Chapter 9
The air turned brittle in the sudden quiet, save for my heart beating like a drum inside my chest. I donned the robe he’d tried to give me earlier, securing the terrycloth sash around my waist, then padded to the sink to pour myself a glass of water.
I’d wanted my father to draw me like he used to. I should’ve known that it wouldn’t be so simple. Time had changed us. I wasn’t his little girl anymore, and the things he wanted from his models were things I had no business giving him. It was natural for him to get aroused with the others. I wondered if he slept with them, too. The thought made me sick, not from disgust, but from jealousy.
Although I had experience taking my clothes off over webcam, I had never been so naked with a boy before, let alone a man—and that”s what my father was, a man. Jagged and smooth, hard and soft, so many amazing things at once. I was his daughter, but I was also a woman, with breasts and hips and the ability to give and receive pleasure.
He’d touched my pussy. No one but me had ever touched me there. It happened so quickly I hadn’t had time to process. But thinking about it now made me want to rub my thighs together.
I liked it. More than that, I wanted it to happen again.
Something was seriously wrong with me. I refilled the glass, running the tap too hard and splashing water everywhere. I forced myself to drink, to drown, to suppress these terrifying urges.
This man had abandoned me, but he was still my blood. Had six years apart turned us into strangers who could pass each other on the sidewalk and mistake one another for potential mates? My mind cried out for an explanation for which my body had no answer. None that made sense, anyway.
My lungs begged for air. I coughed, water spluttering from my mouth into the sink. I moved to set the glass on the countertop and misjudged the edge. The glass fell to the hardwood floor and shattered.
“Fuck,” I spat. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and stooped to gather the pieces.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs.
“What happened?” my father asked, coming to stand behind me.
“I dropped a glass.” My voice cracked from coughing. I couldn’t look at him. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He ripped a handful of paper towels from the roll beneath the cupboard, and knelt to help me collect the pieces. “Careful. Don’t use your bare hands.”
“I’m fine.” I sidestepped to toss the pieces into the trash. Pain shot through the base of my right foot. I shouted.
“Did you cut yourself?”
“My heel.” I stood on one foot, afraid to put pressure on the wound.
He scooped me into his arms as if I weighed nothing and carried me to the futon. He grabbed a bunch of tissues from a nearby box. “Hold these under your heel.”
I saw the inch-long chunk of glass sticking out of my foot and winced. My father walked to the sink, crunching glass beneath his thick-soled boots, and pulled a first aid kit from the cupboard. He dragged the chair he’d been sketching from over to the futon and rested my foot on his lap.
“You might want to bite down on something.” He withdrew a pair of tweezers from the kit. I closed my eyes and leaned back onto my elbows.
A jolt of pain zipped into my calf as he freed the chunk of glass from my flesh. I swore, then clenched my teeth against the throbbing in my foot.
“It doesn’t look deep,” he said. Something cold and wet slid over my heel. It stung. “Try to hold still.”
“Sorry.” I opened my eyes and a flood of longing filled my chest like oxygen. Memories of him soothing my bumps and bruises, bandaging paper cuts.
He curved a hand over my ankle as he cleaned the wound; I tried not to think about where those fingers had been. He dabbed a glob of antiseptic, cool and tacky, onto the cut, then layered the area with gauze and secured the dressing with medical tape.
“You should try to stay off your foot for the next day or two,” he said. “I’ll help you into the apartment.”
He held out his hand. I inhaled a ragged breath and accepted his help.
“Thanks,” I said, wrapping my arm around his shoulders. “Good thing you weren’t planning on having me stand for the painting.”
His jaw clenched. He stayed quiet as we made our way to the door, then said, “I’ve changed my mind about that. I don’t think it’s a good idea to have you model for me.”
I would’ve stopped in my tracks if he hadn’t been supporting me.
“Oh,” I said, the word sticking like a lump at the back of my throat. I should’ve been grateful. I should’ve been relieved. But all I felt was panic and disappointment, like he was abandoning me all over again.
“Is it…” I couldn’t make myself say the words. Is it because I made you hard? “Did I do something wrong?”
