It is never as cold in the city as it is in the hour before the sun has fully resigned itself to staying hidden. Every surface, every building, even the teeth of the wind seems to want to grind me down to a nub as I walk with my hands buried so deep in my pockets I expect to pull out handfuls of thigh bone. The phone vibrates again—a phantom, because it is never anyone actually reaching out, only the echo of my own anticipation, a muscle memory of checking and rechecking.
A confirmation email sits at the top of my inbox, lines of bolded text staring up like a dare. “Your appointment with Jonah is confirmed for 9:00 PM.” I read it, then re-read it, then close the phone and do it all over again in the space of a city block. The little blue map dot tracks my progress, each footstep an isometric pixel shifting closer to the crosshair where my life will, in theory, become fractionally more defined.
I rehearse what I’ll say. I do this for everything: haircuts, job interviews, phone calls with my mother. The lines spool and unspool in my head, running parallel like train tracks leading nowhere. “Hey, I have a 9 PM with Jonah—yeah, I booked online, yeah, it’s my first, well, sort of my first, depending on how you count, which, I guess you don’t need to know—” Abort. Try again. My mouth is dry, which is stupid because my gloves are damp with sweat even though the air hurts to breathe.
Every window I pass is a mirror. I look for flaws, but all I see is someone rehearsing how to look normal, which I guess means I’m failing at it. I pull my jacket tighter, the zipper catching on the lanyard that holds my work ID, which I forgot to leave at work even though I told myself I would. The city is full of people more interesting than me: a guy in a powder-blue peacoat talking animatedly into the void, a woman walking three whippets in little matching jackets, a group of students laughing too loud for how late it is. Nobody notices me. I’m background radiation, a coat shape with nervous energy.
At 8:47 PM I turn down a side street and see the tattoo studio’s sign, black block letters pasted over frosted glass. I have thirteen minutes to compose myself, which is nowhere near enough. I duck into a coffee shop with a “NO BATHROOM” sign in the window, just for the heat and the cover, and order a drip coffee that tastes like burnt rubber bands. I take a corner seat and unwrap my scarf. My neck prickles as I imagine everyone watching, waiting to see if I flinch. My hands shake as I thumb through the email one more time, though I already know every word of it.
A shadow passes over my table and I half expect the tattoo artist to materialize out of the air, pen in hand, ready to scrawl judgment on my forehead. Instead it’s just a delivery guy with a box of croissants, which makes me feel both stupid and relieved. I sip the coffee and stare at the bruise-colored sky through the steamed-up glass.
“Just ink,” I say quietly, as if the words might settle in my chest and anchor me. I’m not fooling anyone. The placement matters—lower abdomen, left side, hidden except when I’m naked, which, let’s be honest, is not a scenario I find myself in very often. I’ve told myself it’s private because it’s personal, but really it’s because I can’t imagine explaining it, not even to someone who’d see it up close. Maybe especially not to them.
The real reason is a ghost in the muscles below my navel, a secret signifier. I want a mark that only I know the meaning of. I want to control the narrative of my own skin. That’s the lie I tell myself, anyway. It’s easier than admitting that I just want to be seen, and that every other mark—every scar, every fading memory—was made by someone else.
I check the time: 8:53. I stand, nearly knock over the coffee, and catch it with both hands. The barista glances over but says nothing. My heartbeat is louder than the music in here. The confirmation email glows in my pocket as I step back into the cold, my breath a plume of nervous condensation.
I skirt the traffic, pace matched to the light cycles, every step a tally mark toward inevitability. The studio’s block is emptier, the businesses on either side closed or barely awake. A lone woman shovels salted slush from the curb, not looking up as I pass. The sidewalk is pitted with last ice, and I nearly eat shit twice before I reach the address.
Nine o’clock sharp, and I’m here. I can see the outlines of figures inside the studio, backlit by fluorescent bars that bleach the air to hospital white. A line of boots sits neatly inside the vestibule, as if the artists are monks preparing for a surgical rite. I can’t feel my toes. My skin tingles with the anticipation of needles, of being punctured, of the thin membrane between body and story being breached.
My palms are slick, and I can’t get a grip on the door handle. I wipe them on my jeans, stare at the reflection of my own anxious face in the glass, and try to look like someone who deserves to be here. Not the overgrown kid who spent his freshman year scribbling fake tattoos on himself with sharpies because he was too scared to go to a shop. Not the guy who learned to hate mirrors because the eyes in them always knew too much.
