Under Locke(41)

Slim hooked a thumb in my direction. “We’re trying to talk Iris into getting a piercing as her rite of passage to Pins.”



Well shit. Before there was medical insurance, there was a piercing.



Dex looked over, sized me from the waist up since I was sitting down, and hummed.



“What about your—,” Blake started before Dex shot him a pointed look.



“Not happenin', bro.”



Whatever he was going to say I had a feeling wouldn’t be something I really wanted to know about, so I didn’t bother asking him to finish his sentence.



Dex focused in on me again, blue eyes bright against the tan skin of his face. “Belly button, babe.”



My belly button.



It wasn’t on my face. No one would see it unless I showed it to them, and if I took it out, the scarring would be so small no one would notice it.



But still. “Does it hurt?”



Dex seriously bit his lip but it was pointless. His mouth started curling upward in amusement. “I don’t think any of us would know from personal experience.”



I made a face. Smart ass again. “I’d hope not.”



“Every girl I’ve ever pierced hasn’t complained too much, Iris. I think your cartilage was more painful,” Slim explained. “Now if you were getting your nipple,” he bugged his eyes out, “Or something like your hood pierced, then I’d probably tell you not to do it until you did something easier first.”



“Uhh...where exactly does a hood piercing go?” I asked slowly, feeling naïve as I clenched my thighs together in perceived fear. I’d seen pictures of some non-traditional piercings and read things in novels that made me debate whether to grin or blush, but… I thought that was pretty rare.



His lazy grin was my answer. “Let's look it up,” he suggested.



I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have been curious enough to look, but I did. Slim leaned over the computer, quickly typing in a search that brought up page after page of different types of piercings.



The first few pictures were pretty PG. A single eyebrow, double eyebrow like Blake's, nose, tongue, labret, snake bites, the septum, nose bridge! The more Slim clicked through, the more I started to wonder whether I should be looking or running. There were nipple piercings on men and women, and then I saw the vagina.



A hood piercing. A vertical one, horizontal one, a deep one...I shuddered and like an idiot, put my finger over Slim’s to go to the next page.



Penis!



A dick popped out at me from the screen. A hard dick with a piercing that curled from the urethra through the head.



“Holy shit,” I whispered, looking at the damn picture longer than I should have, crossing the line between appreciation and staring.



But it wasn’t over. I glanced at the picture right below it and saw rows of penises.



I gulped.



A long, incredibly thick one with a piercing straight through the head. Top to bottom. In print on the lower half it had “Apadravya” labeling it. One penis after another popped up on the screen. Pictures with words like frenum, dydoe, lorum, and pubic slapped me in the face—visually, not physically. Unfortunately, I would say since they were all impressive...could an erection be pretty?



Not that I had much experience to go off of but whatever.



My thighs clenched together, and I’m sure my eyes were nearly the size of the sun. I started huffing, a sign that I was going to regret the nervous words that were going to spill out of me. Words that cemented I was lonely in not just an emotional sense. “Do those help the man or the woman?"



“What do you think?” Dex asked a little too quickly.



I stuttered, entranced with the image on the screen. I should have been grateful I didn't reach up to stroke the screen, that would have been horrible. Not that staring was any better.



“Dex has one,” Slim spit out in a laugh.



My gaze stayed forward. “Pardon?” I coughed.



Slim shook his head, grinning wide. “Dex? Am I lying?”



My focus slid over to the man in question. The man in question who had his eyes locked on me, bleeding me out with the focus of his gaze. And it was with that same confidence, that complete concentration that he shook his head slow, slow, slowly. Grinning just like a man with no shame at all. “You ain’t lyin’.”



A volcano erupted on my face with his answer. I opened my mouth, unable to say anything. Whaaaat? So I did the only thing that could remotely save my honor.



I face-planted the desk.



And then started mumbling, “Way too much information.” They might have been laughing but I was too humiliated by the fact that I’d been ogling a stranger’s penis—and requesting one just like it from Santa—when the man behind me had what I was sitting there admiring. And the man behind me being Dex. If it would have been Blake, I might have grimaced but…