Drawing Lessons

by Julia Gabriel

  “What’s that little smile for, hmm?” he asked.

  Her face turned hot and she was grateful for the heat and steam of the shower. “This might be better than sex,” she fibbed. Nothing was better than sex with Luc.

  “Turn around so I can rinse you.”

  Rinse me. Kiss me. Fuck me. Whatever he wanted to do to her, she would let him. Even paint me. She wasn’t going to stop that and she knew it. She enjoyed modeling for Luc, enjoyed being the object of his attention ... of his art. She felt wanted when he was drawing her. Desired. She wasn’t sure he was really seeing her, not in the way he thought he was or wanted to. But he was looking at her, and she would settle for that.

  She closed her eyes and let the shower spray chase the suds from her hair. Luc’s fingers wiped stray bubbles from her cheeks and nose. She grabbed his hand and pressed it to her lips, licking his palm. When she opened her eyes a second later, she was greeted with the sight of a wet Luc Marchand in front of her. A wet, hard Luc Marchand.

  His words from last night came back to her. Sometimes it’s just a matter of seeing what’s right in front of you. Luc wanted her, however improbable that might seem to an outsider. But between them there was undeniable chemistry. She reached out and wrapped her hand around him. His groan was deep and lusty, pained almost. His warm hand covered hers, then slid her hand off.

  “Just watch,” he said.

  He stroked himself up and down, up and down, never taking his eyes off her. His gaze bore into her face, her breasts, her hips—hot and dark and barely in control.

  “I could look at you all day, Marie. I can never see enough of you.”

  “Do you see me when I’m not here?”

  Still his eyes bore into her. “Yes,” he rasped. “I’ve come more in the past week than in ...” His words trailed away, washing into the drain. His breathing was becoming shorter and shallower. His nostrils flared.

  “You don’t save yourself for me?” Her own breathing was labored now, too.

  “Marie,” he gasped. “Don’t ... come ... let ... me ...”

  He wanted her to save herself for him. But she wasn’t sure she could. She was so consumed by watching Luc that she hadn’t noticed her own hips beginning to rock back and forth. But he had. He was touching himself and yet she felt touched, too. The only thing in contact with her, though, was the water running down her back.

  How is this possible? Just watching him ...

  By the time Luc came, she was close to the edge herself. She took a deep breath to stop it, to give him a moment to gather himself. He leaned into her, one hand on the wall behind her, his chest heaving against her collarbone. After a minute, he slipped his other hand between her legs. She topped it with her own and stopped him.

  “It’s your time to watch me,” she said.

  He took a step back as she began to rock her hips, her hand sliding through her own flesh. Luc dropped to his knees, his eyes fixed to that hand.

  The water ran over his head, through his hair, in rivulets down his back. She dug her fingers into his wet hair to balance herself as she swam closer to a climax. Her legs began to wobble, her thighs quivering. It was right there, almost in reach. Luc was staring intently at her, mesmerized, and through a haze of pleasure she recognized what he was doing. He was committing every little detail to memory. The lines and planes and shadows. His face blurred as she burst through the orgasm, water coursing over her face, her breasts, her hips.

  In the tiny spot of her brain still functioning, she felt Luc’s hands grasp her thighs and hold her steady.

  * * *

  They spent the rest of the morning outside, Luc drawing Marie while Marie attempted to capture on paper the acres of landscape beyond his property. Marie sat on the low stone wall where Luc had first kissed her and tried to maintain a straight face as he popped in and out of her peripheral vision, chewing on his pencil, the very picture of seriousness.

  She preferred modeling for him over having him draw her while she was trying to do something else. It was hard to monitor her smiles and scowls minute by minute when she was focused on other things. Not to mention, formally posing for him turned her on. To have him intently staring at her—and only her—was heady stuff, intoxicating. But Luc flitting around her like an insect was distracting, not sexy. And she wanted sexy Luc all the time now.

