Gently, without hurry, he began to play with my clit, and my already sensitized flesh hummed and buzzed with delight. It was hard, so hard to remember not to groan or speak, and when his other hand alighted on my leg, smoothing its way up my thigh, over my hipbone to my ribs, I thought nothing of it other than how good and warm he felt.
“Tell me about your phoenix.”
My eyes shot open. I hadn't realized I'd closed them. Glancing down, I tried to find his eyes, but the room had become pitch black. Even so, I felt him tracing the outline of the phoenix tattoo on my side with the tip of his finger as though the room were as bright as day. How was he doing it?
The photos, I realized. My phoenix was one of the bigger ones, all gorgeous, garish colors, rainbows and flowers and fire licking up the left side of my ribcage from a pile of bones and dead wood on my hip. It was stunning. Of course he'd remembered it.
I licked my lips and he flicked his thumbnail over my clit, making my hips jump into his hand. “What... what do you want to know?” I asked.
“Did you design it?” The pad of his thumb soothed the aching nub at the apex of my pussy, and I tried not to melt into incoherence.
“Mm, yes... I... I designed all my tattoos,” I managed to get out.
“And why did you choose a phoenix?”
Really? My brain scrabbled for an answer that wasn't too pat, but in the end I had to settle. I was just too distracted. “A phoenix is a... a symbol of rebirth,” I said as his thumb began to circle faster and I felt my core begin to tighten. He really knew the perfect ways to play my body, as though I were an instrument.
“And why did you choose that particular symbol of rebirth?” he asked me casually. My orgasm built, a swell in the ocean about to become a tsunami. “Um...” I ran my tongue over my teeth as bliss buffeted my mind. “Because... because everything you were burns away, and you come out new...”
“Mmm,” he murmured. His hand slid over the place where the tattoo lay, soft and hot, and I shivered under it even as he stroked my clit harder and faster, until I was coiling up, aching and ready to come—
—and he paused.
My building orgasm faded. I couldn't help myself; I cried out with the loss.
“Another minute,” he said, and it took all my strength not to scream in frustration. When the mounting pleasure had faded, he began again, expertly plying my body, and this time the orgasm built faster and harder and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from shrieking.
Then his hand moved up to just beneath my right breast and he traced the tattoo there, and as he did, his fingers found the jagged scar hidden beneath the ink and followed it tenderly. But he didn't ask about the scar. “Tell me about your sparrow,” he said instead.
My mouth fell open. The sparrow was so small compared to my other tats that it was a wonder he remembered it at all. But then his finger ghosted over the sparrow's beak—exactly where it was—before retreating and stroking against its breast and in a sudden flash of insight I realized he had memorized every tattoo of mine.
The thought shocked me, stunned me.
“Ah... uh... a sparrow... they say the gods mark the fall of a single sparrow...” My voice was a whisper.
“I see,” he said. His thumb moved faster and faster, until I was on the brink again, and again he stopped. This time I kept my wits enough about me that I was able to stifle the moan of frustration. It died in my chest, strangled before it was born.
Malcolm waited for my quivering body to subside. “Good,” he murmured. “Well done.” His thumb resumed its pace and I thrashed and strained against my bonds as he traced his hand up to my throat and the tattoo winding over it. Words this time.
“And this one?” he asked. “What does it say? The script is so elaborate I could hardly make it out.” And his fingers trailed over the scar beneath it. The red smile I was supposed to wear down to the grave.
“It says, 'Might as well live.'” I told him, my voice so soft I could barely hear it.
He gave a low, quiet laugh. “Dorothy Parker,” he said, and with a flick of his thumbnail I was coming, hard and aching around his fingers, my body lost in ecstasy as I yanked against the ropes, but inside everything was tumbled and torn, rent asunder and filled with pain and anger.
He knew my tattoos. Every single one. I was raw and exposed. He'd seen the scars beneath them, and he knew they were important in some way. We were dancing around them, around their significance, and it frightened me. But all he did was wait for my orgasm to pass before moving on to the next. Gently he stroked each one in the dark and asked me, as he circled my clit with his thumb, what each one meant to me.