TASTE ME

by Carrie Alexander

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  Contents:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

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  1

  The wet paintbrush hovered above the woman's bare breast, then dabbed down, adding another coating of goop to her perky nipple so it looked like a shiny red cherry. A glistening globule broke free and rolled along the curve of the most perfectly shaped breast Julian Silk had ever seen. He could hardly believe his eyes.

  "Damn!" The artist pressed her finger to the painted breast to stop the runaway drip, making the woman's flesh jiggle slightly. Stretched out on her side, the model didn't move, except to stifle a yawn.

  One of the assistants darted in with a handful of Q-tips to repair the mistake.

  "Cress!" the artist called. She removed her finger and stepped back, giving the model an evaluating stare. She held an open palm under the gooey paintbrush. "I need more cornstarch in the cherry paint, Cress. It's too thin. Angelika's thighs are streaking."

  Julian looked. The model's thighs were also perfect. Not as perfect as the breasts, because Julian was a breast man, but perfect enough to make him want to wrap his hands around them and lick from stem to stern. That the thighs happened to be painted with candy-cane stripes had nothing to do with it.

  He couldn't say the same about the words TASTE ME, which were written out in silver nonpareils that framed the perfect little belly button on her tight, flat tummy.

  Julian shoved his hands into the pockets of his trousers, giving himself a little more room down there. So this was why the X chromosomes on the Hard Candy staff had staged a Nerf ball tournament to decide who got to "supervise" the December cover shoot.

  Victor Noone, the magazine's advertising sales director, looked up from a consultation with a contingent from Sugar High, the up-and-coming candy company that was buying heavily into the gala holiday issue. "Julian! Please join us."

  At the sound of his name, a female head snapped to. Petra Lombardi, the Hard Candy art director, hurried over. "I didn't know you planned to be here, Julian." Her voice was like sliding silk, her heels staccato spikes. Silver-blond hair and milky skin looked an even whiter shade of pale against a black leather suit with dainty silver buckles. Petra was a woman of sharp contrasts and biting smiles. Attractive, but potentially poisonous. After a short-term exposure, Julian had developed a resistance.

  "You must say hello to the Sugar High executives." She took his arm. "And our creative team, of course."

  Julian cast another lingering look at the photo set before letting Petra tug him away. The reclining model was arranged on a satin-draped tabletop. Every inch of her skin had been coated in glorious color—edible paint, he'd been told. A team of black-clad assistants, wielding paper cones of frosting as glue, rapidly affixed assorted hard candies to her body, decorating her in stripes, scallops and swirls. Even the model's hair was transformed, pulled back into a knot, sprayed white and strung with strings of candy dots.

  The woman with the paintbrush hovered over a long table set to one side, out of the heat of the lights. The surface was chockablock with painting implements and small buckets of the sugary concoctions in a rainbow of hues. A young black man with sunglasses perched atop his shaved head was shaking a box of cornstarch into a plastic bucket.

  The artist stirred the red syrup, lifted a long-handled spoon high to test the thickness, then licked a dab off her pinkie. She nodded at her cohort. "Thanks, Cress. That's better."

  He cocked an eyebrow. "We can't have streaky thighs."

  "Julian?" purred Petra. She squeezed his arm, her sharp burgundy nails narrowly missing skin as they bit into his rolled-up cuff.

  "Coming," he said, without moving.

  The artist glanced at him. Not a startled look, nor an eager one. She merely glanced once and looked away without reaction, as if he were just another boring plebeian she had to put up with while creating her masterpiece.

  Julian forgot about the nude model. "Who is that?" he asked Petra.

  "The body painter. Mia Somebody."

  Some body, indeed. Even though she was clad in a pair of shapeless overalls and high-top red sneakers, it was obvious that Mia the body painter was her own work of art. Her face was button-cute and topped by a mop of black ringlets. She was short, but her legs went all the way up to a pert bottom. The bib of her overalls bagged over a baby-doll undershirt that clung to breasts that might have been as bodacious as the model's if he could get a really good look at them.

