Sharpie on thighs "I want to feel you here"

On Skin Writing

I have loved skin writing for as long as I can remember.

When I was a young girl, I was the one constantly scolded by teachers and parents for inking up my skin. I’d spend half an hour drawing an elaborate sketch on my thigh beneath my shorts while I learned algebra, or I’d doodle all over my forearm while I gabbed on the phone. There was a combination of factors that appealed to me when I did it—from the glide of the pen over my skin to the unique words, image, or design I’d set out to put there for whomever to see. I liked the look of ink on skin, and the way people told me I wasn’t supposed to do it. It was more appealing to me than a tattoo, because I could change it to fit my mood, and scrub it all away for a new blank canvas if I didn’t want it to endure. Then, skin writing was just a thing I liked to try; but later, it would turn into a huge turn on for me.

When I was 18, I saw The Pillow Book at a small theatre in my hometown. It was the first erotic movie I ever saw, and everything about it excited me: a writer heroine, her discovery and search for sexual experiences, sexy images of flesh, calligraphy against skin, Ewan McGregor, full frontal male nudity, pure devotion, and a Romeo and Juliet style twist. I left the theatre moved by the story, but more by how exotic and erotic the look of all that calligraphy had appeared on the flesh. I’d had a tattoo in mind for a couple years by then—one I swore I’d get after the publication of my first book, which is indeed going to happen—but even that didn’t strike me as much as this story’s concept had. When Ewan McGregor ripped open his shirt and said, “Use my body like the pages of a book…of your book,” I had a whole new notion of what skin writing could do. It was the using of someone’s flesh in creation of a story to be read and understood—and I craved this, someone else using my skin like I had all those years.

The thought mostly buried itself over the next decade. I had a professional career and didn’t usually have time to doodle on my skin, but sometimes, when I was bored, I’d Sharpie a word or symbol on the bottom of my foot. Later, this transformed into a love of henna. Whenever I could, I’d henna the entirety of a foot and all the way up my calf with some new design I liked. When I went on vacation, I’d mark up my hand with something to catch the eye. It still wasn’t the same as what had roused me in that flick, though—it was done by me, for one, and the henna lacked the same appeal.

Of course, that didn’t stop me from convincing an artist I dated in my late twenties from coming over to henna the entirety of my back. We’d shared a bottle of wine before I’d stripped down to my panties and stretched myself out on the living room floor. He’d squealed over the canvas of my back—literally squealed, because he was an exuberant, lively, playful man—and I clearly remember him sitting on my ass for a long time, waiting while he looked over my naked back and breathed these heavy, deep breaths.

“Anything? I can draw anything?”

“Yes, anything,” I’d said. He’d stared over me for what felt like forever, then spent the next forty or so minutes dragging paintbrushes and fingers across my skin to create whatever henna design he had in mind. He told me how he was playing along with the lines of my back, and not only did I love that what he was drawing was a mystery I couldn’t see, but that as he shifted on my ass to work, we both grew breathless until he called it done.

“Is it weird that I really want to fuck you right now?” he’d said. I’d shaken my head so fast, confessing I felt the same—and we’d fucked right there on the carpet, me flat on my belly and him trying his hardest not to wreck his design. Sadly, it rubbed off a little on his stomach (we might have gotten a bit into it), but nonetheless, I was still tickled to flash him what was left over the next few days.

After him, the urge quieted again. Henna seemed the answer, but my life was too busy to sit down for a session. Occasionally, I’d write memos with ink on my palm, even if I had a perfectly good post-it stack, or phone to jot a note in. Years later, though, I’d have the sexiest relationship of my life, where everything was an option, and want—pure want, desperate, vocal, speak it out loud want—was the name of the game.

I miss you, I’d told this lover via text. I want you, now.

I want you too. Now. Soon. How would you have me?

This picture is what I sent him in response.

