She never looked at his face once while she worked, but she was highly aware of him. Her knuckles brushed occasionally against warm, dense flesh. Her nose was just inches from his body. The alcohol base from the body paint filtered into her nose. Beneath it, she smelled the musk of his skin like a subtle, living thread twining through the chemical artifice. The fragrance was potent somehow, sending a loud, clear message of male virility to some ancient part of her brain.
Only a stretchy, seaweed-like boxer-brief costume covered his genitals. Joy couldn’t help but be conscious of the fact that her chin was mere inches from the fullness behind the flimsy material. She worked steadily, but a dull, pleasurable ache began to grow at her core.
A light glaze of perspiration had dampened her brow and upper lip by the time she leaned back. She glanced up at him, a calm—entirely fake—expression plastered on her face.
“You’ll have to lower your briefs enough for me to make the transition look natural,” she said.
The air conditioner made a loud, chugging sound and then resumed its typical hum. She saw his throat convulse. Was he as uncomfortable with this situation as she was? He held her stare with those striking eyes and moved his hands, folding down the seaweed brief and exposing the stretch of skin just above his genitals.
&n
bsp; She lifted her tattoo pen and paused.
Seth had used the airbrush below the brief, but not in a thorough manner. Joy could see several patches of naked, golden skin along with a smattering of light brown hair. Pubic hair was usually several shades darker than hair on the head, which meant he must be blond beneath the beautiful headpiece affixed to his head.
Below that strip of skin, the flimsy material barely contained a virile package. The vision was nearly as striking as that of the man’s eyes peering through the elaborate mask. What was it about that stretch of skin below the belly and just above a man’s cock that spoke of sensitivity . . . vulnerability?
His arm muscles clenched tight. He kept his hands on the material of the briefs, as if he wanted to be prepared to jerk the garment back into place at the slightest provocation. Joy didn’t know whether to feel compassion for him or annoyance. He was the six-foot-four-inch tower of brawn here, not her. She was hardly going to attack him. She disliked this intimate aspect of her work, but the human body wasn’t something that could be ignored when it came to art. He was just a backdrop, not any different from the canvases in her studio.
Her expression hardened at the thought. She leaned forward and continued her design, the tip of her marker slipping across firm flesh. She was doing fine for the next minute or so until she noticed the brief was stretching and expanding to contain his erection. His cock rode along his left thigh. The column of it was clearly delineated beneath the insubstantial garment.
Shit.
She glanced up at him anxiously. He was looking down at her. She’d known he would be. She’d sensed his stare on the crown of her head the entire time. He closed his eyes briefly. She sensed his regret even through his half mask.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a gruff voice. “Just . . . just ignore it.”
Heat flooded her cheeks and she looked away.
How mortifying.
It wasn’t uncommon for a model to occasionally experience an unwanted erection during a makeup application, but the evidence had never been so . . . close to her before. Nor had it ever been so appealing.
For a few dreadful seconds, she felt like she couldn’t expand her lungs. They finally released, however, and she reached for a pot of paint.
“Do you want to take a quick break?” she asked, striving to keep her voice even.
“No. Go ahead.” His voice sounded so strained, she glanced up at him in concern. She saw the rigidness of his angular jaw. His eyes blazed through the prosthetic mask.
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” she said.
“I can take it if you can.”
She wasn’t quite sure she could take it. Things had gotten warm and wet between her thighs. She looked down at her lap and used her forearm to wipe at the thin layer of perspiration on her upper lip. Her heartbeat segued from a throb to a roar in her ears. She swirled her paint—twice right, once left, twice right, once left—the familiar task of moving the brush through the thick liquid striking her as rich for some reason . . . sensual.
She lifted the brush to his skin and began to paint. It was a little like working while a ravenous lion raced toward you in the periphery of your vision. She was acutely aware of the power in him, the incipient energy, like a giant spring that was being held down tight with effort. She worked steadily for the next half hour or so in the area of his lower abdomen, creating the impossible—a flare of fire in water.
The realization hit her as she moved to the lower left quadrant of her design that she should have told him he could release the garment until she began to work in that area again. He’d kept his hands on the sides of the brief the whole time, however, exposing that strip of sensitive skin. Something about his pose excited her for some reason. It was as if he were frozen in the moment of offering himself to her . . .
. . . giving her a taste.
Her cheeks burned at the uncontrollable thought. She leaned away from him, feeling the loss of his subtle, radiant body heat on her cheeks and lips. She exchanged her paints and went back to work.
What was wrong with her? She’d never had this reaction before while she’d been working. Her skin felt flushed and prickly with awareness. There seemed to be some strange, inexplicable connection between where her paintbrush stroked his taut skin and her clit.
Why did she want to hold on to that brilliant flare of lust that the stranger’s fierce eyes and hard cock promised? Maybe because you were told today that life and a future aren’t a certainty, that both of those things are as ephemeral and as difficult to hold on to as an unexpected lightning strike of desire?
Joy didn’t want to let go. She wanted . . . no, she needed to hang on.