by Gabi Moore
“I’m so sorry.”
He fumed and stared at the box on the floor.
“You’re really, really lucky, Nyx.”
The hair on the back of my neck prickled. “I know. I’m sorry for ignoring you.”
“It’s OK.”
He lifted his eyes to mine and tried to smile at me. My heart broke as I realized – he was trying to cheer me up. We stood there a long time, looking at one another. The props and fanfare from earlier that day had all gone, but we were still on a stage all the same. The little bedroom nymphs scattered and left us standing there, looking at one another, a whole ocean of space and silence between us.
I took a few uncertain steps towards him. Touched my hand to his chest. He looked relieved, took my hand in his and kissed my knuckles. Like a little surrender, like taking a big gulp of air after coming up to the surface of the water, our lips met and we kissed. Quietly, delicately, breath held just in case we disturbed something. He exhaled and pulled me in closer. Kissing him was breathing for me.
“I’m sorry Adam,” I whispered. In response, he tightened his arms around me and rocked a little with me in his arms.
“I’m sorry too, Nyx. There’s nothing going on with me and Laura. And I don’t want you to think of me as a bad influence.”
I pulled back a little.
“I know but,” I said and looked around the room, “I don’t know if I can do all of this on my own.”
“Of course you can!” he said and pecked me on the forehead. “You’re a firecracker. And like I heard you telling Tamara, the play just needs a little more sex in it and everything will be fine.”
He gave me a naughty wink.
“You were eavesdropping?”
“Of course I was.”
I playfully tried to bite his arm.
“Well, I don’t see how that’s going to solve my actual problems right now. I have a massive painting I have to pull out of thin air by tomorrow morning. I don’t think sex can help me in this instance.” I scoffed.
“What? Of course it can” he said. I eyed him closely.
“How…?”
Like a light flickering on inside, something naughty sparkled behind his eyes and he started to search around the room.
“Got any paint?” he asked.
“Oh my God, Adam, what are you going to do?” I asked, rolling my eyes.
He laughed and began to rummage around in the cardboard box at his feet; it was a box of supplies from the college and some leftover materials from making the forest props a few weeks ago. I looked down at his frantic hands and admittedly, felt a little excited.
“We could go to the art shop quickly, “I said. “I don’t know when they close but maybe we can have a look around for paint?”
“To hell with the art shop,” he said.
He was on his knees now, scrambling through the supplies like a nutty professor. I loved him like this. All fired up. He didn’t notice me staring at him. So I just stared.
“A ha!” he said and held up a fistful of small paint tubes. I had forgotten about those.
“Now what do you want to do with that?” I asked, but he had already bolted to his feet and was fanning them out in front of me, like a magician asking me to pick a card.
“Which one should we use? Go on then, choose one.”
I looked down and tried to think. We didn’t even have any paintbrushes, so I wasn’t sure what harebrained idea he could have been planning.
“Don’t think about it so much, just pick a color!”
I laughed out loud. “OK, red!” I said quickly.
He was so good at stirring people up, and getting them excited about the thing he was excited about. Maybe I could get a little carried away by him. Just a little.
He tossed the other colors back into the box and held up the red tube, smiling mischievously.
“Now what?” I said.
“Well, of course we’re going to need a canvas.”
“But I don’t have a canvas.”
He pulled his lips tight to the side and mimed thinking about something deeply. It made me laugh. It was so funny to see him like this, in his element, playing the clown. A hot clown, that is.
“Hm… are you sure you don’t have one?” he said in a funny accent. My eyes widened as he turned to look in the direction of my bedroom and then darted off.
“Wait, where are you going?” I cried, but he had already emerged from the room looking victorious, my white bedsheet in hand.
“What? Are you saying …no, we absolutely cannot use my sheet!”
“Oh yes we can.”
“No, we can’t!”
“Yes we can.”
He started pushing things aside so he could lay the sheet down flat. It took up the whole living room.