Sharpie on thighs "I want to feel you here"

Needless to say, we found a way to get together soon after… But until then? I refused to wash off the words. I loved that I could pull down my pants in the bathroom at work and find that level of want scrawled on my thighs. That my chicken-scratch handwriting revealed my desperation on my very skin, and that he was making his greatest efforts to come strip me down to find it.

I told him later I wanted him to Sharpie all over me, call me names and scribe his lust for me on my flesh. He loved the idea, but our relationship was, unfortunately, fairly short-lived after that. So, I tucked the urge away for many more years.

I nearly forgot about it.

But one night, not all that many months ago, it flared up again. It was a coincidence with a friend, but it suited exactly what I’d always wanted—someone else writing on me, using my skin as he saw fit. We’d gone out to a party and both of us were dressed to the nines, and after a few drinks, he’d wanted to make a list but had no paper. I’d offered up a pen and the entirety of my thigh, and though he thought I was kidding, I soon arranged myself as best I could in the front seat of his car, the entire event furthered, somehow, by my efforts to not flash everything up the skirt of my sassy dress. There was something blissfully erotic in him gripping my leg, writing his message on my bare skin—especially as dressed up as I was. I remember holding my breath, because the combination of his own breath over my leg and the scratch of his pen turned me on more than I could ever admit to this friend. Well, that, and not knowing what it was he was writing in his hunch over my leg.

His scrawl ended up being a childish, silly note—but from that experience, I finally knew what about skin writing made me tick, and what elements, exactly, I was after: my skin, offered up for him to write whatever he pleased; him, shifting me about to scrawl on the curves of my body; that pen, marking me up in a gritty, vulgar way that completely contrasted how glammed up I was right then. And even though what he wrote ultimately irritated me, I still felt the burn of it when I tried to wash it away in the morning, and the memory of being used for whatever he wanted to write. That’s what I loved the most.

Skin writing has so much potential to it, whether it is done in a beautiful way as in The Pillow Book, or in a purposefully crude way like that memorable note on my thigh.

Which is why one day, I hope I’ll get all the elements just right—because it is truly a turn on for me.

Click the lips for more Kink of the Week…

Man and woman in sensual embrace about to kiss.;Sean Nel ©123RF.com

The Kiss

When I saw the Kink of the Week theme this time around, I knew I had to join in—both because the kiss is one of my favorite acts, and because I’ve been so lucky to have had many wonderful kisses. What I love most about the kiss is its variation; in one moment, it can be soft, sensual, and sweet, a tender caress between lovers. But in the next, it can be rough, wild, and hard, a battle of tongues that signals deep desire, given as easily as it can be taken away. The kiss is as intimate as it is a tease, and as passionate as it can be purposely cold. “It’s all in the kiss” is a phrase that often holds true—if for no other reason than it might, potentially, provide a glimpse of what lay ahead. Sloppy but given with gusto? Rough and taken with a trained gaze? Soft and peppered with whispers of yes, more, yes…? There is certainly much to be drawn from a kiss.

Man and woman in sensual embrace about to kiss.

Yes. This moment. Sean Nel ©123RF.com

Kisses are also as memorable in their fails as they are in their successes—those bad ones have the tendency to stand out all on their own. My first kiss was a silly thing, a peck on the lips I gave a fellow 7-year-old on a dare in the middle of an elementary school field. It was an all eye-open, quick lips, what-the-fuck-is-this-thing-we’re-doing kind of kiss. (Okay, maybe more for surprised him than me.) My first mutual kiss came six years later with my first boyfriend, and it was another awkward, mouth-closed, eye-open (him) disaster that left me pining. Even some of the ones I shared with my high school sweetheart later on live in this funny Bad Kiss Memory Land for his apparent desire to swallow my face whole—which admittedly, was as endearing as it was absurd.

