Off Limits: Tales of Alien Sex

The Tattooist SUSAN WADE

THE MAN WALKED INTO her shop one Tuesday afternoon in early fall and said, “Missus? I want you to tattoo my penis.”

Claren was tucking needles into their sterilization envelopes and didn’t even flick him a glance. She’d been in the business long enough to learn.

“I don’t do penises,” she said.

He didn’t say anything, just kept standing there with his bulk blocking her light.

“Try Kevin Klardey down on Eighth,” she said after a moment, still not looking up. “He does ’em sometimes. When he’s in the mood.”

The late afternoon sun slanted through the windows of the old frame house she’d converted to a shop, pooling mellow and golden on the dark wooden floors. A beautiful day; she didn’t want it ruined by this pervert.

He leaned down and carefully positioned a thousand-dollar bill on the table in front of the autoclave. “I don’t explain well, Missus,” he said. “I want you to tattoo my penis.”

Terry was setting the table when she got home around six-fifteen, and their unrestored Hyde Park bungalow smelled delectably of ginger and garlic. He was wearing bicycle shorts and nothing else.

Claren came up behind him, slid her arms around his wiry cyclist’s body, and squeezed. “Miss me? Whatever you’ve been cooking smells wonderful.”

He set down the plates and turned around to give her his full attention. “You know it. I’m winging it, sort of a Szechuan stir-fry. Now that you’re home, I’ll start the rice.” His dark hair was beginning to thin a little on top, but there wasn’t a single strand of grey in it. She already had a thick streak of silver over one eye, which he said was elegant. They had been together for twelve years.

“I doubt I’ll make it that long—I’m starved.” She rubbed her face across the dark fur of his chest, inhaling deeply. Terry’s bare skin always made her imagine how she could decorate it. “God, I love your pheromones. Have I told you that lately?”

“Not since this morning, darlin’. Did you skip lunch again? I made pasta salad for you to take.” He gave her a final squeeze and turned back to fold the red bandannas they used for napkins.

“I didn’t think about it till I was already at the shop,” she said, heading for the fridge. Its frosty breath gave her a delightful shiver as she examined the contents. She poured herself a glass of orange juice, then found some Havarti cheese. A slice would hold her. “Had a weirdo come into the shop today. Offered me a thousand bucks to tattoo his prick.”

Terry came into the kitchen and ran water into the rice steamer. “He give you any trouble? Hey, go easy on that cheese. Don’t want to spoil your appetite.”

“Nah. I broke it to him gently that true artists are unmoved by the lure of filthy lucre.”

“What’d he do?” Terry had added salt to the water and was adjusting the flame of the gas burner.

Claren paused, then downed the rest of her juice. “It was funny, I got the impression he was pleased. He said that was why he wanted me to do it—because I’m a real artist. Then somebody else came into the shop and he left.”

“Did he at least leave you a tip?”

“Ha,” Claren said. “Gonna grab a shower.”

“Ten minutes till showtime,” Terry warned.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” She gave him a wink and whipped open the snaps on her shirt. Then she treated him to a little bump-and-grind as she backed across the living room toward the hall.

He followed her, whistling and clapping, until she tossed her bra onto the sofa. Then he said, “The hell with dinner,” and came after her.

The big man returned to the shop two days later.

Claren was by herself again, which wasn’t all that common—she had a robust clientele and lots of walk-in business. But she had blocked off some time that afternoon to work on new designs for an upcoming convention. Having the man turn up just then made her uneasy; she wondered if he had kept watch and waited until she was alone. But he held his big body so awkwardly as he came toward her—his head hunched forward and his big hands fidgeting with a manila folder—that he seemed more deferential than threatening.

She looked up and waited. No point in encouraging him.

This time, he didn’t speak. He opened the folder and laid it in front of her on the drafting table.

Claren glanced down, expecting a nude picture of him. The folder did contain a stack of photographs, but they were cut from a magazine. Probably Skin Art. The one on top was of a woman’s legs in fishnet stockings—a back view, showing garters and seams. Claren recognized those legs—and the stockings—instantly. The tattoo had taken four months to complete, and was precise in every detail. Most people probably never realized that Lindy’s trademark fishnets weren’t real.

The man turned the picture over, revealing the one underneath. This one was of a man’s upper arm, twined with four strands of barbed wire. The top three strands had broken, their barbs scattering and transforming into crows that rose in a spiral toward the top of his shoulder.

