Take Me Read online

  Of course it is. Of fucking course it is.

  My fingers tighten on my pencil but I force them to relax. Force myself to relax despite my iron cock and the tension that’s riding me hard. A name is just a name, after all. Or at least, that’s what I tell myself as I put pencil to paper.

  And then I start to draw.

  Tuesday: Hope

  Deacon Vick is what fantasies are made of. Dark, dirty, dangerous fantasies, to be exact.

  The kind that keep you up at night, tossing and turning in sweat-soaked sheets.

  The kind that make you tremble.

  The kind that make you want, make you wet...and then make you come, over and over again.

  I should know. I’ve had about twelve different fantasies about him since I walked out of here last night.

  And now I’m back for more. Palms sweating, knees shaking, body screaming for relief even though it’s barely been twelve hours since those long, talented fingers of his shot me straight to mind-melting orgasm.

  Just thinking about it ramps up the need ricocheting around inside of me by about a thousand degrees. Well, that and the fact that he’s standing ten feet in front of me in nothing but a pair of ripped jeans. He’s got his back turned toward me as he works in front of the fire, his broad, heavily muscled back gleaming in the firelight.

  I’m close enough that I can see a drop of sweat sliding down his spine. It slips between his shoulder blades then down, down, down, until it disappears beneath the low-slung waistband of his well-worn jeans. For a moment all I can think about is tracing its journey with my fingertips...and my tongue. About kissing and licking and caressing my way across those wide shoulders, down that long, lean back, over that truly, truly fabulous ass.

  I promise myself that I’ll do just that before this week ends. Promise myself that before this modeling gig is over, I’ll know his taste as intimately as I know my own. Maybe more.

  Of course, what he looks like when he comes isn’t all I’m planning on learning from Deacon Vick. Not when the man’s a legend in a field known more for chewing up contemporary artists and spitting them out than it is for worshipping them. A field known more for destroying egos and ripping apart careers than it is for putting artists on a pedestal.

  And still they’ve made him a god.

  No, I think, as I look around his studio at the pieces in varying stages of completion. It isn’t that they made him a god, it’s more that he was born one and they couldn’t help but recognize it. After all, no one who can create works as sublime as Deacon can be anything as mundane as human.

  As if sensing the weight of my gaze, he shifts a little, leaning over to grab for a pair of black fireproof tongs. I watch his muscles bunch and ripple in the firelight, and my fingers itch to touch. More, they itch to sculpt.

  It’s one more thing I add to the list, one more thing I promise myself I’ll do before I see the last of this place. I’ll sketch him just like this, head down, shoulders bare, too long dark hair falling across his ridiculously high cheekbones and cut-glass jaw.

  I can’t see any more of his face right now, but I don’t need to. After staring at him nonstop for four and a half hours yesterday while he sketched me, I can picture it perfectly. Dark eyebrows low and furrowed, laser focused green eyes narrowed on the task in front of him, full, sensual mouth twisted in concentration as he makes sketch after sketch.

  All of a sudden, he steps back from the fire and my breath catches in my throat at the thought that he’s about to turn around. That he’s about to find me here, studying him as fiercely as he studied me last night—but with no sketchpad in my hand.

  I’m pretty sure I look as turned on as I am right now and I’m not sure how I feel about that. Not sure that I want him to know just how many fantasies I’ve had about him since I walked out of here yesterday—or how many times I had to get myself off before I could finally fall asleep last night.

  In the end, none of my worries matter because Deacon doesn’t turn around. Instead, he just shifts as he bends the warm metal to whatever design he sees in his head, his muscles straining against the inside of his skin with the effort.

  It’s sexy as fuck.

  Then again, everything about him is sexy as fuck. I press my legs together in a weak attempt to stop the throb—stop the ache—that’s winding its way through me. And when he bends over, faded denim molding every inch of his lower body and cupping his ass in a way that I would do anything for the chance to echo, I have to bite my lip to keep from gasping.

  Have to clench my fist around what’s left of the apple I’ve been eating to keep from touching.

  Have to lock my knees to keep from trembling—and from moving toward him on shaky legs.

  It’s all so much harder than it should be, considering how much I want to learn from him. And considering how much I need the money I’ll earn to pay my tuition now that my scholarship has fallen through.

  The thought of how close I am to losing art school—and everything I’ve worked so hard for—is the first thing to penetrate the desire that wrapped itself around me like a scarf the moment I caught sight of Deacon.

  I want him—of course I want him—but I need this job more. Need my art more. I always have.

  Work first, I remind myself. Play later.

  With that edict firmly in my head, I do my best to lock down the heat inside of me. To bury it deep, at least until I’ve earned my tuition money. I can wait that long to have him, I tell myself as I shove my hands into the pockets of my jeans. No matter how much it hurts.

  “Are you going to stand there watching me all day or are you going to come over here?” Deacon’s voice—low, laconic, filled with gravel—slides over me, through me, wreaking havoc with all my best intentions.

  “You didn’t look ready for me, and I didn’t want to disturb you.” I clear my throat, swallow down my need. And fall back on the flippancy that’s gotten me through so many difficult situations in the past. “God forbid I deprive the world of the next great Deacon Vick masterpiece.”

