by Mann, Marni
“No.” His fingers reached under my shirt and started to crawl toward my chest, ticking the skin just below the wire of my bra. His mouth moved up to my ear. “I threw it away.”
“You what?” I turned and faced him, his hands sliding to my back and hovering over the clasp. “Why would you do that?”
“Turns out I wasn’t having a creative block. It was the piece…it didn’t feel right, and I couldn’t find a rhythm. So after you left,” he paused, lifting the strap off my back to unhook it, “I started this. It was inspired by what happened last night.”
After he’d made me come on the shower bench last night, he carried me to the bed and licked me again on the mattress. I begged him to enter me, but he never gave in. And when my body shuddered for a third time, he covered my wet, naked skin with a blanket and I fell asleep. He never returned to our bedroom.
“Can I see it?” I asked.
His eyes wandered over my face, stopping at my lips, and his hands finally unclasped my bra. The cups loosened and he pulled the lace down past my nipples, his stare meeting the erect little buds that craved to be sucked. He controlled me last night; he’d gotten exactly what he’d wanted and he hadn’t submitted to my begging.
It was my turn.
I circled my arms behind my back and closed the hooks, then I pulled the bra over my breasts again. “The painting…show it to me, Cameron.”
He lowered his head and reached for my mouth. Just because my breasts were covered now, it didn’t mean his hands left them. He rolled my nipples between his thumb and index finger, pulling on them through the fabric. “I can still taste you on my lips.” His were just inches above mine. “I need more of it...more of you.”
I could feel the wetness between my legs. It was spreading… almost dripping to my thighs. My clit throbbed for friction. My mouth wanted to be on him, flicking the tip of his cock.
I rubbed my teeth over my bottom lip and followed it with my tongue. “You’re not getting any of me just yet.” My brows rose as I waited for him to comply.
He nodded finally, and his hands dropped from my chest. He found my fingers, clenched them between his and led me over to the windows. The glass ran from the floor to the ceiling and took up an entire wall of the studio. I remembered the first time he had invited me here, and the feeling that had spread through me when I took in this view. I looked at it every day and still hadn’t gotten used to it. There were moments when I couldn’t even believe I lived here and that after everything…he still wanted me.
He stopped in front of the only easel on that side of the room and turned the wooden feet so that they faced us, slowly revealing more of the picture. My breath caught in my throat; my hands shook a little. My feelings for Cameron always made viewing his work an emotional experience. But this? This was a different feeling entirely.
“What do you think?” He moved behind me again, pushing his body into me, and his hands circled my navel.
The painting was simple, a white background with a single image in the center: a woman with her arms stretched over her head and her back facing out from the canvas. Her torso was twisted in such a way that the side of her breast was exposed, as was her full ass. One foot was lifted, while her other foot remained flat. He’d painted her toes and legs in a sky blue that gradually darkened into a stronger, more brilliant blue when it reached her waist; her breast was a mix of yellows—ochre and Naples; he’d used a soft bronze for her shoulders, and burnt umber formed the top of her head and continued through her arms. The tones were muted, but they blended well, and the way he’d layered the paint gave her body dimension and character without needing any intricate detail.
“Do you see why I threw away the other piece?” His palms flattened just under my ribs and pushed. I jerked up against his hardness. Even with him being much taller than me, I could feel it against my lower back. Then his nose grazed my ear and ran up and down my cheek. His lips never touched me, just the tip of his nose, bringing goose bumps to my skin. “After you left…this felt right. This is what the memories of you inspired.”
Cameron had inspired several of my paintings and I could find elements of myself in his work: the sensuality we shared, the intensity of our lovemaking. But when I looked at this woman, the only thing I saw us having in common was our hair color. Where my body was slender and petite, hers was voluptuous, with a thick ass and much larger breasts. I couldn’t help but notice the resemblance she bore to the other woman in Cameron’s lifeLora, the one who had claimed his mouth, his hands, his body until I had entered the scene. Now, they were best friends, like Dallas and I were, though I believed she wanted a lot more from Cameron.
“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about your pussy since I left you on the bed last night. It’s fucking haunting me, it’s so good.” His hand drifted down and halted when it reached the V of my jeans, pressing his thumb through the thin material. “I gave you what you wanted…now you give me what I want. Give me this.” His thumb rubbed the small space between my folds.
I swallowed the tingles that had made their way into my throat and closed my eyes. I feared his answer, but before I gave in, I had to know if it was her.
“Who did you make this painting for?”
He had pulled down the collar of my shirt, exposing my shoulder. But his lips didn’t touch me; they hovered over my skin, his breath hitting the strap of my bra. “Lora.”
My whole body dried up and my back stiffened at the sound of her name. When he felt the change, his tongue deepened and lengthened across my skin. He was trying to bring back that feeling, but it was gone. I couldn’t go there. Not now…not while her body glared back and taunted me from the canvas, every groove and bump and slope so perfectly portrayed. Of course, he hadn’t needed a picture to work from. Lora’s limbs and torso and breasts were ingrained in his head because his tongue had spent so much time licking them.
“Is she coming here?” I asked.