Even after six years, she was still proud of the design. Some of her first custom work. For Manuelito, who had escaped from a Salvadoran prison camp and come north to establish a relocation center for other refugees. Claren was pleased to see that the tat remained dark, its lines still distinct against Manny’s gorgeous bronze skin.

The man turned to the next clipped-out photograph. This was of the chiropractor who had asked her to tattoo his back with the bones and muscles of the spine. Claren examined the work critically. It could have come straight from Gray’s, the illusion so powerful, the trompe l’oeil effect so real, that it looked as if the man had been expertly flayed.

Which, in a sense, he had been. One of the reasons Claren preferred this medium was that her work went beneath the surface. Most visual artists worked flat, but her canvases were impregnated with the images she created.

The man began to turn the picture over. She tapped him lightly on the wrist and moved away.

“You’ve made the point,” she said. “You know my work.” She propped her butt on the sill of the window next to the drafting table and crossed her arms.

“Your work,” he said, then paused.

Though he spoke with no discernible accent, Claren had the impression that he was translating his words into English.

“Is special,” he said.

“Thank you.”

His oversize hands rose from the folder for the first time and grappled with the air, as if they would wrestle words from it. “You twist the real, Missus. Make us see what is not. Give the person a mask that instead of concealing… reveals him.”

“Yes,” she said. A hot spot was forming in her chest. Nothing felt better than having someone grasp the point of her work. Nothing.

“I have need of your skill,” he said. “Will you look, please?” He brushed through the pictures in the folder and offered the last one to her.

This one was a Polaroid snapshot. She took it, knowing before she saw it that it would be of his prick.

At first, she thought the photo was overexposed, but then she realized that his prick actually was that pallid and featureless. He had almost no pubic hair, and his balls looked pale too.

His prick was normal size, maybe even a little bigger than average. But the shape was undifferentiated—no mushroom shape to the head, no foreskin, no visible glans—not so much as a vein showing. And the skin had no texture at all. It looked like one of those plastic vibrators that pretend to be for something other than masturbation. No, it looked… embryonic.

“Inside, I am human, Missus,” he said. “I am like other men. Will you give me a mask that shows this?”

Claren hadn’t smoked in eight years, but she had a sudden longing for a cigarette—a sense-memory that blurred her vision: the hot-sulfur snap of the match, that first sharp curl of smoke reaching her lungs as the tobacco caught. Reflexively, she groped for the pack that always used to lie handy on the corner of her table. Nothing there, of course.

She inhaled sharply. Could she? Her heart was racing. It had been a while since she’d had a real challenge. A real test of her mastery of trompe l’oeil technique.

But was it safe? She looked him over slowly, then relaxed. He had come to her for her skill, not because he was kinky.

“It will take a long time,” she told him, “probably at least twelve weeks. Four sessions, three weeks apart.” She did not insult him by mentioning the pain. She could tell he understood that. “And it will cost… a lot.”

He nodded, a humble quality to the gesture. She stared at the skin on his face and arms, but it seemed normal—faintly tanned, without much hair.

Claren was suddenly ashamed, for no reason she could have named. “Come back tomorrow at six,” she said.

She fidgeted at the dinner table, needing to talk about the new commission, but reluctant to bring it up. Terry would be irritated with her for taking on an evening client, especially one who might be a pervert.

He was always annoyed when she worked late, because it cut into their time together.

“What’s on your mind, darlin’?” he said. “You seem jittery.”

“Took on a long-term job today. After-hours gig. Twelve weeks, off and on.”

Terry’s mouth compressed. “Why nights?”

She shrugged. “Not enough time free in my day schedule.” Taking the easy way out—you should be ashamed of yourself.

He was shaping his mashed potatoes with the tines of his fork, making furrows down the sides. The gravy spilled onto his plate like hot wax from a guttering candle. “Which nights? How late do you think you’ll be?”

“Tomorrow night’s the first session. After that, I’ll have a better idea of how long it’ll take. We’ll probably do Fridays three weeks apart to let the skin heal.” She noticed how careful she had been not to say “his skin,” much less, “his prick,” and that added to her uneasiness. She didn’t usually keep things from Terry. “So how was your day?”

“Same old, same old. Tests on that new ceramic stuff. No big bangs for a while.”

Terry was an engineering assistant at one of the university’s research facilities. They did a lot of defense work, developing materials and weapons with high-energy electrical pulses. He loved the huge daisy wheel generator they used for their gigavolt experiments, the “big bangs.”

