I held his hand as I stepped down from his pickup truck and gave it an affectionate squeeze. “Liam, I promise you will not be that bad.” I paused a moment and shook my head. “Actually, that’s a lie.”
“What?” His eyes went large.
I giggled. “I haven’t actually seen your work yet, so I don’t know whether you’ll be bad or not. But, it doesn’t matter. The class is a judgement-free zone. We’re just there to have fun and learn from one another.”
“No competition, then?” Liam still sounded incredulous.
“No competition,” I promised. “There are a few people there who are amazing artists—Ted and Suzy Mankowitz. They’re this married couple and they each have different styles, but their drawings somehow seem to gel together in a way. It’s fascinating. And Summer, Phoebe’s partner, can take a look at something just once and sculpt it to a near-perfect likeness.”
I kept chattering as we drove to the studio, trying to ignore the zing of exhilaration rushing through me as Liam took my hand and placed it on his knee. “Then there are people like Paul. He’s perfectly hopeless, but he just loves everything so much. The other day, he told me, ‘Katie, I didn’t pick up a paintbrush until I was seventy-two-years-old. I’ll never be Monet, but it’s like I always say. You have to keep learning. If you’re not learning, you’re not growing, and if you’re not growing, you may as well be dying.’”
“And wait until you meet Phoebe,” I babbled on, noticing Liam had gone silent for a moment. “She’s a great teacher, but she’s a character. A hippie, even though she’s only a few years older than we are. You’d think she was a flowerchild in the 60s.”
Liam
When Katie said the name “Paul,” I immediately felt guilty and wished I hadn’t put her slender hand on my knee. I glanced down at it and instinctively contracted the muscles of my thigh, hoping she’d remove it. She didn’t, but seemed to notice my discomfort and filled up the silence with her sweet voice.
“Paul” reminded me of Nicole. Nicole’s Paul was, without a doubt, the classmate she complained about the most. I had even asked her about him one time. “You sure, you’re not secretly in love with this guy?” I asked. “You talk about him all the time.”
“God, no,” Nicole had assured me. “He’s repulsive. This is not a case of arguments arising from sexual tension. He’s a greasy pig who spends all day studying, playing video games, and shoving food in his mouth.”
Slightly relieved, I had laughed at her cruelty. “He can’t be that bad.”
She sent me a link to his Facebook. He was that bad. Almost like a cartoon character. After sending the link, Nicole railed on about how disgusting he was for another fifteen minutes. Then, she said a quick goodbye and left for study group. The same pattern was repeated at least four or five times over the following weeks.
I shook my head, trying to clear it as we approached the studio. I had let Nicole go. She was no longer part of my life. True, she didn’t know it yet, but in my heart, she was as good as gone. I had to focus on the here and now, and now, Katie was trying to make me happy.
As soon as we arrived, I realized Katie was spot-on in her description. Phoebe did look as if she had stepped right out of a film from the 1960s. Frizzy red curls framed her face, falling out of the messy bun piled on top of her head. She was wearing a flowy purple top over vintage corduroy bellbottoms that were also purple. I didn’t notice fashion much, but the bright magenta color of her clothes clashed so badly with her hair, it stung my eyes.
“It looks like we have a visitor,” Phoebe said. “Are you an artist?”
I tried not to laugh. “Liam is a firefighter,” Katie helped. “Or, he will be soon, anyway.”
Phoebe was also wearing bright, grape-colored lipstick. My eyes were inadvertently drawn to her mouth as she smiled, which was most likely her intention. “Ooh,” Phoebe cooed. “A sexy fireman. You did bring us a treat, Katie.” She turned to me and put a hand on my arm. “Are you here to model?”
“No,” I laughed, giving Katie a “Help me!” signal with my eyes.
“Model?” Katie asked. She looked puzzled.
Phoebe didn’t take her eyes from me, and I was beginning to feel uncomfortable. “Yes! I announced it before the Halloween break,” Phoebe said. “I told everyone we would be moving from watercolors to live modeling.”