“You’re nuts!” I shouted, but I couldn’t help but laugh.
“I’m nuts, am I? I saw you on stage earlier today, I think it’s very obvious who the nutter is around here,” he said, and made a lunge for me. I squealed and darted out of the way, and all of a sudden we were playing a game of catch, me desperately trying to avoid stepping on the bed sheet.
“Adam! Adam you’re terrible, come on stop, I have so much work to do!” I laughed, and narrowly avoided him catching me.
“Work? Oh we’ve got lots of work to do, all right,” he said and we raced circles round the bedsheet. I gave up and flopped down on the sheet, laughing and trying to catch my breath. Quick as a Jack in the box, he sprung next to me and lay down beside me. God, it was ridiculous how quickly he could turn my legs to jelly.
“Well, what now, smart guy? We don’t have any paintbrushes or anything. And it’s going to be a lousy painting in just one color.”
The blood rush felt good in my cheeks. Still smiling, I watched as his face turned a little serious. He gave me that look, that same mesmerizing look that had thrown me off guard right from the start.
“What?” I said, suddenly taken with his intensity.
He smiled.
“Well?” I said, giggling nervously.
He sat up, peeled off his shirt and tossed it overhead. In the silence of the room, I heard it land softly on the bare floor. I wanted to tell him he was crazy. That that’s not what he was here for, that I needed his help, that he had gotten me into enough trouble as it was, that he was indeed a bad influence …but no matter how much I thought I wanted all that, I wanted to just keep looking at him even more.
He stood and peeled off his trousers, and slowly tossed these aside as well. I gulped and tried to look away. His body was beautiful. Strong, lithe. Crackling with a kind of wild energy that was impossible not to look at. I wanted to tell him that I was un-seduceable, that I couldn’t let myself get carried away by him again, couldn’t slip, couldn’t fall again like that, couldn’t let go… but no matter how much I wanted all of that, I wanted him to lay back down again and kiss me.
And he did.
He took me out of my clothes, all the lines and textures and colors of my skin stark against the plain white sheet. We lay there, a quiet symphony in flesh and white, something clean about it all, and also something delightfully dirty. I could do the painting after he left, I guess. I’d think of something. I didn’t care. I just wanted his lips on mine.
Naked skin to naked skin, we wound our bodies together and kissed, each caress a little apology, a little suggestion, a little permission. It was so easy to kiss him.
“Lie back,” he said.
I obeyed, the hard ground underneath me pressing hard up against my spine and shoulder blades. To my surprise, he rose and lifted his hands up in the air, and before I could make out what he was holding in his hands, a long snake of red fell from high and came splattering cold down onto my bare chest.
The paint! I recoiled and looked down at the twists of bright red on my breasts and stomach.
“What the …are you crazy?” I yelled. He held the paint tube overhead like a sword he had just plunged into my heart, and now I was bleeding out in acrylic. H
e was smiling wickedly. I tried to sit up but he flopped down on top of me, squelched his chest against mine and pressed, squashing the paint coils between us into a red film that gave me instant goosebumps. I squealed and laughed and tried to get away.
His weight heavy on me, his hips pinning me in place, I could do nothing but laugh and wriggle and then look down at the seeping red spreading out between us. When I opened my eyes and looked at him, his face was glowing with mischief.
“See? We don’t need paintbrushes,” he said, pleased with himself.
I slapped his arm.
“You big brute. Now what, huh?” I said, but just as I spoke these words his eyes told me the answer. I bit my lip and he leaned in for another kiss. Though the paint was cold and sticky and alien, his lips were everything but. They were warm. Slick. Every inch perfectly familiar to my tongue. I sighed and let him kiss me.
“You bastard,” I mumbled into his mouth.
I felt him smile and then wiggle against me, making the paint squelch between us.