For a second I freeze, breath caught in my throat, and the cold reminds me of another time—years ago, college, a party in an off-campus apartment with walls the color of dishwater and a thousand unread books jammed on every shelf. I’m in a bedroom with someone else, a boy whose name I can’t remember but whose hands I will never forget. We are both buzzed and scared, skin prickling in the dry winter air, and he kisses me like he’s been waiting his whole life to do it. I kiss him back, or maybe I let him do all the work, and we fumble at each other until the room spins and we both laugh. The memory is quick, but the shame is glacial—slow, grinding, inescapable. I left before anyone else could wake up. I never told a soul.
The cold brings me back to now. I check my phone one last time, as if the email might have vanished, as if the appointment might have been a fever dream. But it’s there, with the address and the name: Jonah. The artist’s portfolio had the kind of clean lines and delicate shading that made me think he might be someone who could see what I was trying to say, even if I couldn’t say it.
I take three slow breaths, like I practiced, and count each exhale. My hand lands on the door. I squeeze until the bones press white against my skin. The world outside is blue and sharp and unsympathetic. Inside is heat, and light, and the promise of pain.
I push the door open, stepping over the threshold as if it might shatter beneath me.
The door gives with a mechanical click, then a muffled thunk as I stumble across the threshold, into a heat that feels instantly unearned. The space is a sensory assault—chlorine-bright lights overhead, the bite of antiseptic seething through the air, and a low, thumping music that vibrates the bones of my ankles. The floors are black tile, glossy and cold, their seams filled with the dust of old stories.
No front desk. Just an archipelago of workstations, each one more aggressively decorated than the last: framed art climbing up the walls in unbroken columns, Polaroids of healed work thumbtacked to a cork board, shelves loaded with bottles and gloves and perfectly aligned stacks of shop stickers. I try to make myself invisible, ducking my head, but the room’s geometry draws my gaze forward whether I want it or not.
He’s there, exactly like his portfolio picture, but larger, more real—Jonah, in a black t-shirt that fits like a second skin, bent over a tray of tools. His right arm is a riot of linework, a sleeve of precise black bands and runic symbols that read as both ancient and futuristic. He’s prepping something small, talking quietly to the other artist at the next station, whose face I register only as a blur of sharp eyeliner and shaved scalp.
Jonah straightens up and glances my way. My first instinct is to bolt. My second is to feign casualness, which I do by standing rigidly at attention like I’m awaiting conscription.
“Hey,” he says, voice a low register that manages to cut through the bass line. “Dylan?”
“Yeah. Um. Hi.” My own voice warbles, then cracks, then dies. I try to walk forward but trip on an uneven tile, my face flush with a new and special mortification.
Jonah’s smile is minimal—a tightening at the corners of his mouth, a hint of dimple in the beard shadow. “You’re right on time.”
The other artist eyes me with mild interest before returning to their phone. I wish I had a phone to look at, but I’m holding mine out in front of me like a sacred offering, the email still open and glowing. I realize too late how desperate that looks and stuff it into my jacket, which I then start to take off, only to realize the heat in here is already baking my armpits and I’m not wearing anything cool or presentable underneath, just a faded v-neck that clings to my body with static. The whole process takes way longer than it should. When I finally emerge from the cocoon of my outerwear, my hair is standing up from the scarf and my hands are shaking so much I nearly drop everything onto the floor.
Jonah watches all this with a patience that is either Zen-like or deeply practiced. He gestures to a short wooden bench near his station. “You can put your stuff there. Want some water?”
“No, I’m good.” I am not good. My lips stick together and my tongue feels like a cat died on it. The smell of antiseptic is so sharp it’s almost a flavor.
“First tattoo?” He sits and pulls on a pair of black nitrile gloves, the sound a soft snap that lands somewhere between erotic and surgical.
“Yeah.” I try to swallow but there’s nothing left to swallow. “I mean, technically. I’ve done some stick-and-poke, but—nothing, you know, professional.”
He laughs, a sound that doesn’t mock. “We all start somewhere. You’re in good hands.”
I nod. The panic is more manageable if I don’t look directly at him, so I focus on his hands, on the methodical way he lines up the equipment. The tray is a still life of needles, wipes, tiny squeeze bottles, each one set exactly parallel to the next. The movement of his arms draws my attention, muscles taut and smooth under the ink, and I am immediately and violently aware of my own body, of the way my shirt clings and my jeans cut awkwardly at my hips.
Jonah glances up at me through thick, dark lashes. “Did you bring the design, or do you want to draw it out together?”