“Live modeling?” I echoed. A strange feeling was starting to build in my gut.
Katie gave a little moan behind me. “Oh, I forgot.”
“Yes,” Phoebe took her eyes off my chest and looked up into my bewildered face. “Over the next six weeks, we will be inviting a variety of models to come in. As they perform different poses, we sketch or paint them—whatever each student prefers.”
“But, they’re clothed, correct?” I looked over to Katie, bewildered. The knot in my stomach did not ease when she bit her lip and shook her head.
Phoebe finally looked away from me and laughed, her red curls bouncing in mirth. “My dear girl, no! Of course not. How could we study their anatomy properly if they were clothed? No. The only way to learn how to draw the human form is to see it in its full glory—free from the shackles of clothing.”
She put her hand on my arm again and squeezed the bicep. “I, myself, am a dedicated nudist. Summer and I spend nearly every vacation at a clothing-optional camp.”
I thought Phoebe was hitting on me, but then she paused and said, “It is a pity you are not modeling. Your muscles would be excellent to paint… or sculpt. If you change your mind, I may have some clay in the back. My partner, Summer, would love to sculpt you. Neither of us are interested in men, of course, but from an artistic standpoint, we do appreciate a sinewy male form. It is so rare we get to observe one.”
I laughed nervously, and Phoebe removed her hand from my arm, looking slightly disappointed at my refusal to be her muse for the evening. I could only be relieved she was only interested in studying me as an art form, and I wouldn’t have to fend off her advances.
“Maybe we should go,” Katie said. “Liam hasn’t taken an art class since a very bad experience in high school, and he was hesitant about coming tonight. This might be…” she paused, waving a hand in the air, searching for the right word, “a little much.”
“An art virgin!” Phoebe clapped her hands, bouncing up and down as if she had just won the lottery. She turned toward the studio in the room behind us. “Summer, come take a look! We have an art virgin in our midst today.”
An older woman with streaked gray hair came into the entryway. Like Phoebe, she was wearing purple, but she had a smock over the top of her outfit, which was caked in paint and dried clay. “Well, come on in,” she grabbed my hand into a firm handshake and pulled me toward the door.
I looked back at Katie, again hoping for help, but she just gave me a small shrug and a smile before following us in.
“Take my seat,” Summer said, slamming a chair underneath me. “This is usually my chair, but, and don’t tell anyone else this, it has the best angle of the platform. Now, what medium do you want?”
“Medium?” I just gaped at her.
Summer put a finger to her lips and tilted her head, considering for a moment. “You look like a paint guy.”
“I do?”
“Yeah. Your all tense and anxious. If I gave you pencils for sketching, you’d probably just break the tips off every single one of them, pressing too hard, and you’d be worried about getting it right. You need paint. Free flowing, relaxing, easy to fix. Just swipe over what you’ve done and repaint it, or wipe the canvas down with some water and start again.”
That didn’t sound too bad. “Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath. As Summer walked away, I let out a sigh. I liked this girl. A lot. I didn’t want to be humiliated in front of her, but Katie seemed nonjudgmental. I figured I could impress her more by being open to the experience than by being the best artist in the room. All I could do was try to relax and go for it.
Katie
&nbs
p; I knew we were in trouble the moment Phoebe said the word “model,” and not because she was pretending to flirt with Liam in the way she did with nearly everyone the first time they walked in the door. No, I was worried because working with models sounded much more difficult than the landscapes had been—when Phoebe broke out her laptop and projected photos from her travels onto the studio walls for us to study and recreate.
My gorgeous bronzed date turned to me with a stunned look I found simply adorable. Liam was clearly the type of guy who was used to being the alpha male. And it wasn’t just because of his muscles. It was everything about him—his intellect, the way he carried himself, even the way he interacted with people. He didn’t take advantage of it the way most men would. He was confident and commanding. Without being a jackass.