Fortunately, beyond those experiences, I discovered many beautiful kisses. A heavy, sensual kiss that happened in the middle of a rainy afternoon remains the one I consider my real first; it was slow initially, hands slipped into hair, breaths whishes of sound between us as if to signal how closely we were about to connect. Much later, I experienced kisses so heavy and intense they felt stolen in the dark, but so delicious I would have given anything to have them stolen all over again. Later still was an insanely memorable dance floor kiss—a slow-build thing that seemed like it would happen the second we met, and yet didn’t all through the two solid hours we swung ourselves around, lips near and smiles wide…until the kiss itself made it feel like time stopped. There was another kiss with someone else that merged sweet with seductive while we swayed half-clothed in a living room, where curious pecks and nibbles of each other’s lips soon blurred into a meshing of tongues so combustible it was hard to believe we’d done anything more than kiss. And far later, I’d swear I found my kissing soul mate, with whom kisses were desperate, deep, and in sync, sparking almost as much electricity in the tension before our lips met as when they actually did. (Of course, it didn’t hurt that he would turn out to be alarmingly good with his mouth in every other way, too…) 😉 To this day, that lips nearing, eyes locking, breaths speeding come-together is as much one of my favorite moments in fiction as it is in real life—because goddamn, that build has the potential to make an actual kiss so much hotter.

One of the other joys of the kiss is that it is built to travel. It can graze the swoop of a shoulder just as easily as it can tease an inner thigh, and it can also transform into anything: the suck of a nipple, the nibble of a finger, the taste of cunt or cock. But after this transformation, it can always come right back up to where it started—sealing the moment as a quiet end to a beautiful, luscious storm.

So in case it was at all unclear—I’m a big fan of the kiss.

What about you?

XX,
Jade

Want more kisses? Click on the lips… 

Man kissing woman against a wall.Artem Merzlenko ©123RF.com

Erotic Fiction: “Passerby”

At the start of the month, the incredible Molly Moore chose a Kink of the Week theme of anonymous sex, a topic she’d been thinking on for a while but that she sweetly said was re-inspired by reading my story, “A Taste.”

I’ve been delighted to see all the stories, essays, and musings roused by this theme—and since Molly paid me such a lovely compliment, I knew it was time to pull the following story out from my desktop files to finally meet the world. It’s got a very different tone than “A Taste,” but since it fit the theme so perfectly, I couldn’t resist.

I hope you enjoy…

XX,
Jade

PASSERBY

by

Jade A. Waters

 

Celine had walked down Fremont Street at least four thousand times in her life.

It was always consistent—storefront after storefront, the occasional woman with a stroller, a pissing dog by one of ten fire hydrants. She’d never left this town and still didn’t know if she ever would, because everything was familiar and quaint here. She could rattle off the business hours of any shop simply from her constant walks back and forth, home to work, work to home. She didn’t like to drive, preferring the fresh air against her face while she processed everything she’d seen that day, or what she might do that evening. She didn’t even take her car to the grocery store, instead favoring the slap of her shoes on the pavement and the opportunity to observe all the sparks of life around her.

Because that’s what she did: observe. It was part of her job as a research tech, and part of her role back in her student days, too. Watching. Recording. Thinking. Processing. Wondering. All the magic she saw happened in test tubes, petri dishes, and experiments. It amazed her that despite the bevy of surprises in the lab, her life repeatedly followed an invariable routine.

Celine adjusted her bag on her shoulder. Sometimes, she wondered if she should have left after high school. It wasn’t that she ran into her alumni all the time, or saw too many of the same people, time and again—but other than the flickers of life she discovered in the lab, all of it was repetitive. Storefront. Stroller. Dog. Today she saw the postwoman, her arm stretched in a wave as she walked along the other side of the street.

How many times had the postwoman been up and down Fremont Street?

A gust of wind picked up as Celine approached the library. It was pleasant, different. It blew her skirt to the side, gathering the fabric against her legs and sending it in a flutter toward the road as if trying to steer her in a new direction. She’d probably been inside the city library two hundred times as a teen, and on occasion when the research shelves at work didn’t have what she sought. It was the last business before a long stretch of recreational parks and trees; beyond that, the road broke into the residential section of town.

