony said. “If she is then John will lead her and Kara back to one of our theaters and he’ll get started on her tattoo while you and I see if we can find a honeybee that suits you.”

  “Theater?” Liz asked him. She’d always liked teasing and flirting, and evidently, Kara realized, dating Travis for an entire year had not changed this in her. She wondered if her sister would be comfortable with Travis flirting with strange women the way she was flirting with Tony.

  The tattoo artist shrugged nonchalantly, but his grin suggested he was really enjoying Liz’s attention. It was a definite move away from the pure professionalism with which he had first greeted them. “Theater, studio, workshop, operating room, what word would you use?”

  Liz hooked her arm into Tony’s and said. “I’ve never thought about it. What do other artists call their workspace?”

  She led Tony away toward the stack of books Thea and John had thumbed through earlier.

  John watched them go for a moment, then refocused his attention on Thea. “Are you ready then?”

  Thea looked as bewildered by Liz’s sudden disappearance as she did by how fast things were suddenly moving. “I g-guess so.”

  “Great!” John said. “Let me ring you up and I’ll ink your tattoo.”

  Chapter Two

  Thea’s Tattoo

  Thea

  Thea’s level of anxiety skyrocketed as she reached into her purse for her debit card. Paying for the tattoo pretty much committed her. If she was going to back out, now was the time to do it.

  John pushed some buttons on the cash register. It was the most old-fashioned thing in the store, showing the digits for two hundred dollars before adding in the tax.

  Thea handed him the card and he punched the price and number into a different keypad and waited for the little strip of paper to print out. He ripped this off the roll and handed it and a pen to Thea.

  She hesitated a moment seeing the tip line on the receipt. Was she supposed to tip now before she’d seen John’s work? And how much did someone tip for a tattoo anyway?

  She drew a straight line through the space for a tip and carefully copied the cost onto the final amount line below it. Then she signed her name and handed the receipt back to John.

  He separated the white and yellow copies, stuck the one with the original signature into the cash register and handed the other to Thea. “Are you ready?”

  “I, I guess so,” Thea stammered.

  Kara put her hand on her arm in a reassuring fashion. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

  Thea shook her head. “No, I want to. Let’s go.”

  “Great!” John said. He gestured toward the door at the back of the store he had used when he joined them after they first came in. “This way, please.”

  Thea turned uncertainly toward Kara. “You’re coming with me, aren’t you?” she said.

  “Of course,” Kara assured her. “That’s why we came together, remember? So we wouldn’t have to do this alone.”

  Actually, Thea remembered, Liz and she had come so Kara wouldn’t have to get pierced alone. They’d all agreed that it was a frightening thought to have to drop your pants and panties for a strange old man in the back of a dark and smoky tattoo parlor. Not that this place was dark or smoky, and John was actually young and cute, but it still felt weird. She’d known the guy for no more than fifteen minutes, probably less, and she was about to show him her bare pussy—something she’d never shown any guy before she met Nick. She really had no way of knowing how professional John would be, but as he didn’t look gay to her, Thea definitely wanted a witness to keep him in line.

  Kara stepped ahead of Thea and passed through the door. Thea mustered her nerve and followed her.

  “Turn left!” John called out behind them. “We’ll use the theater at the end of the hall.”

  There appeared to be three theaters back here, Thea noted as she followed Kara into the one at the end of the short corridor. Inside was a device that reminded her a bit of a dentist’s chair. The counters and cabinets also resembled a dentist or a doctor’s office.

  Kara turned back toward the open door. “What happened to John?” she asked.

  Thea stopped examining the tattoo chair and studio to look for him. “I don’t know.”

  John appeared a moment later in the doorway holding a stencil. “Sorry about that, I had to print the thermal fax,” he said. “Just give me a moment and we’ll be ready to go.”

  He pulled a long sheet of paper off a thick roll that reminded Thea of the kind that doctors use to cover their examination tables. He placed the sheet on the seat of the chair where Thea’s naked buttocks would go. “Why don’t you take off your pants and underwear and make yourself comfortable.” He patted the back of the chair to reinforce his point.

  “My pants?” Thea repeated.

  John smiled patiently as if he had heard this exact same question a hundred times. “You do realize that you have to take your pants off if I’m going to put a tattoo on your mons, don’t you?”

  Of course Thea realized she’d have to lower her pants, but for some reason when imagining this moment, she hadn’t realized that she’d be taking them all the way off. “Can’t I just lower them?” she asked.

  John shrugged. “If you prefer.”