  While Mia may have been aware of Julian's interest, she wasn't standing still for a leisurely inspection. Now that the cherry paint had been adjusted to her taste, she flitted between the model and the paint table, making adjustments and adding color, perfecting every splotch and candy dot of her creation while the bald assistant followed, spraying the model's completed parts until she was as lacquered and shining as a French glycee tart.

  And all the while, Mia Some Body continued to show no interest whatsoever in the presence of Julian Silk, CEO of Silk Publications and such a dashing, sought-after playboy that he'd recently been named one of Celebrity Gossip magazine's Hottest Bachelors of the Year.

  Not that he cared for that tripe. The publicity was mildly annoying and even embarrassing, particularly when it led to dazzled young women stopping him on the street to take photos or to have him autograph their bras. He didn't want to be a sex symbol celebrity, even for fifteen minutes of fame. His conservative board of directors had let it be known they felt the same.

  On the other hand, Mia's complete disregard was humbling. And rather inspiring.

  For the first time in months, Julian was roused to prove to a woman just how irresistible he could be.

  "The umbrella over that strobe should be adjusted." Mia Kerrigan gnawed her knuckle as she watched the photographer direct his assistants as they finished lighting the cover shot. "There's too much shine coming off the paint."

  "Out of your hands, sweetheart," Cress said. Even though they were standing off the set and out of the glare, he slid his Gucci aviator sunglasses into place. He claimed the bright lights hurt his eyes. Mia thought he just wanted to look cool for Angelika, a top model they'd worked with before, but who was too pricey to be one of Mia's regulars.

  "I want this to be perfect." Mia was used to photographing her own artwork when she staged body-painting sessions in her home studio. But the money she got for freelance jobs was so attractive that she'd resigned herself to giving up creative control of the end product.

  With a sigh, she reminded herself that Phil Shavers, the photographer the magazine had chosen, was one of the hottest in the business. Angelika would look gorgeous on the cover of Hard Candy, the sexy new men's lifestyle magazine. A truly edible feast. If the glazed eyes and openmouthed expressions of the spectators were typical, the magazine's young, buff, upwardly mobile readers would want to ravish the model like a pack of hungry wolves.

  "It's perfect," Cress said, being completely sincere, unlike the toadies who'd gathered around. Cress's taste was impeccable … for a raging heterosexual.

  Reminded of why she hired the photo stylist whenever it was financially viable, and relied on him as a friend the rest of the time, Mia stood on her toes to throw an arm around Cress's thin shoulders. She gave him a sloppy kiss on the cheek. "Thanks."

  "Ugh. You're all sticky."

  She licked his jaw. Sugar granules melted on her tongue. "So are you."

  He gave her a squeeze. "Let's go shower off."

  "Not until the shoot is over. We might need to do touch-ups if Angelika starts to melt. Her butt is already looking globby."

  Cress managed an obvious leer from behind the sunglasses. "Says you."

  "Get her number yet?"

  "She slipped me her card."

&
nbsp; "Before or after you gave her the Brazilian?" Mia needed her models to be as slick as porpoises from head to toe. Cress had developed a magic touch with the hot wax—one of his many skills.

  "Models appreciate a man with gentle hands," he gloated.

  "Uh-huh. Nothing says you're special like ripping out stray pubic hairs."

  Satisfied that the shoot was under control for the moment, Mia turned away to sort out her table of supplies. There were paints in every flavor—cherry, lime, grape, orange, three shades of chocolate. She was fully stocked with penny candy, as well. Sugar High, the candy company that was underwriting the cover as a heavy advertiser, had sent over a box of product for her use. To be doubly sure she'd have every color and shape under the sun, Mia had sent Cress out for an even larger variety. He'd gone wild at Sweet Something, a popular candy store in the Village, and come back with enough hard candy to decorate a hundred models plus their agents.

  The unusually large amount of ingredients and supplies had maxed out Mia's credit card, but she'd get the cost back a hundredfold when the check from the magazine was cut. If she was lucky, there'd be enough to pay her rent for a couple of months and still put a good chunk aside for the complicated multimodel tableau she'd already sketched out for the International Body Painting Expo coming up in a couple of months. With an attention-grabbing Hard Candy cover on the horizon, a good showing at the expo would shoot Mia to stardom in the body-painting community.

