The apartment was in the warehouse district, above a bakery that smelled like cinnamon at 6 AM and closed by 8 PM. There was no sign on the door. No business license. Just a buzzer that said S. Ink and a staircase that creaked under my feet.
I’d found her Instagram by accident. Scrolling through tattoo artists in the city, looking for someone who could cover the scar on my hip from a childhood surgery. I’d clicked on a profile with beautiful black-and-grey work, delicate lines, and a bio that said: “Private studio. By appointment only. I choose my canvas.”
The artist was Sloane. My stepsister.
She hadn’t told anyone she was tattooing. Not our parents, not her friends, not me. She’d been doing it for two years out of her apartment, building a client list through word of mouth, keeping her day job at the gallery to pay rent.
I’d messaged her anonymously at first. Asked about the scar cover-up. She’d replied with professional courtesy—pricing, availability, a request for photos. Then I’d sent the photo, and she’d known. She’d called me ten seconds later.
“You don’t have to come here,” she’d said, her voice low. “I can recommend someone.”
“I want you,” I’d said. And I’d meant the tattoo. Maybe.
That was how I ended up in her studio—a converted bedroom with a professional chair, a ring light, and walls covered in sketches that looked like they’d been torn from her dreams. She was wearing a black fitted t-shirt and latex gloves, her blonde hair tied back, her focus completely on the stencil she’d applied to my hip.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” I asked, my arm gripping the chair’s armrest, my body tense. “You’ve never tattooed me before.”
She looked up. Met my eyes. Set down the machine with a soft click that echoed in the small room.
“I’ve been studying your skin for years,” she said. Her voice was steady, professional, completely at odds with the words she was saying. “Every summer at the lake. Every Thanksgiving when you wore that backless dress. Every time you walked past my room in a towel. I know exactly where to touch you.”
She traced my inner arm with her gloved finger—a slow, deliberate path from wrist to elbow that had nothing to do with the tattoo. I shivered. The needle had hurt—a sharp, insistent buzzing that felt like a bee sting over and over. But her touch was worse. It was knowing. Intimate. Completely forbidden.
“It hurts,” I breathed, though I wasn’t talking about the needle anymore.
Sloane leaned closer. Her face was inches from mine, her blue eyes dark with an expression that was part artistic focus, part predatory hunger. She smelled like green soap and incense and the exact moment when professionalism becomes obsession.
“Then let me make it better,” she whispered.
She kissed my shoulder. Right where the needle had been. Her lips were warm, soft, completely at odds with the latex and the equipment. And then her ungloved hand—the one that wasn’t stained with ink—was sliding under my tank top, finding my ribs, my waist, the curve of my hip where the stencil waited.
“Sloane,” I gasped. “Your roommate—”
“Is in the kitchen,” she whispered against my skin. “With headphones on. She won’t hear.”
Her hand moved lower. Under the waistband of my jeans, under my underwear, finding me wet and ready and completely shocked by my own response. The needle was still buzzing on the tray beside us, a low vibration that seemed to travel through the floor, through the chair, through both our bodies.
She picked up the machine.
“No,” I breathed. “You can’t—”
“I can,” she said. And she turned it on.
The buzz filled the room. She held the needle over my hip, her other hand inside my underwear, her fingers pressing inside me with a confidence that made my back arch off the chair. The vibration from the machine traveled through her arm, through her body, into the hand that was touching me, amplifying every movement until I was shaking, gasping, completely at her mercy.
“Hold still,” she commanded, her voice low. “Or the line will blur.”
She tattooed her initials on my hip. Small. Delicate. Hidden in the design she’d drawn to cover my scar. The needle bit into my skin while her fingers moved inside me, the pain mixing with pleasure in a way that made my vision blur, my hands grip the chair, my teeth bite my lip until I tasted copper.
“Almost done,” she whispered, though I didn’t know if she meant the tattoo or me.
She made me come as the needle finished the final stroke. My body arched, the chair creaked, and she pressed her palm over my mouth to catch the sound. The orgasm was sharp, devastating, completely consuming—amplified by the vibration, the pain, the knowledge that she was marking me permanently while she destroyed me temporarily.
After, she cleaned the tattoo. Wrapped it. Kissed the bandage.
“Forever,” she said, looking at her initials on my hip. “Now you’ll never forget who you belong to.”
I haven’t. The tattoo healed perfectly. The scar is gone, replaced by her art. And every time I look in the mirror, I see her initials and I remember the chair, the needle, the way she made me come while she marked me as hers.
Sloane still tattoos me. Every month, a new piece. She says I’m her favorite canvas. I say she’s my favorite pain.
