Life Class

by Scarlet Blackwell

  Ryan didn’t look at him. He stared straight ahead out to sea, his jaw clenched. He shook his head. “I just thought you were…”

  “What?”

  “Making fun of me,” Ryan finished. “At my choice of…career.”

  Harley frowned in confusion. “I don’t understand. Why would I… You seem like a decent guy to me. I don’t know why you think…”

  “I’m sorry,” Ryan said abruptly. He tossed his serviette onto the table, his plate empty, and stood. “I should go.”

  “You don’t have to leave yet,” Harley said. “Stay for dessert.”

  Ryan shook his head. “Sorry, dude, I have some place to be. Thanks for dinner.” He vanished off the terrace before Harley could even offer to show him out.

  They hadn’t yet arranged the second sitting, so Harley had to call up his contact and pry Ryan’s cell number from her before calling the model himself.

  “Hello?” Ryan answered on the fifth ring, his voice gruff.

  “Hi, it’s Harley.”

  “Oh…hi.” Ryan sounded awkward.

  “I wondered if you were free again this week to come back and sit for me.”

  There was a pause. “Yeah. Is tomorrow good for you?”

  “Sure. Say three-ish. Is that okay?”

  “Yeah. See you then.” Ryan hung up.

  Harley closed his phone in relief, having been convinced Ryan would not be coming back. He wasn’t ready to admit to himself that the model had got under his skin shockingly fast since their first meeting. A primal lust for Ryan filled him, the likes of which he’d never known. He might be wasting his time, but that didn’t stop him wanting Ryan.

  Chapter Three

  Ryan had been trouble at school. He wasn’t interested in much beyond chasing girls and hanging out with the coolest kids. Consequently, he left without his diploma and things had gone downhill from there. After he’d had several successive brushes with the law, his parents had thrown him out at the age of twenty-one, and suddenly he’d found himself jobless and penniless on the streets and had to grow up real fast.

  He stayed in a hostel in his hometown of Newport Beach while he took on odd jobs. Ryan’s problem with customer service jobs, such as waiting tables, was that his temper was so easily triggered. One wrong word from the customer had him telling the diner to stick their meal up their fat ass. He had never heard of—nor did he give a rat’s ass about—the motto “the customer is always right”, he informed his first manager.

  Despite being sacked from nearly every establishment in the city, he finally managed to save up enough to pay a deposit on a tiny apartment. If you squinted hard enough through the trees, you could even make out the sea. It was a shit hole, but it was Ryan’s shit hole.

  He tried hard after that, managing to keep the roof over his head, but not the food in his mouth, struggling fruitlessly below the poverty line for years, too proud to ask his parents for help.

  One day he saw an ad on the notice board in the local coffee shop for models for the life class at the college. Ryan knew what a life class was, but he wasn’t afraid of taking off his clothes. His face and body were all he had in this world. He knew that, and he traded on them frequently.

  He went along to the class, and there he dropped his robe and stood naked on a podium while a group of spotty youths painted him, pretending they weren’t interested in his obvious charms.

  From past experience, everyone was interested in Ryan’s charms, male or female, and he soon began to realize it was time to use these charms appropriately.

  A blonde girl approached him at the end of the sitting as he tied his robe. He groaned inwardly because he wasn’t into underage girls and was disappointed this was the best the class had to offer him. She introduced herself politely as Leanna Smith and told him her mother was a well-known local artist, Anna Smith, and asked if he knew about her.

  Ryan looked at her blankly because he didn’t know the first thing about art, even though it had been his favorite subject at school. Leanna went on undeterred. It was her mother’s birthday next week, and she would love Ryan to come and sit for her as a present.

  Ryan regarded her suspiciously for a moment. This girl wanted to buy him as a present for her mother. Maybe he should have felt more offended than he did, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. The sum she mentioned was considerable, and he duly presented himself at the beachfront house three days later.

  Anna Smith was an attractive blonde in her forties, her admiration for Ryan obvious as soon as she set eyes on him. She took him up to the studio, and there he stripped, a little more nervous at this one-on-one sitting than he’d been in the group scenario, bizarrely enough.