Once Terry got started on his job, she was off the hook. He wasn’t the type to pester her about a decision she’d already made; she wouldn’t have to talk about her new customer again unless she felt like it.

Claren asked him a question about the materials experiment and took a bite of her salad.

As he answered, she watched the supple movement of the skin of his face, deeply tanned from all his cycling.

He has such beautiful skin, she thought. She daydreamed designs for it, lulled by the rhythm of his voice as they finished dinner.

She was restless all the next day, waiting for six o’clock, and wondering if the man would actually show up. She had come in early that morning to have some uninterrupted time to work on the design she would use to make his penis seem ordinary.

Ordinary. Why did he want to look like everyone else? Most of her customers came to her because they wanted to look special.

But she was pleased with her drawing. Plenty of texture. She would fool the eye into seeing shape where there was none; add definition and color—she’d even included a throbbing vein in the design.

He arrived two minutes before six. She flipped the “Open” sign to “Closed” and locked the door behind him before walking around the two front rooms of the shop to draw the shades. For this job, they needed privacy. The light inside the shop seemed brighter once the outside world was shut out.

The muscles in her calves were tight. Routine, she thought, stick with the routine. She handed him a clipboard and said, “Fill out these forms, please,” then went to get a large white bath towel and a plastic squeeze bottle of liquid antiseptic soap.

He was still writing his name on the release form when she came back, and Claren had to resist the temptation to tell him to finish it later. Routine, she reminded herself.

Her tattoo equipment was already laid out on her worktable, but she sat down on the tall stool in front of it and rearranged everything. She would be using small clusters of needles, for a very subtle effect. Too much intensity of color would be a mistake; it would only look artificial. She was going to make this poor guy’s prick look more normal than Norman Rockwell’s. Lifelike, instead of like some freak, she thought. The prospect was satisfying.

The man brought her the clipboard and said softly, “I have finished it, Missus.”

“Fine,” she said, and pointed at the soap. “There’s a bathroom through that door and to the left. Strip and scrub—and make sure you wash behind your ears, hear?”

He hesitated for a moment, seeming confused by the wisecrack. Then he gave her a tentative smile. “Yes, Missus.”

As she watched him shamble toward the bathroom, Claren had another sharp craving for a cigarette. After he closed the door, she called, “Hey—leave your shirt on so you won’t get cold.”

He was pleased with her drawing, and climbed eagerly into the reclining chair.

The texture of his flesh was stranger than she’d expected. After she folded the towel back from his massive thighs, Claren wondered if he was human.

The skin of his prick was fine-grained and very smooth, like a baby’s. Maybe he was a burn victim? But she’d tattooed people disfigured by burns before; his flesh didn’t have the shiny ruined look of a scar.

Awkwardly, Claren reached over and touched him. His skin was hot and more taut than she’d thought it would be—but it was still skin. Completely human, she assured herself. And then, looking at the pale swollen-cigar shape of him, the unnatural symmetry, she corrected herself. Well, maybe not completely.

About eighteen square inches of skin to be tattooed, she estimated. Though none of it was actually square, of course. Artists who needed a flat canvas to work were pikers. With four sessions, that was about four and a half square inches each time. She hoped he was as tough as he was big.

She swabbed him down with alcohol, applied a topical anesthetic, and sprayed him with green soap and water. Then she picked up the duplicating paper she’d traced the design on and positioned it carefully on his prick. She rubbed a deodorant stick across the paper to transfer the design, then pulled the stencil away. The drawing had transferred clean.

Claren dabbed a glob of petroleum jelly at the base of the shaft—the area she’d be starting on—and smoothed the gel out. It would help the needles run smoother over the skin and make the excess dye easier to wipe off.

For once, she was reluctant to use surgical gloves; she liked the sensation of touching his skin. But it wasn’t safe to work without them.

She selected a three-needle cluster soldered onto a bar, picked a tube, and loaded both into the tattoo machine. She would work in a soft pinkish brown pigment first, outlining the design in a very fine line.

She was used to touching flesh. Very accustomed to it, but this was different; when she touched him, it was as if an electrical connection had been closed. She was no longer herself.

Or, rather, not only herself. Now she was feeling things with his big shaggy body as well: his enormous heart thubbing-dubbing in her chest, the slabs of his heavy flesh enfolding her organs, odd layers of muscle rippling as she moved her arm.

