The parlor was called Needle & Thorn, a basement shop in the East Village with neon signs in the window and a reputation for artists who didn’t ask questions. I’d booked the appointment six months ago — a phoenix on my lower back, rising from ashes, the kind of tattoo that said “I survived something” even if I wasn’t sure what.
Sloane was the artist. Thirty. She’d done work for three celebrities and a hundred strippers and she had a waiting list that stretched into next year. She wore black tank tops that showed her own ink — sleeves of Japanese dragons and geometric patterns — and she had a habit of looking at her clients like she was deciding where to put the needle.
I’d been on her table for an hour. The stencil was applied. The outline was half-done. And then she’d stopped. Set down the machine. Put her gloved hand on my spine.
“The needle is still buzzing,” I whispered, looking back at her over my shoulder. My crop top was pushed up to my ribs. My yoga pants were low on my hips. The phoenix stencil was blue and temporary and completely at odds with the permanence of what was happening. “The stencil is on my skin. The ink is ready. And your gloved hand is on my back, not the tattoo. You’re supposed to be tracing the outline. Not touching me. Not pressing your palm into my spine. Not—”
Sloane didn’t speak. She just set down the tattoo machine on the tray beside us — the buzz dying with a whine that sounded like a complaint — and leaned down. Her cheek brushed my spine, right where the phoenix’s wings began. Her gloved hand slid from my lower back to my hip, then under the edge of my crop top.
“If your apprentice walks in,” I breathed, my voice barely audible over the sound of the street above us, “he’ll see the artist kissing the client instead of inking her. He’ll see your latex gloves on my bare skin and your mouth on my neck and the needle forgotten and he’ll know that this isn’t a tattoo session. This isn’t art. This is—”
She turned my face toward her with a gloved hand on my jaw. Her mouth found mine. A kiss that tasted like green soap and pain and the exact moment when a mark on skin becomes a mark on something deeper. Her tongue slid against mine, her gloved hand sliding from my jaw to my throat to the front of my crop top, finding my breast, my nipple, pinching with a pressure that was completely at odds with the gentleness of her needlework.
The parlor door opened.
“Hey Sloane, I’m back from—” Her apprentice. Marco. Twenty-two. Pierced nose. Completely unaware. “Oh. Sorry. Didn’t know you were in a session.”
Sloane didn’t pull away. She just pressed her other hand over my mouth, her gloved fingers still pinching my nipple, her eyes locked on mine. Then she turned to Marco with a smile that was completely professional.
“Just adjusting the stencil, Marco. Give us ten.”
“Sure thing.”
The door closed. Sloane looked at me. She picked up the tattoo machine. Turned it on. The buzz filled the room again.
“Look closer at the stencil,” she whispered against my ear, her gloved hand sliding down my stomach, into my yoga pants, finding me wet and ready and completely at her mercy. “The phoenix isn’t the only thing I’m leaving on you. Hidden in the wings. My initials. My mark. Permanent. Just like this.”
She made me come on the tattoo bed. Her fingers inside me, the needle buzzing beside us, her mouth on my neck while she worked me with a rhythm that matched the machine. I came with her latex-gloved hand over my mouth, my cry swallowed by rubber, my body shaking so hard the bed creaked.
After, she finished the tattoo. Two hours of precise, perfect work. The phoenix was beautiful. Its wings were spread wide. And hidden in the feathers — so small you had to know where to look — were two letters: S.V.
Sloane Voss.
She’d signed me. Not just with ink. But with everything that came before it.
I still go to Needle & Thorn. Sloane is still my artist. And every six months, I book another session — a rose, a moon, a constellation — and she finds a new place to hide her mark. She says I’m her favorite canvas. She says the only thing more permanent than her ink is what she feels when she touches me.
She’s right. The tattoos are forever. And so is she.
