What would it be like if he used more than his fingers?
I shuddered.
“Bring it here,” King said, holding out his hand, snapping me out of my own imagination where I was naked and writhing underneath him.
“No, you don’t want to see it. I was just messing around. I’ll just put it back in the drawer and clean up now.” I walked over to the sink with the book under my arm. King reached out and snatched it away from me, flipping the pages in search of my sketch.
“Holy Go-go-Gadget arms,” I quipped. I’d clearly underestimated King’s reach.
“How do you know that?” He asked.
“What do you mean? How do I know what?” I asked.
“The ‘Go-go gadget’ thing. That’s a reference to a cartoon. Have you ever even seen it?”
“Um…I think so. It’s this guy who wears a trench coat and has a billion little gadgets all over the place that usually don’t work the way he wants them to.”
“I know who it is. What I want to know is have you watched it since you lost your memory?”
“No, I haven’t watched any TV until earlier tonight when Preppy put on something called American Ninja Warrior.” I stepped back and leaned against the counter. “What are you trying to get at? I thought you believed me.”
“That’s not it. I’m just trying to figure it out. Help me understand.” King leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “If you haven’t watched it, then it’s something that carries over from before. How exactly does that work?”
“I’m not really sure. When I was living in the group home, I saw a psychologist or a psychiatrist or one of those. He told me that memory loss works differently for everyone. For me, it wiped out all personal information. Names, faces, memories. But I can still walk and talk, so I retained all my functions. I also know facts. Like, I know who the president is, and I can sing to you the jingle for Harry’s House of Falafel’s commercial. I just don’t know HOW I know those things.”
King nodded. I bit my lip.
“You know, you’re the only person besides the psychologist guy who’s even asked me about it,” I added.
King turned a page in the book and found my sketch. He studied it for several minutes. Time seemed to tick by slower and slower. I grew restless wondering what he thought of it. He was probably trying to figure out how to tell me it was complete crap. But then again I didn’t take him for someone who would go out of his way in order to avoid offending anyone.
So, what the hell was he staring at for so long?
And why the hell did I need his approval so badly?
“Are you done for the night?” I asked, trying to draw his attention away from the sketch. If he hated it, I’d rather just not talk about it at all. He lifted his eyes from my sketch just long enough to give my body a slow once over, like he was looking at me for the very first time. His gaze ignited my skin as if he’d actually touched me.
“Am I done?” he repeated my question. King ran the underside of his tongue across his bottom lip, leaving a sheen where he’d made it wet. “I’m not sure. I’m thinking I could just be getting started.”
Holy Shit.
The familiar redness burned its way up my neck and my ears grew hot.
The clock read 4:45am, and although I should have been tired due to the time, I was more alert than ever. The caffeine and sugar from the four Red Bulls I’d drunk felt like it could keep me awake for days, but I needed to get away from King because I felt myself starting to forget all the reasons why letting him strip me down and have his way with me would be a bad idea.
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“It means that I’m done with clients. But it also means that I’m not done with you.” King grabbed my wrist and dragged me onto his lap, the very place I’d just fantasized about being.
I gasped.
The hard muscles of his thighs rippled under mine. His smell—a light mixture of soap and sweat—was intoxicating. He fisted a handful of my hair and yanked my head sideways, exposing my neck to him. He breathed me in, running his nose along my neck, followed by a long leisurely lick from my collarbone to the sensitive spot on the back of my ear. I moaned, and he chuckled. I could feel it vibrate through his body and into mine. “Oh, pup. How much fun this is going to be.”
Just like that, he released my hair and pushed me off his lap. My shaky knees almost gave way, and I had to hold onto the counter to avoid falling forward onto the floor.
“We’ve got one more,” King said.
“I thought you just said no more clients tonight,” I said, breathlessly.
King proceeded to set up three small containers of black ink. “Here.” He handed me a thin-tipped black marker.
“What do you want me to do with this?” I asked.
“I want you to draw your sketch again. The same one. Hold it up for reference.”
“Draw it on what?”
“On the back of my hand, it’s a much smaller canvas then your sketch so you’ll have to downsize a bit, but it’s one of the few spaces of blank canvas I have left.
“Why?”
“Why do you always ask so many fucking questions?”
“Don’t you have a machine that does this? You can copy this picture and just stick it on there if that’s what you really want.”
King sighed with frustration. “Yes, I do. But it’s not the point. I want you to draw it on me. I want you to put that pen to my skin and recreate your sketch. I don’t care if it’s crooked. I don’t care if it’s not perfect, just fucking draw it!” he shouted, standing up. He took a few steps toward me until I was backed up against the counter, clutching the sketch book to my chest. “Please?”
A ‘please’ from the man who didn’t say ‘please’.
“Okay,” I agreed. “But why?”
“Because I looked over at you while you were drawing this, and you looked all cute, biting your lip, your face flushed, the back of the pencil pressed against those pink lips. Then, when you showed me what you drew, I saw it right away.”
“Saw what?”
“Me. The bird. You drew me.” I opened my mouth to argue that it was just a bird, but I couldn’t. He was right.
Dark and dangerous.
Hard but beautiful, taking what he wanted from the world.
It was him.
King propped the sketchbook on the table so I could reference my drawing. I did the best I could to create a smaller version of it onto the back of his hand. I worked even harder trying to ignore the electricity humming between us. King never took his eyes off of me.
It took me twice as long to complete than the sketch, but when I was finally done, I put the marker down and sat back.
“Okay?” I asked.
King held his hand up and examined my work. “It will work,” he confirmed. “Now, go get me a coffee.”
“No Red Bull?” I asked, standing up from the table.
“It’s after 5am. After 5am calls for coffee.”
“Okay, coffee then,” I said, making my way down to the kitchen. By the time I figured out the single cup coffee machine thing they had—the only modern appliance in the kitchen—and got back to the studio, King was hunched over his hand with his tattoo gun buzzing.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Silence.
“So what? You’re ignoring me now?”
He lifted the gun from his skin. “Yes, because if I talk to you, I’ll be giving this bird a dick in his mouth instead of a snake,” King said.
“I will get back to the fact that you sort of made a joke later, something which I didn’t think you were capable of doing, but right now, the only thing I can concentrate on is that you are tattooing my sketch onto your hand!” I shouted.
“What did you think I was going to do with it?” King dipped his gun into the ink.
“I don’t know, but not that!”
“Pup?” King asked softly.
“Yeah?”