Celine closed her eyes as she walked, picturing the cells in her petri dishes growing larger, into full shapes. Life. Their latest experiment was really something, and she could already form the lines of the report she’d send off to the American Journal of Science in the next year. She inhaled excitedly, enjoying the whiff of honeysuckle from the park behind the library, the pungent, sweet scent carrying on the breeze. It was myrrh with a hint of citrus, an unusual combination, she thought. Celine opened her eyes.

Two fire hydrants down on the road, a man walked toward her. She tilted her head—somehow, she hadn’t noticed him before.

But now Celine, ever the observer, watched as he neared her. He started as a small speck in the distance—a dark-haired, tall stranger. Closer and closer he came as Celine walked down Fremont Street. She could see him clearer now, wearing jeans, tee shirt, and flip flops. He appeared casual yet clean, his hair thick and black, and falling just below his ears. He was handsome, almost like a better version of her high school sweetheart, if he had been darker and older.

She was at the library now and the man was close, his torso broad beneath his shirt as his muscular arms swung at his sides. He had the kind of body she fantasized about when she was alone in her house night after night. Maybe it was the wind, or more likely it was the view, but goose bumps sprinkled over her skin. He was still a bit down the road and yet Celine could make out his face. He had green eyes, a stern nose, and a smiling mouth. There was much more life in him than that of a petri dish.

And he was such a different view than she’d ever seen on Fremont Street.

They passed each other as two passersby on a stretch of quiet road do—she didn’t say anything and neither did he. But when she met his eyes, she nodded a hello. Her body surprised her as she did. There was a vibration deep in her core, a pang of longing that she hadn’t felt in a while. He smelled like aftershave, the good kind that didn’t overpower or suffocate like that of her supervisor or her ex-boyfriend. And up close and brushing by her shoulder, the man’s arm sent a quiver through her limbs. His torso was almost twice as broad as she’d thought from a distance, and she had a spontaneous wonder over what it would feel like to touch his skin and to kiss him, or to feel him pressing inside.

Then he was past her, a single variable on the same old street.

Celine kept walking but slowed her pace. She was a scientist through and through—researching, observing, processing. It occurred to her that walking past the man had been like breaking through an invisible shield, both of them trapped for a minute in a magnetic vortex before sliding past one other and back into their own worlds.

Then again, it could have been her imagination, her constant wonder over how everything outside of work was so routine.

Celine cast a second glance over her shoulder, regardless.

The man did the same.

She faced home and took another step. She’d passed hundreds of faces—smiling here, waving there. Always constant.

But what if, this time, it was different?

What if he’d felt it, too?

Celine turned around. Her throat was parched but she shouted anyway.

“Hey,” she said.

Immediately, the man pivoted on his feet. His lips stretched in a bigger grin.

“Hey.”

Celine’s experiments for the last three years introduced foreign cells to those already growing in her petri dishes. Cell Type X, adhering with A, B, or C. Watching them fuse together in the dish had made her nipples harden beneath her coat—it was something unusual and new.

Like this man.

He came back, hovering a good foot taller than her. His face was clearer now that she could see him up close. He smelled of aftershave because his face was smoothly shaven, and on his neck he had the tiniest nick from a razor blade. His shirt was blue and faded, grazing the waist of his jeans. He removed his hands from his pockets. He had a large watch on his left wrist and a jagged scar on his arm, just below the hem of his right sleeve.

This is the arm he curled around her waist.

Celine’s breath caught, her skin teased with another gust of wind and the nearness of this man, smiling down at her.

What if Cell X and Cell A mixed?

What if they collided in a furious storm, creating new cells and surprising everyone with the aftermath? The discovery?

Celine raised her chin, offering her lips. She had a flash of how crazy it was, and yet there was something about this man, this random passerby she’d never seen on her walk before. When she didn’t pull away, he coiled his other arm around her waist and tugged her into him, his chest firm against hers. His cock swelled beneath his jeans.

Celine found this most fascinating, since she, too, was aroused in the strangest way. She shifted her feet, squaring herself in his arms. Her pussy was wet, wetter than it had ever been in four thousand walks down this sidewalk.