Claren applied the cluster of needles as if in a trance, carefully stretching out their textureless skin to ensure the proper application of color. She felt the pressure of the needles entering their flesh, a burning cut in the penis she didn’t have.

In spite of the local, it was excruciating.

Without asking him about the pain, she applied more anesthetic and waited a couple of minutes to let it take effect. She continued the work, but before long a chain of sweat was forming along the line of her upper lip and across her cheekbones. Feeling it from both sides—jabbing the bar and taking the needle—was a strain.

After she had the defining lines laid in, she switched to another bar with a broader cluster of needles soldered at a shallow angle. She used a tawny tint for background shading, then went back over the same area with a pale rosy apricot.

Claren paused and swabbed the sweat off her face. Then she wiped the blood and excess dye from his prick. The tat looked too distinct and dark now, but she knew it would fade to the right tone once the skin healed. Blood welled up on the shaft, and she blotted it off again. He flinched, and moved his thigh against her forearm.

Not a freak. The thought came from nowhere, but carried a note of utter authenticity. It was followed by another, even more startling:—genuine mutation—our kind breed true—

She jerked her arm away. For the first time, she noticed that his eyes weren’t brown. They were an intense dark grey. The narrow web of skin between her fingers was itching furiously.

“That’s enough for now,” she said. Her voice rang strangely in her ears. Her fingers had a fine tremor as she positioned the bandage on his prick. “You can get dressed.”

Obedient as always, he lifted himself down from the chair, drew the towel around him, and shambled toward the back. She rummaged through the drawer of the desk to find a copy of the “Caring for Your New Tattoo” instructions for him.

When he returned, he asked her, “Again in three weeks, Missus?” as if uncertain of her answer. Claren nodded, but could not speak.

“You seem tired, darlin’,” Terry said later.

“Long day,” she said. She was lying flat on the sofa, staring at the ceiling. The water stain near the corner was shaped like a human heart, ventricles and all.

Terry came over, stripped off her sandals, and started rubbing her feet. He was good at it; firm pressure in the right spots, no tickling. Eventually, the strangeness inside her began to break up and flow away.

Terry sensed it too. He worked his way up her calves, kneading the tight muscles like taffy. When he reached her thighs, Claren pulled him down on the sofa and climbed on top of him. He grinned, but let her lead.

She lay against him, both of them fully clothed, and breathed in his smell. Now and then she moved a little, rubbing her breasts against him, cupping herself around him as he got hard.

She felt like she did in the bathtub sometimes, as if she were drinking the water through her skin. Except this time, it was Terry she was absorbing. Everything she loved about him was soaking into her as she touched him: his strength, his playfulness, his warmth. His familiarity.

They lay nearly still together for so long that when she finally peeled his shorts off and took him inside her, they came on the third stroke.

The next morning at the shop, she studied the man’s data sheet and release form. He had given his name as Hadrian Franklin, his mailing address as a post office box in Tracker’s Point, Montana, and had left the line for a phone number blank.

She tattooed twenty-three other people that week. The college student who wanted a permanent gold chain around her ankle was the most interesting of the new clients. None of the others was interested in a trompe l’oeil effect. And Brad the Birdman came for his sixteenth appointment; the glorious blue-and-yellow macaw plumage on his back and shoulders was two-thirds done now.

None of it was as absorbing as the work on Hadrian Franklin. Claren spent every spare moment soldering new combinations of needles together in preparation for their next session.

Hadrian had healed well, and now that the skin had peeled, the coloration of the tattoo was precisely the right intensity. Because only the base of his prick was tattooed, it looked like a wax model that was starting to melt.

Claren was unsettled by the half-formed look of it. For the first time ever, she felt remorseful that her design was altering this smooth expanse of skin.

He remained silent, his huge body quiescent under her hands. Claren found herself wishing she hadn’t told him to keep his shirt on last time; she was curious about how the rest of him looked. Was he really a mutant?

She knew the answer at once. He was.

Confused enough by the thoughts she had while tattooing him, she didn’t try to talk as she worked. Normally she kept up a conversation with her clients to distract them from the discomfort. But with Hadrian, she felt the pain too. It was as if she were tattooing herself, only stranger.

The pain intensified as she moved closer to the tip, cradling his prick in her left hand as she tattooed. She’d gotten the knack of using her left thumb to stretch the skin out as she worked, to keep the detail of the tat clear enough.

