by KT Morrison
Tempting Maggie
KT Morrison
Contents
Part 1
1. Sketchbook
2. Pastel
3. A Squeeze
4. Confessions
5. FarmFresh
Part 2
6. Altieri’s
7. Possibilities
8. Shaggy
9. Co-ed
Part 3
10. Turpentine
11. Torque
12. Totem
13. More
14. Hydra
15. Tickles
Epilogue
Afterword
Other Books by KT Morrison
This work of fiction is intended for mature audiences.
Individuals pictured on the covers are models and used for illustrative purposes only.
Copyright © 2017 KT Morrison
All rights reserved.
Part One
Chapter One
Sketchbook
Tuesday, September 19th
In the center of the campus, there’s the Oren Glen. A wooded garden that surrounds Oren House. The house came before the glen—two hundred years ago—and was locally famous for having a beautiful and well-tended garden. Later Oren generations built on to the garden, expanding and making it grander, growing til it became the Glen. The Oren family established this private college and were philanthropists and lovers of the natural world. That love for nature was meant to be reflected through the ages in the wooded glen that surrounded Oren House.
No Orens lived in it these days. Now the two-story Federal-style home, clad in white wood siding, was the Office of the Dean of Admissions and held the Registrar. The wooded glen was still much the same as it had been for over a century, and Max Milton laid out a brisk walk over its gravel path on his way to see his precious Maggie, wringing every bit of the bequeathed joy out of the sunlight filtered through trees and leafy shrubs.
He was out of class unexpectedly and he had the rest of the afternoon off. He’d take Maggie to an early dinner. Dinner, perhaps, after they banged out a quick one under her dorm room duvet. Maggie’s roommate had her Neo-Classicism seminar on Tuesdays and she wouldn't be back to the room until 5 P.M. He and Maggie could enjoy a quick horizontal dance, maybe some Xbox, run down to Altieri’s in the Village and get a slice of pizza.
Professor Klinger, Public Policy 325, sacrificed half of today’s lecture to make up for some missing office time he wasn’t able to fulfill because he’d been under the weather. If you were one of the lucky students who were on track you could leave halfway after an abbreviated instruction. Given Max had an A already, and Klinger’s affection, this was free time as far as he was concerned.
Now he was crossing the quad, under the shadow of Keegan Hall West where Maggie lived. He’d been appointed to Samuelson House on the east side of campus and Maggie was here on an all-girls floor, in a four-story grand Georgian broad-stone built in 1860. He’d petitioned to get himself into Keegan, even tried with Maggie to see if they could get a room together on the fourth floor because it was co-ed. (First floor was male only, second and third were for girls. Fourth floor was a party). It was too late, though, and his petition was rejected because rooms had already been decided. Spots were tight and worked out months in advance. Administration didn't care that he had a fantasy of sleeping in the same bed with his fiancée every night. He’d just have to somehow survive the eight-minute cross-campus walk every time he wanted to see her. It wasn't the end of the world.
He weaved through four freshmen who were trying to get the hang of Hacky Sack, wondered why they’d go to this quad when the first year building was down the path, north of Keegan East. Remembered then that the one with the red Che Guevara shirt was his roommate Steve’s little brother.
“Hey, Max,” the kid called cautiously.
“Hey, man,” he answered back, tossing a wave but not stopping because he didn't want to waste any time.
In the lobby, four guys were playing ping pong on a long table they’d pulled out of the TV room. He jogged up the stairs to the second floor, went down the hall and made his way to Room 210, where his Maggie lived with Jessie, a cute blonde-haired girl from Iowa who was in Art, like Maggie. The two of them had transformed their small space into a work area and most of the time they had drop cloths and easels and props for weird multimedia projects they wanted to tackle. He stopped at her door and pressed his ear to listen if she was home.
Maggie Becker had a white American father, a stock and option trader, and her mother was a Hong Kong Chinese lawyer. She was killing them pursuing art but they loved her anyway because she sought excellence. He’d fallen in love with her in Freshman year. Such an unlikely pairing—her with her creativity and passion and talent, and him with pragmatic zeal for Policy and Law. For a while he thought she might be dating him to appease her parents. Some kind of message to them, See, guys, I’m not so bad.
Farmingham College took all sorts, from Politics whackos to crazy geologists to nutty art fags...as long as you pursued it with excellence you were welcome at Farmingham. And your parents could afford forty-eight grand a year.
He listened to her door, waiting for some sign of life. A smile curled the corner of his lip as he heard the tinny iPhone sound of a cello sonata in e-flat major. Boccherini, cello and bass. She told him that sonata was her first ever live performance and the sound constantly played in her head. She’d practiced til she thought she might go mad. Her first boyfriend had been the bass. She hadn’t seen him since high school but Max was jealous that he had that piece of her still.
He knocked on the door and danced on the tips of his toes with a big smile on his face. There was movement in there, something being put down, someone getting up and rushing to the door.
The door was whisked open and his Maggie was there with a buoyant smile, eyes wide and happy, she said, “Heeyyy...oh, Max, oh shit...” She clutched her T-shirt and stepped back.