“I emailed it? But I brought a printout, just in case. I can pull it up again if you need it.” I fumble for my phone, realizing too late it’s not in my hand anymore, and then I’m digging through my jacket pockets while the silence grows louder.
He stands and comes around the station, close enough that I can smell the faint tang of soap and sweat under the chemical fog. He’s taller than I am, but not by a lot—just enough to make me feel very slightly off-balance, as if gravity itself is being recalibrated. He holds out a hand, palm up, and I give him the crumpled printout. Our fingers brush, and my skin is so cold that the touch feels like a burn.
He examines the image—a minimalist fragment, a black line crossing through a circle—and holds it up to the light as if there might be a secret watermark. “You want it left side, under the waistband?” His eyes flicker to mine, not asking for permission so much as confirming a shared conspiracy.
I nod, and my voice, when it returns, is smaller than I want it to be. “Yeah. I want it to line up, so you only see it if—”
“If you want them to.” His tone is neutral, but I hear the edge of something in it, a recognition.
Heat flushes my face. I want to explain, to preempt his assumptions, but I can’t make the words form. Instead, I force a smile that probably looks like a grimace and say, “I guess I’m kind of a coward about the obvious stuff.”
He grins, teeth flashing. “Everyone is, at first.”
The other artist looks up, says “Hey Jonah, can you check my stencil?” and the moment is broken. Jonah nods at me—“One sec, you can get comfy”—and strides over to consult on a Celtic knot that’s already making my brain hurt with its precision. I am alone, surrounded by color and line and the electrical hum of possibility.
I strip my shirt off quickly, before my nerves can talk me out of it, and fold it onto the bench. The studio’s warmth slides over my skin and raises goosebumps. I glance down at the patchwork of pale scars that run across my arms—faded, but there—and wonder if Jonah will notice, or if he’ll say anything if he does. My hands keep moving, rubbing up and down my own arms, as if I can press the anxiety out through the pores.
He comes back, still gloved, and kneels to set up the stencil at eye level. His presence is so focused it makes the rest of the room drop away. He kneads the skin above my hip with gentle, professional pressure, and the chill of the prep solution shocks my nerves into high alert.
“You’re doing fine,” he murmurs, voice lower, closer. “Let me know if you want to take a break.”
I nod, afraid that speaking will betray too much. The moment he applies the stencil, pressing it flat and careful, I feel an electric pulse go straight through my stomach.
He peels the paper off and inspects the transfer. “What do you think?”
I look down, and for the first time, I can actually see it—a piece of myself that is both foreign and familiar, at once deliberate and totally accidental. “It’s perfect,” I say, and I mean it.
Jonah looks up, and our eyes catch, just for a second. In that moment I am more naked than I’ve ever been. Not because of the skin, but because he sees something I thought was still safely hidden. My panic isn’t just visible—it’s on display, framed by the blue stencil lines and his steady gaze.
He doesn’t say anything, but the air between us changes, like a bubble stretching to its thinnest point. I hold my breath, waiting to see if it pops.
“It’ll take about half an hour,” he says quietly. “You can lay down, if you want.”
I do as I’m told, and as I settle onto the chair, I feel the weight of my own body, the tattoo gun waiting in Jonah’s hands, and the raw, trembling certainty that when I walk out of here, I’ll have to face not just the mark, but the story it tells.
I close my eyes, willing myself to focus on the sound of gloves snapping, of ink bottles being uncapped. But all I can hear is my own blood, the rush of it so loud that I’m sure the whole room can hear.
The machine’s buzz cuts through the music, a wasp in my ear, and then the needle touches skin.
It’s not a gentle introduction. It’s a high-voltage snap—pain, but not the pain I’d expected. Worse, but somehow cleaner. For a split second, my muscles try to evacuate my body, legs twitching, spine arching, but Jonah’s hand finds my hip and presses me back to the vinyl. I wonder if he can feel the bone-deep tremor through his gloves. “That’s the worst of it,” he says, voice close to the surface of my skin, barely loud enough to compete with the bass and the drone.
I want to ask, “Are you lying?” but I’m too busy remembering how to breathe. Jonah seems to sense this; his next words are slow, paced to the rhythm of the needle.
“In. Out. Don’t tense up, you’ll regret it tomorrow.”
The sting modulates, an insectile march that drills into my nerve endings but settles into a perverse steadiness. It’s not the sharpest pain I’ve felt—scars on my forearms will forever hold that trophy—but it’s the most honest. There’s no high, no shame spiral, just the raw fact of needle dragging pigment into dermis. The machine’s pitch changes as he works, tiny Doppler shifts, and I find myself matching my breaths to the tempo.