Claren wiped off the blood and dye and switched needle bars. As she applied the new cluster, she wondered where he was really from, where he really lived.

The answer formed—not an image that built up one element at a time, but a complete picture that seemed to bloom instantly in the center of her brain. She was in a large log building, like a refectory, filled with people. Big bulky men and women, all with pale golden skin and dark grey eyes.

“Is that your home?” she blurted out. “In Montana?”

He looked at her sadly. “Yes, Missus.”

“How—” Claren set down the tattoo machine and swiped the sweat from her face. “Why do I see it?”

He looked down at the blood that was welling from his penis. “Apologies, Missus. The pain—and you are touching me. My containment is not so strong when I hurt. And touching, skin closeness—” He stopped.

She waited for a moment, then realized he was stumped. He simply didn’t have the words to explain more. But why did he look so guilty?

“It’s okay,” she said. “I don’t mind seeing things—feeling—the things you—”

Her reassurances didn’t seem to convince Hadrian. He looked guiltier than ever, like an overgrown child caught tormenting his sister.

She blotted the blood away and picked up the needle again. The duality of sensation was like a drug. Painful pleasure.

“Actually,” she whispered, “I like it.”

She tattooed six inches of skin in that one session.

She was very late getting home. Terry was waiting up for her, which irritated her. She had wanted to lie on the sofa by herself, undisturbed, and mull over what she had learned about Hadrian. Think about the sensation of pushing the needle bar and taking it inside her flesh at the same time.

She had wanted to think about him and masturbate.

But Terry was all over her, wouldn’t leave her alone until she yelled at him. Hurt, he retreated.

They each went to sleep unsatisfied that night.

The next morning, he asked her to close the shop at noon so she could come to his cycle race. Feeling guilty about her snappish-ness yesterday, she agreed.

The races were usually colorful, if a little boring—Terry mostly went in for track racing. But that day she found the lean, defined muscles of the cyclists’ legs and backs disturbing. Claren tried to watch the racers, but kept averting her eyes in distaste.

She managed to pay attention to Terry’s race, and she cheered for him when he won. His was the second to the last match. Afterward, the cyclists all went to the Tavern for beer and nachos, and Claren went along dutifully. Animated from the victory and the congratulations of his friends, Terry didn’t seem to notice her uneasiness. She was glad. How would she explain it? That the way their muscles were shaped looked wrong to her?

Watching Terry’s flushed face across the table, she knew he would want sex later. And she didn’t.

On the way home, still feeling expansive, Terry sped up North Lamar, weaving the Toyota nimbly around the barriers construction crews had left all down the center lane.

“This isn’t a race,” Claren said.

“Sure it is! A race to see who gets home soonest.” He reached over and slid his hand up her thigh.

“The way you’re driving,” she said, pumping acid into the words, “it’ll be a miracle if we get home at all. If you’re going to speed, at least keep your hands on the wheel.”

The preemptive fight she had started escalated quickly. Within minutes, it spread from Terry’s driving to her irresponsible attitudes and finally to money.

He slept in the spare room that night.

Hadrian was three minutes late for his appointment. Claren was a nervous wreck by the time he arrived. The weather had turned cold the night before, giving them a crisp bright day on the line between autumn and winter. As he entered the shop, he swept air that smelled of woodsmoke inside with him.

“Missus,” he said, and picked up the towel she had ready for him.

As he turned toward the back, she said, “Hadrian.”

She had never called him by name before.

He looked at her, his dark eyes like pewter in the fading evening light. “Yes, Missus?”

“I’ve been thinking—your shape. The way you really are—it’s beautiful. Why did you want to change it? Have me cover it up?”

There was a long pause before he answered. Why had she asked him this aloud, instead of waiting until they were touching? She could find out anything she wanted to know when she touched him.

Maybe I’m afraid to know, she thought.

“I am in love, Missus,” Hadrian said, and went into the back.

Her heart pounding, Claren rearranged her needles. He was in love. Who with?

He came all the way from Montana to have me tattoo him. But that doesn’t mean—

She thought of daisies. He loves me, he loves me not.

Claren wasn’t certain she was ready to find out. But she could hardly wait to touch him again.

She ended up tattooing the entire underside of his penis in that session.

When she came in at midnight, Terry was still up. She could tell by the way he was looking at her that he was going to insist on making love. He watched her hungrily, and with a certain bitterness.

Claren’s jaw clenched. Don’t even bother, Terry, she thought. It’s not going to happen.

