Curve Effect (A BBW Box Set of Contemporary, Science Fiction and Paranormal Romances) (37 page)

She put her hand on one of his sculpted biceps and stroked it with her thumb. “You didn’t get much sketching done,” she said.

“Bryce, I’m going to remember everything about you for the rest of my life,” he answered, the sound of his voice telling her he was just as fatigued and relaxed. “I’ve got years to paint you—but only this weekend to love you.”

Bryce stopped stroking his arm, her body motionless within its circle. Had he just said he only had the weekend to “love” her? Surely that was just a turn of phrase--a pretty euphemism for fucking. It’s not like he’d said he was in love with her.

“Walt?” She said his name quietly.

He answered her with the soft whistle of a snore.

*****

At six in the morning, Bryce finally gave up on trying to fall asleep for more than twenty minutes at a time and climbed from Diaz’s bed. Getting out of it without waking him wasn’t easy. He’d spent the night spooned against her, an arm across her shoulder or around her waist, his body slightly curled so that his lips were pressed against her neck or shoulder.

The way he held her like that felt a little possessive. She found it both slightly annoying and completely wonderful. Any annoyance she’d felt disappeared once she’d finally extracted herself from his sleeping embrace. Watching him from the end of the bed, she felt a small pang of need and was tempted to crawl back under the covers and feel his strong arms wrap instantly around her.

Instead of returning to bed, she retrieved the lovely outfit and gold strapped sandals Erato had forced on her. She headed into Diaz’s bathroom to change before going home. She would, she decided, borrow his keys while he slept and slip next door for a shower, fresh clothes and some makeup. He certainly couldn’t see her like she was, she thought, opening the bathroom door and flipping the light switch on.

She almost jumped straight from her skin at the sight of Erato perched on the edge of the tub. Bryce shut the door, grabbed a towel to cover herself and turned on the bathroom fan before she acknowledged the muse. “What the hell are you doing in his apartment!”

“Making sure you don’t do anything stupid, dear.”

“It’s a little too late for that, don’t you think?” She opened the carefully folded clothes with a hard snap. “Now get out of here so I can dress.”

“No can do,” Erato answered and stretched her long legs out. She tilted back over the tub, a superior grin on her otherwise lovely face.

Bryce took a second to examine the tub. It was an original fixture to the old apartment building, cast iron, luxuriously deep and perched atop small pieces of metal that resembled animal paws. The tub was definitely deep enough to drown the muse in—which would be satisfying but pointless if Erato truly were an immortal. There was also a shower curtain suspended from an oval rod attached to the ceiling and an add-on showerhead with its flexible metal hose hooked to the faucet at the tub's side. Both the hose and curtain would be good for strangling an annoying muse.

Again, pointless, but at least the need would be out of her system for as long as it took Erato to speak again.

“Oh, nice,” Erato said, her voice dry and disdainful. “Fact is, you get back in that apartment of yours, into the shower that faces the mirror…the mirror you try every morning not to look in…you might not come back. Then our little deal is blown and I’ve wasted a perfectly good evening.”

She paused, a nostalgic smile lighting an expression that had grown harrid. “Well, not completely wasted. He does have one of the most beautiful uncut cocks I’ve ever seen.”

“Y-you’re a perv,” Bryce blurted out. “You were watching? All of it?”

“Don’t get the panties you’re not wearing in a knot, dear.” Erato laughed and took the outfit from her. “A large part of inspiration is observation. How do you think a muse helps a shut-in like you without going out and seeing what other people are doing?”

“A shut-in?” Bryce wasn’t sure which was worse, that Erato had watched them last night or that she was calling Bryce names. “I most certainly am not!”