  Big frog in a small pond, her father would say, if you can be satisfied with that. Pastor Robert Kerrigan ran his church and congregation like a Fortune 500 company. He believed in sticking to the rules and striving for the highest level of success, in any field.

  Mia believed in breaking the rules and playing her life by ear. "Happy frog," she mumbled.

  "What?" Cress said, appearing at her elbow.

  She gave him her biggest grin. "Can I book you now for the expo? It's the first week in October. I must assemble the best team possible to have a chance at the gold medal in the group category."

  Cress sniffed. "I'll have to check my schedule. I'm much in demand these days."

  "Oh."

  "Yeah, right, Vogue called and I forgot to tell you." He slid his sunglasses down his nose and looked at Mia over the frames. "Of course I'll do it. You're my homie."

  Mia flicked a paintbrush at him. Cressley Godwin IV was from a family as well-off as her own. They'd met years ago in private school, two misfits more interested in the arts and independence than shopping for designer labels on Daddy's dime and doing Ecstasy at dance clubs. Cress talking 'hood style was like Mia trying to carry on a coherent conversation with her mother's French classics book club.

  Cress frowned at the lime flecks on his champagne-colored raw silk shirt. "You got paint on me. The sugar will spot."

  Mia handed him a sponge. "Send me the dry-cleaning bill, homie."

  "Oh, don't worry, I will."

  "Touch-ups!" screeched the photographer.

  Mia grabbed the bucket of cherry paint and the air brush. "Bring the vanilla paint and the gelatin glaze. We need to layer another coat on Angelika's southern hemisphere."

  "Have glaze, will travel to uncharted territories," Cress muttered as he followed her to the set. "Just like Lewis and Clark."

  Mia began to spray the model's striped thighs. "Or Stanley and Livingstone."

  "Livingstone got lost in the jungle. I've never met a thicket I couldn't conquer." Cress smiled at the model. "Isn't that right, my angel?"

  Angelika giggled. Most models giggled around Cress, who first made them his friends and then got them to take him home. He claimed that once they were in bed together, the typical supermodel soon forgot that they had six inches of height on him. His prowess supposedly dazzled them. Mia believed that his girlfriends had a shortage of brain cells to start with.

  "Mmm-hmm." Mia pointed the nozzle of her spray gun at the twenty-one-year-old's plucked pubis and squeezed the trigger. Usually, the models wore tiny unobtrusive thongs no bigger than an eye patch, but going without produced a cleaner look.

  When a model was willing to pose sans thong, Mia was careful to shoot only tastefully arranged poses. While she had much appreciation for the sensual aspects of body painting, gratuitous salaciousness frosted her cookies. Her art came first, not Hard Candy's horn-dog target audience.

  She shot a glare at the gaggle of onlookers. Huh. Several were edging closer, wanting a better look at the tempting display. Mia turned her backside to them while she worked, deliberately blocking their view of Angelika. She wasn't in the mood to deal with the sniggers and bawdy comments that were typical of a nonprofessional audience.

  "Okay, looks like we're good," she said a few moments later, after Cress had made a final pass with the protective gelatin glazing medium.

  The photographer darted in and adjusted a peppermint-swirl candy by an infinitesimal degree. "Now we're good. Clear set!"

  Mia rolled her eyes at Cress as she backed away. She bumped into one of the spectators, who put his hand on her butt and said, "Careful, sweet cheeks."

  Gross. Pretending to be startled, Mia whirled around and let go with a spurt of the cherry-flavored paint. It sprayed across the starched shirtfront and loosened tie of a tall, dark-haired man, barely missing another of the onlookers when he lunged out of the way.

  "Hey!" the lunger said. He brushed at the sleeve of an expensive suit. "Watch what you're doing. You might have stained my Hugo Boss."

  Although she'd been on the verge of a smart retort, Mia snapped her mouth shut. She recognized the voice of the man she'd missed as the one who'd made the "sweet cheeks" comment and had assumed he was also the ass-patter. Wrong.