  She wanted to paint the lot. He sat there in a chair with one leg draped shamelessly over the side and studied the paintings on the walls as she drew him.

  Afterwards, she came out from behind the easel and stood before him, and he knew something was going on. “The fee my daughter gave you,” she told him. “I can triple it if you’d like to stay a little longer.”

  Ryan regarded her a moment. I’m a whore, he thought. I’m actually a whore. And then he thought of possibly being able to buy a new couch as Anna reached behind her and undid her halter neck dress, letting it slide slowly down her legs and pool around her ankles. Underneath she wore a tiny, lace thong, and her body had no tan lines. She was in remarkable shape for her age, although her breasts didn’t look real.

  She climbed onto Ryan’s lap and tried to kiss him. Without thought, he turned his head away. She pulled back and regarded him coolly. “Don’t you kiss?”

  Ryan didn’t know why he’d done it. He was no great romantic. He hadn’t had a girlfriend since high school. He had no particular thoughts about kissing either way. Maybe he watched too much TV and just knew whores didn’t kiss their clients and, seeing as he was now a whore, it applied to him too. He was supposed to save his mouth for the one he loved. He wanted to laugh at his own ridiculousness, but he was too busy gasping as Anna slid down onto her knees and put her mouth around his burgeoning wood.

  Ryan suddenly found his cell buzzing with unknown numbers after that first time. Anna had told all her artist friends about him, and they all wanted him to sit for them. These women all seemed like bored housewives to him, rich and glamorous, and the art decorating their studio walls was no great shakes.

  They weren’t subtle in what they wanted from him after the sitting, either, and for a time, he went along with it and enjoyed the money. Soon enough, he became dissatisfied when a couple of women called him up and asked him to sleep with them up front, no mention of posing for a painting first.

  Ryan was angry. He might have been a whore, but he tried to maintain a façade of dignity and respectability, no matter how farcical it was. He turned these women down.

  Shortly after, an incident occurred where the artist painting him came from behind her easel, stepped over to him and blatantly groped his wares. Ryan slapped her hand away. She was scornful and scathing as he dressed and walked out with dignity. Behind him, she shouted that he was cheap trash and he could go back to the gutter for all she cared.

  His phone stopped ringing. Poverty beckoned again, and things became dire. His best friend, Jamie, this time came up trumps, providing Ryan with the name of a man looking for photographic models.

  Only when he went along to the studio did he find the photos were for a gay magazine, but then he didn’t much care who jerked off over him, only that they wanted to. He took off his clothes, pulled a little at himself to get semi-hard and posed for the photographer before collecting his paycheck and going home to spend it on rent and bills.

  The photographer passed his name and number on to a porno film director after that, and Ryan was invited to a rundown warehouse where he was asked to strip before several men examined his body from all angles.

  “Do you top or bottom? I’m guessing top,” one asked him. Ryan looked at him in confusion, freezing his ass off and feeling his balls shrin
king with cold.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, and the men laughed.

  “We got ourselves a virgin here,” a second man remarked. “That’s hot as fuck. Ryan, do you want to fuck some hot guys for the pleasure of gay men worldwide?”

  Ryan stared in horror, going crimson. Slowly he shook his head. “No, I don’t…”

  The first man clucked his tongue disapprovingly. “Ryan, you’re hot, you’ve got a big dick. You could earn a fortune. And frankly, you look like you need the cash.”

  With dignity, Ryan started to put his clothes back on. He walked out of the warehouse without another word. As the California sunshine hit his face, a lump came to his throat, and he laughed at himself. How many men would come out here feeling sorry for themselves after having been asked to star in a porn movie? Gay porn, but porn nonetheless. A chance for the camera to worship his face and body the way it should be.