Like a spell, like clockwork, as predictable as the tides and almost as inevitable, I was wet. I squeezed my thighs together and held onto that sweet ache inside. I loved being naked with him. But I wanted to be more than naked. I wanted him to not only know what was under my clothing, but further under, under the skin itself, somewhere deep inside where only he seemed to reach. Instinctively, I arched my hips and parted my legs against his stiffening cock. It was the affinity that puzzle pieces have for one another, the easy click of a key in the right lock.
Forgetting the paint, I pulled him in closer. It had been too long. I was in withdrawal and wanted my fix urgently. But he lifted himself up onto his hands and peered down at me, pulling back and teasing me, his cock hanging thick and long between us. I begged him with my eyes. He smiled and grasped my waist, then with an abrupt movement spun me around onto my stomach. I giggled as we both watched the paint on my chest press and seep into the bed sheet beneath us.
I peeled my skin off to have a closer look at the mark I had made, human paintbrush that I was, but he quickly dropped his weight down onto me again and pressed me into the floor. I shrieked as the cold paint on his chest touched my back, then dissolved into giggles.
I was a mess. This was all a huge, silly mess.
And I think I loved it.
I wiggled underneath him as he made a big show of smearing me with paint.
“So help me God, Adam, if you get paint in my bits I will never forgive you.”
I felt him sit up, perched on my thighs and quite possibly admiring my paint-smeared rear end.
“What? That’s not the right spirit at all. An artist must become one with their work, Nyx…”
I laughed and squirmed and tried to twist round to see him. Out the corner of my eye I saw him tracing lopsided hearts onto my bottom.
“Gosh, how romantic,” I said.
“You’re awfully opinionated for a paintbrush, you know that?” he said, and when he smiled, the twinkle in his eye did something to me. Not just to my body but …deeper inside. All at once, I thought of Jackson Fucking Pollock. The fateful night with Leah. The night I Went Too Far. It wasn’t like a Jackson Pollock painting at all. It was just disgusting. And I was disgusting. I couldn’t smile anymore.
“Hey what’s wrong?” he said and leaned into my ear to kiss it.
I tried to answer but choked on my own words. I was disgusting. A wave of anger and humiliation washed over me. This was stupid. I was stupid.
“Get off me, I think I want to get up,” I said.
He was by my side in a heartbeat, his hand reaching out for my chin. The bitterness was rising in my throat. Something was wrong.
“We can stop if you want to, only look at what an awesome painting we were making.”
I looked.
To my amazement, it wasn’t half bad.
Lying underneath our red-streaked bodies was a giant, red-and-white abstract painting, part Rorschach blot and part finger painting. It actually looked …nice.
I reached down and touched the red. The color looked so thrilling on my skin, so vibrant and scary and loud. I lifted my fingertips to examine it closely, then stroked lines down the front of my chest.
“I think …wouldn’t this make a cool scene for the play? Just this right here?” I looked at him, hair disheveled and skin doused in glorious lashings of red.
He smiled and raised his eyebrows. “A murder scene? A virginal bed?”
“Both,” I said, and gave him a strange smile.
He embraced me.
“I like the way you think,” he said. “Now if you don’t mind, I think it’s my turn to be the paintbrush.”
I couldn’t help but break into a smile. It was impossible to feel sad with him looking at me the way he was. We hugged and tumbled and soon he was on the bottom, and the ache was back in full force, and my hips clasped for dear life round his hard body, his cock pressing firm against the slit between my legs.
“Now so help me Nyx, if you get paint on my bits, I’m going to be--”
“Shh! That’s quite enough out of you, Mr. paintbrush, you just lie there and do your job, OK?” I said, and pressed a finger to his lips.
He smiled.
Holding his gaze with hungry eyes, I reached for him, placing the hot knot of his dick at the entrance to my body, savoring that sweet moment of inevitability, pushing myself to feel just how delicious it felt to want him so much it came in pangs. I eased over the wide lump of him and settled noiselessly onto his body, a little flicker of recognition passing over his face as both our bodies took a moment to remember how exquisitely they fit together.
