Beneath The Skin(2)

She turns to me, that crazy hunger filling her face again. I smile back, despite a sudden concern that she could legitimately turn into a savage cat and pounce on me for lunch. “You didn’t come?”

I suppose it’s tricky to come when all your energy’s spent resisting a fight-or-flight response due to a very genuine fear of being fucked to death. “A real man always gets his lady off first,” I tell her instead, bringing my lips to her ear for a nibble. “A real man makes sure his lady is satisfied, smiling, and all full-up.” I know just how to work her; I could talk her right back out of those clothes and into round two if I wanted.

“Your lady?” Her eyes glimmer with hope.

I give her my signature crooked smile, slipping even closer to her, and our hips reconnect. “All mine.”

“And you make sure your ladies are … all full-up?”

“All full-up of me,” I amend.

The next instant, her hands clutch my bare ass cheeks and she pulls me against her. Message received. I reach under her thighs, lifting her up and slipping myself inside in one smooth motion. And it’s against the wall behind that rickety privacy screen that I empty myself inside her as her wails fill the room yet again. After I’m finished, I keep going, ensuring she gets her seconds.

She does.

“Y’know, you’re not as bad as they say,” she says when her clothes are, in fact, completely on.

I pull off the condom and tie it off, looking around for somewhere to dispose of it. Then I suddenly realize what she just said. “Wait a sec. Bad?” I ask, leaning against the wall, still naked, and folding my arms.

“Tammy warned me about you.”

“Tammy?”

“Yeah.” She smooths out her wrinkled top as she goes on. “As did Lindsey and Laney and Mira and Mark.”

“Mark?”

“Your ex Nicole Pressley. He’s her brother—and a friend of mine.”

I squint. Who the fuck is Nicole Pressley? “Ah, I see,” I say instead.

“They say nasty things about you. You’re a player. You use women. Nicole’s brother told me how you broke his sister’s heart right after you broke her foot. Y’know, when you dropped a bowling ball on it.”

Oh. That Nicole. “I see my reputation precedes me.”

“But you’re sweet,” she says, smiling so tight that her eyes scrunch up. She runs her hands through her chin-length auburn hair, trying to make an arrangement of it. “Do I look presentable?”

“Angelic,” I answer, still trying to remember Nicole’s face.

After giving me a shrug and a blushing smile, she sweeps out from behind the privacy screen, leaving me alone with my thoughts. Even as my heart rate slows, I already feel horny again. My sexual appetite is insatiable; it’s like going out for dinner, eating the whole menu, then leaving the restaurant hungrier than you were when the hostess first greeted you with her big eyes and saccharine voice.

You know it’s bad when you’re bored not a minute after you come.

I’m drawn out of my thoughts when I realize my clothes aren’t in front of me. Then it hits me: She tore off my favorite shirt by one of the easels. That’s also right about when I feverishly kicked off my pants and underwear. It was all done in a scuffle while we were on our lip-locked way toward the privacy screen.

At the same moment that I realize where my clothes are, I hear a pair of innocent footsteps in the room. A student has arrived. Fuck. Then I hear more footsteps, followed by more voices. Two students have arrived. Double fuck.

Don’t worry. This isn’t some extraordinary situation I’m in. Really, it’s just another day in the life of Brant Rudawski.

I look for my phone, then realize it’s in my pants, slapping my bare thigh in the discovery. I breathe slowly, listening to the commotion on the other side of the screen as it steadily grows with the accumulation of more and more students. Gnawing the inside of my cheek and staring at the wall in front of me, I wonder at which point I should start to panic or calculate some way out of this.

“Pencils at the ready,” comes a voice, echoing through the studio.

The chatter seem to cease at once, replaced with the shuffling of pencils and scraping of stools and chairs along the floor.

Class has started.

This is a great day.

I try to picture the room as I strategize my way out of this. The easels all faced me when I got behind the screen, if I’m recalling correctly. That fact leads me to assume that, currently, everyone’s back is to me. Right?

With a silent breath and at the precise speed of paint drying, I creep an eye around the edge of the privacy screen.

Confirmed: Everyone’s back is to me.