by Vremont, Ann
“Stay still!” Percy issued her command with a growl that sounded more like a plea. “There’s only one rule to being a muse—you have to wear the damn uniform. All of it.” She let out a frustrated trill as Bryce dodged her again. “And you have to accept this.”
At five-four, Percy stood about half a foot shorter than Bryce and looked like she weighed at least a hundred-fifty pounds less. Ignoring the size difference, Percy pounced on her. Thighs locked tight against Bryce’s hips and waist, she wrapped an arm around the back of Bryce’s neck. The shift in weight spun Bryce around, her arms frantically wind-milling for something to grab and coming up empty.
Bryce fell onto the couch. Her wrist bounced off the wooden armrest. Pain shot through the bone and she pulled her hand to her chest.
Percy snapped the bracelet around Bryce’s other wrist and gave a triumphant “woot”. “There! Bracelet accepted.”
The sound of voices, dozens of them, joined the wildly dancing colors already infecting Bryce’s vision. Percy’s voice cut through the growing din, but the blonde offered only a lame excuse for the havoc the fabric and amulet wreaked in Bryce’s mind.
“What were you going to do all weekend, anyway? Stare at a blank computer screen?”
*****
All of it.
All of it!
Percy’s caveat repeated itself, somehow wriggling past the noise booming in Bryce’s head. If she could just get the outfit and bracelet off, it should stop. She clawed at the chain. The clasp refused to yield to her fumbling fingers. Momentarily abandoning her attack on the chain, she pulled at the sheet. The more she strained to pull it off, the tighter the fabric clung to her body.
“Percy! Stop this! It’s not funny.” Realizing the woman had vanished even more abruptly than she had appeared, Bryce dropped to her knees and then to her hands as image melded to sound, sound to sight, the stimuli stacking themselves higher, pressing her down until she thought her spine would snap.
Through the soft pastels of a Monet landscape, she saw the hard glint of metal pruning shears on the other side of the patio’s glass door. She pushed up and staggered forward, her softly voiced “thank you” as she found the door unlocked lost in the symphonic cacophony battering her ear drums.
Bryce brought the shears up to where the linen wound over her shoulder. She felt like she had fire ants crawling on her skin. Dancing from the sensation as she fought the shears and fabric, she stumbled against the knee-high pots holding her bronze pipe roses.
Ass over tea kettle she went with a billowing whoosh as the shears sliced through the linen at last and she landed on the neighboring patio. Grabbing the material at her waist, she scooted backward.
Free of the sheet, her vision cleared and the time-etched granite beneath her faded to the patio’s everyday concrete.
Sound still clawed at her, and she jammed one of the blades between her wrist and the chain. Twisting the shears, the chain snapped. The world went quiet—as if someone had shut off a giant faucet. The only sounds left were the erratic beat of her heart and the ragged pull of oxygen through her lungs.
And a voice—a very masculine voice she would recognize anywhere.
“Bryce? Are…are you okay?”
Chapter Two
Jeez-oh-Pete, please tell me I’m not sitting bare-assed on G. Diaz’s patio.
Resisting the impulse to close her eyes and scrabble madly back through the rose bushes to her own patio, Bryce slowly turned and looked over her shoulder at the question’s source. What she saw temporarily pushed everything else from her mind, even her own naked state.
Diaz was sitting on a stool, an easel in front of him. At his feet, he had dropped a paintbrush and the splatter of dark blue marked the surrounding concrete. It was August and hot. He was shirtless and barefoot, his muscled frame covered only in a loose pair of cotton shorts. Lighter in skin tone than most of the Latinos in the neighborhood, he nonetheless had a summer tan—the day’s humidity turning his skin to a slicked bronze.
For a second, she let her gaze soak in the ripples of muscle that played over his abs before the skin smoothed like worked steel across his chest. She felt her nipples pebble, and the reality that she was naked and on his patio slammed into her once again.
Bryce scrambled to cover herself with the damaged piece of cloth. At the fabric’s first touch against her skin, her vision began to blur and she tossed the sheet away. Audience or no audience, she couldn’t put that thing back on. Wearing it had been like one of the bad acid trips her mother used to describe.
“Bryce, are you okay?” Diaz rose from the stool and repeated his question. Instead of scooping the toga back up and offering it to Bryce, he dropped to his knees behind her and lightly touched her shoulder.
She was naked, and he was all but naked. They were poised there, him touching her, their bodies covered in moisture from the heat. Hadn’t she dreamt this at least a couple dozen times since he had moved in at the beginning of the year? Hell, she’d fantasized about it while wide awake, with her fingers dizzily working her clit until she came quietly calling his name.
Of course, it could never be like I imagined it.
Giving a panicked snort, she turned her head forward and drew her legs up to her chest. “I need something to put on…please.”
Diaz reached for the two halves of linen.
“Not that!” Seeing him freeze, she hastily added, “Allergies.”
He picked up the fabric and turned until he was sitting facing her. “It’s a flax linen, Bryce,” he said, his expression incredulous.
“Uhm…I guess. So?” How the hell did he know her name, anyway? She’d never talked to him, only knew that her “B. Schoene” sat alongside his “G. Diaz” on the row of mailboxes at the front of the converted apartment building.