  At lunch, he drew her while she ate the dandelion salad he’d prepared for them. She drank more of his great burgundy, letting the wine warm up her veins.

  “Is this what the paparazzi did back before cameras were invented?” she asked lazily. “Scurry around with paper and pencil drawing people?”

  Luc smiled without looking up from his drawing. “That might be who I was in a past life, primitive paparazzi.”

  “Do you believe in past lives?” The wine and the sudden surfeit of sex had loosened up Marie’s tongue.

  “I believe in present lives.”

  “So you don’t believe that what we do in this life affects where we end up in the next one?” She swirled the last spiky dandelion leaf through the mustardy vinaigrette.

  “No, I don’t, Marie. If that’s the case, then I’m royally fucked for my next life.”

  She frowned. “Why would you say that?”

  “As is your husband, I might add,” he replied, ignoring her question.

  “Oh I don’t know. I wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for the fact that he’s getting royally fucked by Maya Redfearn in this life.”

  “Well, in that case, I am glad for his misfortune.”

  He stood to clear away their lunch dishes. Marie followed him to the studio’s kitchenette, worried that her questions, which she had intended to be innocent and throwaway, had made him crabby.

  “What’s on the agenda for this afternoon?” she asked, recorking the bottle of wine. “Are you going to draw me some more?”

  “What would you like to do?”

  “I’d like to try drawing you again, if you don’t mind. But maybe not all of you. I think I should start small.”

  “You want to draw the smallest part of me? Well, that would be my brain.”

  He grabbed his head and pretended to screw the top of his skull off. She laughed at his clownish behavior. Whatever crabbiness had been brewing was gone now.

  “Your laugh is more intoxicating than any wine, Marie.”

  The rapid metamorphosis from funny Luc to sexy Luc sobered her right up. She wiped the last tears of laughter from her eyes.

  “I meant like those small drawings at the museum. That focus on just one body part.”

  “Ah.” He rotated slowly for her, like a product on display. “Which part of me are you considering?”

  She knew she should do something like his bicep or calf, something prosaic. Easy. But in her heart, she knew that wasn’t what she really wanted to draw. She tugged his shirt hem from the waistband of his old, soft khakis.

  “May I?” she asked.

  He pulled the shirt over his head and flung it aside. She unbuttoned and unzipped his pants. He let them drop to the floor and kicked them away.

  “On or off?” He snapped the waistband of his boxer briefs.

  The glint in his eye told her that he too was remembering the first time she tried to draw him. She was braver now—and she had already seen what was underneath.

  “Off, of course,” she answered, watching closely as the rest of him emerged.

  You are beautiful. And mine. For now, for today, and that was all she would ask for. Just one day at a time. She would not let herself hope for anything more than that.

  She found a mat and a blanket, and carefully spread them out on the floor. Luc lay on his back, one knee bent, posing as if for some cheesy calendar.

  “You should be holding a paintbrush between your teeth or something,” she joked. “Like it’s a flower.”

  He rolled his eyes at her suggestion and instead made a show of arranging his penis just so. He was trying to be funny, but watching him touch h
imself made her want him. Made her want to touch him with her own hands. She pushed that thought from her mind. She really did want to draw him again. As great as the sex was, she wanted her lessons, too.

  “You’re being rather too optimistic about my abilities there,” she said. “That’s a little above my pay grade.”

  “I have more faith in your talent than you do.”

  She knelt down and pushed him over onto his stomach.

  “The back of my knees, Marie?” he joked. “I have cellulite there, you know.”

  She lightly pinched the taut skin behind his knees. “Too bad. That rules that out.”

  She ran her nails across his shoulders, leaving a pink trail in her wake. “Looks like you have scars from thousands of women’s nails up here.”

  “I do not,” he said with mock indignation.

  “So I can’t draw your shoulders.”

  She brushed away the hair from the nape of his neck, then leaned in close, close enough for her breath to warm his skin.

  “Hmm. Your pores are rather big here.”