In this situation, I could tell Liam felt a bit off-kilter. He was unsure of himself for the first time since I’d met him. And I was relishing the tables being turned on a guy who was so sexy he nearly took my breath away every time I thought about him. The bronze pagan god I’d first seen at Becca’s Halloween party was finally nervous. It was so cute, I could have squealed in delight.
Unfortunately, I had no idea the torture Liam and I were in for when class started. If I had, I would have insisted we leave when we still had the chance.
Once Liam was seated, I took the station to his left. Phoebe said there was another guest coming in, so our chairs were squeezed fairly close together and I enjoyed the pleasant sensation of my knee pressing against his.
The other students began filing into the room, chattering excitedly over the prospect of working with live models. And then, the models themselves came into the studio. They were wearing white robes, and Phoebe guided them to the platform at the center of the room. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she began. “Although we have another fine specimen amongst us…” She paused, looking pointedly at Liam, whose brown cheeks flushed in embarrassment. “He has, unfortunately declined my invitation to join our other guests. It is just as well.”
Phoebe gestured to the two figures before us—a young woman of about twenty with dusky brown skin and a closely-shaved head that made her exquisite bone structure even more striking, and a tanned young man of about the same age who was nearly as muscled as Liam.
“Tony and Yvette are lovers,” Phoebe said, running a hand down the woman’s arm. “They are Naturist friends, whom Summer and I met at Fire Island a few years ago.”
Tony and Yvette gave each other a knowing smile, and in one motion, both dropped their robes onto the floor. Tony reached for his lover’s hand, and they stepped up onto the platform. I tried not to look at Liam, but stole a quick glance and noticed his eyes were wide with surprise as the Naturists disrobed and proudly displayed their bodies.
“Tony and Yvette will be performing a series of poses for us this evening, and will hold each pose for 15-20 minutes. For those of you sketching, I want you to focus on drawing only what you see, not what your mind believes should be there. Accuracy is key here, so pay particular attention to your foreshortening techniques—thinking about perspective and angling.”
Phoebe reached up to grasp Tony’s tanned bicep, and I tried to focus only on his arm, as opposed to his entire muscled form, or the large member dangling between his legs. “If Tony’s arm is straight out, making a fist,” she paused as he complied and made a fist, “then, you will see more of his fist, his bicep may be hidden, and his upper arm will appear further away.”
“If he moves his arm like so…” Phoebe gently bent it into a new position, “his bicep, tricep, and shoulder will be along the same plane, and will have a similar perspective, while his very strong torso may be in the background.”
She continued, “For painters, the positions will not be held long enough for you to paint an entire picture, so you can sketch out the first and then paint as from memory, you can focus on one small aspect such as a hand or shoulder…” Phoebe ran a hand across Yvette’s bare shoulder as she said this. “Or, you can do several small, quick, impressionistic paintings of each pose. The choice is up to you. With watercolors, we worked in a more regimented style, so in this unit, feel free to experiment.”
Phoebe winked in our direction, and as the lovers entwined themselves in an embrace, I looked fully at Liam. His eyes were still wide, gazing between the pair and his canvas as if unsure where to begin. At first, I thought perhaps he was horrified, but I noticed Liam’s breathing was beginning to increase, a flush was coming to his cheeks… and underneath his tight t-shirt, I could see his nipples hardening as his pecs flexed. I stole another glance down at his lap and blushed myself. Liam was aroused.
Liam
When Phoebe said we could “experiment,” she winked at me in an unsettling way. I tried not to look at Katie when the two models dropped their robes and stepped up onto the platform, though I could feel her eyes on me.
I knew the models were just there for educational purposes, but the way they interacted with each other and with Phoebe was erotic, somehow. Then, they moved into their pose. The woman, Yvette, had skin slightly darker than mine and small breasts high on her chest. She sat on the platform first, extending one leg out and pulling the other into herself.
The man, Tony, moved behind her, pressing his chest into the curve of Yvette’s back. He wrapped his arms and legs around her. I wasn’t sure whether anyone else could see, but Summer had promised me the best angle in the room, and I could see Tony grinding himself into his lover’s back as they supposedly adjusted themselves into the pose.