  “You’re going to be the next great Deacon Vick masterpiece,” he tells me without bothering to turn around. There’s no irony in his voice at all, no hint of humor. And his focus never wavers from the metal he’s working, even as his words light me up hotter than the fire burning right in front of us.

  Fuck. How the hell am I supposed to ignore the sizzle between us when everything he says—everything he does—only makes me hotter?

  I’m still struggling with what to say when he does finally glance over his shoulder at me, green eyes flashing in that fallen angel face. His gaze sweeps over me quickly—one second, two—before he glances back to his work, but even that’s enough to light up my every nerve ending. Enough to make my knees tremble and my breath catch in my throat.

  “You’re early,” he continues. Not praise, not condemnation. Just a statement.

  The indifference of it is what finally helps me find my balance...and my voice. Turning into a pile of desperate, wanton goo is one thing. Letting him see that I have, when he’s so blatantly unaffected by what he did to me yesterday, is something else entirely. A girl has to have some pride, after all.

  It’s that thought that lets me say, “Just making sure you get your money’s worth.” Then I take a last bite of my apple—praying I don’t choke from sheer horniness as I do—before launching the core at the garbage can in the corner. It bounces off the side of the old, wooden desk heaped with papers I’ll bet a hundred bucks he hasn’t so much as touched since he put them there, before landing neatly in the trash. The noise echoes in the room as it crashes into the metal bin, but Deacon doesn’t bother to look. “I’m conscientious like that.”

  He answers me, though. In what might be the most obnoxious way possible. “I always get my money’s worth.”

  Of that I have no doubt.

  I move closer, to get a b
etter look at what he’s doing. And because I can’t stay away any longer. The admission hurts—as does playing the moth to his flame—but I’ve never been one to lie to myself. Especially when it hurts.

  Deacon doesn’t say anything else, and he doesn’t look at me again, even when I stop only a few inches away from him. All of his concentration—all that he is—is focused completely on his work as he stretches and twists, twists and stretches, until the metal in his hands is long and delicate and flowing in a way I wouldn’t have imagined possible if I wasn’t standing right here. If I wasn’t watching him do it with nothing but two pairs of tongs and his incredible strength.

  Because I long to touch—both him and the heated metal—I scoot back. Not far enough that I can’t observe his technique, but far enough that if I forget myself and reach out I won’t actually be able to touch him.

  I’m not sure how long we stand like that, him shaping the metal into something beautiful and me watching him do it. Me, imagining that I’m the one brandishing the metal so skillfully. Me, imagining that I’m the one he’s paying such close attention to, the one he is literally bending to his will.

  I don’t know where the last thought comes from, as I’m normally a control freak—and right now I don’t actually give a shit. How can I when the legendary Deacon Vick is literally making magic in front of me?

  He finally stops twisting and I hold my breath as slowly, slowly, slowly, he starts to bend the taut, twisted metal. He’s holding it tight, his muscles bunching and straining with the force necessary to keep the metal twisted while also shaping it into something else.

  And then he’s done, turning and plunging his work into a large trough of water that he has set up against the back wall. The metal hisses as it touches the water, steam rising into the already unbearably hot room. He holds it there for several long seconds, letting the cold water harden the metal to near brittleness.

  I can’t help gasping when he finally pulls the piece out and holds it up to inspect. It has no definitive characteristics, nothing I can point to and say oh, that’s a fill in the blank. But it doesn’t have to. There’s such power in the curve of the metal, in the incredible intricacy of each of the slanting twists, that it doesn’t matter what it is. All that matters is that it is beautiful.

  I know it’s just a small piece in what is to become a much larger sculpture—Deacon doesn’t do small—and suddenly I’m dying to know what it will be. Dying to know what he’ll use this one drop of beauty to create.

  I move forward before I even know I’m doing it, hand outstretched with a sudden, desperate need to touch what he’s made. To feel its power and its grace under my fingertips, even as I’m forced to acknowledge that I’ll never be able to create like this. That I’ll never be talented enough to see what Deacon sees and then, somehow, translate that vision into art that makes people tremble the way that I’m trembling.

  That makes them want the way that I want.

  “It’s still hot,” he cautions, voice even deeper than before

  Rusty with disuse, I think, right before my fingers slide along the dripping metal. He’s right, it is still hot, but “I don’t care.” A little burn is a price I’ll willingly pay for a chance to touch Deacon Vick’s art as it’s made...and to touch the man himself.

  He grins then, a quick flash of teeth that is as predatory as it is amused—almost as if he can see what I’m thinking. “What do you see?” he asks, finally letting go with the second pair of tongs and setting them aside.

  It’s a test—there’s no way one tiny part of a massive sculpture can tell the whole story. And still I feel my stomach clench with the need to get it right, the need to show Deacon that I understand what he’s doing here. Because I do. I fell for his art the first moment I saw the sculpture he installed outside the Vicon building back when I was a sophomore in high school.

  Everything he’s ever done—before or since—has spoken to me in a way nothing else has. His work is why I decided to give metal sculpting a try, and at least partly why I fell in love with it from the very first moment.