  Luc snorted and she had to bite her lip to hold back her own laughter.

  She moved down to his legs and pretended to consider his thighs and calves, lightly tapping her fingers over the well-formed muscles. “It would take forever to draw all these little hairs.”

  “I’d be happy to lie here forever for you.”

  “Yes, but I’ve got things to do.”

  Luc’s shoulders bounced with silent laughter. She ran the flat of her palm over his ass. “No hair here.” She dipped her head and dropped a kiss on the indentation at the small of his back. “Pores look okay.” She lightly scraped her nails along the curve of his backside. “Hmm. Some evidence of ass-kissing but it doesn’t look recent.” She cupped his very fine ass in her hands and concluded, “I think maybe this is the part I should draw.”

  As she leaned back and picked up her sketchpad, Luc twisted his hips, slightly adjusting his position on the blanket.

  “If there’s one thing you have helped me see, Marie, it’s that modeling is very ... rewarding. I’m beginning to think I’ve wasted my life on the wrong side of the easel.”

  “Glad to know there’s something I was able to teach you, Mr. Marchand.”

  “Ah, you are teaching me many things, Ms. Witherspoon. But draw quickly. I have things I want to do, too, and all of them involve you.”

  Chapter 15

  Marie walked at a leisurely pace back to her mother’s office. It was a sunny day with temperatures practically balmy for early November. The branches of the street trees in Georgetown were nude, the last leaves already fallen prey to autumn’s changing moods.

  She unbuttoned her wool coat so she wouldn’t be overheated by the time she arrived at the office. She had a long afternoon of inputting data ahead of her. That, and her mother wanted her to brainstorm message ideas for the firm’s holiday card. In the past, she had dreaded that task, with its requirement that one be both cheerful and clever. But she was looking forward to the upcoming holidays more than she had in recent years, even allowing herself to imagine spending Christmas Eve in Middleburg with Luc. Dinner and wine by candlelight ... opening gifts by the fire.

  Yes, Marie thought she might have both cheerful and clever in her this year.

  She’d just come from a longer than usual lunch with Nishi. Nishi had treated her to an expensive French restaurant tucked away on a cobblestoned side street in Georgetown in honor of Marie, in Nishi’s words, “getting laid.” She was even beginning to think that this thing with Luc was more than just getting laid. She was leery of getting her hopes up but everywhere she looked, it seemed, little hopes were flitting about.

  She smiled at Maeve as she passed the front desk.

  “Marie—” Maeve began, then stopped. “Good afternoon.”

  Marie paused to ask Maeve what was wrong, but the older woman had picked up her phone and begun to dial. She made a mental note to ask on her way out at the end of the day. Maeve was widowed, her children and grandchildren living in the midwest and Texas. Maybe she was down about the holidays.

  Mother should invite her to Thanksgiving.

  Upstairs, she was surprised to see the door to her office closed. It was never closed, unless she was meeting with someone. Which she wasn’t doing at the moment, obviously. She turned the knob and pushed it open.

  “God damn, Marie, you must have been on a three-martini lunch. Or six, maybe.”

  Marie froze. Richard was sitting behind her desk, his expensive leather shoes propped up on a stack of file folders. Her computer monitor was cocked at an unusual angle. So this explained Maeve’s stiff behavior downstairs.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, quietly closing the door behind her. “Does my mother know you’re here?”

  “Of course she does. I stopped in to say hello to her first.”

  “Does she know you’ve been going through my computer?”

  He rolled his eyes. “I can do whatever I damn well please where your mother is concerned and you know it.”

  “You still haven’t answered my question. What are you doing here? And let me have my chair.”

  “I’m comfortable here, thank you.”

  He made her want to scream and stamp her feet and tear out her hair all at the same time.

  “I’ve called off the divorce.”

  Just like that—with five measly words—everything went into slow motion around her, the shit-eating grin on his face, the goose-like honking of car horns on the street below, the white noise of the ventilation system, a conversation leaking through the wall of the office next to hers. There was suddenly not enough oxygen in the room.

