Naked Canvas (An Alpha Billionaire Romance)

by Grey, Sadie

We ended up leaving the party together and going back to his place. By then, my head was swimming. He told me how beautiful I was. How fascinating I was. He said everything I hoped he would say, all the sweet nothings I was burning to hear.

  To be honest, I ate it up. He was so goddamn cool and I was so goddamn not. The fact that he liked me was a dream come true. An ultimate validation that I, too, was one of the cool kids. That I finally fit in.

  Things got hot and heavy between us. He wasn’t a great kisser, but I was inexperienced and I thought maybe I was the one doing it wrong.

  Things progressed. He started unbuttoning my blouse. I was hesitant. Before that, I had never really done much with guys, but I liked him, and I didn’t want to let on that I was so nervous that I wanted to throw up. I let him take my shirt off and tried to be cool.

  I stood in front of him with my breasts bared, trembling and unsure. He was sweet and gentle. He told me how sexy I was. Told me how much I turned him on. His words took some of the edge off my fear.

  We undressed each other slowly. Playfully. Until we both stood naked in front of each other. I had never been with a naked man before. I mean, I had seen pictures and videos, but being face to face with it in real life was a whole different story.

  I explored his body with my hands. I touched his chest, his arms, his face. He took one of my hands firmly in his and placed it on his penis. I couldn’t believe how hard it was. I wasn’t sure what to do so I grabbed it and gave it a firm squeeze.

  Can you believe that? Just remembering it is making my face red. Do you ever get that? You think about something embarrassing you did years ago and you get embarrassed all over again?

  Of course, you don’t. I’m sure you never do anything embarrassing, Mr. Perfect.

  Anyway, he grabbed my hand and guided it over his erection, showing me how it should be done. I stroked him and I could tell he was enjoying it.

  I can’t really describe how amazing that made me feel. Knowing that I could have that kind of effect on him. That I could make him feel that good. It was such a rush. It turned me on like crazy.

  He pushed me down on the bed. I was having so much fun playing with his cock that I ignored his fumbling with my breasts. He was clumsy and awkward, although at the time I didn’t know any better.

  He had been much smoother with his clothes on. Still, I wanted him to like me. My need for affection overpowered everything else. I wanted to impress him, I guess. To prove to him, and maybe myself, that I was as cool as he was. That I was just as sophisticated. That sex was no big deal. This is just what regular people did, and I was one of those regular people. I kept telling myself to stop being a prude.

  He put his head between my legs. The sensation was like nothing I had ever felt before. His tongue stroked me and my body responded to him, even though he was pretty unskilled. After a while, it became clear he wasn’t going to make me come. Not even close. But hey, fair is fair, right?

  I gently pushed him off me and took him in my mouth. He was so hard and warm. I teased him with my tongue, and he groaned ridiculously. I would occasionally look up at him to see if what I was doing was working. This was all new to me, but I wanted to do it right. I wanted to make him come, even if he couldn’t make me come.

  I asked him to tell me when he was going to finish so he didn’t do it in my mouth, but of course, he didn’t say anything. His hips jerked. That was the only warning I had before I tasted that first shot.

  I pulled away, and he ended up unloading the rest on my face. I wasn’t thrilled with it, but I figured hey, at least I’d gotten him off. Mission accomplished. By then, I was just tired, and all I wanted to do was sleep. I figured once I’d made him come, we were all good.

  But he had different ideas. He wiped my face with my panties and renewed his advances with a fury. It was as if his orgasm turned him on more instead of satisfying him.

  To his credit, he was hard again pretty quickly. Not that I wanted him to be. But still. We lay next to each other and his body was pressed fully against mine. I could feel his hardness poking between my legs. Searching for my sex.

  It was weird. Even though I didn’t really like him, my body was on fire. I wanted him inside me. I wanted him to fuck me. Things had not gone smoothly so far, but I was ready. And from the way he had been talking, I just sort of assumed we were a couple now. That this was going to be a long term thing. So I figured, why not let him be my first?

  I lay back and spread my legs. I’ll never forget the way he looked at me. He had this hungry look in his eyes. Like a beast about to eat its prey. All his cool sophistication was gone. He was just an animal now.

  He stuck a condom on and positioned himself over me, rubbing his head between my legs. I liked the way it felt. Then he plunged himself into me. It hurt at first, but I had been expecting that. I had read enough about sex to know what was coming, physically anyway. Emotionally was another story.

  He hammered away at me. I think he had watched too many pornos or gotten some bad advice. My whole body shook with his thrusts. Still, it felt kind of good. I could feel something building within me, but before it could materialize, his hips jerked against mine and he collapsed on top of me. I could already feel him shrinking inside me.