  I get him, I really do, but even I can’t figure out what this glorious, sweeping curl is supposed to be. “A petal,” I finally say, because if I look close enough I can almost see the flower it could become.

  “A petal?” His voice doesn’t change, but there’s something in his eyes that says I’ve surprised him. Whether that’s good or bad remains to be seen.

  “Yes.” I reach out and trace the glorious, sweeping curve that he created from talent and strength and sheer, unbending will. “I can see it right here.” My hand brushes against his own as I stroke the warm metal, and he doesn’t pull away. Instead he tangles our fingers together for one second, two, as his thumb strokes over my inner wrist.

  But then he’s pulling back, moving back, and I’m left craving. I want more of his art almost as much as I want more of him.

  “Take off your clothes,” he orders, as he places the metal on the tarp-covered table in the corner.

  My nipples tighten at the words—and the unmistakable command in his voice as he utters them. I reach for the hem of my shirt before I make the conscious decision to do so, hands trembling from the compulsion to do as he asks. And from the need to have him look at me.

  I drop my shirt on the floor, followed quickly by my bra. Then reach for the waistband of my pants and yank them—and my underwear—off with one quick shove.

  Deacon still hasn’t glanced at me, and for the first time I feel a chill, despite the heated, humid air all around me.

  I wait several more seconds, but when he doesn’t turn around, I ask, “Where do you want me?” My voice is so husky I barely recognize it.

  “On the worktable,” he answers and he’s still not looking at me.

  With any other artist, it wouldn’t bother me. After all, we’re taught early on that drawing nude models is like drawing anything else. But with Deacon, I can’t help thinking of the way he touched me yesterday. The way he looked at me. The way he got me off.

  And even though I know he’s messing with me—testing me—I can’t help getting a little pissed off. Because there’s a part of me that wants his attention, that craves it, in a way that has nothing to do with him being an artist and everything to do with him being a man. And not just any man. The first man I’ve let touch me in a long, long time.

  Determined to rattle him, to shake him the way he so effortlessly is shaking me, I do as he asks and hop up on his worktable. As I do, I shove aside a top of the line grinder and flex shaft—way better than the ones I have back in my own meager studio space at the local artists’ co-op.

  Seeing them reminds me that even though I applied for this job because I need the money—my financial aid check fell about fifteen hundred dollars short of this semester’s tuition—the truth is I’d do it for free in a heartbeat.

  Not because Deacon made me come harder than I have in a long time—though there is that—but because the chance to watch him work, to ask him questions, is worth way more than any money I might earn. It’s worth everything...because he’s worth everything.

  Finally, finally, he reaches for his sketchpad and charcoals. Electricity zips through me and I shiver despite myself.

  “Are you cold?” he asks, and the question is so well timed that I can’t help wondering how he could know that I’d shivered when it doesn’t seem like he’s paying any attention to me at all.

  “I’m fine,” I tell him in a voice that isn’t as strong or steady as I want it to be. But it’s hard to be steady when my whole body is thrumming with anticipation...and with need.

  “Then put your heels on the table.”

  “My heels?” I ask, even as I pull my knees to my chest. There’s a compulsion deep inside of me to do what he says, one that has nothing to do with the twenty dollars an hour he’s paying me to model.

  “Rest them on the ed
ge of the table.” For the first time there’s an edge of impatience in his tone and it gets my back up. And still I do as he says.

  Long seconds crawl by and he doesn’t say anything else. He just stands there, all thick muscles and long, loose limbs as he rummages in his charcoal box. Eventually he pulls out a pencil, looks it over, then tosses it back in the box.

  He does the same thing again. Then again and again and again, as the air between us only gets thicker. He’s doing it deliberately—by now, I’m sure of it. And still it gets to me.

  I’m determined to wait him out, though. Determined not to cave to the tension sparking all around me—or the tension sparking inside of me. But as long seconds slide into longer minutes, I can’t help getting antsy. Can’t help squirming just a little. Can’t help the way my hips are gently rocking on the table and the way my breath is coming in short, little pants.

  Finally, finally, he picks a pencil.

  I hold my breath, wait for him to turn to me. Wait for him to look at me. Instead, he turns to the left and starts walking away.

  “Where—” My voice breaks before I can get more than a word out. I hate it, so I clear my throat. Take a deep breath. Make sure I’ve got my shit together before I open my mouth again. And ask, “Where are you going?”

  He doesn’t answer, but he stops at the small refrigerator in the corner of the room. He pulls out two waters before turning and heading back to me, jaw set and eyes burning as they rake me from head to toe.

  His gaze is so heavy it’s almost a physical caress, and I shudder in relief. At finally having his attention. And finally having a starting place so there can, eventually, be an end to the tension racking my every nerve ending.

  He makes no move to answer the question. No move to do anything but stand there and watch me with electric eyes and a look so arrogant that it makes me itch to wipe it off...even as it makes me wet.

  Annoyed, frustrated, aroused, I make a sound halfway between a moan and a growl. And then I start to scoot forward, off the table. If he can ignore me, then I can ignore him too.