Luster (3 page)

I
’m not
one who’s easily surprised but when Falyn actually agrees to model for me, my jaw nearly drops to the floor. I’m cool about it of course, as though I completely expected her to say yes. But still, holy shit. She’s actually willing to do it?

Definitely didn’t see that one coming.

Something about the way she tilts her head to the side while she’s waiting for me to reply has my cock stirring even more. I fight the ridiculous urge to push a stray piece of hair that’s hanging down back behind her ear.

“It’s simple. Once we pick a day and time, you come by here wearing something that will show off your legs. I’ll have you pose somewhere like on that couch there. It usually takes me a while to get started, but not too much longer to finish up. Although I still have to get a good grip on what I’d like to do with your specific work.”

She nods like we’re discussing trading stocks, but it’s still evident that she’s embarrassed by the idea.

“What exactly do you mean by something that will show off my legs? Is that the only part you’ll need to see, uh draw, I mean?”

A strong breeze blows through the room and my dick starts to lose its hardness. Yep, definitely time to put the pants back on. I pull them up my legs as I answer her. “Well, I guess that depends. I plan on drawing all of you, but mainly focusing on your legs. It might work even better if you just stick to wearing your underwear. That way I’ll be able to get the
full view
I need.”

I don’t blush when I say this and intentionally emphasize my wording to try and get a rise out of her. No dice though, and when Falyn stares me down I can almost see her mind working against itself. She wants to say something, but also doesn’t want to come off as prudish.

Maybe I should try to not be such an asshole about her morals or whatever, but it’s kind of fun watching her eyes widen each time I say something off the cuff.

It almost makes me wonder what she would be like in bed…

“I see. Well then I guess I’ll just see what I can find to where. When would be the best time for you?”

I scratch my chin, wondering about that very thing myself. I know I should go hunt down my calendar but I’m not quite ready to leave Falyn’s presence just yet. “I know I’m pretty busy the next couple of days, but I think we can work something out after that. Maybe this weekend?”

She gives me a curt nod, and I just have to laugh to myself. When will she give this up?

Falyn picks up her clipboard from the couch and starts jotting something down. I glance over her shoulder to see what it is, fixing on a grin when she looks over at me and rolls her eyes.

“Saturday would work best for me. Is there a particular time of day that you need to use best? I mean for lighting or whatever?”

Well at least she’s being accommodating. “I’ll be sketching you in here, and as you can see there aren’t really a whole lot of windows. Or any, for that matter. So it doesn’t really matter what time of day. How about…”

“5 PM works for me.”

So now she’s trying to put on the professional bitch look. I see how it is.

“All right then. I guess we can do 5 o’clock.”

We stare at each other for a moment, sizing each other up. I wonder how much she knows about me already, how many bullshit rumors she’s probably read about me online. Everyone thinks they know you if they’ve read about you somewhere on the Internet. ‘Course most of what you find there is a total lie.

She quirks her eyebrows up, and I wonder if maybe she’s thinking the same thing about me. Truth be told I didn’t really look into the company she works for. I only know she is the heiress to the hotel chain because she mentioned her father being the owner over the phone. It’s kind of hard to forget that.

Falyn steps forward hesitantly, pulling in her lip between her teeth. She looks like she’s about to say something but stopped herself.

“Is there something else?” I ask. The way she chuckles to herself before answering is sort of cute. If you’re into stuck up chicks like her.

“It’s just that… Do you have any sketches I can see?”

Is she blind or something? I gesture to the surrounding walls, her gaze dropping to the floor. “You’re looking at them, babe. Are these not enough for you?”

She huffs, looking back up at me totally exasperated. “Other than the ones hanging up on the walls, I mean. And also? I think you know my name by now. And it’s not babe.”

At this I grin. “Oh, don’t act like you don’t like it. Everyone loves when I call them babe.”

It’s funny to watch her fold her arms the way one slams a door, and I can practically see the steam billowing out of her ears.

“Are you always this much of an asshole? Or is this just how you treat your business partners?”

“Business partners? I didn’t know that they had a label for what we have between us.” Okay, I know that was pretty cheesy on my end, but when I see Falyn’s mouth turn up in the corner just slightly I continue on, anyway. “And to answer your question, yes. This is me. What you see is what you get, babe.”

Her fingers lightly drum over her arm, the perfectly manicured nails of hers gleaming under the fluorescent lighting hanging above us. If you look at her just by glancing you would never know the little things that I’m picking up the more I look at her.

Like the way she obviously tries so hard to keep herself in perfect condition, however she really is human like the rest of us after all. It’s in the way she has a few of her bobby pins loose in her hair, and the way her makeup is slightly smudged around her eyes. And how the indentation of a ring circles her finger, almost ghostly white compared to the rest of the smooth tanned skin around it.