  And that was just it. That was all Ryan was. There was nothing else to make money with. What happened when the face went and the muscle started to drop? Already he was losing muscle mass because he couldn’t afford to feed himself properly. Soon he was going to turn to skin and bone and drooping flesh, and who would be interested then? He would swap his face and body any day for a marvelous brain, he thought suddenly; the brain of a Harvard professor. To be sitting in a peaceful study, surrounded by books, not worrying where the next meal was coming from.

  He’d just turned down the opportunity to make, if not a fortune, then certainly a tidy sum, and he was an idiot.

  He bit his lip hard and lifted his head, staring defiantly ahead of him as he set off down the street. He was alive and he had what life had thrown at him. He either got on with it or he didn’t. His choice.

  A couple of weeks later, working a few hours at a restaurant, he had the misfortune to be waiting a table at which presided Anna Smith, the artist who’d first offered him sex for money. He froze as he got there, notepad in hand, and she looked at him, her heavily made-up face breaking into a broad grin.

  “Ryan, darling!” she cried so six other pairs of eyes at the table landed on him, some of them more familiar than he would have liked. “Where have you been, my dear boy?” He wondered why when she knew exactly where he’d been—cast into the ether by her witches’ coven for daring to rebel against being turned into an object and passed around like a glorified dildo.

  He didn’t answer, only set his jaw firmly and regarded her with steely eyes.

  “Come now,” she scolded. “You have lines around your mouth when you pout like that. It’s not pretty. I’ve missed you. I’m invited to a charity art auction on Friday. Why don’t you accompany me? I’ll introduce you to lots of new artists who, I’m sure, will all be dying to paint you.”

  Dying to fuck me, more like. “What can I get you to eat?” he asked stonily.

  Anna sighed and rolled her eyes. “Don’t bear a grudge, my love. It doesn’t suit you. Come by mine at eight on Friday, and wear something nice. I’ll make it worth your while.”

  Ryan looked away, addressing the rest of the table. “Everyone ready to order?”

  He was there on Friday, ten minutes late deliberately, as his one act of rebellion, and Anna answered the door herself in a slinky black evening dress, her lips painted scarlet, dripping in jewels.

  “You’re late,” she said with a pout, and he said nothing, only glared. He wore his only decent shirt and pants, both black, with a black tie, which set off his pale face and large blue eyes, his hair freshly cropped so it graced the elegant curve of his skull in fine, dark stubble.

  Anna looked him up and down and smiled slowly. “I think you’ll make quite an impression tonight, Ryan.”

  And he did. The gathering was a good mix of men and women, all the women and a few of the men riveted by Ryan as soon as he stepped in the door. He stayed obediently by Anna’s side as she introduced him to one person after another, most of the women pressing him with their cards and asking him to call them up if he wished to model for them. It was with relief that he didn’t see any of the artists he’d already bestowed his favors on in the past.

  After a few glasses of wine, he managed to corner Anna alone. “Look,” he said, his voice low, “these people, are they going to be wanting…? Because I don’t…”

  As he spoke, his gaze strayed to the corner of the room. There, a man of medium height and build stood watching him with a glass in his hand, his glossy, dark hair falling across his eyes untidily. In the room full of people, he stuck out like a sore thumb. Their eyes met intensely for the briefest moment before Anna put her hand on Ryan’s arm, and he turned back to her, blinking, having missed what she’d said.

  “I just want to model,” he told her. “I don’t want to be bought anymore.”

  His gaze strayed back to the man in the corner, but the stranger was gone. So came about his first glimpse of Harley Hayes.

  Chapter Four

  Ryan arrived promptly at three for the second sitting. Harley was in his studio doing some work on another canvas when Maria showed the model up. When Ryan came through the door, Harley smiled and put his paintbrush down to wipe his hands on a rag.

  Ryan looked stunning again. He wore those battered shoes and worn jeans, with a red, equally faded T-shirt. He was shaved glass-smooth, a small nick evident on his throat so Harley’s eyes were drawn to it magnetically. Ryan’s hair looked shorter than it had been yesterday, closely cropped so his ocean blue eyes, fringed by lush black lashes, appeared enormous. He smiled hesitantly, and Harley caught himself as he realized he was staring.