“Oh, sure, sure,” Erato started, holding up a hand and clicking off the pattern of Bryce’s weeks. “You go to classes on Tuesday and Thursday, you teach G.E.D. students Monday and Wednesday evening—both on the same campus and in the same building. You go to the grocery store on your way to or from campus. You do ninety percent of your bill paying and non-grocery shopping online. You recently stopped going out to meals with your friends—and you can’t expect them to keep asking much longer when all they ever get now is a ‘No thank you’. Are you going to come back here and eat breakfast with him, when you’ve all but stopped eating in front of friends you’ve had for years?”

“How do you know all this?” Bryce clutched the towel around her body. She felt like the last year of her life had just been placed under a microscope, leaving her more exposed than she had been while splayed in front of Diaz.

She tried to think of the last time she’d gone out with friends. Had it really been that long?

Erato stood up. Her large hands framed the sides of Bryce’s face and she planted a motherly kiss on Bryce’s forehead. “Because I know you now, and so I know everything about you. It’s part of a muse’s job—well, at least for the permanent hires. You’re still working on a strict need-to-know basis, dear—that’s why you can’t see into his mind the way I can see into yours.”

Cocking her head, Erato listened for a second beyond the noise of the fan. “Why wouldn’t you eat in front of him, anyway…you were holding him in your mouth last night.”

Bryce shook her head—it was totally different. “You’ve seen him, he’s perfect.”

Erato’s gaze drifted back to Bryce and she shrugged. “Perfection is relative, dear. You’ve never been to Olympus.” She stopped again and moved closer to the bathroom door. “And you’ve never been one of the girls the Perfect Mr. Diaz let mommy chase away.”

“Mommy?” Bryce asked, but Erato disappeared just as Diaz knocked on the bathroom door.

Damn, she should have changed in front of Erato and left before he had a chance to wake up. Hiding most of her body behind the door, she unlocked and opened it a few inches to peek out at him. He was barefoot and shirtless, having only slipped his pants back on.

“Did I wake you?” she asked.

Brow furrowed, he angled his head to the side and then glanced at the mirror that hung over the double sink. “I heard voices.”

Bryce’s gaze widened as she thought through how she was going to explain. Give him the truth and he would think she was crazy—but he’d likely think the same thing if she said she talked to herself. Which she did anyway. A lot.

“Story…uhm, that I have to turn in Monday, not done yet,” she explained. “The class is pass or fail based on the story, and I was trying out some dialogue.”

“Monday?” The deep lines smoothed a little, but he still looked concerned. “I don’t want to make you fail the class. It’s your last semester, isn’t it?”

“Oh, no, don’t worry.” She waved her hand, and the door opened another few inches. “I just need to tweak some things and such…that bit of dialogue especially.” She hesitated, wincing. “You didn’t hear any of it, did you?”

Diaz shook his head. “Do you want to run it by me?”

He looked serious, as if he didn’t think she was lying, and Bryce smiled. “No, I’d like to keep how much I suck at writing between me and the professor.”

He nodded and then motioned in the direction of the sinks’ counter. “You went to your apartment already?”

Ready to remind him that she’d worn the dress before, Bryce turned her head just in time to find a black georgette blouse paired with black sandals and silk pants. Next to the outfit was a travel kit. The patterned swirls of pink and cream, edged with an antique gold ribbon made the kit too feminine to belong to Diaz.

Damn that muse!

“Yeah, I borrowed your keys,” she improvised. “I hope you don’t mind?”

At least the weekend would improve her skill in lying.

“No, I’m just glad you were back when I woke up,” he answered, his hand on the doorknob like he wanted her to let him the rest of the way in. “I would have felt abandoned.”

Bryce snorted at the thought—she certainly hadn’t intended running off, just catching a quick shower. She wanted every last minute the weekend would offer despite Erato’s arguments to the contrary. “Come on,” she teased. “You really expect me to believe that? Who in her right mind would leave you?”

The second the question left her mouth, she wished she could call it back. His face took on a distant look that he quickly masked, and she wondered whether he was thinking of another woman or the fact that she had told him she would only give him this weekend?