“Your blue shirt…the one you like to pair with the black pantsuit. That’s linen, isn’t it?”
Sensing her jaw was starting to drop, she buried her chin against her knees and clasped her arms tighter around her legs. She could feel flesh bulging, wet skin sliding against wet skin in the summer heat of L.A. Nothing ever bulged in the magazine or television ads. Nothing was wet and slippery unless the photographer wanted it that way. And just what the hell was he doing noticing her clothes like that or knowing what the hell flax linen was? Did he have a linen fetish?
“It’s a different mix,” she stammered. “Or maybe the metal.” She inclined her head in the charm bracelet’s direction.
Diaz scooted until his back rested against the patio door and he could see all of her at once. He tilted his head, first to the left, then to the right. His gaze seemed to draw a frame around her, reminding her of the easel just a few feet away.
Bryce hugged her knees tighter, trying to make herself smaller, invisible. She wanted to leave, couldn’t bear the thought of standing up in front of him and climbing her way back over the pots.
Dressed, she had perfected the art of being invisible. With the right cut of clothing, a man’s attention skipped over her, registering neither lust nor disgust. The same idea applied to makeup. She always left the house with a light touch of color—enough for a professional appearance, but not so much she risked comments on her pretty face while the ugly caveat of her body went unvoiced but hanging in the air.
Naked, invisible wasn’t an option.
He was still staring at her, running one half of the sheet through his hands like rosary beads. “I almost think you want to be naked on my patio, Bryce.”
With a body and face like his, naked women falling over Diaz wouldn’t surprise her. Still, he could hardly expect that to be her modus operandi for picking up men. She raised her head, gaze widening in challenge. “Naked on your patio is the last thing I want.”
She was going to have to find a new apartment now. There was no way she could keep passing him in the courtyard. His quiet, thoughtful gaze and the unusual ease it sometimes produced in her would be gone—from now on, she’d only see his stunned expressi
on from finding her naked on his patio.
“Okay.” He held the sheet out to her with his own challenge. His mouth tilted at the corners, the grin sensuous and surprisingly hungry.
“I-I told you. I can’t put it on.” Afraid to expose more of her body to his view, Bryce reined in the impulse to reach out and push the fabric away.
“Allergies, right?”
When she nodded, Diaz dropped the material to the concrete and scooted forward until he was close enough to run a finger down the side of her arm. The thin film of sweat covering her skin parted at his touch and ran in rivulets, as if she were melting from the contact. But then the warm melt turned to a sharp sting. She jerked her shoulder forward and looked at one of the superficial bloodied marks the rose bushes had scratched into the back of her arm when she fell through to the patio.
“Now…I see a few scrapes…” He paused, moving close enough to her that one shin was positioned along her side while his other leg rested warm and moist against her back. “But nothing like a rash an allergy would produce.”
Hell, he was practically cradling her with his lower body. If he so much as lifted an arm…
He smoothed his palm across the unmarked plane of her shoulder blade. “In fact, it’s all very soft and cream colored.” Keeping his arm bent, he ran his hand all the way across her back to her other shoulder. The motion brought his lips to within only a few millimeters of her ear. “No signs of swelling, either. Are you sure you’re—”
“It’s not like you could tell, really.” And there most certainly was swelling, she thought as she inched away from him. Her clit was swollen, almost twitching with the need to be stroked. Why the hell was he tormenting her like this? He’d always seemed kind, never cruel, in their brief encounters. But now it seemed as if he were trying to seduce her and that could only be a joke on his part.
“Could you just get something, please…a robe maybe?” She didn’t mean to snap the words out, but she did. Her tone pushed him a little farther away.
He slid closer to the building and then leaned back, his stomach muscles flexing as he reached up and opened the patio door. Watching Bryce watching him, Diaz patted blindly behind him.
Shit, why doesn’t he just go inside—then I could run back through the bushes.
As if he had read her mind, Diaz lightly kicked the sheet and bracelet out of her reach. “Don’t go anywhere,” he said, rising quickly and stepping inside his apartment.
He stopped just inside the patio door, his head and torso hidden as he leaned over and rummaged through something just out of view.
Damn, he’s got a nice ass. The thighs and glutes were thickly muscled, like a climber’s or cyclist’s powerful lower body. She knew he had a weight bench inside, had even sat against her wall reading to the sound of him working out. Sometimes, though, she had to carry the book into her bedroom, the sound of all that masculine grunting as he pumped weights—well, it had its own special effect. As often as not she let the book drop to the floor, hands roaming her body while she imagined all that noise was for her benefit.
Tilting her head, Bryce leaned forward as Diaz pulled a laundry basket closer to him and more of his mouth-watering lower torso came into view. She traced the curving lines of his legs, starting at the backward sweep of his calf and up over the front thigh with its medium dusting of black hair. Gaze traveling higher, surprise widened her expression.
He hadn’t, had he Popped wood…talking to her? While she was naked? If anything, things should have taken refuge higher up.