“Surprise,” he said.
“What are you doing here?”
“I got out of class today. Got the whole afternoon,” he told her.
“Whole aftern—”
Her mouth worked a moment, saying nothing, and her eyes darted over his. “…Oh,” she said. “Come in.”
He stepped into her dorm room, saw where she’d been sitting on her bed, her sketchbook was out, her charcoal and some pointed pastels in a flat metal tin. She closed the door behind her, her head stuck in the gap and peering down the hall before it shut.
“What are you wearing?” he asked her. She closed the door and turned, wearing only an over-sized yellow T-shirt. Bright yellow with bold blue collegiate print that said wrestling, and then under that d1. Her legs were bare, her feet too. She was his beautiful girl. Maggie smiled, looked down at her outfit, twinkled her toes and held the hem of the shirt.
“What?” she said, crinkled up the front of the shirt in her fists. “Don't look at me,” she laughed. Maggie had stunning almond eyes, they sparkled under her long lashes—bright amber with flecks of copper and chestnut. Her skin was pale, but clear and smooth, her hair a striking tawny russet that she highlighted underneath and along the back in platinum and blue.
He held his arms out to welcome her, standing by the side of her bed. A smile curled one corner of her mouth and she rolled her head around, came to him and put her arms around him. They kissed, warm and loving, but without a rolling passion that would spill them on the bed, tearing each other’s clothes off like he’d hoped.
She smacked his lips, sucked them, pulled away, said, “Why aren’t you in class?”
“Klinger did half a lecture. You could hang around and do a little one-on-one if you felt you needed it,” he said, threw his book bag onto her bed and hea
ved himself on it, making her sketchbook and pencils jump.
“Ma-ax,” she said, gathering her things up and putting them on the table at the side of her bed. Wedging it there in the clutter, sliding things aside, wobbling her flea market table lamp with gold tassels and making a can of Mountain Dew with a straw poking up fall off the back side. It made a hollow empty swish as it slid down the curtain and rattled on the floor. “Shit, Max,” she said, leaning then and reaching to retrieve it. The hem of her shirt came up as she bent. He saw her bare thighs revealed, the curve of her rump under the material, then the seam of her ass where it met her thigh, the swoop of her black panties.
“Did you just wake up?” he asked her. “It’s almost three o’clock...”
“No, I’m up,” she said. “I was at class this morning.” She tossed the can in the trash across the room from where she stood.
“Don’t get me wrong. I like what you’re wearing. It looks like you just got up, or you’re ready to go to bed...which suits me...”
She crawled up the mattress to him, a smirk on her face, clasped his cheeks between her thumb and fingers and pouted his lips. “That why you’re here? I’m only good for one thing?”
“Three things,” he said, his voice mushed by her grip. “I was going to make sweet love to you, play some Xbox, then I was going to buy you something to eat.” Each action accentuated with a numerical representation on the extending fingers of his wagging hand.
“I’m good for three things?” she said, gripping his three fingers he’d counted out for her.
“Ow,” he said as she twisted them. “Tip of the iceberg,” he said, making her smile.
She patted his cheek, making a hollow sound out of his open mouth. “I can’t, Maxy. Dinner, yes, but I have to work right now. You have to get out of here.”
“Can’t blow it off?” he said, rolling to his side and propping his head in a hand.
“No, I have people coming over.”
“For what?”
“Drawing, Max,” she said, checking her watch. “I have to do twenty drawings over the next two weeks.”
“What class?”
“Figure.”
“How far behind are you?”
“One a day, at least, I’ll be okay, but I’ll still have to crank out extras...maybe on the weekend.”
“What kind of figures?”
“Any.”
“Want to draw me?”
“You’d pose for me?”
“Sure.”
“Naked?”
“Yeah.”
“I show the drawing to my teachers and all my classmates.”
His face stayed blank as he considered the consequences.
“Not so keen now, are we?” she laughed.
“No...well, no, yes, maybe...do I have to show my face?”
She cocked her head, her cute little mouth twisting up. She said, “No, you don’t. They’re going to know it’s my fiancé.”
“Why?”
“They know you. Some of them do.”
He laughed, picturing her friends looking at a nude drawing of him. “Maybe it’s okay. Maybe it’s kind of hot.”
“Hot, Max? This is my work here, not for you to get off.”
“Isn’t great art always about getting off?”
She widened her eyes, shook her head, “Now I know what kind of art you like.”
“Did I give myself away?”
“Like those big Reuben girls?”
“Who’s that?”
“Babe,” she said, patted his knee, “You gotta get out of here, they’ll be here soon.”
“We can’t hang out at all?”
“I have to work. Take me out to eat later?”
“Yeah. Can I hang out and draw?”
“Max, you don’t draw. It’s, like...you’ll make people mad if you’re here goofing around.”
“Fine,” he said. “Maybe I’ll pose for you all. Need a model?”
“We have one.”
“Who is it?”
“Not sure who’s coming today. They get arranged through the school.”
“Creepy old dudes? Wait, here...in your room?”