Jonah leans in, his forearm brushing the exposed shelf of my ribs. He’s all focus, head cocked as he guides the needle through a shallow curve. The heat from his body radiates through the black T-shirt, and the scent of sweat and soap slices through the chemical haze of the studio. It occurs to me that we’re closer, physically, than I’ve been to anyone in a year.
“Doing okay?” he asks.
I try for casual, but my voice comes out thin. “Yeah. Actually kind of cathartic, once you get past the horror show part.”
Jonah grins, just the one side of his mouth. “That’s how it gets you. People come in for the art, stay for the pain.”
I want to say something clever, something that’ll make him remember me after today, but the best I can manage is, “You must hear a lot of stories.”
He wipes down the linework with a practiced swipe, then checks the stencil before answering. “Mostly breakup tattoos. Sometimes prison tattoos, sometimes midlife crisis stuff. People don’t get tattooed because things are going well.” He glances up, eyebrow raised. “Or maybe you’re the exception.”
The question hits harder than the needle. “Nope. Not even close.” The truth leaks out before I can stop it. “Just… figured it was time I had some say in what gets written on me, you know?”
Jonah’s face softens. “That’s as good a reason as any.” He guides the machine into another pass, and I focus on the pressure of his hand, the solid warmth of his thumb keeping my skin taut. I can’t help but catalog every sensation: the faint tremble in his touch, the way his lashes cast shadows down his cheeks, the tick of his jaw when he hits a tough spot in the line.
We lapse into silence, the only conversation the back-and-forth of needle and wipe, needle and wipe. The pain settles into a white noise, leaving my mind free to start overthinking. I want to fill the emptiness, but every time I try to speak, the words jam up in my throat like traffic at a dead intersection.
Jonah breaks first. “So. What do you do when you’re not getting stabbed by strangers?”
“UX designer,” I blurt. “I design onboarding flows that no one reads, so mostly I just ruin people’s days with pointless pop-ups.”
He laughs, low and genuine. “You’re the reason I have three password managers on my phone.”
“Guilty,” I say, feeling a flicker of pride at having made him laugh. “What about you? Do you do this full-time, or are you secretly, like, a poet?”
Jonah wipes my side, the cloth cool against the flare of raw skin. “Tattooing’s my main thing. I used to do construction before this, but—” He hesitates, the machine hanging in midair. “Honestly, I was always better with small details than heavy lifting.”
“Seems like you’re good at both,” I say before thinking it through, and suddenly I’m very aware of the fact that I am shirtless and sweating while a near-stranger is hunched over me, inscribing something permanent.
He chuckles. “Gotta keep your options open.”
My brain scrambles for new subject matter. “You been here long?” It comes out awkward, like a teenager hitting on a bartender.
“Couple years. Opened my own shop last winter, figured if I was gonna be broke, might as well be my own boss while I’m at it.” His hand presses firmer as he shifts for a better angle. “What about you? Native, or did you get conscripted by the city?”
“I’m from upstate. Moved here for school, then just… didn’t leave. I guess I kept waiting for it to start feeling like real life.” My jaw clicks as I realize how close I am to saying the thing I never say, the thing that haunted every day of college: I didn’t leave because I was afraid if I went home, I’d have to explain myself. Instead, I take the on-ramp to safe terrain. “You know how it is.”
Jonah lifts the machine and gives me a look, unreadable. “Yeah. I do.”
For a while, we ride the noise. The music from the speakers dissolves into background haze, punctuated only by the hiss of the needle and the occasional shuffle of the other artist—who, from the lack of sound, seems to have left or is deep in a session behind a closed curtain.
Jonah’s focus is absolute. When he’s working, the rest of the world narrows to the thin blue guideline and the shape of my body beneath his hands. He hums sometimes, not quite in time with the music, but in a way that makes the silence more bearable. Every so often, his thigh nudges against the edge of the chair, grounding me, keeping me from floating off into the realm of abstract anxiety.
“In. Out,” he reminds me, as the needle scrapes near my hip bone and my whole body tries to evacuate. “Just a few more passes on this section.”
The urge to say something, anything, builds to a critical mass. “So, what’s the weirdest tattoo you’ve ever done?” I ask, hoping for a story to distract from the pain.
Jonah’s eyes flick up, a smile lurking at the edges. “You mean besides a guy who wanted his ex’s face on his kneecap?”
