We recently partnered with our lusty friends at We-Vibe to host AROUSE: a nation-wide erotica writing contest. Your submissions were hot AF, and after reviewing nearly a hundred dirty stories, we sent the top ten to our judges, who then selected the winning entries.

This one was the hottest of them all: The Tattoo Artist by Hepsibeth Smythe.

We hope you enjoy it. And to maximize your pleasure, pop over to We-Vibe for products that’ll enhance your experience.


I was lying on my back on the half-reclined tattooing chair, and two hours in, the intermittent buzz of the tattoo gun had grown familiar. I had my tank top pulled up to expose my right side, and she was sitting close, leaning in as she moved the gun carefully over my ribs.

It had taken me a few minutes of the needle against my skin to get distracted enough to relax. At first, being this close to her—partly undressed, with her attention on me—had almost made me dizzy. She reminded me of the kinds of boys that I had crushes on in high school: lean and confident, tired eyes and messy hair, a playful swagger in the way that she moved. When she first put her hands on me, my breath caught in my throat and I felt myself get wet, immediately.

The combination of the heavy, drowsy summer heat, the pain of the needle, and the closeness of her had lulled me into a kind of natural high. I was blissed out, turned on, deliciously present in my body. I breathed deeply into the sensation of the needle’s sharp insistence, hyperaware of the contact points between our bodies and the pulsing warmth of my cunt.

“You must be tough as fuck,” she murmured, her gaze following the tip of the needle as it pierced my side, again and again, right against my ribcage. Her voice was low and a little hoarse, her face barely a foot away from mine. I let my eyes linger on the pocket knife tattooed on the side of her neck, before moving up along her jaw to her mouth, to the serious lines of her face. “I’m used to people freaking out when I work on their ribs.”

“I like it,” I replied honestly, my own voice soft, our faces close enough together that we could almost whisper.

“Kinky,” she said under her breath, a half-smile playing over her lips. She paused to gently wipe away the excess ink, her expression softening back to seriousness as she looked over the work she’d done. I watched her face as her eyes traced over my skin.

And then she glanced up, catching me staring, my lips parted. When our eyes met a shock lit through me, lightning running beneath my skin. She held my gaze. Suddenly all of the air in the room felt charged and intensely still. For a couple of seconds neither of us moved. Then she said, in that low, hoarse voice:

“I think it’s done.”

I licked my lips, feeling a little lightheaded—maybe from the heat, or maybe from the awareness that our time together was running out. My heartbeat rose to a heavy thud. I could feel how wet I was, the longing to be touched a kind of pleasurable pain.

“… Show it to me?”

She picked up a hand mirror and held it at an angle for me to look. Without letting myself pause to think, I reached up and lightly put my fingers over hers to adjust the tilt of the mirror.

We were close enough that I heard her swallow in the pause before she spoke. “What do you think?” she asked. One of her fingers moved, almost imperceptibly, against mine, and a shiver of adrenaline rushed through my body. My eyes were fixed to the surface of the mirror but all of my awareness was collected into the places where my hand was touching hers. She slid her thumb out from under my fingers and lightly, slowly, grazed it against the back of my index finger.

My breath quickened, and I could see the rise and fall of my ribs as I looked at my tattoo in the mirror. “I love it,” I said quietly. My gaze slid from the surface of the mirror down to our two hands holding the mirror’s handle, and I watched her thumb as, again, she moved it along the back of my finger. A shiver ran through my body, goosebumps rising along my arms and the back of my neck. My fingers tightened, just a little, around hers, and she exhaled, a quiet rush of breath.

I could feel her watching me. I pulled my eyes back up to meet hers: that feeling, like an elevator dropping. Our breath the only sound, as her thumb continued to move along my finger. The focused intensity of that light, delicate sensation was getting me wetter than I’d felt in ages, more turned on than most lovers had ever been able to make me, and she was barely touching me. That one, subtle point of contact was building a tension deep inside me that was rising in swells, at once agonizing and inexpressibly delicious. My body began to tremble.

Suddenly, gently, she pulled her hand away, set the mirror down, and leaned back in her chair, studying my face, her expression serious and unreadable. She took a couple of slow, deep breaths. I was almost holding mine, the adrenaline coursing through me in the aftershock of her touch, all that unreleased tension still humming through me.

And then she said, “Tell me what you want.” Her voice was a low, hoarse murmur.

I swallowed, my gaze slipping down from her eyes to her mouth, to her neck, to the points of her nipples against the black fabric of her t-shirt, to her tattooed hands, gripping the armrests of the chair. Everything in me was an aching hunger.

“I want…” I glanced behind her, remembering where we were, and that someone could walk in at any moment. “I think I want you to lock the door.”

A smile crept across her features. She didn’t move.

“What else?” she murmured.

Between my legs, a rush of heat, radiating outward. Looking into her eyes, the thrill of feeling her wanting me back ran like electricity across the surface of my skin.

“I want,” I said, pausing to run my tongue over my lips, watching her gaze move down to my mouth, “to let you feel how wet I am right now.”

“Mm.” She tilted her head a little to the side and trailed her eyes over my body.

“… I want to feel you tasting me.”

Her lips parted. I watched the rise and fall of her chest. And I imagined it, my body still trembling, my cunt pulsing.

“And then with your mouth still on my clit, I want you to slide your fingers into me,” I said, low and steady. “I want to feel how you move inside me, first slowly, teasing me, holding back.”

“Fuck,” she exhaled.

“I want you to keep teasing me,” I whispered, “until I’m so wet from wanting you, until I’m shaking. Until I’m begging you.”

I stared into her eyes as I spoke, holding her gaze. The way that she was looking at me was almost as good as being physically touched. 

“And then,” I continued, “I want you to fuck me. Hard.”

Sitting back in the chair and watching me, she took a breath and let it out slowly. Without breaking eye contact, she leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, so that our faces were only inches apart. It would have been so easy to reach for her, to close the space between us—but I held back.  

Instead, I said, “I want you to know how I sound when you make me come.”

Her eyes moved down to rest on my mouth. She wetted her lips.  

I smiled, and murmured, “… And then I want to find out how you sound.”

She pushed the chair back, and got up to lock the door.

The AROUSE writing contest is a partnership between Shedoesthecity and We-Vibe. We love We-Vibe for many reasons: of course we enjoy mind-blowing orgasms, but we also value that We-Vibe products are designed and inspired by real bodies, real connection, and pure pleasure.

Keep coming back to read the top ten entries! They are most certainly arousing; we’re excited to share the diverse range of stories.