Chapter Forty-Four
Rhys
I cannot get the image of her thigh out of my fucking head.
That trench coat flash, brazen, knowing, burned itself into the backs of my eyelids. She leaned on my car. Then she blew a kiss and walked off in heels, a gift bag full of chaos and candy left behind.
The bag was excessive. Adorable. Delilah to the bone. Thoughtful, almost. A little sweet. Which makes it worse. Because it means she’s feeling things. And worse still, I am too.
I’ve got to get her charges dropped. Get her reassigned. Strip her from my docket before I stop pretending I don’t want her teeth in my shoulder and her cunt on my mouth.
Give her what she wants. Give her what she needs with the kind of ruin she keeps begging for in a hundred depraved little ways.
Benji trails me to the community art center.
Jett’s already there, straddling his bike like a fucking noir novel come to life. He doesn’t even have to try. Hair tousled just right, jaw clenched like he chews gravel for breakfast, brooding like he’s been hired to make Delilah’s panties melt from fifty miles out.
I park next to them and just sit for a moment. Breathing.
You are the voice of reason. You are the licensed one. You are the adult in the room.
And all I can think about is the fact Jett bailed her out. Took her home. Probably gave her a fuck so good it scrubbed the jail stench out of her skin and left her raw and purring and covered in his fingerprints.
I want to drive the car into his kneecaps. I don’t. I park.
I sit still. Breathe. Repeat my mantra.
She is your patient.
She is your patient.
She is your…
I get out of the car still unsure which of these two bastards I want to throw a punch at more.
It would be easy to light a match and let them burn each other down. Benji wouldn’t start it, but he’d finish it. That man is a human battering ram wrapped in a smile. Could kill someone just trying to give them a hug.
Jett knows where to break bone to make a point. To make a warning.
Me? I know exactly what these hands can do.
And not one of those things belongs in a sketchbook tonight.
“Therapy, Rhys,” I say under my breath. “Not a bloodbath. Art. Healing. Soft lighting and charcoal nudes.”
Jett clocks us as we walk up. He drags a slow look over the two of us, then tips his chin at the building. “You better sign off on my therapy shit with a glowing fucking review.”
I huff. “I’m impressed you showed.”
Benji grins, big and warm and harmless. “I haven’t done anything like this since grade school.”
Jett side-eyes him. “What kind of fucked-up elementary school did you go to?”
I lift a brow. “We had finger painting in mine.”
“That’s what I meant,” Benji says and nudges Jett’s arm.
I tense.
Jett doesn’t hit him. Doesn’t snap. He actually lets out this low chuckle, like the rage melted into something less sharp. “Finger painting might’ve been more fun with nudity involved,” Jett says.
Benji lights up. “Can we make that a thing?”
“That is not a thing,” I say, jaw tight. “This is about expression. Observation. Emotional…”
“Perving on naked people at a safe distance,” Jett says. “Kinky, academic edging shit.”
“Fuck you,” I say.
“We should add finger painting to the suggestion box if they have one,” Benji says, all bright-eyed chaos.
He’s disarming Jett without a single warning shot. Taking the edge off all our bullshit with some cupcake-scented sunshine.
Fuck. He’s good.
Too good.
Gets in close with laughter and heart and a soft grin that probably makes Delilah want to ruin him. That makes me hate him just a little bit more. Because she has. And I’ve heard every detail in my office straight from her mouth that’s been wrapped around his cock. Bastard.
They follow me. I sign us in, already irritated by the sound of Benji’s humming and the way Jett’s boots echo like accusations.
The community center is quiet, low lit, humid with old plaster and soft lighting, designed to soothe.
Most of the regulars will already be inside, set up at their usual easels, each guarding their comfort like it’s a fucking fortress.
There’ll be a few spares. We won’t sit side by side, thank God.
Too much testosterone. Too many open wires.
We’ll spread out. Stay calm. That’s the plan.
Until I open the door.
My breath stops. My heart punches my ribs so hard I almost stagger.
Because she is here.
Pink hair. Lit up like a flare. She’s perched on the modeling stool. A goddamn siren.
Her eyes lock on mine. She shifts, one hip tipping, the light catching the curve of her bare stomach. Her body shimmers.
Bare. Fucking. Skin.
She’s nude.
I jerk back, shoulder-check them both out of the doorway with the force of a linebacker, and slam the door behind me.
“Class is cancelled,” I bark. My voice cracks on it.
Benji blinks. “What’s wrong?”
“She’s…” I can’t make words. “Delilah.”
His eyes go wide, and he steps around me before I can stop him.
Jett straightens beside me, his neck popping like dry knuckles as he cranes his head. “She’s what? Drawing naked people now too?”
Benji pops back into the hall, eyes blown and grin crooked. “She is the naked people.”