It’s her left ring finger, too… A thought starts ghosting to the surface of my brain.

“Are you married?”

She lets out a loud laugh, quickly shaking her head. “Um, no. Absolutely not. Why would you think that?”

A point to her hand. “Looks like you’re missing a wedding band there. I didn’t know if maybe you were on the sneak or something from your husband. I don’t want to get wrapped up in any kind of domestic affairs, you know what I mean?”

Falyn just rolls her eyes again, smirking at me this time. “Oh please. If I were married this wouldn’t even be an offer on the table.”

“You sure about that? I mean you don’t seem to be fighting me here very much at all.”

She looks past me, to the equipment I have set up back where my real sculpting is done. Something has caught her eye.

Ignoring my comment, she moves toward the giant corkboard I have tacked up on my wall full of previous sketches.

“See? This is what I was talking about right here! Not all the nudes and whatever, but the other things too,” she says, trailing her fingertips along the edges of the paper. “Wow. There’s so much detail involved.”

I shuffle over to her, careful to watch my step for metal shavings on the floor. “Yeah. There kind of has to be if you want the kind of intricate work I put into mine. Especially when you’re working with metal.”

I don’t want to get sidetracked here though, and I can feel that that’s where this is heading. The way Falyn is observing my drawings kind of makes me feel nervous for some reason. Like I’m a kid at the front of a room during a spelling bee.

I swallow against the lump that’s rising in my throat, trying to regain control again. Keep your head, Matt.

“So 5 o’clock Saturday then?”

She slowly turns back to face me, practically dragging her eyes away from the drawings. “Yeah… yeah, that sounds good to me. I guess I’ll bring the contract?”

I shrug my shoulders noncommittally, not wanting to answer that question quite yet. Something tells me that this drawing may take more than the usual amount of time.

* * *

I
t’s not long
after Falyn leaves that real life starts to pour back into my mind, slowly drowning out everything else. It’s hard to shake my angry thoughts over what’s going on with my family, so I go to do what I do best.

Make some awesome shit out of nothing.

And in the meantime… I’ll be looking forward to my next meeting with Miss Falyn Morrissey.

E
liza plops down
on the bed beside me, hovering around my shoulder. “Looking up some details about Mr. Big Shot, are you? Find anything juicy?”

I nudge my best friend playfully, knowing well enough that she knows Matt better than I probably ever will. “Just the basics. Single, young, insanely hot… Which I already knew of course.”

“But of course. It’s kind of hard not to come to that conclusion when you first meet him. So how did the first meeting go? I forgot to ask when we were on the phone earlier.”

I think back to yesterday and being surrounded by Matt’s studio. And Matt’s… well, everything. “It was interesting, to say the least.”

“Oh man,” she laughs, her eyes widening up as I drop my forehead into my palm. “That bad, huh?”

I groan. “You have no idea, Eliza. That man is insufferable! I’ve never met another human being as full of themselves as Matt Walsh. I just… I don’t get it.”

Eliza gives me a knowing look. “You don’t get it? What’s not to get? He knows how talented, creative, and not to mention ‘insanely hot’ he is. He’s probably had people tell him that all his life. You don’t get his ego? Or you don’t get why it’s so appealing to you?”

“Pfft. Appealing? I wouldn’t go that far. Yes he’s nice to look at, and sure his work is pretty damn good. But his whole personality makes me want to throw up a little. He’s just such a… Such a—”

“Jerk?” she offers.

My tensed-up shoulders relax some—she gets it. “
Exactly
.”

Eliza pats my shoulder. “I know. Remember I’m the one who referred you to him, so I know quite a bit about him. And by quite a bit I mean not too much. He keeps to himself mostly, believe it or not. All I know is that he’s been a huge help to me… I mean his work is phenomenal and I’m constantly getting people coming into my gallery asking when his next show will be.”

She did tell me before that he was a lot to handle, now that I think about it. I just had no idea how absolutely right she was. And the fact that I’m willing to handle it for the sake of a gaining contract with him still baffles me even now.

“I got to see some of his sketches, and bits and pieces of different sculptures he’s working on. I have to admit that he is really good at what he does,” I reply. My stomach grumbles loudly, causing the both of us to burst into fits of laughter. “Careful! Watch out for my laptop!”

She slides back off the bed and stretches her arms over her head, craning her neck this way and that. In her downtime Eliza likes to pretend to be a yogi, at least for the time being. She’s always off on some new health craze every few months or so.

“Now that your stomach mentions it… I’m pretty hungry too. Want me to grab some snacks?”

“Sure,” I say, smiling up at her.

