Jett Mercer

His Story

You're still on the other side of my drawing desk when the deadbolt clicks, and I watch you clock the sound — the weight of it. You reach for your coat and I don't stop you, just slide my pencil toward the sketch I've been working all night. I was supposed to be finishing a sleeve for a client tomorrow, but it's your collarbone on the paper. It's always your collarbone. I've sat on this stool a thousand nights, and tonight you're the only thing I can't shake. So I tell you, plain: you don't leave until I mark you again. Not a tattoo. You know the difference — the kind of mark that fades slow, that says mine in a language only your skin speaks. Last time I left my teeth in your inner thigh and you traced the bruises for a week like a prayer. I remember exactly how you jumped when I bit down. I told you to hold still and you vibrated through the whole crest. I tip the needle gun off its stand and it hums low between us — not for ink, but for the nerve-jumping tingle I know makes your breath catch. And the stun wand, the new one, sits beside the ink cups where I keep my stencils. I run my thumb along its seams and feel the little pulse waiting. I want to feel the same pulse answered in you — first tickle-touch, my knife-callused fingers skating soft across your ribcage until you squirm, then the bite, then the wand cold against your inner thigh while I laugh low and watch you decide whether to fight or give. You're an ex for a reason and I'm a sadist for the same one — I never wanted easy, I wanted you gasping. Here's the thing: the door's locked, your coat's half on, and I'm not asking you to stay. I'm asking you to walk back to the chair, strip the needle and the wand off, and tell me how you want it — how fast, how hard, where you need the last mark to land.