  Thea’s hands came to the button securing the top of her jeans and hesitated, realizing that John was still watching her. Feeling foolish because he was about to
see her up close and personal, she turned her back on him to open them, unintentionally facing Kara.

  “Wow, this is really embarrassing,” Thea told her cousin.

  “I’m about to do it myself,” Kara reminded her. “I know exactly what you mean.”

  Biting her lip, Thea unfastened her jeans and pushed them down to mid thigh. Underneath she wore a pair of brand new green panties that she thought looked sexy without being exotic. She was mortified to realize there was a spot of dampness visible on the fabric. She’d realized she was excited down there, but hadn’t realized it had gone so far.

  Kara didn’t say anything, but Thea was certain she must have noticed.

  To hide the wet spot, she quickly pushed her panties down into her jeans and stood there bare from mid-thigh to her short t-shirt. She felt vaguely ridiculous and very vulnerable. Ridiculous because she was in her thirties, and even though her boyfriend was about John’s age, she didn’t really think that younger guys spent a lot of time slobbering over older women. She felt vulnerable because she was standing with her pants around her thighs with her swollen black pussy lips glistening in the cool air of the tattoo parlor.

  She began to realize that it would have been both more comfortable and more dignified if she’d simply taken her pants all the way off but it was really too late to do anything about that so she sat down on the chair and tried to look comfortable with her position and her body.

  John pulled on a pair of latex gloves. “Great!” he said. “Are you ready?”

  “I think so,” Thea told him.

  He sat down on a stool beside her, opened a nearby drawer and removed a cheap Bic razor. “Let me just make sure you’re smooth enough,” he said.

  “I shaved this morning,” Thea protested.

  “And I’ll just touch up the job,” he said. “Which side do you want it on, left or right?”

  “Right here,” Thea told him, pointing to the spot with the fingers of her right hand. To her intense embarrassment, she discovered that there was indeed a sort of proto-stubble growing beneath her fingertips.

  “No problem,” John told her before proceeding to scrape away the tiny hair follicles. When he had finished, he ran his own fingertips over the spot as if he expected to be able to feel the tiny hair follicles beneath his latex glove.

  Thea closed her eyes and fought against a shiver of pleasure. She feared her lips were glistening even more brightly.

  “That feels pretty good,” John said.

  Thea bit her lip to avoid agreeing with him.

  John reached into another drawer and took out a stick of roll on deodorant. Popping the cap, he set the square of thermal fax against the smooth shaved flesh of Thea’s mons veneris, checked that the image had the angle he wanted, and began to wet it down with the deodorant. After the cloth was good and wet he let it sit for a minute or so, then pulled it off in one quick jerk. The two masks of drama—one weeping, one laughing—were emblazoned in purple ink against the dark brown flesh of Thea’s mons.

  “How’s that?” he asked.

  Thea examined the image, but upside down it was hard for her to tell if they looked right or not. “What do you think, Kara?” she asked.

  Kara looked uncomfortable examining the image, but she did it. “I think it’s cute,” she finally said.

  “But?” Thea prompted her.

  Kara shook her head. “No buts, it’s cute.”

  “Okay, then,” John said. “Does that mean we can do this?”

  Thea hesitated a moment longer. This really was the last moment she could change her mind. But it wasn’t like she was getting Nick’s name permanently marked on her pussy, was it? Even if Nick and she broke up in the future, this wasn’t something she would regret down the line. If another man saw it, she wouldn’t be embarrassed, would she?

  Thea decided she wouldn’t. In fact, if she ever got close enough to another man to want him to see what was beneath her panties, she figured she’d enjoy his moment of discovery as much as he did.

  “Go ahead!” she told John. “Let’s do this.”

  John stood up and opened one of the cabinets, taking out ink, needles, and little caps to put the ink in. Then he pulled a device that looked like a cross between an automatic stapler and a paintball gun and loaded it with needle and ink. He had to take the needle out of a little sterile packet first, but that wasn’t a problem. It actually made Thea feel safer about her decision to get the tattoo. It would be horrible to do this and catch some disease in the process.

  “Now scoot out a little bit more,” John said. “I want your butt on the edge of the seat there so I have very good access to your mons.”

  And my pussy, Thea thought. It was unavoidable. Scooting her butt up further on the seat of the chair would have the immediate result of bringing the swollen lips of her pussy closer to John. She wished she wasn’t quite so wet, but didn’t know what to do about it.

  John didn’t seem to notice. “All right, some people think this stings a little bit.”