  “No,” was all she could say when she regained the power of speech.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” This couldn’t be happening to her. She must have tripped on the sidewalk outside and knocked herself out cold, or stepped off the curb and been hit by a cab. Any minute now she was going to come to and Richard would be gone.

  “On the advice of my staff.”

  Marie vaguely remembered her father saying something about a challenger for Richard’s seat in next year’s election. She hadn’t given it much thought since then. It wasn’t her problem.

  “You don’t want to call this off. Your campaign manager does.”

  “Same thing to you.”

  “What does Maya think?”

  “She understands. She wants what’s best for me.”

  “Well, I want what’s best for me and that does not involve being married to you.”

  Richard casually lifted his feet from her desk, then slammed them down on the floor. Marie jumped.

  “Too bad, sweetheart. You are married to me. And will be until I decide otherwise.”

  “I’m not doing it.”

  “What happened to ‘Richard! Let’s try marriage counseling! We can work this out!’“ He coldly mocked her. “Well, I’ve been counseled by my campaign manager to patch things up with you. We’ve had a change of heart and all that nonsense.”

  “You know, I’ve been seeing other men. Actually, I’ve been sleeping with other men.”

  “That will have to stop, obviously.”

  “Are you stopping with Maya?”

  The sneer on his face was answer enough. “You really don’t have any say in this.”

  “Yes. Yes, I do. I’ll file for divorce.”

  He laughed. “You can’t afford to file. I’ll drag it out ‘til you run out of money. Your parents won’t pay for it either. Your father has millions of dollars in DefenseTech contracts he wants put into the budget. I can hold that up with the rest of the Armed Services Committee.” He stood. “You can have your seat back. We’ll be seeing each other around.” He leaned in to kiss her but Marie snapped her face away just in time. His lips smooshed her cheek and she had to suppress a chilly shiver.

  His footsteps were still echoing down the hall as she pulled up Google. Sure enough, one Samuel Varner, a Pittsburg
h restaurant magnate, had thrown his hat into the ring for next year’s primary. And he was making hay with the notion of Richard as an adulterer who abandoned his wife for a mistress. Well, at least someone is on my side.

  She barged into her mother’s office without knocking. Her mother looked up, startled, then hung up the phone. Eileen Witherspoon did not look surprised to see her.

  “Richard was just here.”

  “I know, dear. I told you he’d come around. He needs you more than you need him.”

  She looked at her mother, dumbfounded, unable to believe her mother had just said that.

  “You’re right. I don’t need him and this isn’t happening, so wipe that idea out of your head right now.”

  “Nonsense. This is the best thing for you, Marie. You can go back to your normal life, have children—”

  “I don’t want children right now. And certainly not with him!” An image of Luc chasing a dark-headed toddler down his lawn flashed through her head. “Anyway, I’ve fallen in love with someone else.” There. She’d said it. Admitted it. She was in love with Luc Marchand. Not just getting laid. Not just having an unserious fling.

  “Oh seriously, Marie. You can’t be in love with someone else this soon. Richard says you can finish your MBA, as long as it doesn’t interfere with campaign events. I got him to agree to that.” Eileen Witherspoon looked inordinately pleased with herself.

  “Wait—you were negotiating this with him?” Marie could hardly believe her ears. “Can’t he just marry Maya and be done with it? It’s not like she’s going away.”

  “Apparently, the bloom is off that rose. At least as far as marriage is concerned.”

  “And you believed that? If he needs a wife, she’ll do just fine.”

  “It’s not that he needs a wife. It’s that he doesn’t need an ex-wife.”

  “Well, when you file for divorce you generally end up with an ex-wife. Isn’t that the whole point?”

  “I believe he has seen the error of his ways.” Her mother turned back to her leather-bound daily planner.

  “If you believe that, I have all sorts of bridges and shit to sell you.”