He closed his eyes. I tugged on his earlobe.
“Feel what, Daddy?”
“I was afraid you might regret it.”
The apprehension in his gaze nearly broke my heart. After everything, he was still afraid I was going to change my mind about him.
I shifted closer to his body, nestling into the angle between his chest and the bed.
“Never,” I said. “It was everything I could’ve hoped for, and so much more.”
“You have no idea how happy that makes me, Jetty.” He kissed me with a passion that belied the sleep in his voice. “I love you so goddamned much. I’d be fucking devastated if you left after all that.”
“I love you, too. And you don’t have to worry because I’m not going anywhere without you.”
His cock stirred against my thigh. Straddling his hips, I rocked my pussy back and forth against his growing erection, coaxing it back to its full hardness. But instead of the usual pussy job I used to give him, I angled his shaft upward and then sank down.
We both gasped, Mason’s fingernails biting into my flesh like blunt teeth.
“Jesus,” he said with a smile, “my little girl’s insatiable.”
I bent to nibble his ear and whispered, “Just like her Daddy.”
Epilogue
Three months later...
This is bullshit!”
My painting teacher, Professor Mendez, massaged her temples with her fingertips. “Please calm yourself, Stefan, or I’m going to have to insist that you leave us.”
Stefan pointed an accusatory finger in the face of the guy seated next to him.
“My painting isn’t derivative,” he shouted. “Your ugly face is derivative. And the rest of you are all a bunch of mindless hack drones who wouldn’t know real art if it took a dump on your chests.”
He grabbed his painting from the easel and hurled it to the linoleum. A few people gasped, others laughed. I rolled my eyes.
“Take a walk Stefan,” Professor Mendez said. “A long walk.”
“Whatever.” He stormed out of the classroom, pausing only to wipe his shoes on his real art and almost falling down in the process.
“There’s one every semester.” Professor Mendez shook her head and then gestured to the next painting, a grayscale portrait of a sleeping couple entwined on a bed. “Now, what do we think of Jett’s piece?”
The seconds piled like sand at the bottom of an hourglass. I’d lost track of the number of times I had started, stopped, and scrapped the painting. I met my new friend Sasha in Ceramics Club my first week at NYU. She and her boyfriend Alister had been good sports about posing for the painting, willing to strip down and cuddle up whenever I needed a visual reference, their enthusiasm waxing and waning in direct correlation to my offers of free burritos.
“It’s intimate,” said a girl with magenta hair, “yet, there’s resistance. You can see the desperation on their faces, like they’re trying to hold onto each other.”
“The way she plays with light and shadow is really effective,” said a wiry guy whose name I could never remember. “It makes the bedding and the people’s skin look three-dimensional.”
“Does anyone recall the term for that?” Professor Mendez scanned the group. No takers. "Chiaroscuro. Modeling in light and dark to make obje
cts appear solid.”
“I think she could’ve done more with the background,” said the first girl. “The walls are totally bare. It feels unfinished.”
“But I think that’s the point,” said another girl with thick-rimmed glasses. “It keeps our focus on the couple.”
Professor Mendez moved on to the next piece, and I let my shoulders relax. I studied my painting a moment longer, noting the tweaks I would’ve made and the things I would’ve taken better care with if only I’d had more time.