Heather Rainier (6 page)

That thought echoed in Seth’s brain over and over again as he waited for Jayne to arrive. She’d called a few minutes before and told him she was on her way to Divine Ink from the library.

To make sure she understood the commitment she was making, he planned to draw the basic design on with a hypoallergenic marker first. If she still liked it, then he’d begin tattooing her. She didn’t seem the flaky type, but in his years as a tattoo artist, he’d seen people back out at the first twinge of pain, or have “buyer’s remorse” after the process was started.

He was willing to admit that her happiness with this tattoo meant more to him than any of the others he’d ever done. He didn’t doubt his skills. He just wanted her to be pleased with it long-term and to have a positive experience to remember in the years to come.

The bell jingled, and Jayne walked in the front door and smiled at him. Her cheeks were flushed a pretty rosy color, and she seemed in good spirits.

“Before we get started, Seth, I’m sorry for putting you on the spot last night. It was the adrenaline, and the heightened emotions of the moment. I got carried away and put the cart before the horse. Could we pretend yesterday didn’t happen at all?” Her unusual blue-green eyes shone with hope, and he couldn’t help but smile.

She went right to him when he opened his arms and hugged him back. “If it makes you feel better, I will. But I enjoyed that story you were writing.”

“It’s still embarrassing to know you’ve gotten a look inside my head like that.”

Seth chuckled as he directed her around the counter and behind the partitioning wall, to the back of the studio where his more private workspace was set up. “I thought it was good and I think a lot people might agree.”

She snorted in disbelief. “What would you like me to do?”

Make an offer I can’t refuse.

Biting his tongue on what he really wanted to say, he showed her where to stow her clothing and her purse. “I’m going to sketch the basic design on you with a marker so you can see the placement and we can make changes to your liking. Are you ticklish?”

“Not really.” She gulped as she held the top button of her blouse between her fingertips. “Is this where it gets weird or uncomfortable, because of what happened last night?”

Seth gently grasped her hand. “I don’t want
you
to be uncomfortable, Jayne. It’s not weird for me. I want you to be able to relax because this will take several sessions. Once we’re sure you like the placement of the design, I’ll drape the parts I’m not working on. You can leave your panties on, but for now I’ll need everything else off.”

Her voice had a slight shake to it when she responded and undid the buttons on her blouse. He turned to his portable work table and opened the sketchbook to the page with her original drawing on it. It was unbelievably hard not to turn back around and watch her strip. This was a fantasy coming to life for him, being able to put that design on her beautiful skin.

While she undressed, he organized his supplies. He could hear her clothing rustling around, and the anticipation to see her built inside him. His cock tingled as he imagined her taking each garment off, revealing more and more of her gorgeous flesh and her lush figure. He enjoyed looking at a beautiful naked woman as much as the next man, but this particular woman
really
made him love his career choice.

“I’m ready, Seth.” He could hear the trace of self-consciousness in her muted voice.

He turned to her and couldn’t help it when he paused and just…stared at her. From head to toe, she was curvy perfection. She perched nervously on the paper-lined padded table, clad in nothing but a black lace G-string. She noted his gaze and hooked the thin waistband with her thumb. “I was trying to make it easier for you.”

His cock hardened so fast it drew her eyes, and she blushed profusely. He groaned and chuckled as he carefully took a seat on his rolling stool. “I’m sorry. That’s completely unprofessional of me, Jayne, but you’re gorgeous.”

She smiled at him, and her eyes twinkled. She was adorable as she sat there with her ankles crossed and her little pedicured toes hooked together. Her reddish-brown hair curled around her shoulders and framed her pink-tipped breasts, and her hands were braced on the table beside her sweetly rounded thighs. Her knees were pressed together, and he could see her pulse pounding rapidly at the base of her throat.

Best to get started. Otherwise there’s going to be touching and kissing and she might get what she asked for after all.

Being fairly certain that she would accept his attention willingly made him even harder.

She bit her lip as he reached out and gathered her hair so it all flowed down her back, not hiding an inch of her lovely, bountiful breasts. Her nipples hardened to pebbled points that his mouth watered to taste. This close, her unique scent was intoxicating.

Remembering the marker in his hands, he said, “Hold your arms out at your sides for me.”

She was slightly elevated on the table so that her breasts were at his eye level. A slight gasp escaped her as he drew the curving outline of the first rose. He rolled close enough that her calf was trapped between his thighs as he sketched the vine on her rib cage beside her right breast. In the quiet of the studio, she exhaled slowly, and he could see her studying his face in his peripheral vision. He glanced up at her and smiled. Her tremulous, reciprocating smile lit a fire inside him as he turned his attention once more to his work. She couldn’t see what he was doing without twisting around, so she watched him instead. The knuckles of his right hand brushed against the silky outer curve of her breast as he sketched. Once he was tattooing her, he’d have gloves on, and he was sure he’d miss the feel of her smooth skin. Her soft, rapid respirations signaled her continued nervousness and he knew what she needed.

He grinned and held the marker up to her. “Hold this, please. I know what I forgot.”

She took the marker from him. “What?”

“I think this might help you relax.” He turned on the sound system on the work counter, placed three CDs in the changer, and placed the remote in her hand. “You can skip to the next song anytime you want.”

The low strains of Apocalyptica’s “Cohkka” began, and he went back to work. As Jayne listened to the first minute or two, an unknowingly seductive smile crossed her face, and he had to take a deep breath. This song made him think of her every time he listened to it.

“I love cello. This is different. Sexy. It would probably be good writing music, too.”

Seth nodded as he continued drawing and tried to ignore his aching cock. The blend of classical cello with modern rhythms and hard rock arrangements picked up its pace, and he paced his sketching along with it. He was pleased that she liked his choice. That meant something to him.