“The fuck you say?” Jett says, full snarl.
“She’s the model. Nude. Glowing like a stripper angel,” Benji says. “No wonder you come here every week. Man, I really wanna finger-paint her. With edible paints.”
I press my hand over my face. Not because I’m horrified. No, that would be reasonable. I’m hard. My dick is at full fucking attention, already mentally sketching every shadow on her body in charcoal and precum. This is not okay. And yet, God, yes, it is.
Jett moves in. Inches from me. Heat rolling off him like a furnace. “This supposed to be a joke? You testing my anger management shit right now?”
“She’s not part of this,” I snap, stepping into him. “She’s never modeled before. She’s clearly here to fuck with me, not you. She didn’t know you two would be here. We’re leaving.”
Jett laughs. It’s low and mean. “Oh, hell no, doc.”
“Excuse me?” I stiffen. “I am not gonna be responsible for you losing your shit and turning that studio into a crime scene full of snapped pencils and popped eyeballs,” I hiss.
Benji’s still smiling. “He’s got a point. There are at least five artsy hipster dudes ogling our woman like she’s the damn Venus de Milo. And she is. She’s fucking glowing. Sparkly.”
“She’s naked?” Jett says again, voice tight.
“Yep. All but this delicate little chain at her waist,” Benji hums.
“Did she see you?” I ask, trying to assess how fucked we are.
Benji nods, unbothered. “Waved right at me. She looked… proud. Her tits,” he starts.
I don’t have the capacity to process this with my clinical mind. It’s not here. It’s run off, abandoned me to the wolves.
“Stop,” Jett snaps. Then, jaw clenched, he looks between us. “Here’s the deal.”
Benji and I go still.
“I’m going in,” Jett says. “I’m gonna sit down like a perfectly adjusted smarmy hipster with a mild-to-severe exhibitionism edging kink and sketch her respectfully. I don’t shank a single dude with a graphite stick. No broken fingers, no paintbrushes through anyone’s eye sockets.”
I nod slowly, waiting for the catch.
He turns on me, full intensity. “You, doc, you go in there too. Sit your clinical ass down and draw her. Look at her. Study every inch. I want detail. Portrait level. Line work so real I can taste it. And at the end of class? You say she’s just a patient.
Just a relaxing night. And you look me in the eye when you lie. ”
I stare at him. I stare at Benji, who’s nodding along like this is a fucking team-building exercise and not a descent into horny madness.
Fuck.
I do what any reasonable man would not. I walk in with her two lovers flanking me and I take a seat. Like this is normal. Sane.
She sees Jett and bites her lip. Grins at Benji. Then she shifts and locks her eyes on me in a challenge.
Jett drops into a stool three down from mine, stiff and twitchy, eyes ricocheting between her, me, and Benji. He hasn’t even touched his materials.
Benji is glued to her. Every molecule of his attention, his awe, his love, is on her. And it’s obvious. He’s proud of her. Moved by her. This isn’t a spectacle to him. It’s a fucking devotional.
I hate how much I understand it.
Because I’m proud too.
She’s bare. To a room of strangers. Her lovers. Her goddamn therapist.
And she looks like she was born for it. Shame couldn’t stick to her if it tried. She’s made herself a masterpiece.
I want to make her bare her soul with this same ease. To open up that wild, cracked heart the way she opens her thighs. To let someone in where it hurts.
Because I know she thinks her body’s the only perfect thing about her. And it makes me want to fucking scream.
I see her. Every broken, brutal, brilliant inch. And every time she gives me that unhinged, too-hungry grin, I see exactly what I’ve been missing. Exactly what I need.
I pick up the charcoal. It’s already smudging my fingertips, already soft and dirty in my grip.
Her belly catches me first, soft and plush. A place I’d mouth while she writhes. I sketch the gentle swell, right below the navel, and my hand moves like I’ve done this a hundred times. As if I’ve touched her there.
Her hips draw me next. The arch of bone. The dip before her thighs. I want my hands there. I want bruises there. I shade the curve, the slope, the way her thighs part on the stool, draped, languid, made to be spread.
I shouldn’t be this hard. I shouldn’t be here. But I keep drawing. I trace the line of her thigh, down to her knee, back up to where that delicate gold chain rides low across her hips. I capture the glint of it. I want to bite it off her.
And then, fuck me, I get to her breasts.
They are not demure. They are not art-school polite. They’re heavy and perfect and smug about it.
And I should not imagine the weight of them in my hands. Should not want to lick the sweat off the valley between them. Should not want to see what she does when you pull her nipple between your teeth and don’t let go right away.
My hand keeps moving.
This isn’t technique anymore. It’s obsession. I’m not drawing her like a model. I’m drawing her like a goddamn confession.
And I know, when she sees this page, she’ll know everything.