She relaxed the death grip she had on her knees and pried her attention from his erection to look at the discarded fabric, then at the easel Diaz had been sitting in front of when she’d stumbled onto his patio.
She had learned, in part through her own casual observations when he’d moved in, but mostly from unwanted conversations with the nosy Mrs. Gretz across the way, that he worked as a professional artist producing commissioned portraits. She’d even asked him about it later in an exchange of neighborly pleasantries she hadn’t otherwise managed to avoid. He had implied he suffered through the portraits to pay the rent while he waited for his other work to “catch on”.
So, that makes him a serious artist.
She thought of the hallucinations that had lasted until she had stripped the linen and chain away. And then there was Percy’s outrageous behavior—the woman had pretty much stated that she was a muse and that Bryce was taking her place for the weekend. But Percy was a nutcase.
Or was she? Could all that male arousal be the product of one sliced up sheet and broken charm bracelet?
“I’ve wanted to paint you for months, but you never stop outside your apartment long enough to start a real conversation.”
He was standing on the patio’s threshold, a red and black kimono pressed against his lower abdomen. Bryce had a moment to wonder if he was still hard before she looked up to find him staring at her chest. She followed his gaze and realized she had dropped the protective shield of her arm while looking at the easel.
Her breasts were fully exposed--so was her own arousal. Her nipples were drawn tight, the areolas darkened in excitement from pale cherry to a deep red.
Diaz blinked once, slowly, his hand jerking against the kimono and what had grown to an only partially concealed erection. He pulled his lower lip into his mouth, licking it as he did so.
“To paint you like this.”
Bryce remained motionless. This really couldn’t be happening. Not the Percy thing, not sitting naked in front of Diaz with his body responding as if the sight of her was turning him on. She swallowed, her throat parched at the same time her mouth salivated over the outline of his ample cock pressed hard against what had been a loose pair of cotton shorts.
“Will you let me paint you?”
Soft and low, the question had all the sexual power of a full-throated purr. Bryce’s mouth twitched with the perverse desire to tell Diaz he could paint her white if he wanted to. She didn’t think it was possible for her nipples to get any tighter, but the idea of his coming—on her or in her—sent her body temperature spiking higher. Far from wanting to run, her initial response was to fully unfold in front of him. Maybe if the whole Percy thing was real, so was this.
No, Percy was a whack job—an infectious one at that if Bryce was starting to believe there was any possibility that she really had been deputized by a runaway muse or that Diaz found her body inspiring.
“Bryce.” He whispered her name, a slight tremble running through his tensed shoulders. “You’re killing me here…yes, or…?”
Had he really just refused to acknowledge the possibility she would say “no”?
She reached for the kimono, hoping if it could wrap around his broad shoulders, it would fit her, too. “I don’t even know your first name,” she said, turning her back to him as she slipped her arms into the robe’s sleeves. Like her body cared what his name was. She’d been fantasizing about him from the first day she’d met him. And his good manners and frequent smiles had already challenged her resolve more than once to remain as distant from him as she was from her other neighbors.
“Walt,” he answered.
She didn’t need to see him to know he was smiling—pleasure filled his voice, the tenor and warmth enough to leave her sleepy and weak-kneed. But how could she acquiesce after all this time trying to be invisible to him?
Trying but not wanting.
She squelched the traitorous thought with a flick of her shoulders.
“It says ‘G. Diaz’ on your mailbox.” She turned around to find his hand extended to help her up, the line of his arm a direct draw to the thick bottom swell of his erection and the heavy handful of balls.
Praying he hadn’t caught the direction of her gaze, Bryce offered a nervous smile and shook her head “no”. Diaz’s hauling her up from the patio was not an option.
“I prefer ‘Walt’,” he answered and folded his hands behind his back, the motion pushing his cock closer.
/>
“Well, someone has to.” A tiny snort possessed her at the thought of someone so sexy being named “Walt”. Of all the little bedroom—shower, living room and kitchen—fantasy names she’d dreamt up for G. Diaz, “Walt” wasn’t anywhere close to being on the list. Hell, even “Geronimo” had suggested itself.
“It’s the Anglicization of ‘Galtero’,” he explained.
“Why’d you choose that?”
“You’re just stalling, Bryce.” He tilted his head and winked at her before his gaze dropped to where her hands clutched the edges of the kimono together. He hadn’t been gentleman enough to find the sash for her, she noted.
“Uhm…no. I wouldn’t call it stalling. You want me to strip for you,” she answered. “Well…strip again. And yet I don’t really know anything about you.”
“Not from a lack of trying on my part.” Leaning back against the apartment’s exterior wall, he folded his arms over his chest. “And, to answer your question, do I look like a ‘Galtero Diaz’?”
He looked, she thought, like a wonderful mix of many things. She knew he was paler in winter—at least he had been when he moved in. But right now the olive green eyes were set deep in a face tanned to a burnished gold-brown she couldn’t hope to achieve with her wholly Germanic heritage. His hair was a jet black that, when he tilted his head like he just had, threw off natural highlights of deep silver. And he was certainly taller than any of the Hispanic men she knew. He must be pushing 6’3”.
She shrugged. “Maybe a little, Walt.”