  He didn’t offer his hand because it was suddenly damp. He moved to a bottle of mineral water on the desk. “Drink?”

  “Yes, please,” Ryan replied politely. Harley poured it with an unsteady hand and held it out.

  “Thanks.” Ryan took the glass, their fingers touching briefly before he turned away from Harley and walked over to the canvas Harley had been working on. It was a landscape, sunset over Huntington Beach pier, which Harley had started some weeks previously and was now completing from memory.

  “That’s beautiful, dude,” Ryan offered.

  Harley smiled in pleasure. “Thank you.”

  Ryan looked at it for another moment, then he walked over to the bed. He bent and put his glass down on the floor so Harley admired the tight stretch of denim across his ass before he straightened up and, with back turned, pulled off his shirt.

  Harley thought he would groan. He moved to his easel and took down the landscape, moving to prop it up against the wall. He lifted the covered portrait of Ryan and carried it back with him. Ryan was barefoot by now and sliding the denim down his legs. Fuck, Harley thought. This is wrong. I have to stop perving this way, or it’s going to frighten him off. Why didn’t he give me some sort of fucking warning before he started to strip?

  Harley threw the cover off his canvas with a shaking hand, pulling his bottom lip into his mouth and sinking his teeth into it. Ryan’s boxers were black and tight fitting and they came down off his pale buttocks and his long legs like a perfect glove. Ryan kicked them onto the top of his pile of clothes and climbed onto the bed, settling face down.

  Harley sported wood now as his gaze travelled the luscious curve of the model’s spine and onto the twin round globes of his peach-like ass. For a moment, he imagined his face between them, his tongue, his fingers and his cock, Ryan writhing beneath him as he was filled.

  That was it. His cock was rock hard and about to split his pants. Ryan turned his head to look at him, and Harley made sure his entire body was behind his easel.

  “This okay?” Ryan’s tone was so innocent that Harley couldn’t quite believe it. Did he really not know what he was doing?

  Harley nodded mutely and hid his face as Ryan shifted his pelvis slightly, seeming to slide and thrust a little against the satin cover, his legs spreading farther so the artist could see his balls.

  Harley closed his eyes and bit his lip until he tasted blood, his hear
t hammering, his stomach sending flames of desire to his groin. Oh, he knows what he’s doing, how can he not? Maybe he does this to every artist in the hope they’ll offer him money to sleep with them. It would serve him right if I went over there right now and put my tongue in that ass. I bet he’d stop teasing me then.

  His breathing came fast as he held his pencil up to the canvas and tried to focus on it, his gaze straying back unbidden to Ryan once more. The model turned his head away, looking absently out of the window, perfectly still. He doesn’t know, Harley thought with a start. He’s not teasing me after all. He’s just naturally sexual like this. And strangely, his heart sank in disappointment. As much as it titillated Harley to imagine Ryan was putting on some sort of performance for him, the truth was, the straight model was oblivious to Harley’s desire for him.

  He took some deep breaths and steadied his hand, then he focused his attention on Ryan’s profile instead of his ass and tried to be the professional he knew at times he could be. Without doubt, Harley’s nude was going to make him a fortune if he didn’t get distracted in falling for his model.

  But Ryan seemed to be the distracted one. He still gazed out the window, and his mouth moved like he would speak before he closed it again firmly as though to keep the words inside.

  Harley shaded a cheekbone, defined the sensuous lips a bit more, waiting for the other man to break the silence, which, after a few minutes, he did.

  “Look, about yesterday…” Ryan finally glanced over at him, and their eyes met. His long fingers plucked a little at the satin cover. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  “You weren’t.” Harley’s voice was soft.

  Ryan swallowed and licked his lips. “I was. I don’t want you to think I wasn’t grateful for your hospitality.”

  Surprised, Harley contradicted him. “I didn’t think that.” What surprised him more was how tender and damn near affectionate his voice sounded to his own ears.

  Ryan sighed. “Well, I did, and I was wrong. I’m not all that keen on talking about myself, and I’m not used to people asking. I’m sorry.”