I nod, grateful for the diversion.
He thinks for a second. “There was a guy who came in here during the pandemic, wanted ‘LIVE LAUGH LOVE’ across his lower back. In gothic script. Said it was for irony but I think he was dead serious. He brought his own playlist. Made me listen to Hootie and the Blowfish the entire time.”
I snort, almost derailing the needle. “That’s a war crime.”
He grins, pleased to have gotten a reaction. “You’re safe. Your design is art-school minimalist. Zero regrets guaranteed.”
“Only because I spent six months overthinking it,” I say, and there’s something about the way I say it that makes us both laugh, the sound bouncing off the studio’s hard surfaces.
The next few minutes pass in a trance. I lose track of time, lose track of where I am, until the pain fades into a hot ache and the hum of the needle falls away. Jonah wipes down the area with a gentle, almost affectionate touch, then sits back on his stool to study the work.
I prop myself up on my elbows, suddenly embarrassed by how much I want his approval.
He peels his gloves off, tosses them in the trash. “You did great. Want to take a look?”
My legs are shaky, but I swing them over the side of the chair and stand. Jonah points me toward the full-length mirror, and I walk over, trying to act like I do this every day.
The mark is small, almost delicate, but it vibrates with a significance I can’t describe. My skin is angry and red, the black line cutting through the circle like a declaration. I touch the edge, then yank my hand away, afraid to smudge the newness.
“It’s… perfect,” I say, though the word feels insufficient.
Jonah stands behind me, arms crossed. Our eyes meet in the glass, and there’s a flicker of something—pride? Relief?—in the way he looks at me. “Told you it wasn’t so bad.”
I want to ask him to touch me again, just to prove the pain is gone, but instead I stuff my hands in my pockets and try to play it cool. “Thanks. Seriously.”
He leans in, voice pitched low so it doesn’t carry. “If you ever want to talk about it, the story behind it, I mean—you know where to find me.”
My mouth goes dry. For a moment I think about unloading it all, every secret, every memory of that night in college, the boy whose name I can’t recall but whose hands mapped my shame with absolute precision. But I’m not ready. Not yet.
The city outside the window is violet, then black. In the studio, every surface throws back its own version of the overhead fluorescence—steel, glass, sweat-darkened vinyl, even the exposed patch of my lower stomach bandaged up like a crime scene. The antiseptic stink is stronger now that the day’s work is done and all the windows have been shut, trapping it in with me and Jonah, who moves around the shop in a rhythm that is both practiced and, tonight, subtly agitated.
There is no more music. He’s killed the playlist, and the only sound is the mechanical whine of the ancient neon sign in the vestibule and the faint buzz of the lights, which makes my nerves tingle at the same frequency. My hands are folded in my lap, pressed together so hard my knuckles have gone sallow. The tattoo burns beneath its wrap, a memory of pain that feels rawer than the real thing. The chair I’m sitting in is sticky with my own sweat. My shirt clings to my armpits and lower back, but I can’t bring myself to move. I am afraid of how deliberate any gesture would be in this electric hush.
Jonah moves like he’s trying not to startle me—slow, efficient, deliberate. He breaks down his workstation, bottles in a tray, needles into a sharps container, wipes folded into crisp squares before being binned. He wears the black T-shirt like it’s a uniform, sleeves rolled to display the dense geometry of his arm. I watch him the way I’d watch a predator in a glass enclosure, all coiled strength and decision. I tell myself that this is just professional decontamination, a post-tattoo protocol, but the truth is there’s nothing left to clean except what hangs in the air between us.
I want to say something. I want to make a joke or ask about the aftercare again, but my mouth refuses to move. My heartbeat is a rolling thunder in my ears, louder than any playlist. I can feel every atom of my body bracing for the next moment, the next inevitability, and I think maybe Jonah can too. His movements have slowed, bordering on theater. He lingers at the far end of the studio, wiping down the counter in long, absentminded strokes, and when he finally puts the cloth down, it’s like a starter pistol in a footrace.
He faces me. There is no polite preamble. He doesn’t pretend to check a message or fiddle with a bottle; he just looks. There’s a precision to it, a directness that makes me feel like I’m the only thing in the world. I know I should look away, defer, make some gesture of awkwardness, but I can’t. It’s like being locked in the tractor beam of a searchlight.
He crosses the studio in three steps, stopping just close enough that I can smell the clean sweat in his shirt and the salt on his forearms. He leans one hip against the workstation, hands braced on either side, and just holds my gaze.
