by Violet Blue
“Sorry. What?”
“I was saying that I’m done for the day. Unless, of course, you want to stay like that. I’m not complaining.”
She smiled. The silky fabric draped across her bare thighs moved beguilingly as she swung her feet down from the chair on which they rested, and a spark of pleasant friction traveled up between her legs.
Will had talent aplenty, besides his skills as an artist. And she was mad with unsatisfied desire. She crossed the room and pulled the brushes out of his paint-stained hands, her own hand straying to his zipper and the growing need she felt under her massaging fingers. The paintbrushes clattered on the table and Will groaned as his tongue found and circled hers.
“Jesse’s out of his mind if he doesn’t want you. I wouldn’t care who you were, I’d fuck you.”
“Then shut up and do it,” she said, and pulled his hips toward hers.
“I have an idea,” said Will. She was sitting in his office and it was four o’clock on Thursday afternoon, an hour until the day could reasonably be called over. An hour until they could quit the stuffy world of cubicles and mindless office work for the spring afternoon outside.
She raised her eyebrows. “And that would be…?”
“I’m working on a new piece and I need two models, male and female.”
She looked at her coworker for a moment and a slow smile crept across her lips.
“Is this the Selene and Endymion you were talking about for the gallery show?”
Will nodded, his own smile conspiratorial, and then looked up at a knock on the half-open door. She turned and caught her breath, as she invariably did ever since the first time she had seen him. Eyes the color of alpine lakes, and those cheekbones, and that mouth. How many times had she stared at them and dreamed about claiming them for her own purposes?
“Hey. How’s everything going?” Jesse said. Always so understated, so nicely professional. God, but she wanted to see this man in the grip of passion, all restraint abandoned to the dictates of his hunger.
“Great. Will’s just been telling me about his upcoming show.”
He turned that cerulean gaze to Will. “I heard about that. Great job, man! Congratulations.”
“Thanks. I’m having problems, though,” replied Will with the most tragic expression of frustrated genius he could muster. She had to turn away to hide her smile.
“I’ve already said I’d volunteer, Will,” she put in, picking up the thread and pulling the game along.
“That still leaves me without a male study,” he replied, an irritated note creeping into his voice.
She sighed. “You’re impossible.” Her gaze flickered casually to her boss, the object of her desire, leaning in the doorway.
“Look, Jesse will do it. Right?” She tilted her head back with a half-mocking smile.
“Do what, exactly?” he asked, his tone matching hers. An undercurrent of sarcasm lay behind the words.
They baited each other like this constantly, so subtly as to be completely overlooked by all but the most perceptive, yet nevertheless felt by both of them. And still she did not know whether it meant something, or nothing at all, and he did it simply because she could understand it when others remained oblivious.
“You could be Will’s other model for his new painting,” Ari said brightly. “You’ve taken classes on Greek and Roman art, haven’t you, Jesse?”
“In college, yes. And that has nothing to do with posing for anything. I think I’ll have to pass on this one, Will.”
But Will, bless him, had his head tilted to one side, looking Jesse over with a critical eye.
“Actually, you’ll do very well,” he said with authority. “You’re just about Ari’s height, so the proportion would be about right. I could really use the help, Jesse.”
“See?” she chimed in. “You’ll be doing a very charitable thing.”
Jesse rolled his eyes at her, and stuck his hands further into the pockets of his loose-fitting jeans.
“I don’t think so. You two are insane.”
“Oh, come on, don’t be such a wuss.”
“Yeah. Look, I’d even offer to pay you guys,” Will interjected, “but I can’t, just yet. And I’d really, really appreciate this.”
Jesse was still shaking his head, but she turned to Will.
“Just tell us when to be there. He’ll show,” she said.
“Saturday, anytime between two and three is good. I’d like to get at least three hours of daylight to work.”
“I’m not doing this….”
“He’ll be there,” she said to Will.
“You ready yet, Ari?”
“Just about,” she called back. She stuck a final hairpin into the loose twist of hair atop her head and surveyed the effect. Not period correct, but it looked close enough for Will to get the right effect. And close enough to be becoming for the eyes of her fellow model. She smiled at her reflection in the mirror, and wondered if Will had told him yet that this was to be a nude study.
Evidently not. She walked out of the bathroom in slippers and nothing else, and felt the gaze of both men turn her way—one cool and appreciative, one hot with shock and unspoken lust. Color stained Jesse’s cheeks, but his expression remained unchanged as he lifted his eyebrows and turned to Will.
“Please tell me we’re covering up somewhat.”
Will looked away from her, and at Jesse with an expression of perfectly innocent surprise.
“Oh, no. This is the seduction, where Selene comes to Endymion as he sleeps. But don’t worry, you have your eyes closed, since you’re supposed to be asleep.” He looked down at his brushes with a grin, as Jesse stood quickly from the stool where he had been perched.
“I really can’t do this…” he said, but he was still looking at her, his eyes fixed on her face. He always made a point of looking at her eye-to-eye when they were at work, and she wondered why. Perhaps he didn’t trust his gaze to venture anywhere else, but how could he possibly avoid it now?
