Beneath The Skin(28)

I lick my lips, smile at my artwork, then say, “I have never been, and will never be, a one-hit anything.”

His soft, slow footsteps echo through the room. “You already got another hit in that brilliant mind of yours? Something maybe about castrating men?” he suggests innocently. “Maybe I can stand on a stage for you, naked, with a big ol’ censorship bar sticking out from between my legs. We can call it Penis Envy.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Or we can skip the stage, skip the censorship bar, and just … you can have me naked. I mean, before you chained me to that display and ditched me, you did talk me out of my clothes.”

Despite my rising blood pressure, I speak evenly as I carefully add a whisker. “They weren’t chains. They were handcuffs.” I clear my throat. “Fake handcuffs, at that.”

“I still couldn’t free myself,” he points out. “The little trick latches were out of reach. Hey, if you wanna use chains next time …”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I’m all for exploring. I’m not a master of kink, per se, but …”

“Despite how you might see the world,” I murmur thoughtfully, applying a light stroke to the cat’s left paw, “every female in the world is not interested in slipping between the sheets with you.”

“Most of them are.”

I slap my charcoal pencil down so hard on my desk, I worry for a second that I’ve broken it. When I finally turn to grace Brant with my furious eyes, I catch him startled, his hands thrust in the pockets of his low-hanging jeans, and his shoulders, visible due to the black tank top he wears, are hunched upward. His forehead is wrinkled in surprise.

I was prepared to burn him with a mouthful of scathing words about women and respect and boys like him who only have sex on their minds … when quite suddenly sex is the only thing on my mind.

How’d he become ten times hotter since the last time I saw him? And this time, he’s got clothes on.

“Actually, what I came here to say …” he starts.

“I think you’ve said it already.” I steal my confidence right back by ripping my eyes away from him and returning to my work.

“Listen. I … I joke a lot, alright? It’s like my defense mechanism. I sorta deflect all my anxiety and shortcomings by … flirting. By staring at your gorgeous boobs. By imagining you in different positions.”

“Please, go on,” I moan mockingly. “You’re making me so wet.”

“But maybe you do the same thing.”

I can’t even decide where to place my pencil. Also, for some reason, my thighs are squeezing together so tight, you’d think I was trying to fuse them together. I turn to Brant again, humoring him. “Is that so?”

“Yep. And maybe your art is … kind of a defense mechanism too.” He takes a few tentative steps toward me. “Maybe you hide behind all that angsty art so that you … don’t have to risk being hurt by people.”

I rise from my stool, pencil gripped like a weapon. “Don’t come in here and presume to know me after one night.”

“Am I right, then?”

“My art isn’t a defense mechanism. It’s the means by which I express myself. It’s what I do. It’s my passion. Maybe you’d understand any of that if you had a passion outside of the one in your pants.”

Brant wrinkles up his face. “I can’t tell if you just insulted me or complimented me.”

“I mean, really, tell me. I’m curious. Tell me what made you choose photography. Or is that all a lie? Are you just some creep with a camera around your neck? Hell … Are you even enrolled at Klangburg?”

“I left my camera at home. So I was right, then?”

I blink. “What?”

“About the art thing.” His expression turns quizzical as his bright eyes dart over to my drawing. “Is that cat eating its own tail?”

“I just said …”

He moves around me, as if he just lost all interest in debating art and cameras and defense mechanisms. He stands in front of my raked desk, observing my work. When he crosses his arms, his back spreads, flexing the muscles of his triangular form that peek out from under the black tank top.

There’s something incredibly sexy and intimate about how Brant studies my work. This time, he knows it’s mine. Something about that fact sends a shiver of anxiety through my system, not unlike the way his fingers might feel if he brushed them over my skin.

“Is it like … symbolic?” he asks, keeping his gaze on the drawing.

I don’t answer, watching him with my pencil gripped so tightly, my hand cramps.