  I was nowhere near satisfied, but I figured it would be better next time. Besides, my first time was just something that I needed to do, you know? Now I had checked it off my list and moved into a new phase of my life. Angie the virgin was gone. I was a woman.

  I didn’t really have time to let it sink in. As soon as he caught his breath, he rolled off me and scrambled to get his clothes on. He told me it was great. Told me he had a good time, but he needed to be up early the next day for work.

  I nodded and continued to lay there. Not understanding the subtext of his words. He was like, no, I need to get some sleep. I’ll give you a call one of these days.

  I still didn’t understand. I forced him to say it.

  He was like, you need to leave.

  I couldn’t believe what he was saying. I checked my watch. It was three in the morning. I was miles from my apartment. I told him as much, but I was wasting my breath. He just kept insisting that I go.

  I got dressed with tears in my eyes. I couldn’t believe this was the same guy I’d met at the party. His entire demeanor had changed. All of the sweetness and gentleness was gone. He had seemed so impressive when I had first met him. Now he just looked petty and small. He was so full of shit I could practically smell it on him.

  I had no money for a cab, so I left and made the long, sad walk of shame home. I mean, I know that it’s almost impossible for your first time to live up to the fairy tale sort of expectations. I knew that it would be awkward and not all that great. But I hadn’t expected it to be so anticlimactic. I hadn’t expected my first time to be with such a shallow, lying douchebag. I hadn’t expected that I would get kicked out and have to walk home alone afterward.

  I was so angry at him for so long. I waited for him to call. You have to understand, I didn’t like him. I didn’t even want to see him again. But goddammit I wanted him to call. I wanted to know that he liked me. I wanted to know that he wanted to see me again. I wanted to be the one who told him no. I wanted to end the relationship between us, not him.

  But he never called. I was just a cheap one night stand to him. I didn’t even get the satisfaction of telling him to go to hell.

  It’s funny. I have thought about that night so many times since it happened. He probably hasn’t thought about it since.

  Chapter 14

  My voice trailed off and I stared up at myself in the mirror. All the old feelings of rejection and humiliation resurfaced within me. My eyes roved over my body, searching for the tragic flaws that would answer the shameful question that burned in my mind ever since that night. What the hell was wrong with me?

  I kept waiting for Dominic to say something. To pass judgment on me for my story or to ask a loaded question that made me feel even shittier abou
t the experience. I had never told anyone about that night. It had been a secret source of embarrassment for me, festering just under the skin where no one could see it. Just recounting the tale had been a struggle. The least he could do was respond.

  Instead he said nothing. He sat hunched over me, painting my thigh. As I talked, he had painted a latticework of vines encircling my right leg. Dark flowers bloomed from those vines, and thorns seemed to bite into my skin, drawing crimson drops of painted blood. He put the finishing touches on a poisonous looking blossom and straightened on his stool to look at me with serious eyes.

  I frowned at him. “What?” I asked. “You don’t approve?”

  “Do you need my approval?” he asked in a neutral tone that made me want to pull my hair out.

  “No, but I just bared my soul to you. I expect you to say something.”

  “Then, no,” he said. “I don’t approve.”

  I sighed. “I knew you were going to judge me. Look, I was naive and stupid and I let him take advantage of me.”

  His brow furrowed and looked at me, confused. “I think you misunderstood me. I don’t approve of what he did to you. He sounds like an asshole. There’s nothing wrong with what you did. You took a risk. You put yourself out there. You didn’t play it safe. Don’t ever apologize for that.”

  “Oh,” I said, relaxing in my bonds. “I guess I never thought about it that way.”

  “You see? It helps to confront the past. By keeping it bottled up, it sounds like you’ve been feeling guilty about that night, which is a shame, because I think that guilt changed the way you live your life.”

  “Well, it certainly opened my eyes to the way men are.”

  “Tell me,” he said. “What do you think you learned about men that night?”

  I thought about how to put it into words. Dominic picked up his stool and moved it to the other side of the bed. He arranged his paints silently, waiting for my answer.

  “Well,” I said finally. “When it comes to sex, men are liars. They’ll say and do whatever it takes to get a woman into bed.”

  He dipped a brush into a blob of paint on his easel. “So you judge all men by what happened to you that night?”

  “I guess so,” I said. “But I don’t think I’m wrong. People are generally selfish, and men in particular are selfish about sex. It was something I suspected for a long time, and that night just confirmed it for me.”

  “That’s such a cynical outlook.”

  “You call it cynical. I call it realistic.”

  He leaned over my left leg and continued to paint. I couldn’t see what he was painting, but each brush stroke left cool lines on my ankle. “So the way you lost your virginity changed the way you look at relationships.”

  “No,” I said quickly. “Well, okay yes, a little bit. But I don’t agonize over it. I don’t let it run my life.”