“I’m bringing it by her place in a few hours, so that gives us plenty of time…”
I didn’t want to turn around; I didn’t want him to see the pain on my face, or the drops of jealousy surfacing in my eyes. But I also knew I couldn’t fake what he wanted me to do. Not when it came to her.
I took a deep breath, reached into my back pocket and pulled out my cell phone. Swiping my finger across the screen, I checked the time. “Shit,” I said. He was standing behind me, looking over my shoulder. I had to make this sound convincing. “I’m running late.”
“A few more minutes won’t”
I pulled away from his grip. “No, I really have to go, Cameron.”
Just as I reached for my bag, he came up behind me and wrapped his hands around my stomach. His lips touched my ear. “There’s something you’re not saying here and I’m not letting you leave until you do.”
“This is the second night this week you’ve been to her place.” I opened my mouth to say more, but I closed it. I didn’t need to tell him the real reason I wanted to leave. I had accepted that Lora had a strong presence in his life; he’d never tried to hide her from me. But I had a hard time accepting that the strokes he’d used were made to form her body. I didn’t expect him to constantly be creating mine; I just didn’t want it to be hers that he created instead. “And I just miss you...that’s all.”
“She hired me to do a piece. That’s the only reason I’m going there.”
Lora had hired Cameron to create multiple pieces in the past. He’d met her at an art exhibit shortly after he had graduated from Northeastern. He’d left the event with several upcoming meetings set, one of which had been with her. I didn’t know how their meeting had begun; I only knew it had ended on the stairs going up to the second floor of her townhouse. I also didn’t know when Lora finally told him she was married. But the news hadn’t bothered him, and it didn’t stop him from fucking her, or any of her married friends who he’d also created pieces for. But I wasn’t the one to judge who he slept with. Their affair had always been
casual. He said he’d never loved her; it was purely a physical attraction. Whatever they’d had, it lasted up until we had started dating.
“You’d go there anyway, Cameron, regardless if you were working on something for her.”
Even though they were no longer physical, he still respected her and trusted her, and he believed some of his success was due to her. Whenever she came over to the apartment, her gray, all-knowing eyes told me she was either jealous of what we had, or she was jealous of me specifically. It was probably both. I couldn’t help but make the comparison between the two of us when she was in front of me. If Lora was what Cameron was used to, what he truly craved, then I didn’t understand what he was doing with me. She was in her late-forties; like the painting, she was long and curvy; her breasts were full and most definitely fake. Her movements were thought out and sensual. And she didn’t just flirt with her eyes and mouth; she charmed with her whole body, including the smooth British accent that dripped off her tongue.
The air he exhaled roughly through his nose warmed the skin on my neck. “You know you have nothing to worry about.”
I believed him.
He cares about you, Charlie. I know you feel it.
I also believed Emma; her voice was just another layer added to everything I was already feeling. But no matter how much I felt that Cameron truly cared, I didn’t enjoy watching him go to her place, or knowing the piece he’d painted was of her, or how the sharp twinge in my heart didn’t dull at all when her name blew so casually through his lips.
I squeezed my hands around his and leaned back into his chest briefly before I pulled away. It would have been hypocritical of me to start a fight about Lora, considering that Dallas, my ex-boyfriend, still had a huge presence in my life. It couldn’t have been any easier for Cameron to listen to Dallas’s name fall from my lips or for him to watch me go to his placewhich was exactly where I was headed now. But Cameron never gave me any shit about Dallas. He never told me not to go to his apartment, he never accused me of hooking up with him, and he never seemed bothered that we spoke almost every day.
But I also didn’t create pictures of Dallas’s unclad body…though I very easily could have painted every bulging ripple of his muscles, every hair that dusted his limbs.
I knew his body as well as Cameron knew Lora’s.
“I’ll see you when you get home.” I kept my back to him, grabbing my bag before I reached the elevator. Once I was far enough away so that the emotions on my face wouldn’t be as obvious, I turned around.
“I won’t be too late,” he shouted so I would hear him.
I wasn’t sure how much it mattered by then.
***
After exiting the train at North Station, I walked the remaining blocks to Dallas’s West End apartment. He buzzed me in when I called him from downstairs. He had signed a lease about three months ago, the same time I had moved my things into Cameron’s place. Once he opened the door, his bare arms wrapped around me. As they did almost every time we hugged, my eyes briefly scanned his fully-inked sleeves, the symbols and the words that I had memorized during all the hours I’d spent in their embrace.
It had been several weeks since I’d seen him. He’d recently accepted a job with the Celtics as their new athletic trainer; he’d moved to this neighborhood because it was close to the TD Garden where they played and practiced. It had taken him years to qualify for this job, shadowing the trainer for the Patriots and Bruins until a position in one of the leagues had become available. Now, he flew in their private plane and attended every game, but his constant working and traveling hadn’t changed anything between us.
Seeing him again, I realized how much I’d missed him.
