Chapter 86: Work Of Art

I practically choked on my cigarette smoke when hearing Julian’s heart-stopping request.

*This was NOT how I planned on spending my night!*

I was still unable to look at his face, let alone his body at all out of the sheer shyness I couldn’t overcome. His big hands held my slender ones so gently and yet I could still feel my palms beginning to sweat. I chewed on the orange part of my cigarette, making it unintentionally tilt back and forth in the rhythm of my racing heart.

“No, Julian, I’m not going to fuckin’ draw you. I’ve never drawn a human in my entire life. I think the only living thing I’ve ever drawn before is a cat. Literally.” my trembling grumble was quiet.

*Fuck! Why won’t my body listen to me?!*

“There’s a first for everything.” he gave his response as easily as if he were walking through a park, unlike me who was struggling to even get a word out. He leaned down again to where his lips could graze my forehead, his hot breath warming my skin as he spoke words that he knew would trigger somebody like me. “Unless you don’t think you’re up for it…”

I felt a vein in my neck twitch. Bastard knew that people like me hated to be doubted and always had to prove them wrong.

“Your fucking shit almost stinks as bad as your sister’s, you know that?” I growled with my fiery strength returning and I pushed his head away from me with a couple of fingers on his jawline. “Fine. Fuckin’ whatever. Stand in front of the fucking window.”

“You’re saying the F word quite a lot. Did I pinch a nerve?” he teased me while moving in the direction I told him to go.

“Shut the hell up, Julian.” I sassed him as I put a blank canvas in front of me and squirted more black and white paint into the tray I was using before.

*Alriiiight. Humaaaaans. Let’s do this. This might actually be fun.*

For a second I was looking forward to doing this. After feeling that brief moment of pride from drawing my other painting, it dawned on me that I did enjoy art. When I looked over to Julian my enthusiasm sank like a rock and my heart ended up thumping away in my chest like a rabbit rapidly stomping their foot. His beige skin tone looked glossy under the silver light, the weak light casting long shadows and revealing every crevice in his shirtless body. From the rippled muscles along his ribcage to the packs on his abdomen and flat pecks. Don’t even get me started on his face and blonde hair. His blue eyes had an enticing glow in them. He was enjoying every second second of this.

“Is there any position you want me to make?” he was so casual and nonchalant meanwhile I was trying to keep myself from having a seizure.

“U– uh, you uh…” Fuck! Talk fucking normal! *ARGH!!!* I almost choked on my cigarette smoke again as I gulped down my drooling saliva. “I don’t fucking know, just fucking stand there!”

“You got it, Ms. Arlee.” he had a flirt in his tone this time as he gave me a charming smirk and placed his hands in his pockets while leaning most of his weight onto one of his legs.

*Fuck is he hot.*

“Don’t fucking call me that…” I grumbled again, still on a cussing spree. I was beginning to notice that everybody was right—I said the F word when I was *reeeeally* worked up.

“Should I say Mrs. August then?”

His question made me feel like somebody had knocked the air out of me with a brutal punch to my chest wall. My cigarette almost clumsily dropped from my lips but I clutched my lips before I made that world-ending mistake. “Don’t fucking call me that either! Just– just shut up! Fuck! Can’t you see I’m fucking concentrating??”

Julian snorted but said nothing more, becoming the obedient puppy that I had begun to miss. Over time my shaky, sweaty hands began to calm down with my heartrate but there was still something in my chest that kept floating and it kept my cheeks hot. The more I focused on his body and not on him in general the easier it got to paint his figure. It definitely took longer than painting the moon since I was actually putting more effort into this. If I was gonna do it, I wasn’t gonna half-ass it. I wouldn’t be proving anybody wrong then. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.

*Pfft. If I did sleep.*

I wiped my heavy eyelids while staring at my work. There was no clock in here but the slowly gliding moon made the shadows shift on his body. Fucking dammit.

“Do you need me to do something else?” he spoke up after our long silence. For a second there I had forgotten that he was even in the room. It was so peacefully quiet that it felt like I got lost on another planet.

He must’ve noticed I’m getting sleepy again. The concentration definitely isn’t helping.

I rubbed my eyes again in an attempt to snap them fully awake. “Nah, I’m fine. Just keep doin’ what you’re doing.”

The look of Julian’s furrowing brows and crooked frown showed that he didn’t believe a single word I said. Before I could tell him to mind his own business he took his hands out of his pockets and went for the knot on his pajama pants that helped them up. My voice got stuck on the frozen tongue as he loosened his pants and pulled them halfway down his boxers. He then proceeded to pull those down too but only to a teasing length where I could see the lines on his hips and his thin, blonde happy trail that all ran down to the same place. A place that was teased to me further when I saw there was the beginning of a bulge from being half mast.

*Th–that bastard! AGH!!*

I glanced away from him when my heart started thumping away in my chest. Everything from my hips and down was screaming his name but I refused to let it show.

“Is this good enough?” he tilted his head as if he were playing innocent.

I had been huffing on my cigarette so much that I didn’t even notice that it was completely burnt out until now. “It’s excessive as fuck but it’ll work,” I mumbled. I was about to flick the cigarette onto the table but stopped when my creative–the often spelled dangerous–mind clicked in. Using the ashes from my cigarette, I shaded in the parts of his body that I didn’t want to mess up with gray paint I wasn’t familiar with.

“Well.” I stepped back with my hands pridefully on my hips. “Look at that. I’m a legend in the making.” my overloaded pride didn’t last very long when I stared at the painting a little longer.

*Damn, he looks good, even in my shitty artwork.*

I jolted like a startled cat when I felt his hand suddenly appear on my lower back. I was so busy gawking at my ‘masterpiece’ that I didn’t even notice his approach. Julian’s hand slowly slid to my hip and his other hand gripped the other side. An all too familiar feeling when he pulled my back close to his chest and he kissed the back of my neck. “You’re amazing, baby.” I usually cringed when he called me things like that but I was too distracted by other things. His tone was so quiet that it would be inaudible from across the room, but it was loud and clear for me. “It’s almost as beautiful as you are.”

“Come off that mushy shit,” I mumbled. My voice surprised me that it was still weak from earlier. Or maybe it just grew weak again?

*Ah, fuck…*

I already knew where this was going when I felt his grip tighten on my waist and I knew my body wouldn’t be able to resist after his hour of temptation.

My inner, futile struggle was visible through my biting my lip and the bead of sweat that slid down the side of my neck. That familiar shiver ran up my spine when I felt his soaked tongue slide across my skin, licking it up as if it were honey to him. I would’ve and should’ve been grossed out but instead, it made my knees weak and Julian took advantage of my vulnerability in a heartbeat, his grip tightening further as he yanked down my shorts and underwear.