  “Would you say that he got you drunk and had his way with you?” Dominic asked. His tone was neutral, but I knew exactly what he was getting at by the phrasing of his question.

  “You think I judged you unfairly when we hooked up?” I asked. “Because of my first time. You think I’m comparing you to him?”

  “I think if you let go of your past, it would change your outlook on a lot of things.”

  He said nothing after that. I assumed he wanted me to say something, but I decided to wait out the silence. This was his game, not mine. I could happily lay there quietly while he worked.

  My thoughts, however, did not stay silent. He had raised a valid point. Maybe I was judging Dominic too harshly because of what happened that night. Equating Dominic with my first lover was an unfair comparison. Dominic was everything that other man had pretended to be.

  Dominic was brilliant and profound. I had learned more about myself today than a lifetime of self-reflection could teach me. Dominic had an effortless way of getting to the truth of things. His way of viewing life and of viewing me was a revelation. I had come here to get paid, but Dominic was giving me something more valuable than money. His perspective showed me how beautiful the world could be, and he seemed intent on connecting me to my true identity.

  It was something I had suspected about him when I looked at that first sketch of me. He saw me differently than I was. Like he saw me without all my baggage and all my hang-ups, and he was trying to get me to see myself that way, too.

  I looked at my body in the mirror and at the shapes he had painted on me. A stormy cloud above my heart. A ship in a troubled sea. A tangle of thorny flowers imprisoning my leg. The images were beautiful and troubling. They went beyond mere decoration.

  Finally, I broke the silence. “The pictures you’re painting on me. What do they mean?”

  He shook his head. “I’m just free painting as you talk. Think of it like doodling. I’m letting my subconscious take me where it takes me.”

  “So you’re not trying to tell me something with the images you’ve chosen?”

  “Let me answer that with a question,” he said. “What is art?”

  “Wow, can I pass?” I asked with a laugh.

  A smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “I know it’s a big, unanswerable question, but I’m curious. What is art to you? There’s no wrong answer here.”

  “I don’t know. This is probably going to sound totally stupid, but when I think of art, I think of pretty things.”

  “So art is beauty?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “That doesn’t sound stupid at all. Every artist on the planet probably has their own personal definition of what constitutes art. And everyone who looks at a creative work has their own definition, too.”

  “What’s your definition?” I asked.

  “I tend to agree with you. For me, the art I make is about capturing two things. Beauty and truth. When I see something beautiful in the world, I want to capture it somehow and share that beauty with the rest of the world. And the same goes for truth. If I can’t create something beautiful, I want to portray something true. I want to find the truth of a thing and show that to the world.”

  “I think you do that quite well,” I said quietly.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “So how does this answer my question. Are you trying to tell me something with what you’re painting on my skin?”

  “Some artists create a work of art with the intention of making their audience feel something specific. A photographer who wants to make people sympathetic to the homeless will take a photograph of a vagrant looking sad and desperate. A movie director who wants to scare his audience will have things go bump in the night. A musician who wants to make his audience sad will compose something in a somber, minor key.

  “But for me, I don’t try to make my audience feel anything specific. I just put the image on the page or the paint on the canvas, and I let the viewer feel whatever they’re going to feel. There’s no single ‘correct’ reaction to my work. Whatever it makes you feel is the correct response.”

  “I think that makes sense,” I said, but the doubt in my voice contradicted my words.

  “Take this, for example.” He leaned back and let me see what he had been painting on my left thigh. A colorful bird with outstretched wings sat perched inside a crude and ugly cage. “What does this image make you feel?”

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “Is it?” he asked.

  “Yes, obviously. I’m the bird, and I’m trapped inside a prison of my own design. It’s like you’ve been saying all day. I build these walls around me. I let fear control me. Or I let my past control me. It keeps me from taking risks, and it keeps me from finding true happiness. Right?”

  “I told you, there is no right or wrong when it comes to what a painting makes you feel. You get what you need from a piece of art. It’s a reflection of the one viewing it, not just a reflection of the artist.”

  “Whatever,” I said, grinning. “I got it right.”

  He smiled. “It’s not about right or wrong. I
t’s about honesty. You were honest just now about how it made you feel.”

  “Well, it’s sort of the direction you’ve been pushing me all day. Maybe you’re finally starting to fix me.”

  “I’m not trying to fix you. There’s nothing wrong with you. I’m just trying to get to know you, and along the way, you’re starting to get to know yourself, too.”

  I laughed. “There you go again. You’re like a freaking zen voodoo sex master.”

  His eyes glimmered in amusement. “I should really put that on a business card.”

  “You should. Well, Master Bell, do you have any more questions? My arms are getting kind of tired.”

  “Fair enough. Just one more question. Tell me, which one you like better.”