Paint It Black 1

"Paint It Black"

"EEEEEK!" Rachel squealed, looking at the gorgeous blonde girl in the bubblegum-pink dress. "Twins!"

DeeDee grinned back at her as the two kissed the air just next to each other's cheeks. "I should be so mad at you for wearing the same outfit as the birthday girl," she said, "but you just look so good in that dress! But you know everyone's going to think we did this on purpose!"

Rachel giggled. It wasn't just the dress that made her and DeeDee 'twins'. They both had the same long blonde hair (Rachel's was a bit straighter), the same blue eyes (DeeDee's were a bit lighter), and they even wore the same size outfits (at least for now--they had a running bet on who'd gain the "Freshman Fifteen".) At a big party like this, with both of them wearing their favorite color, everyone would probably be mixing them up all night long.

"I'm so glad you could make it to the party!" DeeDee said, leading her down the hallway into the grand ballroom. "When Mummy told me you were out in L.A. scouting apartments, I figured there was no way you'd be able to get back here in time."

Rachel winked. "I called Daddy up and pouted over the phone a bit, and he let me fly back in his private jet. You didn't really think I'd miss your eighteenth birthday, did you? I'd die of curiosity if I didn't see what you had planned!"

DeeDee opened the doors to the grand ballroom. "Mummy came up with the idea," she said modestly, "but I couldn't really turn it down."

Rachel gasped in delight. The whole ballroom had been turned into a miniature funfair, complete with carnival games, magic shows, entertainers and jugglers. Rachel noticed that the whole thing overflowed onto the lawn outside, where pony rides and an inflatable bouncy castle awaited her attentions. "Oh, this is just brilliant!" she sighed. "Much better than my eighteenth. I still can't believe that Daddy wouldn't spring for tickets for everyone to see Pink." She tried to affect a pout, but the atmosphere of the party turned it into an infectious grin.

DeeDee looked hesitant for a moment. "You don't think it's a bit...childish?" she said nervously.

"Oh, no!" Rachel said. "I mean, well, yes, but you only turn eighteen once, and what's the point of growing up if you can't be childish one last time?"

DeeDee's hesitation melted into delight. "Thanks, 'Chelly," she said. "Anyhow, I have to circulate and be hosty. Go nuts, there's tons to do, and the buffet is on the far side of the room, behind the midway."

They parted with another air-kiss, and Rachel let her feet carry her through the barely-organized chaos. She saw a few friends she knew she'd need to see before the night was done, but for right now she just had to see the entertainment. There was so much going on, she didn't even know where to start!

She spotted a sign that said 'FACE PAINTING', and immediately decided to make that her first destination. No matter what the rest of the night held, Rachel knew it would be better with a rainbow painted on her cheek. Or maybe a unicorn. Did the girl do unicorns? She really hoped so; a unicorn would be so awesome--

She slowed up a bit as she got close, some of her high spirits dampened by the girl sitting under the sign. She looked like she'd gotten lost on her way to an underground rave or something--she was dressed in this tight black t-shirt that hugged her boobs in a way that made her look like a total slut, and the leather skirt she was wearing didn't help any. She had something like five piercings in each ear, one on her lower lip, and she had this weird sort of eye thing tattooed on her arm. Her hair was short, spiked, and a shade of red no human being had ever naturally possessed, and just looking at her smug half-smirk made Rachel think about going without a unicorn for the night.

Rachel couldn't quite conceal her grimace. Ugh, what was DeeDee thinking? Whoever they hired to set this whole thing up, didn't they have...dress codes, or standards, or something to make sure that a girl like this didn't get in? She didn't look like she was having fun; she looked like she didn't even know what fun was, or at least like her idea of fun was sitting in a dark room somewhere listening to Cure albums and drinking absinthe or something.

Still, you sometimes had to expect this sort of thing when hiring people for temporary jobs at one-time events. It was hard to get good help, these days. Daddy had said that more times than she could count. And maybe the girl's artistic skills were good enough to justify her dressing like an emo goth queen at a carnival. Whatever the reason, Little Miss Downer wasn't going to stop Rachel from having fun tonight. She set her face in a smile and walked over to the booth. "Hi," she said, putting an almost-menacing amount of perkiness in her tone. "I wanted to get my face painted, um..." She looked for a name tag as she sat down, but the girl wasn't wearing one.