But later, as he labored over her breasts and laved her with his tongue, doing everything he could to stimulate her, she thought of Hadrian. As she summoned the memory of his resilient, smooth skin, his strangeness, her thighs started to quiver.

What is happening to me? she wondered. Is this the seven year itch, starting five years late?

But the tremble in her inner thighs didn’t dissipate, and as Terry entered her, she fantasized about touching Hadrian, the silky different feel of him under her fingers. She imagined it was his penis pushing into her; she pictured him penetrating her from behind. But in her fantasy, his penis looked as it had when she first saw it, before she ever touched it with a needle.

For the first time in weeks, she came. She came spectacularly, with a spasm that arched her against Terry’s hips hard enough to leave bruises along the inside of her thighs.

The next session with Hadrian was the last they had scheduled. It was set for early December, the checkup on the finished design, to make sure Hadrian’s skin had healed properly and do any touch-ups needed.

Claren waited until he was in the chair, then told him she needed to see him with an erection to make sure the tat’s coverage was complete.

She expected him to touch himself and turned away to afford him a little privacy, but watched from the corner of her eye. His big hands didn’t move.

His penis flowered instantly, like a time-lapsed photograph, a big satiny movement of muscle that made her nipples tighten.

“You must examine me, I understand,” he said.

So she had his permission.

She looked at his prick without touching him. The design showed excellent detail. She had stretched the skin carefully as she did the work, and very few places needed touching up. Her mouth was dry and her skin was damp as she reached for him. No gloves this time. She was anticipating the erotic image that would form in her brain at the contact. When they touched, she would discover what excited him.

And, she realized, he will know how much he excites me. Daisy chain, he loves me—

His skin was hot, and even silkier than she remembered. The second she touched him, the image leaped across the gap between their minds like a high-voltage spark—instant and whole before her.

A woman. Human. Of course, what had she expected? One of his own kind would not have been disturbed by his shape, his differences. But the woman—

Her face was angular, a sculpted narrow pixie face. She had skin like milk and hair the color of maple leaves in the fall. The color of burning, Claren thought as she burned. She was nude, slim-bodied; with flame at the crown and between her legs, and all that smooth moon white skin.

—shivering allure—forbidden fruit—an outsider—

Claren pulled her hand away from Hadrian only with great difficulty. It was as if her muscles had convulsed from an electric shock. But it was an orgasm convulsing her, and she was breathing in gasps as the spasms pulsed through her belly. She thought of the woman’s skin and hair, and licked her lips. Instantly, she came again, a climax so powerful that she couldn’t help groaning aloud.

She leaned against the cabinet, legs trembling. Her hand was wet. She stared at it stupidly. A silvery gel was thick on her fingers.

Claren looked at him.

He seemed unembarrassed.

Of course, she thought, I’m the one who was so horny I came. I came first.

He clambered down from the chair, looped the big towel around his waist, and went to the bathroom.

Claren grabbed a paper towel and wiped off her hand. She was still trembling, and her crotch felt pulpy.

When he came out later—dressed again—she said, “One session of touch-ups should do it. Tomorrow evening, same time, okay?”

He gave her a nod before he went to the door.

But the connection was still open between them—a faint and static-y afterimage, already fading—and she knew she would never see him again.

He was ready for his lover—his human lover—now.

When she got home, Terry was setting the table. He was wearing cutoffs and nothing else, in spite of the early winter chill. The hardwood floors were cold and drafts flowed from the warped window frames. Gooseflesh pricked his arms.

“Aren’t you cold?” she said.

He looked up, then away from her.

What was he thinking?

“Nah. Might as well enjoy going bare as long as I can. It’s almost winter.” He brought two bowls of stew to the table.

She could see him shivering. I don’t even know him, she thought. Look at all that hair on his chest—it even makes him smell funny.

She averted her gaze. Her mouth was dry. She licked her lips, and was struck by a flash-image of the woman—Hadrian’s lover—pure white skin and flaming hair—

Claren sat down at the table and unfolded her bandanna napkin with fingers that shook.

Terry pulled out his chair and started to join her. His nipples were pale brown bare spots in the forest of dark hair on his chest. It was nauseating.

“For Christ’s sake,” she said. “Put on a shirt, will you? We’re at the dinner table.”

[Author’s note: The barbed wire and flying crows tattoo described in this story is the work of tattooist, Henri, of Electric Expressions in New Orleans.]