A knock at the door interrupted us. I quickly returned the frame to the drawer and shut it just as Preppy let in King’s next client.
A woman, older than me, strutted through the door wearing a tight tube top and shorts so short the bottom of her ass cheeks hung out. She set herself up on the table like she owned the place, popping her gum as she explained to King, in detail, the Orchid tattoo she wanted on her left ass cheek.
King told me what he needed set up, and I started gathering his supplies.
“Who’s she?” the girl asked, casting me a sideways glare.
“She’s none of your business.”
“Can’t she step out? I’m really shy,” she whined, even as she pushed her shorts off in a suggestive manner. Leaving on her heels she crawled onto the table and stuck her thong-clad ass into the air.
“No, she can’t,” King said. Grabbing a marker, he freehanded the outline of an orchid onto her butt.
The girl made a pouting noise but didn’t push the issue. After an hour, she asked if I could go get her something to drink. King nodded to me, and I went downstairs to grab beers from the fridge.
When I came back up, I paused at the door.
“Come on, baby. You don’t remember me? You should. Your work is right here.” The girl turned around and sat up on her elbows, spreading her legs, she revealed tattooed butterfly wings on both sides of her inner thighs.
“I remember the work. I don’t remember you,” King said stiffly. “Do you want me to finish this fucking tattoo or not?”
“Yes, but I want your big cock first,” she cooed.
“That’s not gonna fucking happen.”
“Is it because of that ugly skinny bitch? She doesn’t even have any fucking tits!”
There was a commotion, and before I could figure out what exactly was going on, King had thrown the girl’s shorts out into the hallway and was pushing her out the door by her elbow.
“You can get that shit finished by someone else. We’re fucking done here.”
She grabbed her shorts off the floor and stomped past me. “Fucking ugly bitch. Fucking asshole,” she muttered as she practically tripped in her rush to get to the stairs.
King stood in the door way. “And if I hear you ever talk shit about her again, I’ll find you and take that butterfly tattoo back.”
“Oh yeah?” she shouted, stopping on the landing. “How the fuck are you going to do that?”
King was in the doorway one second and an inch from her face the next. “I’ll tell you how,” he seethed. “I’m going to find you, and then I’m going to take my time carving those fucking butterfly wings from that nasty * of yours with my knife. Sleep on that before you decide to open that good for nothing dick-sucker of yours again.”
Her eyes went wide with fear. She couldn’t move fast enough as she rushed out of the house, slamming the door behind her. The gravel spun under the tires of her car as she sped down the driveway.
“Clean up,” King ordered. He grabbed one of the beers from my arms as he passed me in the hallway and went back into his studio. I stood with my mouth open for a full minute before following him.
“What the hell was that?” I asked, putting the rest of the drinks into the cooler by the door.
“It was nothing. Clean up. We aren’t done yet.” King chugged the beer, crushed the can in his hands and tossed it into the trash bin.
The clock above the door read three am.
The next client was a man named Neil who King had being doing a full sleeve for before he went to prison. Neil had waited three years for King to be released so he could finish it. He said he just didn’t trust anyone else to do it right.
I sat on the leather couch and watched King as he scrunched his face up in concentration. How could someone so talented also be so menacing?
You already know how talented his hands are.
I bit my lip and remembered the way his fingers felt inside me. My face flushed.
“I can feel you staring at me,” King said, snapping me out of my daydream. Neil had a huge set of red headphones on with his eyes closed. He was either engrossed in the music or fast asleep.
“I’m kind of bored,” I admitted, embarrassed I’d been caught staring.
King stood and removed a glove. He opened another drawer on the toolbox and removed something, tossing it over to me. A sketchbook landed next to me on the couch, followed by a box of colored pencils.
“Maybe, this will help you stop fucking fidgeting,” he said. “It always helped me.”
Then, he turned up the volume on the iPod docking station before picking up his tattoo gun and diving back into his work.
I opened the sketchbook, which wasn’t blank. The first few sketches were variations of the orange tree tattoo I’d seen King tattoo on the redhead earlier. Each one better than the next until I got to the one he used as a template for her tattoo.