Page 108 of Cross To Bear

“Fuck…” He shook his head and then grabbed a texta, uncapping it and tossing that onto the bench. “You make me wish things I shouldn’t.”

“Like what?” My calm facade was ruined because I jumped as soon as the marker touched my arm. His hand smoothed up and down it, as if settling a horse. “Like what, Bjorn?”

“That everything you just said is true.” His hand moved swiftly, sketching in the details of the tattoo up the curve of my arm. “In ancient times, tattoos were often used for ceremonial purposes, to indicate moving from childhood into an adult, to ward off evil, or to convey supernatural powers.”

He paused, staring down at the beginnings of the design.

“So maybe you can promise us a life of happiness with just one tattoo.” His eyes met mine and stayed there. “But this will hurt, Maddie, a whole damn lot. Take how much you think it’s going to hurt and multiply that. I want to put my mark on you more than I want my next breath, but this…”

Those long, sensitive fingers slid up and down my arm.

“The bear, me, it makes us uneasy hurting you, especially for something that’s non-essential.”

“Except it’s not.” I reached out and grabbed his hand. “It’s not for you. This is what you’ve been fantasising about for so long. I can do this. I got through the other tattoo OK.”

“The other tattoo…” He shook his head sharply. “That’s going to be a pinprick in comparison to this.”

But we didn’t argue any further. The texta slid across my skin, sketching the design in with more and more detail, until finally he pulled away.

“Come look in the mirror.”

This was the easy part, I told myself, but I was already a little light-headed when I jumped off the bench. Bjorn’s hands went out, trying to steady me right as I moved towards the mirror. I saw myself, obviously, not exactly well groomed. My hair was wild and needed a good brush and my arm was sticking out of my shirt, pale and pasty, but Bjorn’s bright orange marks stood out plainly across my skin.

“I don’t want to use a lot of colour,” he explained, coming to stand behind me, the contrast between us stark. “I’m thinking of just using mainly line work and some stippling for the shading.”

“Scared of hurting me?” I asked with a smile.

“No.” His fingertips brushed my arm. “Peonies are a deep pink or red and that will be too harsh on your skin. When I saw it… In my head, the design was delicate, feminine.” He looked down at me, forcing me to gaze up at him. “Just like you.”

I snorted.

“I don’t think anyone’s ever called me delicate before.”

“You are to me.” Big hands wrapped around my biceps. “Small, fragile, human, but also… beautiful. Let me mark you, my mate, and let me make it beautiful.”

Tears rose in my eyes, the ones I’d been forced to keep back when he told me what was going on with his mother. They blurred the sight of him, until I was forced to blink them away. I nodded, my throat too thick for words, and that’s when he turned me around to face him.

“I’ll make it good, I promise,” he said between kisses. They started out almost chaste, but quickly grew more heated. I clung to them, to him, my hands fighting to grip those massive arms. “And I’ll be as quick as I can, not try to hurt you anymore than I have to.”

“Take all the time you need,” I replied, no doubt going to regret that later. “This has been a long time coming. Let’s do it right.”

Chapter 61

Bjorn

I’d never understood the appeal of the process of being tattooed for groupies before. When I was working, I just dropped down into some timeless space inside my head, not focussing on the client, just the tattoo. I was the tattoo gun, my eye and the needles on the end becoming an extension of each other. But as Maddie lay down on my bench, I started to get it. Something tight curled in anticipation, deep inside me, as I rolled closer on my stool and when I reached for some fresh gloves, she shook her head.

“You don’t have to…” My fingers rested on the box, staring down at her. “I mean, unless you need to.”

“They provide a barrier between me and you,” I explained. “Doing a tattoo means piercing the skin.” Did she realise her pupils expanded at that idea? “That means blood. The gloves stop me from transmitting any bacteria from my hands into that tattoo and it stops any diseases in your blood getting into me.”

But the idea of tattooing her bare? It cast my job in a whole new light. I’d feel the warmth of her skin, able to detect each shift in muscle as I worked. I liked it. I liked it a whole lot.

“Is there any other way of stopping bacteria getting into the tattoo? I mean, the amount of bodily fluids we’ve all shared, it’s probably a foregone conclusion with blood borne diseases.”

There wasn’t, not perfectly, but I was up and off the stool, going over to the sink and pumping heaps of Hibiclens over my hands, scrubbing like I was a surgeon ready for theatre. I used the small nail brush to get under my nails and between my fingers, then rinsed off. Because when I turned back to Maddie, my beautiful girl watched my every move.

I had a long, firm talk with the bear about this. He knew what I did. Found it incomprehensible that people wanted that, but he’d seen me at work enough times to understand it happened. He smelled the blood and the fear and sometimes that made him happy, but that didn’t extend to Maddie. When I’d fantasised about just this moment, I had to talk him through it.

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