"Henna," she said, the smirk never leaving her face. She didn't look bored or disdainful, Rachel thought almost in surprise. She'd sort of assumed that those were the default facial expressions for goths, but Henna (and gee, wonder why she'd picked that name) looked more like she was enjoying a private joke. "What would you like...um...?" She finished the sentence in a mockery of Rachel's questioning tones.

"Rachel," she said, her expression souring just a little. She thought about mentioning that she was the birthday girl's best friend, just to see if that might knock a little of Henna's attitude out of her, but decided not to bother. "I wanted a unicorn, if you can do one." She tried not to make that last part sound sarcastic.

"Sure," Henna said, pulling out her paint and brushes. She didn't seem to have taken offense at the implied challenge to her artistic skills. "Just close your eyes, and hold your head as still as you possibly can."

Rachel wasn't sure exactly why she needed her eyes shut for this, but it wasn't like she'd be able to see her own cheeks anyway, and maybe she was planning to extend the design over her eyelids or something. Actually, Rachel thought as she shut her eyes, that would be kind of cool--every time she blinked, they'd be able to see the full design.

She felt the brush begin to tickle at her cheek, and the liquid coolness of the paint as Henna brushed it over her face. "Just don't move," Henna said. "Keep your whole face as still as possible. Don't move, don't speak, just hold perfectly still."

Henna kept the brush moving, painting the area around Rachel's eyes. Rachel tried to hold her head still, but she started to feel a tingling sensation where the paint was slowly drying on her face. It was just a tiny little tickle at first, as if the brush had left a phantom memory of its touch behind, but soon it turned into a hot, fierce tingling everywhere the paint had touched. Rachel started to open her mouth to speak, but Henna shushed her. "Don't move," she said. "You're crinkling your cheeks."

The brush moved over her eyelids now, leaving behind cool wetness that quickly turned to blazing heat on her skin. Her whole face felt flushed with heat, and Rachel let out a quick, sharp "Mmmm!" to get Henna's attention.

"What is it?" Henna said, momentarily taking the brush away.

"I..." The tingling heat was distracting now as it flared up on the whole right side of her face, radiating out from the places Henna had painted to make her whole face throb and buzz. "I think I'm allergic to this paint," Rachel said.

"Nah, it's totally hypoallergenic," Henna said. "I know for sure, I make it myself."

Rachel started to open her eyes, but the tingling was starting to make her dizzy and she clenched them shut even tighter as she steadied herself. "I...my face, though, it's...it's all tingly, and hot..."

"That's normal," Henna said, as she started to dab the brush against the left side of Rachel's face. "It's just temporary. You'll see, it'll subside after a minute or two."

Sure enough, the tingling faded from a painful heat to a warm, pleasant buzzing after a moment, even as she felt the blood rush to the left side of her face where Henna had started to work. Rachel wasn't sure that it really felt like a unicorn taking shape on her face, but the tingling made it hard to figure out exactly where the brush was at any given moment. The dizziness didn't help, either...unlike the tingling, it was only getting worse as Henna worked. Rachel felt like the whole room was spinning around her. Surprisingly, though, the sensation wasn't nauseating. It almost felt...nice. Really, really nice. Between the dizziness and the tingling, she felt...Rachel was suddenly very glad her face was flushed from the reaction to the paint, because she knew she'd be blushing all over right now.

Henna just kept working, the design growing more elaborate, and Rachel felt like she was losing track of time. Without anything to look at, she felt like she was just slipping into a timeless void where all that existed was the tickle of the brush and the pleasant buzz that seemed to cascade from her flushed and prickling face all the way down through her body. She thought about speaking, but the dizziness made it hard to concentrate, and she wasn't sure what she would say even if she wanted to risk wrecking Henna's work.

After what seemed like an age, Henna said, "All done. Want to take a look?"

Rachel opened her eyes. It was a lot harder to do than she thought it would be. She felt briefly like all she wanted to do was sit there, basking in that strangely sensual tingle and letting it radiate through her body, all the way down to her...she forced the thought aside and looked in the mirror Henna was holding up.