When she leaves the room I continue my research on Mr. Matt Walsh. A few minutes into it I see a headline for an article that references something about an ex fiancée of his. My interest piqued, I click through and feel something in my stomach knot up even more tightly than before, knowing that it’s not my obvious hunger. This is something else.

Dinah and fiancée, Matthew Walsh call it quits.

Up-and-coming artist Matthew Walsh and his girlfriend Dinah have split. According to sources close to the pop star, Dinah was completely devastated. “He just broke her heart. Simple as that.”

Mr. Walsh was unavailable for comment.

My blood runs cold when I check out the picture next to the article. It’s one of Matt dressed up in a nice suit and cuddled up next to a face I see all the time on my iTunes list—huge music star Dinah. It looks like they’re sitting in the back of the limo without a care in the world. Her overly white teeth gleam through the dimly lit picture and I feel an out-of-place sense of anger well up inside of me. I don’t know why this is making me mad. I should’ve known to expect something like this from him anyway, given our meeting and all. I vaguely recall reading something about Dinah having a former lover who abandoned her the day of their wedding. But that couldn’t be Matt, could it?

An image of him smirking at me, dropping his pants right in front of me just for shock value pops into my head. Of
course
he would.

I click on a few more pictures of Dinah herself, biting on my lip as I can’t help noticing just how amazing she looks. It really shouldn’t come as a surprise to me to see the two of them together. They’re like a Mexican Princess Barbie and Bad Boy Ken.

While Matt is all long and dark blonde hair, rugged and incredibly masculine, Dinah is petite and delicate-looking, with a waterfall of curly brown hair and pretty brown eyes. You don’t even have to see them in a picture together to know that they look fantastic as a couple. Or at least they did, anyway.

I think about when he asked me if I was married. Maybe he felt guilty about what he did to her, and the loss of the ring on my finger brought up the memory for him.

It also happened to bring up a memory for me…

And there it is. The reason why reading about Matt and Dinah is pissing me off so badly. Matt abandoning Dinah reminds me all too well of what Raymond did to me. The bastard.

I suck air in through my teeth, telling myself not to dwell too much on it. It’s already been over a year since Raymond and I broke up but sometimes it feels like it’s barely been a week. I was thankful for the moment I was able to breathe normally, without a permanent pain in my chest months afterwards.

Raymond’s handsome face swims into my vision, his piercing blue eyes and that mole above his lip. I remember his touch, his scent, all of it. And I don’t want to, dammit.

You work too hard to get this far, Falyn. You’ve gotta buck up and forget that loser. And all he did to you.

I try to shake my head clear of all the thoughts about Raymond but it’s no use. He has yet again invaded my mind’s territory, pissing all over it like a dog.

And of course the last image I saw of him becomes vivid against the back of my eyelids as I close them.

The back of his head between some tramps thighs, bobbing slightly up and down. All he had on was his underwear, and then of course the way too young girl was completely naked. Of course. With her hands curled up tightly in his shaggy hair no less.

Dammit, I’m not going to do this to myself again. I slam the laptop closed, wincing as I realize I may have used a bit too much force. And while I can most certainly afford to replace it I really don’t want to.

Eliza come strolling back into the room at the very same moment, giving me a weird look. “You okay?”

Okay is definitely a relative term here. “Yes, I’m fine. I just remembered that I forgot to tell you something about my meeting with Matt. And believe me you’re gonna want to hear this.”

She hands me a bag of pretzels and a water bottle and slides up next to me. “Go on. I’ve got all afternoon.”

* * *

E
liza looks
like her eyes are about to bug out of her head. “Seriously? I can’t believe you actually agreed to that! Are you feeling okay, hon?”

I laugh and wave off her funny attempt to try to check my temperature. “Yeah, no kidding right? I just didn’t know what else to do. I guess I panicked and instead of thinking it through more I just went with what my gut told me.”

“And your gut told you to get naked for Matt Walsh? And here I thought I’d seen it all.”

I cross my arms. “No. I’m not going to be naked or anything. I’m going to be in a t-shirt and my underwear. He’s wanting to focus specifically on my legs so he wants to see all of them. Oh my god,” I begin, my heart starting to race. “I can’t believe it. I cannot believe I actually agreed to that. What the hell was I thinking Eliza?”

She just laughs at me as I feel the tension in my chest drawing in on itself. Now I really am panicking.

“Calm your tits, Falyn. It’s not really that big of a deal. I mean it’s less than what you were hoping for I guess, but really it isn’t. Just think – your legs will be the next big Matt Walsh sculpture. That’s kind of cool if you ask me.”

I take her words to heart and try to calm myself down. “You’re right. It’s not really that big a deal and the sooner I get it done, the better. Then I’ll have that contract in hand and the next thing you know…”

“CEO, baby!”