  He pressed the needle against Thea’s mons and injected a drop of black ink along the purple line of the stencil.

  “Oh my God!” Thea shouted in surprise.

  John yanked the ink gun away from her, holding the needle away from her body so that she couldn’t bump against it. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  Thea started to cover her wound with her hand.

  “Don’t touch that!” John snapped. “You might rub the stencil off!”

  Thea froze—her flesh still stinging. She knew intellectually that getting the tattoo was going to hurt, but she hadn’t expected this! “That hurt!” she complained. “What did you do? Stab me with that thing?”

  Kara tried to smother a laugh, which made Thea mad.

  “It’s not funny!”

  “I’m sorry,” Kara said, “but it really is! You do realize that the needle has to pierce your skin to inject the ink, don’t you?”

  Thea hesitated a moment, her burst of anger starting to mutate into embarrassment. “I guess I did know that,” she admitted. “I just didn’t expect it to hurt quite that much.” The thought of sitting there while John continued to prick her with that needle was a lot less pleasant now than it had been a couple of minutes earlier.

  “It gets easier,” John told her. “The first minute is pretty annoying but after that your mind and body get used to it.”

  Thea didn’t know if she believed that. A minute drop of blood had formed on her skin, easing up through the pinprick John had just given her.

  “What’s wrong?” Liz asked as she appeared in the doorway. She took one look at Thea with her pants down near her knees and smiled. “What? Did Thea forget that they have to prick her with that needle? You never did like them. Remember how you used to fuss and complain about getting your shots in the doctor’s office?”

  “Very funny,” Thea complained.

  She eased herself back in the chair and thrust her pussy back to the edge of the seat. “Let’s get this finished, John.”

  John looked up, caught his boss’ eye where he stood in the doorway behind Liz, and nodded. “All right,” he said. “Let’s make some art.”

  He lowered the gun like device back to Thea’s flesh and injected her a second time.

  Thea bit her lip but didn’t otherwise complain.

  John kept working.

  “Well, if everything is calm again here,” Liz said, “I think I’ll let Tony take me into one of the other theaters and give me my honeybee.”

  “By yourself?” Kara asked before Thea could.

  “Yes,” Liz said. She teasingly laid her hand on Tony’s arm. “I’ll be okay. Besides, If Tony here steps out of line, I’ll just call out to you and you can run over and deck him.”

  Liz seemed to think this was very funny.

  She slipped out of the room, leaving Tony to follow her up the hall.

  Chapter Three

  Liz’s Honeybee

  Liz

  “Why don’t you ge
t undressed,” Tony suggested as he laid a broad sheet of paper across the seat of the chair in the middle tattoo studio.

  “Oooh, undressed,” Liz repeated. She’d been trying to ruffle Tony’s feathers since they’d gotten here and was starting to get a little frustrated that she kept failing. He was a consummate professional, and she wanted to get under his skin. It wasn’t that she actually wanted to do anything with him—she loved Travis and she had every intention of being faithful to him—but she also missed the chase that led to finding a new man and she just couldn’t help flirting when she ran into a handsome one.

  “From the waist down,” Tony clarified.

  Liz imagined for a moment how he might react if she went further than that—but there were limits to every game and unless she was planning to get another tattoo on her breast, opening up her blouse would definitely cross those boundaries.

  Without hesitation, she lifted her right foot and pulled off a sturdy, if sexy, boot. The studio air felt cool on her sock-covered foot. “Can I leave my socks on?” Thea asked Tony, wiggling her toes to attract his attention.

  He shrugged good-naturedly. “No reason I can think of to take them off—unless you’re planning on adding a tattoo to your ankle. That’s a very popular spot for women.”

  “I’ll pass on that today,” Liz told him. “One surprise at a time, I think, although I might enjoy annoying my mother with it.” She’d have to think carefully about that. If she liked this first tattoo, the ankle was definitely worth considering for number two.

  “While you get ready,” Tony told her, “I’m going to go make the thermal fax of this honeybee design I drew for you. Are you sure this is what you want?”

  Liz nodded. She liked the little drawing with the squiggles above the wings to suggest it was flying, and the little curly cue trail stretched out behind it. That little extra bit of detail had evidently cost her because Tony had charged her fifty dollars above the minimum price.

  He left, leaving Liz alone. It wasn’t nearly as much fun getting undressed by herself, but she decided to be a good girl and stop doing something that could backfire big time on her if Tony actually came out of his shell and made a move on her.