My thigh pressed against Katie’s, and she shifted in her chair. This small, almost imperceptible movement caused her leg to rub against mine. I tried to ignore the sensation, but between feeling Katie next to me, not being able to touch her right then, and watching what was nearly a live erotic film in front of us, I felt my cock stir to life.
I felt my eyes grow wide in fear. Not because of the erection, though I did feel as if I was pushed right back to seventh grade all over again, but because now I knew enough of Phoebe to know if she saw it, she would comment on it, possibly in front of the entire class.
Looking around, I noticed that several class members were already busy sketching or painting, and a few had taken their canvases off their easels to draw at a better angle. I followed suit, covering my obvious arousal. Next to me, Katie tittered.
I turned my head to look at her, hoping she wasn’t completely mocking me. She motioned for me to lean in and whispered, “They’re hot, aren’t they? I’m practically squirming in my seat right now. Sorry if this is torture for you.”
It was torture, at least a bit, but I was glad I wasn’t the only one feeling that this art lesson was stimulating in more than one way. I shrugged. “How about if you pick a smaller area to focus on and teach me more about foreshortening,” I tried.
“And we can ignore the fact that Tony’s trying to hump Yvette’s back?” she whispered.
I gave out a short laugh that made half the room jump and turn to look at us. Embarrassed, I ducked my head and nodded in Katie’s direction. Her warm smile lit up her face. I knew she was pleased I was willing to try—despite my earlier reservations, and despite that I wanted nothing more than to grab her hand and run right out of the room.
She drew her canvas down as well and tilted it toward me, so I could see and mimic her work. Sketching quickly, I saw she focused on Yvette’s foot and ankle. The initial drawing stopped midway up her slender calf.
I sighed in relief. So, I wouldn’t be required to focus on one of her breasts, then. Katie inclined her head toward mine and said, “No matter what pose they’re in, we can most likely see her foot, even if it’s from a different angle, so we should be able to concentrate just on this for a bit.”
I looked more at Katie’s drawing than I did the people before us, and as I tried to match her lines, I thought again about how this girl’s sweet kindness showed in nearly everything she did—trying to make me feel at ease in what could have been a ver
y uncomfortable situation and helping me to create the first picture I’d attempted in at least ten years, was just one example.
As my pencil moved across the canvas in much more stilted, jagged lines than Katie’s had, my mind drifted back to Nicole. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been missing niceness and generosity. If I had taken this class with Nicole, she would have tilted her canvas away from mine, and we probably would have had a competition to see whose picture was the best at the end of the night. And she probably would have one.
That’s the kind of girl Nikki was. Competitive, even in things that didn’t really matter. She had once placed a bet with me to see which one of us would have the highest GPA at the end of the semester. Another time, when I started losing weight and getting into shape, she declared she could probably run faster than me before the end of my training and started a program of her own design to help her do it. Every now and then, she’d ask about my speed per mile, and mark it down in a book, though she refused to tell me about her own progress.
Considering this, I turned to Katie, who was now replacing her canvas onto her easel and mixing a few paints. Now, the other students were chatting away as they worked, and I didn’t mind speaking in my normal tone of voice. “Katie,” I started.
She gave a distracted, “Hmmm?” and squinted, trying to mix the right shade of brown for Yvette’s skin.
“If I wanted to start jogging or running more, would you come with me?” I asked the back of her head, feeling nervous.
She looked up, grinning. “Sure, but only if we kept pace with each other. I had a running buddy once who kept sprinting ahead, trying to race me, and it wasn’t any fun. If you’re going together, you should stay side-by-side, motivating each other and keeping each other company, right?”
My heart felt like it was going to burst. “Right,” I agreed. “What if we try it out this Saturday. I had Academy stuff last weekend, so this weekend, I’m free.”
Hot & Heavy Halloween (Hot Holidays Book 1) Page 12