Her nipples stood erect from the touch of the cool wind blowing through the windows, as well as from the attention of her companions. The upsweep of her hair left her neck and shoulders bare, and the trimmed, dark triangle sheltering her womanhood did more to entice than conceal. She was in her element. Grinning, she tilted her chin at him.
“Go on, get undressed.”
He shook his head. “This is a bad idea.” But he took off his shirt, and his sandals, and his jeans, and finally his briefs.
“Sorry,” he said, red-faced.
“It happens,” she replied with a dismissing wave. “Don’t worry, I won’t touch.”
“You’d better not,” he said with a smile. “Lisa would kill me.”
Ah yes: Lisa, the girlfriend; the unimaginative, painted arm-trophy. Another necessary part of the corporate executive uniform.
She laughed. “And that would be bad. Are you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
She knelt on the metal and glass table that on Will’s canvas would become her cloud-tipped mountaintop. The edge of the table felt cold under her bare torso as she stretched out and peered down to where Jesse reclined beneath.
“Hello down there in the mortal world!” she cooed.
He smiled up at her, one arm curved in position beneath his head. With his other hand he reached up around the table’s edge and gave her fingertips a friendly tug. “Hello, goddess,” he called back. “How are you?”
“Hmm. Olympus is boring and uncomfortable.”
He laughed, and shook his head. The pretense of reserve had been abandoned a few weeks ago, as the long afternoons in the lazy intimacy of the studio progressed—a chaste, prolonged foreplay that soothed her secret craving while fueling it even more. She could flirt with him, let her gaze drink in the sight of his nakedness, and imagine what would happen if this table were no longer between them, if his hand strayed to his cock, soft and still deliciously full, waiting to be awakened and to fill her….
&
nbsp; “Where is Will, anyway? Still on the phone?”
She blinked. “Yes, I think so.” Lifting herself on her elbows, she directed her eyes through the studio doorway. “I can’t see him. Oh, wait, here he comes.”
Will stuck his head through the studio door and gave them an apologetic look.
“That was my mother. I have to pick my sister up at the airport. John was supposed to do it and he bailed. Figures.” He shrugged.
“That’s fine, go ahead….”
“Yeah, that’s no problem.”
“I’m really sorry about this. But hey, you two can have the studio to yourselves now.” He grinned. “Just clean up afterward, and lock the door when you leave, OK?”
“Yeah. Right.”
“Just for that, we’ll be sure not to clean up,” added Jesse as Will’s head retreated. They heard him laugh as he walked down the hallway, and then the jingle of keys and wallet before the front door slammed shut.
Neither of them moved. They listened to the muffled roar of the car engine, the sound of Will driving off. Her heart beat so hard she was sure he could hear it. No excuse remained for them to be here like this, so dangerously close, without even the modesty of clothing to serve as deterrent.
He was staring up at her as she sat, uncertain, on her pedestal and tried to sort through her thoughts. Wasn’t this what she had wanted all along? A perfect opportunity? And it didn’t get much more perfect than this. So why was she hesitating again? Not because of their positions; certainly not because of any practical consideration. Because she had wanted this for so long, and because the conquest had not been an easy one. She wasn’t sure, this time, that desire alone would be enough. But neither did she want to lose.
“So, are you going to leave now?” she asked softly.
In answer, he slid out from beneath the table and got to his feet. He stood beside the table, looking down at her.
“That all depends on you, goddess.”
She had imagined this a thousand times, but the reality of it still overwhelmed her, put her in awe of his body and her own lust. She reached out and closed her hand around his width, her fingertips just barely touching her thumbtip, and she stroked him to fullness. Sticky droplets ran down her fingers, and she felt an answering wet, heavy heat between her legs.
She stood and circled one arm up behind his head, her other hand still moving along his cock. There wasn’t much hair to grab, as he kept it short and spiky, and she liked it that way. The less time a man had to spend combing his hair in the morning, the more time he had for getting the job done the night before. But she managed to gain enough of a grip, and tilted his head down.
She would wager he hadn’t been kissed like that in a long time, perhaps never. The act was an art, one that few people bothered to take the time to master. But she had. This time she chose to be slow and deliberate, and after a moment of hesitation he kissed her back in kind, running his hands along her waist and over her hips, and then back up to cup her breasts.
He pinched her nipples hard, to the point of pain, of unbearable, unsatisfied hunger. She gasped and broke the kiss with an “Oh!” of pleasure, and he lowered her to the table, pulling her hands away from his groin and moving them up above her head.
His mouth closed around one nipple and then the other, leaving a trail of tiny bites across the curves of her breasts. She had said once, amid the blushing babble of some long-ago, inappropriate water-cooler conversation between them, that she liked biting. All this time, and yet he had remembered; he had been paying attention. She laughed in triumph and pushed down on his shoulders.
He understood and obeyed, lifting her legs and moving to capture her aroused clit between his lips. His tongue moved like witchfire over her sex, teasing the entrance to her slit, slick with her desire, and then moving back up to her clit, and then down…and over and over. His mouth coaxed sweet, pulsing pleasure from her, more than she could have imagined that she would feel lying on the hard, unforgiving studio table. And still she was greedy. She wanted more.
