Page 51 of Pink Ink

Her brows shoot up her forehead. I dislike that I don’t know the reason behind her shock at such a simple question. “That’s reserved for your class. Bradford hated it.” She rolls her eyes.

I scoff, risking leaning back now that I’m not about to stab her in the eye with my cock. “Bradford can’t recognize talent.”

“And you can?”

“Yes.” My own work may have gone to shit, but I still have eyes.

I take it back. My cock may still demand her attention if she keeps innocently biting her lip like that. How have I become so easy?

“Who would you consider to be the most promising student in our class? Bradford thought Nicole was a natural,” she says a couple volumes lower.

Reyna’s fishing, and I won’t be the one to tell her what she wants to hear. That would take this to another level we shouldn’t go near. But my answer would be her. In all of my classes, she’s the one who shows the most potential for greatness.

“It’s unprofessional for me to pick favorites, let alone discuss them with you, Miss Sinaga.” I keep my tone scolding, and it’s like lighting a fuse beneath her. It’s good to know she’s as reactive as I am.

“And discussing methods of dismemberment isn’t?” she argues.

I almost prefer it when she acts like she hates me, because then I can fool myself into loathing her. For a couple of seconds at least, before the sick thrill of her attention on me drags me closer to the edge of completely losing it.

Every inch of her was carved by a being of the divine, and each sentence past her plump, biteable lips seems to have been strung together to keep me in her web.

“Everything can be turned into an artform. Just as you’ve made blood pink. I’m curious to know what the thought process behind it was. It was never explained in your prior assignments.”

I’m curious about everything to do with her.

“What’s your take on it?” She says it like a challenge, as if she thinks I’ll never figure it out—and bloody fucking hell does she have me right where she wants me.

Ifeelmyself sitting straighter. Feel the cogs turning in my head, the beat of my heart. It’s like going into a test where I’m ninety percent certain I know the material better than the back of my hand, but there’s still the ten percent.

“It’s never simply an aesthetic choice where you’re involved.”

The barest hint of a smile ghosts over her lips. It’s the knowing kind, like I’ve acknowledged a secret that’s been weighing her down. It’s distracting.

And it’s going straight to my head.

I fear the library isn’t big enough for how easily she stokes my ego.

I clear my throat. “One, that there’s a significant gender disparity in the film industry. Of the top films, under ten percent of directors were women, and about sixteen percent of all directors, producers, writers, editors, et cetera, were women. Which leads to two, you mentioned being able to tell if the creator was a man or a woman. No male would choose such a color.”

Reyna’s wide brown eyes have me feeling like some kind of idiot for wanting to puff my chest out like some pubescent attempting to woo a high school crush with basic knowledge.

“Thirdly, one I believe may just be a happy coincidence, the softening of violence through the weaponization of a stigmatized color, and making the murder feel surreal, dreamlike, or even innocent.” She’s still staring. I clear my throat for the second time, skin warming under her attention. “Just to name a few.”

Her mouth is open in astonishment, and all I can still think about is what it would look like to have those lips wrapped around my cock.

I cross my legs, resting my ankle on my knee as I ease back in my chair. “Miss Sinaga, I could draft a dissertation theorizing your intentions, but I’d rather hear it from the source.”

“What you said. Plus, there’s two more parts to it.”

She sits straighter. Her tone is even and confident, tinged with a spark of preemptive anger, and a splash of defensiveness. Bradford’s doing, I assume.

“On one hand, there’s sentimentality. On the other hand, like you said, society has prescribed notions of femininity and masculinity to specific colors.Using pink as the blood is the feminization of violence typically caused by men. It’s ironic, contradictory, and elicits emotional dissonance. Jarring, and it makes men uncomfortable. The wordgirlysits on the tip of their tongue, but they never say it, because the level of brutality of the crime was fueled by testosterone and male ego. A color is a color. Whether the liquid bleeding from a puncture wound is green or blue or even purple.”

There are many firsts in my life that I will never remember. My first steps. The first painting I did. My very first purchase.

Now, I will always remember the time I got completely hard listening to a student discuss the interplay of social constructivism, art, and death.

My cock is throbbing.