I took the next inch slowly, so slowly it took me several breaths, but my greedy body was way ahead of me, squeezing onto his and sending warm, deep flutters of pleasure all through me. His hands rose to my hips and held me there. Frozen except for the sweet, tentative movements linking us together, we sunk into one another, all heat and wetness and bright, zinging bliss buzzing through us both.
It was heaven.
What happened next? Well, I remember it only vaguely. We made love, of course. But it was unlike anything else I had done with Adam ever before. It’s as though the memories of that evening themselves were burnt out, my neurons stroked to frazzling and then simply blacking out with pleasure.
We must have kissed. He must have held me gently as he stroked pump after pump of ecstasy into my body, waiting for me to absorb every last ripple he had given me before pulling back and lunging into another. And another. He must have squeezed me and pressed hard on my skin – if the finished painting was anything to go by. And if the finished pattern of bruises and scratches on my arms and thighs and belly were anything to go by, he must have done …other stuff too.
In our red and white haze, in the middle of our swirling, slashing, exploding red masterpiece, I remember him poised behind me, his strong body delivering aggressive thrusts into that swollen cleft, his arms wrapped tight all around me as I whimpered and felt myself slip further and further into that deep, delicious void.
“You like that don’t you? Hm?”
I could only respond by groaning and writhing under him.
“You fucking like that? You like being a little slut for me?”
I could feel something delicious rattling all through my legs, making them shake and shudder.
“Good, be my little slut then… good girl …I want your legs wider,” he growled, and pressed me open.
It was too much. Too intense. Too deep.
I remember his breath in my ear as I came, came so hard I felt my heart nearly stop, felt my eyes squeeze so tight all the colors wrung out, felt every muscle pull and snap as I convulsed with orgasm.
And after I had stopped screaming, after my body had stopped jerking and bucking on that ruined white sheet, I remember coming to consciousness again, his muscular arms still round me, and as I opened my eyes I saw the red on white. The skin on skin.
We lay there t
ogether till the paint started to go tacky. I peeled off him with a crackle and gave him an astonished, happy smile. How did he always know how to do that to me? How could he always tell just what I needed? It had grown so dark I couldn’t see the painting clearly. I reached over to him and touched his lips, his chin. It was a still, magical moment. He looked down at his lap and then back at me.
“OK, keep giving me that look and you’re going to start something again.” He gave me a playful smack on the knee. “And we’ve got work to do for heaven’s sake. You really are a bad influence on me, you know?”
He stood and offered me a hand and we both got to our feet, still giddy. We must have looked insane, the pair of us. Like serial killers. Like we had spent the evening stomping wine grapes, but naked.
We held hands and looked down at the painting. It really was perfect.
“I can’t believe we just did that,” I said at last.
“And I can’t believe you’re actually going to give this to Tamara,” was his response.
Yes, why not? She didn’t have to know how it was made. In fact, it would be perfect, just as it was. A little secret mini play inside a play. A red and white talisman.
Art.
Chapter 19
“Boulotte doesn’t get saved?” she said. “But that’s …that’s kind of the whole point of the story.”
I hadn’t worked too closely with the writers up till this point, but Tamara had shoved us all in a room and was now insisting that we wouldn’t leave until we had given poor Boulotte what she deserved, i.e. a grittier take than we had done with her character so far. Lynn, one of the writers, look alarmed at what I was saying.
“She’s right,” said a weedy guy in the corner, one whose name I always forgot. “Boulotte needs to be saved. There’s no narrative tension if shit just gets worse and worse for her.”
I drummed the back end of my pencil on the table and tried to think. I knew that when they looked at me, they saw someone who was a little young, a little stupid, perhaps. But I was onto something, I knew it. Boulotte was boring. Innocent was boring. We needed to come out with something that was truly wicked. The victim had to want it. It seemed so obvious to me now.