“Fuck me,” she murmured.
He lifted his head, and fixed that blue gaze on her. “What? I didn’t quite hear that.”
“You heard perfectly damn well. I told you to fuck me!”
He smiled, and continued to rub one finger between her nether lips as he bent down to bite each nipple in turn, till she moaned and arched shamelessly against his hand.
“Please, Jesse.” Her voice was enticing, pleading, and she was running her nails over his back, and shoulders, and down his chest. “Now.”
“God, Arianne, you’re too damned hot. It isn’t fair.”
He grabbed her ass and pulled her toward him. His cock pressed into her, overcoming her body’s resistance, and she felt herself opening up, stretching to take him in; painful at first, and then growing softer, moister. She flowed over, and inside, and all around him. His hands were around her waist and he rocked her back and forth with his need.
She closed her eyes, and her body abandoned its form, became nothing but feeling and heat. She was the moon, a center of glowing white light; a wild, rising, rushing elation; and with each thrust of his cock she split into prisms of light. No wonder the ancients thought sex an act of magic, of power. Light splintered all around her in a thousand colored shards.
“Oh, Jesse!”
He leaned his forehead, cool and damp, on hers, breathing in her breath, and lying still, now that the ritual was ended. Purple shadows filled the studio. The sun had been swallowed up by the horizon while they spent their desire.
Now, she thought, would come the awkward separation, the fumbling in the half-dark for artificial light and clothing, while he would look at her with guilt and worry, trying not to meet her gaze.
But instead he only shifted his weight, rolling to lie on his side, his warmth slipping naturally and easily from her body. She sat up and hairpins clattered to the table. He reached back and brushed his fingers through the long tangle of her hair, discarding stray pins that marred the soft waves.
“She was famous for her lovers,” he said after a long moment, looking up at her. Even in the poor light she saw his mouth curve into a sensual smile.
“Selene? Yes, she was. But she favored Endymion best of all.”
“Mm-hmm. And she kept him around forever, didn’t she?”
He tugged gently at her hair and she lay back, marveling at the beauty of his silhouette.
“But he had to choose eternal slumber.”
“Can’t say that I blame him. I think I would have done the same,” he replied. His hand parted her legs and he stroked her still-tingling nexus, sticky now from lovemaking. She was glad she had been wrong this once. He understood that the world of mortals could be left behind, that such lovers as they were created their own immortality. He accepted….
The moon was rising in the sky beyond the windows, climbing to the peak from which it would rush, falling, back to earth again. She was rising.
“Will’s probably going to come back soon,” he said, pausing, his eyebrows raised in question.
“I know,” she said with a wicked grin, and wrapped her arms around his neck again.
CALLIE’S KIDNAPPING
Alyssa Brooks
Callie walked along the side street, her heels clicking with every step. Pausing for just a moment, she straightened her little black dress. God, the thing was so clingy. With her curves, she fell out everywhere. She’d never worn anything like this before. Hell, she’d never done anything like this before.
Once again she wondered at herself. Why had she said yes so quickly to her husband this time? Usually she snubbed his wild ideas. Perhaps she was just so tired of being the uptight lawyer. Perhaps she needed a little fun in her life, a little excitement, a little pleasure. A change.
She couldn’t deny the anticipation bubbling in her. The thrill of walking down the street, dressed like this, was both scary and exhilarating. The fact that something could go wrong did not escape her. What if some
one got the wrong idea about her? What if she ran into a dangerous type?
Sure, it was a decent little city. Still, crime lurked everywhere.
Turing down an alleyway, she blew out a deep breath. Thank goodness that part was over. She’d been so afraid someone would notice her. Recognize her even under her makeup.
Tires came screeching behind her. Whirling around, she saw a black van veering recklessly into the alley. She jumped to the side, out of their way. That was close.
But when they hit their brakes with an awful squeal, she knew they were after her. Her stomach clenched with absolute fear. Panic took over her.
Oh god, oh god, oh god.
She started to run and stumbled over her heels. Kicking them aside, she ran as fast as she could. The rough pavement pained her feet as they slammed into it with every stride. Panting for breath, she fought her mind as it screamed to look back and see who ran after her. Oh god, she had to run faster.
Suddenly a strong arm was wrapping around her waist and yanking her backward. A hand smothered her mouth as she screamed. She was dragged backward, kicking and fighting.
The man pushed her into the van, and she got her first glance at him as he jumped in with her and slammed the door shut. The van took off again; there must be a second captor. The man who held her was tall and well built, with a certain stockiness. His eyes were dark but sharp, like eagle eyes. His lips were wide, plump. Other then that, she was clueless. He wore all black, and even his face was covered by a mask.
“Lie down, now.” His voice was gruff and commanding.
She shook as she obeyed him. He climbed over her, grabbed her arms, and stretched them over her head. Then he began to bind them with a black silk cloth. When her hands were tied, he blindfolded her with the same soft material.
The silk could only mean one thing.
Her insides trembled, and the urge to fight invaded her. She bucked under him, but his weight kept her pinned. When she realized how very trapped she was, it scared her even more, and she struggled with everything she had.