“Lean back on your hands just a bit,” he murmured as he started the section of the design that extended in a diagonal formation from her upper right rib cage downward and across to her left hip. He brushed his thumb over a patch of skin that was a darker shade than the rest, near her belly button. There were also three small scars. As he continued drawing, doing his best to encompass each mark within an area that would be tattooed, he asked, “Would you tell me about dealing with your illness?”

Seth wanted to know everything about her and she might find it a welcome distraction. Talking about it while he worked on covering those areas might help her to have a little more closure as well. He knew that from past experience with other cancer patients.

“Well…I’d graduated from Sam Houston State University, in Huntsville, and was working as an assistant librarian on campus, when I first had symptoms. At a routine checkup I mentioned them and my physician got suspicious.”

“So they caught it early? What did they do?”

“Yes. They did a biopsy. I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma.” She pointed to one of the scars and he wanted to lean forward and kiss it. “They used radiation therapy on the cancerous lymph nodes.”

She paused then and he knew that she was giving him the abridged version, speaking in shortened sentences—distancing herself from what had happened.

“The treatment was effective and by the one-year anniversary of the diagnosis I was in remission. I found a full-time position at a library in Houston and loved it. I’d discovered that I enjoyed writing. I had an apartment, a boyfriend, and a social life. Hodgkin’s was a bump in the road that I thought I was over.”

“It happened again?”

“Yeah.”

He couldn’t resist asking the question, thinking of her being on her own dealing with cancer. “Did your boyfriend help you? Was someone there for you?” Obviously the guy hadn’t hung on long-term.

“In the beginning, yes. My mom and dad were also very supportive but they were starting a contracting business and so I tried to not bother them. The doctors did another biopsy and more…tests.” Her eyelids fluttered closed and he didn’t press the point if she wanted to skim over the painful details. “Cancer teaches you patience with yourself and others. They prescribed radiation again and when that didn’t do well enough on its own, they added chemotherapy to the regimen of treatment.” She let out a long sigh. “I hate to bore you with all this.”

“You’re not. I want to know. Tell me, Jayne.”

“I started to feel like my life slowed down, while everyone else’s sped up around me. I had no energy. I couldn’t work. Insurance didn’t cover everything and the medical bills started piling up. Between doctor’s visits and treatment appointments, I distracted myself with writing. My family was there for me, but it got exhausting for all of us. I was beyond relieved when the treatments worked and I went into remission. It took a long time to get my energy back and I had side effects from the treatment. They told me that it was likely that I was infertile, which was depressing, but at least I wasn’t dying, you know?”

Seth’s heart went out to her as he nodded.

“I finally got to a point where I felt nearly normal. Mike—my boyfriend—proposed and I accepted. I was thankful that he’d stuck by me but I knew that the infertility diagnosis bothered him. I wasn’t quite up to full speed when I got sick again, the same flu-like symptoms as the first time. The doctors treated the cancer aggressively and the side effects from the chemo and radiation had me wishing I was dead at times but I stayed positive because I had a wedding to look forward to, even though we’d had to put it on hold.

“Knowing that I was susceptible to depression from the last go-round, I tried acupuncture, chiropractic care, and I wrote in every spare moment. I never told Mike about what I was writing because I knew he came from a very conservative family and wouldn’t approve. It was something I did for my own enjoyment so I didn’t worry. One day, he found one of my journals and read it.”

Seth paused for a second to look up at her. Her cheeks were flushed as she made eye contact with him and he understood why she’d been ready to pass out the night before when she’d answered the door.

“Mike was angry. He let me have it then, like it’d been building up for a while. He said he’d put his life on hold long enough. He said he’d never really reconciled himself to the fact there weren’t going to be any kids to pass on his family name if he married me. And he’d be damned if he married a woman who wrote
porn
.” The last word escaped her lips on a whisper and he wanted to reach for her. He had a sense that she was pulling a bandage off of an old wound and let her continue uninterrupted.

“I was halfway through a cycle of chemotherapy treatments when he broke off our engagement. My mom moved in with me temporarily and helped me because it got so hard to function. I couldn’t get over how tired I was, no matter how much sleep I got. And working was impossible, because the chemo affected my memory and ability to focus. I was really scared. My system was a little haywire and I gained a lot of weight which—you really don’t want to hear all the gory details. I’m sorry.”

He placed a hand around the bottom of her foot and stroked her arch. “It’s okay. Tell me.”

“Between the permanent side effects from the radiation treatments, like this”—she indicated the darkened area he planned to cover—“the scars, the weight gain, the depression…I was a mess. I gave up writing. I nearly gave up altogether but my mom sat me down one day and gave me a talking-to. She told me that if writing made me happy and helped to distract me from my discomfort then Mike could just ‘go fuck himself’ was how she put it. I’d never heard my mom talk like that before.” She giggled softly as she relived the memory.

“She took me swimming when I had the energy for it. She read my stories and didn’t criticize any of them. She held my hand when I threw up after treatments and helped me believe I might survive. I made it through the treatments and last year, the doctors told me that they were confident about the outcome. I focused on my recovery, moved, got a new job, and made contact with Grace and Charity, who I’d lost track of over the years. I decided that for however long I have, I was going to make up for all those lost years.”

“And here you are.”

Her voice was a soft echo. “Here I am.”

Her abdomen fluttered as he drew in light, brief strokes, and then he shifted, trapping her other calf between his thighs as he moved toward her left hip.

“How are you doing now?”

“I have to be careful of infections and get my flu shot every year. I still feel a little out of sync at times, dealing with people who don’t know what it’s like to deal with life-and-death issues. I lost most of that weight, but I still struggle.”