Page 37 of Dark Ink

A pen tapped a signature box at the bottom of the page.

“This course requires the professor’s signature to switch out of,” she said. “So just get that for us and we’ll get you all sorted.”

My heart seized.

“The professor’s signature?”

The registrar turned to me with a smile that I did not share. “Professor Merrick.”

Rian

She was cool to the touch.

My palms cupped her and she was soft, supple, wet. She responded to the slightest pressure. Just a little too much and she would squirm away. Just a little too soft and she would try to take control. She felt like butter beneath me. Like silk. I worked her till she was to the point of breaking. I pushed her further. She could take it; I was sure she could take it. She moved with me like we were partners in a dance. Like we were holding each other in a lake, bobbing with its rhythm. Like we were fucking.

She relented to my pressure. She was mine. She was all mine.

The door to the college’s pottery studio slammed open. It was all the distraction I needed to lose control. The clay I’d been spinning whipped from the stand and landed with a wet splatter a few feet away. Before me stood Eithne. Darkness in her eyes, hair uncombed and tangled. Old collegiate sweatshirt crumpled and limp on her shoulders as if situated haphazardly on a spare hanger. In her hands she gripped a piece of paper.

She glared at me from across the pottery wheel that kept spinning between my thighs.

“You’re supposed to be at your office hours,” she said, pointing indignantly at the clock. I did not follow her finger, did not take my eyes off her in case she disappeared again.

“You were supposed to be at Dublin Ink yesterday.” I tried not to let bitterness cloud my voice, but her rejection still stung.

“I’ve searched all over campus for you and frankly I have a million better things to do,” she added with a huff, ignoring my statement.

She remained half a room away, but I could feel her desire to step closer. It was as if a tether was wrapped around the spinning pottery wheel and with each rotation it was tightening. I knew soon she would have no choice but to step closer. Or get dragged.

“Come here,” I commanded.

My hands were still wet from the clay. I wanted to drag them across her skin before they dried. I wanted to see my handprints against her pale chest. I wanted to draw lines across her naked back like a map, in case I couldn’t find her again. In case I doubted once more that she was real, like Conor and Mason and Aurnia.

“No,” Eithne said.

I stopped the wheel. The pottery room suddenly felt hollow. Deadly silent. Not even the clock on the wall seemed to be ticking.

“What did you say?”

Eithne swallowed. Gripped the piece of paper clutched in her hand even tighter.

“I need your signature to switch out of your class,” she said. “That’s all I need from you. It’s the reason I came here, the reason I found you. The only reason. Once you sign this form, I’m leaving. And I’d really much prefer that you come to me.”

Eithne said these sentences like they were rehearsed. Like a little girl in a school play with a handful of lines she committed to memory each night before bed. Like if she didn’t say them all, and just right, she would turn into clay right there at the door and let me have my way with her, form her as I willed. Do with her supple, relenting body as I willed.

“You need my signature,” I repeated slowly.

Eithne nodded. Was she afraid to speak? Afraid to say she needed more than just that? Much more? Was she afraid to say she was like me? Hungry? Helpless?

“And if you don’t have my signature…”

Eithne set her jaw. She extended the form toward me. She didn’t move any closer. But she stretched out her arm. A little girl feeding the strange dog. The dog that might lick her hand. The dog that might bite.

“I need to get going,” she said.

“I thought you needed my signature.”

Eithne kept her gaze steady on me and she kept the bunched-up form steady in her extended arm. With a sigh, I pushed up from my knees. I noticed a slight exhale of relief from my little Raglan Road girl. Her arm sank an inch or two. She thought she was getting what she wanted. Or rather what she thought she wanted.

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