  She aimed an apologetic shrug at the man she'd sprayed and was startled to recognize him. He was the guy who'd arrived late and stared so intently that he'd broken her concentration. Quite an achievement. Typically, she lost herself in the artwork and had to be snapped out of her trance by Cress or an extremely fatigued model.

  "Uh," she said. "Sorry about that."

  "Me, too," he replied. "I didn't mean to grab your butt. I was just trying to stop you from backing into me."

  She felt less sorry, but he was smiling at her, and his smile was pretty damn charming, so she wasn't mad, either. His voice was nicer than the other guy's, too. Deep, rich and smooth, like buttered rum. There was something familiar about his face. Maybe she'd run into him at another shoot?

  Even so, he was only a suit. Albeit a cherry-flavored suit.

  "I've wrecked your shirt." Mia reached for his arm. "Come over here, we'll get you cleaned up."

  "Shouldn't I lick myself clean, like a cat?" the man said, letting her lead him to her table. He lifted the end of his tie to his mouth and took an experimental taste. His mouth puckered. "Uh, maybe not. I thought the paint's supposed to be edible."

  "Technically it is," Mia said. "But I wouldn't want to eat it with a spoon." She squeezed out one of the soapy sponges they kept on hand. "We're more concerned with looks and application than the actual taste."

  "So it's not a good idea if I set the Sugar High execs loose on—" the man nodded toward Angelika "—our holiday treat?"

  Mia glanced sharply at him while she dabbed at his tie. "That would be in bad taste all the way around."

  "I was kidding."

  "Of course you were." She tossed the tails of the tie over his shoulder, trying not to notice how wide and square it was. She normally wasn't attracted to the men who huddled in conference at photo shoots, even when they were distractingly gorgeous. But this one had more than a thoroughbred body and a handsome face. He possessed black-licorice eyes struck with starbursts of good humor and the male version of a Mona Lisa smile. He was self-aware, not merely self-involved like the usual suit.

  Then he ruined it by saying, "I'm Julian Silk," as if she should be impressed.

  Julian Silk? Uh-oh. She'd spray-attacked the man who'd be signing her current paycheck.

  Never mind, she told
herself, remembering that she wasn't impressed with either power or money. She'd decided that nine years ago when she'd chosen art school instead of the Ivy League, despite her parents' protests. She'd been on her own ever since.

  "Hey, wow," she said. "Congratulations."

  Mr. Silk gave a surprised half laugh. "Congratulations for what?"

  "The stork must have loved you." Mia tilted her head. "Being born into the Silk family is a little like winning the lottery, don't you think? If I'm impressed, it's only by your luck."

  "That's one way of looking at it, I suppose."

  She plucked at his shirtfront to hold it away from his body while she scrubbed at the stain. Mr. Silk stood quite still, but not tense, nor embarrassed. Perfectly casual and unconcerned, as if he were used to being attended to. Which, of course, he was. The man was so sharp and well put together that there had to be a team of tailors, barbers, workout gurus and maybe even plastic surgeons at his behest.

  He made a motion, lifting his hand to his lips and then flinging it away.

  She squinted an eye at him. "What are you doing?"

  "Taking the silver spoon out of my mouth so you'll talk to me."

  Behind her, Mia heard Cress smother a laugh. "It would be extremely idiotic of me to be rude to the man who can have me hired and fired," she said.

  "Then you know who I am."

  She sighed. "Now I do."

  "After I told you." He ruminated on that, lifting one corner of lips so handsomely carved they belonged in the Louvre. "Dumb move. I was enjoying the anonymity."

  "Uh-huh." But he'd just had to pull the I'm-rich-and-in-charge card. She suppressed another eye roll and redirected her attention to getting the stains off his shirt. They'd faded to pink.

  Unfortunately, when his mouth was distracting her, she'd dabbed with too much force and had dampened the fabric to the point where it was almost see-through. The wet cotton clung to his abdomen. She had to scrape the material off with her fingers, pressing them into a slab of corrugated muscle that made her temperature rise beyond acceptable core-activity levels.