“Old yes, some, but not creepy. We meet here first then find...a studio. The models just, like...they want to support the arts.”
He smirked, nodding his head. It would be arousing to stand in front of a room full of young women, knowing they were drawing you, looking at every part of your body and examining it for proportion, and then trying to render what they saw.
“Babe, draw me,” he said.
“Yeah, I—”
“No, right now. Quick...”
“I don’t draw fast, Max. There’s no time… Please...”
“Can you start it, work on it later?”
“Kind of. But the light...”
“Please, Maggie. How long til they get here?”
“Twenty minutes,” she said, looking at her G-shock. “Max, I’ll draw you another time...tonight... You have to get out of here... Please…”
A hollow buzzing came from her night table. She lifted her sketchbook, the size of a pizza box, and she lay it on the pillows. Her iPhone rattled on the wooden surface. “Hold on,” she said, holding up a finger and reading the screen. She picked up her phone and stood, holding a hand over her other ear and walking to the center of the room between the two beds. Her voice was quiet and he couldn’t make out what she was saying. She turned from him then, showed him her back and talked more quietly.
It was two-thirty now and he figured he might head over to Samuelson and see if any of the guys were around. Maybe have a beer or play some Xbox. There was a term paper he could edit for Gov 450, but this free time was a gift and he’d rather do something fun with it.
Maggie shuffled towards the door and her feet slipped into her fluffy slippers with the googly eyeballs that wandered around while she walked. She leaned a moment on the door jamb, and then she sauntered into the hall, still engrossed in her conversation.
His own phone was fished out of his khakis and he texted Cole to see if he was around to grab a beer. While he waited to hear back, he pulled Maggie’s sketchbook over and opened it.
Her drawings were amazing things. She had a terrific eye for volume and detail. A classic looking line, starting with black structure in thin charcoal and then bringing up the depth with colors that made her figures look like they gleamed. He lay back page after page, gently flipping through and letting the heavy textured paper drape over its spiral binding. There were old men with paunches, big bellies and skinny legs with knobby knees. The light played across them in dramatic ways and her drawings seemed to have an energy—not dull lifeless things that were technically proficient but never said a thing to you. Hers were sinewy grace on the page.
A skinny hippy in his middle age on another page, his foot on a stool, his long hair hanging down his pale pigeon chest. His penis and balls hung between his legs and Max smiled, wondered what she thought about when she got to those bits. She could be shy. Sexually confident, but still reserved—a timidity that showed her decent upbringing. Another figure model was a young woman with shaggy black hair. A nice sort of body, no fat, her ribs pressed up against her skin, and with her head tossed over her shoulder, Maggie caught something desperate in her eyes. It was a striking piece of work.
The next page was different. He laid it back and flinched when he saw it. A young man, heavily muscled, his abdominal ridges sizzled with ecstatic light. He was hunched, flexing them, looking away. He had an afro but his skin was light, the color of creamed coffee. Just the way his Maggie took it. His hair was shaved at the sides, with blonde clumps of dreads along the top like a pale coral bed. His sweatpants were provocatively low, showing a deep ridge of muscle that slashed a V down his hips. There was a blatant sexuality to the drawing and it twisted him, held his breath at bay. She’d drawn this boy. He’d posed for the class like this, so provocatively. Or was his Maggie adding more to the drawing than she saw, imbuing i
t with something she’d like to see?
“Holy fuck,” he whispered to the empty room. His hand shook as he flipped another page. It was worse. Much worse. The same young man, looking directly at him. Standing with his legs apart, hip cocked, leaning against a bed wearing only a T-shirt. His cock hung between his legs, a heavy dark thing. Obscenely large, a grotesque wrinkled weapon, draped over his testicles, one large red-brown one seen laying against his thigh. The boy was looking at his Maggie and he was lifting his shirt, showing her his thick patch of pubic hair and the muscles of his belly. The T-shirt was yellow, written on it in blue collegiate lettering it said wrestling, below that it said d1.
His stomach cramped and he realized everything in him had tightened. His legs, his jaw...his hands had formed claws. He wasn’t breathing. He looked up at the room. Saw the bed. The bed from the drawing. The brass posts with ceramic fluting. Maggie had sat right where he was sitting now and had drawn this boy. He’d been in her room. Stood at the foot of her bed and shown her his beautiful body. Revealed to her his incredibly big cock. Pulled his shirt up for her, showed her the thing he put inside girls. Let her know there was a man out there who had a body like that, who had a threatening sexual organ. His Maggie had sat here and surmised it, brought it to life with charcoal and the pastels he bought her, pigments made in France and Italy—far away places he swore he’d take her. This confident boy had shown his Maggie all the things Max didn’t have. Shown her all the things she could have. Tempted her with his blatant and overwhelming sexuality. She’d drawn him twice. Would she draw him a third time? Was he on his way here now? Was that him on the phone with her?
His heart was making up for lost beats now, and he doubled over in pain, his belly heaving, blood pulsing up his neck and swelling his eyes. Was she alone that day she drew this? The two of them in her room by themselves, him with his pants off. Was there even a group on its way here today?