Our friendship didn’t have pretenses or expectations, even though we had a past—and a very messy one at that. Dallas had been there for me when Lilly died. He’d taken care of her while I worked nights at the mansion, and he was the only person I had ever allowed inside our old apartment. He witnessed our poverty, the puke stains on our carpet, the smell of Lilly decaying. He was also one of only two people I had told about my job. He didn’t like it, he didn’t support it, and he didn’t understand it at all. Still, I’d given him the chance to voice his opinions, and he did. And then we discussed it again after the mansion’s take-down, and the relief he felt when he learned I’d escaped the darkness that could have swallowed me and taken me from him forever.
“Beer?” he asked as we broke our embrace.
I nodded, hooked my bag over one of the chair backs at his kitchen table and took a seat on the couch. As he returned to the living room, he handed me a bottle and sat in the loveseat across from me, his knees spread wide, his hands crossed between them. I noticed how much his look had changed in the past few months. Dallas’s style was much more relaxed and athletic than the cold, trendy apparel that Cameron wore. Tonight, he was dressed in a light gray T-shirt and darker-tone jeans with white piping down the hem. The sides of his hair were gelled toward the middle to create a short mohawk, and the whiskers of scruff on his cheeks were all trimmed to the same length. I used to watch him shave it with clippers into the very same style.
It was a good memory.
“I hate that I hardly ever see you anymore with all the traveling you’ve been doing,” I said.
“I know. Things should settle down some in the next few months.” His eyes slowly roamed my face, searching my features. “Something’s off with you. What happened…what’s wrong?”
I shook my head. This wasn’t the reason I’d come here. I missed him, and I wasn’t going to spend the little time we had together complaining about Lora, someone I had absolutely no control over.
“Has he hurt you?”
Something told him it was Cameron who had upset me.
“No…not really.”
Dallas had met Cameron the few times he had visited our apartment. It wasn’t entirely awkward; they were very cordial to each other, but I didn’t get the sense that they would ever become friends. As much as Dallas wanted to like him, I had chosen Cameron over him and there had to be at least a little resentment there. But there were deeper layers than that. Dallas had been in love with me. I was employed at the mansion, having sex with him and clients in the same evening. And what he wanted from me—a relationship, commitment, an affirmation of how strong my feelings were for himI had given to Cameron instead. I knew how much I’d hurt him, and yet here he was as always, wanting to help me anyway.
“Talk to me, Cee” He cut himself off, realizing what he had just said. And as he did, my eyes widened and my back stiffened. “Charlie…I’m sorry. I’m still getting used to it. I just called you that for so long.”
Cee had been the name I used inside the mansion, the character I turned into when I left my clothes in the limo and transformed into a fantasy. It had also been the name that most of the men outside the house had called me, the ones I had given only my body to, because I hadn’t let them in enough to really know Charlie. Dallas was an exception, but the name had stuck. When I had purged the truth to him, we decided to put Cee to rest. It was more difficult for him that we thought it would be.
I nodded and let it pass. “It’s really not a big deal. I just got a little…jealous tonight.”
He smirked.
“I know. It’s ridiculous.”
“It’s not ridiculous at all. In fact, it’s refreshing to know you’re finally feeling something inside that little body of yours. It means you’re human after all.”
Dallas really did know a completely different side of me; even though we’d dated for a year, we had an open relationship that was mostly based on sex. I had given the others before him even less of me. Jealousy was a feeling I had never really had before.
He tilted his head, his keen stare once again surveying my expression. “You love him, don’t you?”
Love.
That was a word I’d only ever used when considering Emma. Before the car accident had taken her, she was my family, my
best friend, my escape from the abuse I experienced at home. But once she was gone, that word had left me, too. What I had with Lilly was so damagedI may have said the word to her, but there was really no meaning behind it. And I knew I didn’t feel that for my father…not yet, at least. And what was happening between Cameron and me was still so new. I’d only been living with him for a short period; before I moved in, while the police and investigators planned the take-down at the mansion, I’d hid out at my dad’s downtown apartment for two months. During that time, Cameron and I had talked constantly, though I had only been able to see him on a few occasions. But ultimately, he was the reason I’d wanted to leave the mansion, why I’d wanted more, why I’d wanted better.
Still, that word hadn’t been mentioned by either of us.
“I don’t know how I feel”
“I do,” he interrupted. “It’s all over your face, I can see it in your movements—and when you look at him. What did he do, Charlie? What got you so riled that you came over here a whole hour early?”
This wasn’t the first time Dallas and I had discussed Cameron. It hadn’t been weird before, but that word he used only seconds ago and continued making reference to could have changed that. Other than Professor Freeman, Dallas was the first friend I’d had since Emma. So far, I’d been able to confide everything to him. I didn’t want anything to affect that—especially not my love for another man.
“We don’t have to talk about this,” I said. “I’m fine. I…”
“Yes, we do. If something’s bothering you, I want to hear it.” He looked at the bottle in his hand. “I don’t care if it’s about him or someone else. Please don’t shut me out. Not again.”
Before having feelings for Cameron, I would have pushed myself off this couch, kneeled in front of Dallas, tugged his belt loose, and enveloped him with my mouth before he would have had a chance to elaborate. I didn’t need words; I used sex instead. But I was learning not to be that person anymore. I had to let my friend in. A part of me even really wanted to let it happen.