"You're crazy."

"Oh, come on! It'll be fun."

"No."

"Claaaaaire. Don't you love me?"

"No." But I knew I couldn't resist his puppy dog eyes for much longer, and so did he.

"It won't hurt that bad."

I couldn't believe I was sitting in the floor of one of the most famous men in Finland, discussing what would be my first tattoo... If I agreed to it.

The design was something I had mentioned I might possibly want tattooed while I was drinking with HIM one night. Two weeks later I had forgotten all about it and Ville had drawn up a stencil.

I glanced back down at the paper. It was beautiful. The tattoo I had drunkenly designed with Ville was a picture of a swallow with a sprig of lily-of-the-valley flowers clutched in it's claws, the national flower of Finland.

Ville had drawn it all out in beautiful colors and added his own signature near one of the little birds wings. The more I looked at it, the more I wanted to get it. And with Ville looking at me like that...

"Fine." He beamed. "But I require my own bottle of whiskey for this."

After retrieving my bottle of whiskey Ville called one of his tattoo artist friends and before I could even think about it we were out the door and getting into a cab headed for the other side of Helsinki.

"Ville are you suuuure this is a good idea?"

"It's a great idea. Here, have some more whiskey..."

After about four more shots for me, and two for Ville, as I decided to share with him, we were at another apartment complex in an even worse part of town than Ville's was. I was nervous, but now I was full of liquid courage, too.

Ville's tattoo artist friend was a big burly man with huge hands that dwarfed mine when he shook my hand. He led us into his living room, where he had his couch and coffee table set up with his tattoo equipment and about thirty different colors of ink.

Ville handed him his drawing and the two of them chatted in Finnish for a minute before he turned to me. "So where are we going to put this, lovey?"

"My shoulder blade." I gestured to my left shoulder. He nodded and motioned for me to turn around. I felt him lightly touching my shoulder for a second and then he was off to the table to draw a stencil.

Ville threw his arm over my shoulder and we settled into the couch to wait.

I sat back against the couch cushion to watch him while he leaned forward to watch his friend draw my tattoo. We'd been dating a month now and I didn't think I'd ever felt this alive in my life. Life with Ville was so passionate and intense and I loved it.

He was watching his friend, who I was thinking was named Tero, with furrowed eyebrows and interested eyes. He had a fascination with tattoos and the process of creating them that was nearly an obsession.

Tero- I think- finished the stencil way too fast for my liking and then I found myself face down on his couch, minus my shirt. I took another shot of the whiskey and the last thing I remember was telling him that I was going to pass out now and to please wake me up when it was finished.

XxXxX

When I woke up several hours later I was in Ville's bed with an itchy pain in my shoulder. I shot up, remembering why my shoulder hurt.

I waded my way through the clothes on the floor to Ville's bathroom mirror and grinned. The tattoo was beautiful. There was almost no black in the whole thing and the tattoo stood out brightly against my pale skin.

I looked up to see Ville standing in the doorway and turned to face him. He was smiling and I didn't think I'd ever been so happy in my life.