“Can I kiss you?” he says.
It is the quietest thing in the room, but it hits like an anvil to the chest.
I am so used to wanting things at a safe distance, to running the numbers on every possible outcome before making a move. I am so used to couching everything in humor or irony or apology. But there is no hedge in his question. It is only the shape of the want, offered up for me to answer.
“Yes,” I say, and my voice sounds foreign—deeper, unguarded.
He smiles, just enough to register. He moves in slow, giving me every inch of time to change my mind, and when his lips touch mine it’s as gentle as a test, a scientist’s first brush of contact on a volatile substance. I am so hypersensitized that even this brush feels incendiary. I keep my hands locked in my lap, but I’m trembling now, the tension vibrating through every muscle.
Jonah’s mouth is soft, not the chapped aggression I remember from that clumsy college attempt, but a deliberate, careful thing. The kiss lingers, then breaks, then returns with slightly more intent. I find my eyes closing. I find my head tipping up to meet him.
He tastes of mint and something medicinal, and when his tongue brushes the seam of my lips I almost flinch—but not quite. I let him in. The world narrows to this: the warm press of his body, the static in my brain shutting down every thought except the next possible touch. The chair creaks beneath me as I shift forward, and my hands finally betray me, unlocking and reaching up to his shirt, gripping the fabric at his waist like a lifeline.
He deepens the kiss, exhaling hard through his nose, and the edge of it makes me shiver. His hands land on my shoulders, thumb tracing the notch of my clavicle through the thin fabric, and I am aware of the heat radiating between us, of the way his forearms bracket me in like a scaffold. There is no room to hide. There is only the physics of our bodies, the give and take of pressure, the measured escalation of friction.
My mind is trying to record every detail, to memorialize this in case it never happens again: the faint buzz of the sign outside, the way the lights hum, the pressure of his chest as it lines up with mine. The places where our skin is separated only by the thinnest possible boundary, and the certainty that the boundary is dissolving.
He pulls back, just enough to breathe, forehead resting against mine. The air between us is stung with ozone and sweat.
“Okay?” he says, a hush in the silence.
I nod, but it’s not enough, so I say, “Yeah. More than.”
He grins, a small, private thing, and then he is kissing me again, this time with his hands in my hair, thumbs behind my ears. The touch makes me groan, low in my throat, and he swallows the sound without comment. His hands are everywhere—shoulders, neck, jaw—tracing my outline like he’s mapping it for later reference. I want to touch him back, but I don’t know where to start, so I keep gripping his shirt, knuckles bunching the hem until I feel the skin beneath, hot and alive.
He shifts his weight and suddenly he’s straddling the chair, one knee on either side, caging me in. Our bodies align, pelvis to pelvis, and even through denim I can feel the hard line of him pressed to my hip. It should be terrifying, but instead it’s a relief—the proof that this is real, that this is mutual, that it’s not just me spinning out in my own head.
He grinds gently, hips rolling with the smallest increment of intent, and I can’t help the gasp that escapes me. He presses his mouth to my neck, nipping lightly at the line of tendon there, and I am shocked at how fast my skin turns to electricity. His hands drop to my sides, holding me steady as he explores, and when his fingers find the edge of the bandage, he hesitates.
He pulls back, lips parted, eyes searching mine for any sign of “stop.”
“Sensitive there?” he murmurs, voice lower now, more gravel than velvet.
“Yeah. But not in a bad way,” I say, and I feel my face flush with the admission.
He leans in and kisses me again, slower, almost reverent, and this time I finally let my hands move up his shirt, tracing along his ribs, the ridges of muscle under the skin. He shudders at the touch, just a twitch, but I feel it everywhere. We are both running on nervous energy, on the old animal instinct to collide and fuse.
The kiss turns messy—teeth, tongue, the edge of need just under control. I taste blood from a split in my lip and it only makes me hungrier. The friction of his jeans against my thighs is a promise, the press of his fingers into my sides a reassurance. I am shaking now, not with fear but with urgency, the need to lose myself in this sensation, in this moment where nothing exists except the other person’s heat and the orbit of our hands and mouths.
He breaks the kiss, breathing hard, and cups my face in his palms.
“I want you,” he says, not as a question but as a fact, as a hypothesis tested and confirmed.
I swallow. There is no clever reply, no script to follow. I only nod, desperate for him to keep going, for this not to end.
He lowers his mouth to mine, and everything else—city, time, every other mark on my skin—blurs out to white noise.