“Well,” he said, his good humor apparently returning. “The key phrase in there is ‘right mind’, isn’t it?”

She nodded and he changed the subject to yet another one she didn’t want to discuss.

“I’ve never seen that outfit before, either.”

It certainly wasn’t something she would have worn before this weekend, she agreed silently. Although the idea of wearing it for him excited her. Beyond its classic black elegance, it was a little sexy. It was cut in a low curve at the top that would leave the top of her shoulders bare. A drawstring tie looked like it would fall just below her breasts to accentuate them. From that drop point, the lower half flowed in soft folds that would end even with her thigh line and hide the fact her body grew wider the further south one’s gaze traveled.

With both the top and bottom in black, she knew the overall effect would be slimming. The georgette material would keep the dark color tolerable if they ventured out into the August heat.

“My aunt bought it for me.” Another lie and she smiled, realizing it was easier to fib the closer you were to the actual truth. “A very, very, very old aunt,” Bryce amended. “It’s kind of sad, really. She lives with eight cats—and I’m her only living relative. But it’s not exactly something I can wear to campus, so it’s been sitting in my closet since Christmas.”

Picking the top up, she winced as a pin stuck her.

Bloody muses! No sense of humor when the joke was on them. But a mere mortal was fair game for their amusement.

She pulled the pin out and showed him her bloodied finger tip. “I’m surprised the tags aren’t attached still.”

“Well, I’m very…very…very glad you pulled it out of the closet for me,” he teased. “Why don’t I make us some breakfast while you shower,” he offered before immediately asking, “Unless I can come in and wash your back?”

The offer was tempting. She certainly wanted to see him nude again—as soon as possible. But Erato had been right, yesterday’s self-consciousness was creeping back in. She didn’t want to have breakfast with him or have him see her in the shower, completely sans makeup and with the hair he seemed to like so much turned into a wet and tangled mess. She would shower alone, put on the exquisite outfit Erato had provided her with, and hopefully find that the muse had been equally considerate in stocking the travel kit with makeup.

“I think,” she started shyly, “I want you to make breakfast while I clean up. Now, if I come out and find you naked and offering yourself up as a serving dish, that would be even better.”

Diaz winked, as if he was more than ready to take her up on the dare. Before she could tell him she’d been joking, he saluted and quickly pulled the door shut. She stared at the door for a second while she pondered whether she should call him back and make it clear she had only been teasing.

Hell, eating breakfast in front of him was going to be hard enough—but off of him, as well?

Chapter Ten

Relaxing beneath the hot water, Bryce convinced herself Diaz had only been joking. He’d have cereal or eggs and sausage cooked up, and she’d eat a little bit while he ate all of his. Not that she couldn’t easily imagine eating a bite or two of sausage from his body. She could almost taste the flavor of it on his skin, meat stacked on meat. Or, she decided and eased further into the fantasy, maybe she would prefer a pulpy dribble of fruit across the rippled muscles of his stomach. She could definitely imagine licking a line of juice up the thick forward jut of his cock.

Out of the shower, her hair drying while she applied makeup, Bryce gave her lips a slow lick. That would definitely be the best breakfast she could think of.

She slipped into the top and pants, thankful that Erato had at least seen fit to provide her with panties this time. Without panties, it would only take her a few seconds of being around Diaz before her excitement soaked through the silk pants.

When she opened the bathroom door, she didn’t see him immediately. She walked toward the galley-sized kitchen and saw the cutting board and frying pan in the sink. Heading toward the bedroom, she heard him clear his throat and turned to find him stretched out on the couch, naked but for the food covering him.

“I was joking,” she whispered, gaze wide as it traveled from the kiwi slices covering his nipples to the pared strawberries in a line down to his navel before finally reaching the smiley face of sausage patties. A plate half full with the same food sat on the coffee table.

“Too late,” he said. He held a peeled banana in his hand and he broke it in half. “Come and kiss me,” he said and then stuck a piece of banana between his lips.