"That's not a unicorn!" she said. She barely even noticed the loose, muzzy tone in her own voice, she was so shocked by what she saw in the mirror. Her eyelids were painted in a blue so dark as to be almost black, and Henna had painted long black tears running down each cheek. "It looks..." She tried to collect her thoughts and give voice to her outrage, but her brain seemed to have sprung a leak and her tongue felt thick and heavy in her mouth, like she'd been given a shot of novocain.

"I know," Henna said apologetically. "It's the way your face is all red, it makes the black look funny. Just close your eyes again, I'll fix it."

Rachel tried to figure out exactly how Henna thought she could 'fix' black teardrops into looking like a unicorn, but while she was thinking, her eyes just seemed to slip shut of their own accord and once she felt the brush moving over her cheeks again, all she could think about was how important it was not to move her head at all. "That's right," Henna said softly as she painted, "just hold perfectly still. Don't move, don't speak, just listen and feel."

Rachel wasn't sure she could do anything but listen and feel now, even if she wanted to. Henna's brush-strokes set her face on fire, like she was incandescent with heat as it tickled across her cheek and down over her chin and up along her eyes and across her forehead. She felt so dizzy and hot now, dizzy and hot and she realized she was squirming in the chair, the heat taking on a sexual element no matter how hard she tried to deny it as she sat there. She wanted to slip away and find some way to relieve this growing tension, but she knew it was important not to move, important to just sit still and listen and feel...

And still the brush kept moving, each stroke feeling like a lover's caress as she felt the paint cover her face. She felt it pass over her lips like an endless kiss as the tickle of the brush was replaced by the luscious fiery tingling heat that ran along the edge of pain before melting into pleasure, and Rachel was aware that she was panting now but she had a hard time keeping track of anything else at all...

This time, when she heard Henna say, "All finished," she tried to open her eyes but found that they were stuck tightly shut. The pleasure was too distracting; it felt like too much of an effort to move at all. She just wanted to drift like this forever. Only when Henna said, "Open your eyes, Rachel," did she find that she could escape from that dreamy passivity and stare into the mirror.

The teardrop design was more elaborate, streaking down her face in twin fans of black, and her lips had been painted to match. The rest of her face had been painted stark white, and the black stood out even sharper against her newly-pale skin. "I, um..." Rachel tried to say something, but she wasn't quite sure what to think. "Something's...not right..." That wasn't what she had asked for...was it?

"I know," Henna said, "your nails don't match at all. Hold out your hands." Rachel followed the instruction without even thinking about it, and she found when she did try to think about it that it was just so

hard

. Her brain felt too buzzed and blissed-out to really process anything; all she could do was look down at her pink fingernails and agree that yes, it really didn't match her new face.

Henna took out a bottle of fingernail polish and began covering each pink nail with glossy black, and even though her eyes were open, Rachel somehow felt like she was still asleep. She just sat there, staring glassily at her own hands as Henna painted them black to match her face.

"That's a good girl," Henna whispered softly as she coated each nail in thick, lustrous darkness. "That's a very, very good girl." The words sounded condescending, but somehow the sweet, cooing tone made Rachel feel cherished and praised and joyous. She just felt totally content to sit there, watching her nails dry and feeling that buzz and tingle and dreamy sexual heat while she listened to Henna soothe her dizzy mind.

"There we go," Henna said as she painted the last nail. "All done, now. Doesn't that look better?"

"I..." Rachel wiggled her fingers slightly, and the way the light gleamed off the black paint just seemed to drive all thought from her mind. "Um...is this...um...shouldn't I...?" She finally gave up the effort at thinking, and sat there with a dazed expression on her face.

"You're totally right," Henna said. "You shouldn't look like that at all." Rachel breathed a sigh of relief. She wasn't sure what was wrong anymore, but she could feel that sense of unease, and she was so grateful to Henna for noticing it. "Your clothes are all wrong, aren't they?"

Rachel looked down at her pink dress. Then at her nails. Then at her dress again. Her thoughts seemed to chase themselves round in circles forever, and all the while, that buzzing, throbbing tingle pounded away between her thighs... "Yes?" she said at last, her confusion turning the answer into a question.

"Don't worry," Henna said, "I've got something you can wear. Come on, let's go find someplace private to change."