“No. You were perfect.” He let us into the apartment. “I shouldn’t have asked you to do that.”
“But I offered.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He lowered me onto the couch cushion. “Anyway, it’s better for you if you’re not involved in my work.”
“Better how?”
“Too much controversy.”
“Since when are you shy about controversy?”
He pushed the ottoman closer so I could rest my foot on it. “I’m not shy about anything. But the backlash wouldn’t fall solely on me. It would mark your career before it even started. Better they see you as an artist first, and as my daughter second. Not as my subject.”
“Who’s they?”
“Critics, dealers, other artists.”
“But I don’t care how they see me.” I couldn’t believe I was fighting him on this, considering how badly the session had rattled me. But when the alternative was moving out of my father’s light and back into the darkness... I couldn’t let that happen. I didn’t care whether the piece went viral, or never amounted to anything more than kindling.
I could not handle losing him again.
“Dad, I’m doing this for you, not for them.”
“I thought you were doing it for you.”
“I am. I’m doing it for both of us.”
“You’re not hearing me, Paige.” He rubbed his eyes. “I’m not going to paint you.”
“Because you’re worried about my career prospects?”
“Because you’re mine.” The edge in his voice told me not to push, but there was something in the way he said the word mine that hooked its claws in me. A twinge of anguish, the threat of darkness buried, something protective about his straight-backed stance.
No, not just protective.
Possessive.
Maybe there was a reason my father had turned his mouth toward mine yesterday, the same reason he’d chosen not to confront me about spying on him. What if, when he spread my legs and touched my pussy and got hard watching me masturbate, it wasn’t just a biological response?
I had spent the last twenty-four hours wondering if I was going crazy, when perhaps the truth lay somewhere on the ground between us.
Like the apple that never falls far from the tree.
“The kiss,” I said, gazing up at him from the couch. “It wasn’t an accident, was it?”
He eyed me like he would a predator, like I was something dangerous. Maybe I was. He shook his head.
“Then, this is real,” I said, “what I’m feeling. It’s not just in my head.”
“Only you know what you’re feeling. But no, it’s not all in your head.”
I brought my fingers to my lips. Now that the pain in my foot had subsided, all I could think about was the fact that he’d wanted to kiss me. Not on the cheek or the forehead. On the lips.
This attraction, this completely inappropriate desire I was battling, wasn’t one-sided. He wanted this as badly as I did, so much that he hadn’t been able to stop himself from kissing me, touching me, watching me.
A current of arousal quivered up my spine, making my skin tingle and my inner muscles clench. I was turned-on again—and confused and conflicted.
But still.
“I’m sorry, Paige,” he said. “I can’t imagine how uncomfortable you must be. You don’t have to worry. I’m not going to touch you, or ask you to sit for me again. I’ll keep my distance, let you have the run of the house, the studio?—”
“No.” I didn’t want to stop sitting for him, and I sure as hell didn’t want him to keep his distance. I wanted him to pull me closer, run his fingers through my hair, and then kiss me for real. A kiss with intent and the power to turn back the clock and make me forget he’d ever left me.
“Okay then.” His expression shuttered. “I’ll drive you to the airport and get you a first-class ticket home.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I said.
He looked deflated. “Tell me what to do here, Paige, and I’ll do it.”
My thoughts were scrambled eggs, piping hot and caution-tape yellow. For the life of me, I couldn’t drum up the words to tell him what I needed, all the things I wanted him to do to me.
Shameful things. Unspeakable things. Nasty, dirty, forbidden things.
Fortunately, some languages are universal.
I untied the sash around my waist and let the robe slide off my shoulders. His gaze dipped to my breasts, the look on his face equal parts apprehension and arousal.
“Paige?”
I reached for him with trembling hands, my fingers closing around the fabric of his shirt. I drew him toward me. He let me pull him down onto the couch. Before I had a chance to overthink what was happening, I swung my leg across his lap and straddled him.
“Kiss me again,” I whispered.
I tipped my face and wetted my mouth and waited.