And when the man lowered his lips to hers, she imagined cells bursting.

His mouth was a little rough, his tongue exploring the crease of her lips. She opened them for him. Their tongues merged in a fit of kissing, both of them magnetized by this sudden change on a gusty afternoon. Celine leaned into him, feeling the thump of his heart within his chest that matched the one within hers.

She wanted him inside of her then, this stranger she didn’t know.

She slipped her hand into his and he broke their kiss, staring down over her face. Maybe she should have said something, but it didn’t feel necessary.

Cell X and Cell A didn’t speak.

Why should they?

Man kissing woman against a wall.

Artem Merzlenko ©123RF.com

Celine and the man walked through the library parking lot. They eyed one another, unspeaking. Behind the building, there was a row of trees lining a fence that separated the property from yet another recreational park. It was absurd how many parks filled this endless, quaint town.

There was no one in the park when the man backed Celine against the library wall. She didn’t know if she would have minded if there was, either, because as he kissed her again, heat surged in her center. It was an unexpected sensation, for the first time in a long time. She laced her fingers in his hair, enjoying the soft thickness on her skin. His hands caressed her shoulders while they kissed and she curled her arms around his waist, inviting him closer. When he pitched himself against her she moaned, shivering as his hands ran down her sides, then under her shirt. He palmed her belly in gentle strokes and glided his fingers up to her bra. When he thumbed her nipples she tilted back her head, letting him shower her neck in kisses.

Celine knew some experiments moved in rapid time. She arched up her hips, wanting the rub of him lower and deeper. The man gazed into her eyes, questioning. Wondering. Like she’d done so many times as she walked down Fremont Street or marveled at the growth in a petri dish. His fingers plucked at her skirt, dragging the fabric up, revealing her calves to the baffling wind. When he crept his hands higher, his fingertips trailed over her hips and she nestled her face into his chest, smelling him against the backdrop of honeysuckle and the growl of the air around them.

She curved her hands over his ass, gripping his muscular cheeks. Nudging him against her. He slipped his fingers beneath the edge of her panties, playing across her short curls, then over her clit. Celine moaned and lifted her face up to his.

“Yes,” she said. She brushed her lips across his t-shirt and repeated the single word, loud over the wind. “Yes.”

The man’s fingers sank into her while he kissed her again. His tongue slid deep, and his fingers plunged far. The rhythm of his thrusts stirred Celine. She whimpered against his lips as he glided his fingers faster, as if seeking inside her with probing fingers while he pressed his cock hard against her side. She shoved her hand in his pants and grabbed onto him, stroking his length as he fucked her hip. The man groaned into her mouth. Celine imagined cells growing and multiplying, splitting and stunning—complex yet simple things. Her body trembled as the man pushed his fingers in and out, teasing her depths. His kisses broke into gasps over her mouth and cheeks, hot puffs of air that mimicked hers. She began to shudder. Her walls trembled around his fingers, flooding with life, contracting with bliss until a cry fell from her lips. The man smothered her in a kiss then, coming in her hand. The hot liquid coated her wrist and warmed her hip through all of the fabric between them.

For several minutes, they didn’t move. They were frozen against the building, statues in the wind—proof of an experiment gone well. His shaft pulsed in her palm and the aftershocks in her sex squeezed his fingers. Eventually, she raised her eyes. The man kissed Celine’s forehead, then her lips, and they slowly untangled themselves and broke apart.

Without a word, he took her hand. They walked back to the front of the library. Celine’s heart had resumed a moderate pace again, the same tempo she was used to, day in and day out. But now, she had a smile on her face.

When they reached the sidewalk, the man wrapped her in his arms for a long, tight embrace.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“You, too,” she said.

And then they walked in their separate directions again.

While Celine headed toward home, she enjoyed the breeze against her arms and the familiar stretch of the road.

She’d walked down Fremont Street over four thousand times, but her life had never looked so new.