Rachel nodded vacantly. She'd been over to DeeDee's estate enough times that she knew where all the guest rooms were, and it felt easy to just float to her feet as Henna packed up her paints in her backpack and walked out of the room with her. She wondered distantly whether DeeDee would notice them leaving, but maybe DeeDee wouldn't recognize her anymore, even with the pink dress that she was already itching to change. She led Henna to a spare bedroom, but it felt more like Henna was leading her.

"Good girl," Henna said as she closed the door behind them. "Now why don't you get that dress off so we can put some better clothes on you? Don't worry about smearing the paint, it doesn't come off."

Rachel nodded like her head was on a string as she unzipped the dress and stepped out of it. She knew that Henna must see the damp spot on her panties, but somehow that seemed less embarrassing and more arousing as she stood there, waiting for Henna to dress her.

"Oh!" Henna said. "Actually, you know what? As long as you're undressed already, why don't we go ahead and put a few more designs on you? Trust me, they'll look great."

The words, 'Trust me,' seemed to echo in Rachel's mind like a cathedral bell as she laid down on the guest bed. Henna took out the paints again, and began to slowly paint a tribal band around Rachel's left arm. This time, with her eyes open, Rachel could watch the design take shape, and somehow the erotic feel of the paint against her skin just seemed to intensify as she watched Henna daub it onto her. She could hear herself breathing now, taking shallow, whimpering breaths as the tingle wiped away all her doubts, all her uncertainties, all her thoughts.

"Hmm," Henna said, her smirk widening, "where else looks like it needs a little paint? I know!" She traced her fingers over Rachel's right breast, and Rachel gasped sharply at the sensation. "Right here. You'll need to take your bra off so I can get at it, though."

Rachel nodded eagerly, now, unsnapping her bra and exposing her breasts to Henna's gaze. Her nipples stuck straight up, already so hard just from all the fiery heat flushing through her whole body, and when Henna began to paint a stylized black rose on her breast, it was all she could do not to wreck the design by gasping for breath. Whenever Henna dipped the brush back in the paint, she took a great, heaving breath as the tingling seemed to center itself in her nipples until all she wanted to do was tweak and pinch and finger them and she didn't even care that Henna would be watching her fondle her own tits until she screamed...

Henna blew on the design, and Rachel couldn't contain her moan of pleasure. "And one more, I think," Henna said, scooting down the bed to Rachel's waist. "Panties, honey."

Rachel practically ripped her panties off, exposing her hot and needy cunt to the cool air of the bedroom, her mindless mind consumed with the thought of Henna fingering it and stroking it and giving her the release she craved so badly now. But instead, Henna began to delicately paint the inside of Rachel's thigh, and Rachel found herself freezing into immobility even as her pussy leaked its juices out onto the bedspread.

"This is an ankh," Henna said as she painted. "It's a symbol of eternal life." Rachel watched Henna paint the cross with the oval on top, then watched in an agony of need and anticipation as Henna painted another at an angle to the first. The two ankhs hooked together through their looped tops, joined together forever, and something about that felt right to Rachel in a way she couldn't articulate. Then again, right now she couldn't articulate anything but a moan as she yearned for release. She trembled furiously on the bed, holding as still as she could while Henna finished the design, but the hot tingles the paint caused burned all the way up her thigh straight onto her clit and her breath just came out in one long, panting whine of arousal.

"Now, some accessories," Henna said as she sat up. "You really need some jewelry to complete the look." She reached into her backpack. "I think I have just the thing," she said, pulling out a pair of silver clips. "These'll do until you can get some piercings."

Rachel frowned in confusion--she'd gotten her ears pierced when she was thirteen--but then Henna snapped a clip shut around each nipple, and Rachel's whole world flashed red with sensations so intense she wasn't sure whether they were pleasure or pain. She grabbed at the bedding, clutching at it as the air went out of her lungs in a rush.

"Of course," Henna said, "not just anybody is going to get to see these. They're the sort of jewelry you wear only for...intimate situations." Her voice was husky now, thick with arousal. Rachel thought she might sound like that if she spoke, but her need was beyond words at this point. "Only a lover would see them, isn't that right, Rachel?"

"uhuh," Rachel grunted out, not even sure what she was agreeing to beyond the fact that it was something Henna said, and Henna's words felt like the only thing that made sense anymore in a sea of aching, desperate arousal and confusion.