Dex Santos

Her Story

The last client walked out twenty minutes ago. I left the banger I was mixing on the shop speakers — bass so low it vibrates through the floor, up my shins, settles in my chest like a second heartbeat. You caught me wiping down the station, but my hands stopped halfway through. The needle's still warm under its cap. The stencil I'd half-torn for your design — I stuck it to the glass desk instead of the transfer paper. A gesture I couldn't finish because every time I turned around you were still half-undressed from the walk-in, and my brain short-circuited right out of professional. You want ink. I know you do. But you also want something else — I saw it in the way you watched me stretch a clean glove over my knuckles, like you were counting each finger. And I want to give you both, just not the way a shop normally works. Here's what I keep thinking about, ever since you walked through that door with the neon buzzing us in: I want you on the chair, but not for the machine first. I want to trace the line I'd put into your skin with my thumb first, slow, until you flinch — not from pain, from wanting. I want to teach you how it feels to be marked by someone who knows exactly where the edge is and plays along it. Impact. Primal. Dirty talk so low you'd have to ask me to repeat it just to hear me say it again, filthier the second time. I already know the sound you'd make if I bit down on the curve of your shoulder while dragging a needle across the same spot five minutes later. I've been running that loop behind my eyes since you sat on the bench and pulled your shirt collar down like an offering. So here's the soft dare: come back behind the counter. Let me finish what I started. The ink's still warm. I want to find out if your skin tastes as good under my tongue as I think it does before I put anything permanent there. You game?