Beneath The Skin(71)

And unapologetically, at that.

Sometimes when Eric and Dmitri are out, I come over for an innocent after-class dinner which gets half-eaten, the rest forgotten as Brant and I lose our clothes on the couch and make a meal out of something else instead.

After my Tuesday studio class, we’ll rendezvous by the grassy knoll of the psychology building and have lunch, which very quickly becomes a gross display of affection against some outside wall, under a tree, in a closet, or at our table in plain sight.

Simply put: we cannot keep our hands off each other.

I’ve never been this wild and reckless with anyone before. The feeling is indescribable, but here I go trying to describe it: I feel free to do whatever I want, oddly terrified all the time, and insatiably hungry for his taste. It doesn’t matter if we fuck eight times in one night; I’ll need a ninth and a tenth.

I can’t get enough of Brant Rudawski.

One time, I surprised him outside of one of his digital media classes, pulled him into the women’s bathroom, then assaulted him in one of the stalls. The look of fear in his eyes was both an extreme turn-on and highly amusing. I may be stooping to all-time lows with him.

And all-time highs.

Then, on an unassuming Thursday, he comes into a condom inside me with a taut arm on either side of my head while his face hovers over mine, eyes scrunched up in that painful ecstasy-riddled expression that happens at the precise time of orgasm. When his eyes open, he’s out of breath, staring down at me like he can’t believe he’s still alive after an experience like that.

I love that bright, beautiful, almost terrified look in his eyes.

“What are you doing to me, Nell?” he breathes.

The question is rhetorical, but I feel compelled to answer anyway. “Same thing you’re doing to me.” I raise my face to his, sucking his lips into my mouth, then nipping his bottom one playfully before I drop back to the pillow. “I’m kind of addicted to tormenting you.”

“You tease me all the time,” he murmurs, and it would sound like a complaint if it weren’t for the lustful look in his eyes, even after coming. “You always leave me wanting more. You make me sweat. You consume every fucking thought I have. You make me work … make me slave for every little morsel that you give me.”

“Do I?” I ask innocently.

He licks his lips, as if to taste me on them. Then, in a deep voice that causes his abs to flex, he adds, “And I love it.”

A week after that, Minnie tells me she’s swinging by the campus and wants to meet up for some coffee. Since Brant’s been asked to photograph something at the School of Theatre for Clayton, I take her up on the spontaneous offer. Minnie has avoided Klangburg ever since her departure from it, so I was curious what inspired her to meet up with me.

“The Showcase.”

I lift an eyebrow, the coffee sitting in front of me growing cold.

“The Showcase,” Minnie repeats, her curls of blue-and-green-tipped black hair bouncing when she nods at me, as if I’m supposed to know what she’s talking about. “What’s your progress?”

“You’re asking about the progress of the piece I’m submitting?”

“Piece? No, pieces. And yes, they’re still due at the end of next month, just before Halloween. You haven’t submitted a damn thing.”

I frown at her. “How do you know that?”

She rolls her eyes. Minnie is a very frail-looking woman, thin to the point of assumed emaciation, and her face is very pointy and angular. Her mad hairstyle of dark curls tipped in a different color of the rainbow each week is so big, it sits like a second head on top of her own. An enormous pair of white-trimmed sunglasses sit in her hair like a mother bird squatting in her nest.

“You do realize I’m chummy with the head of the art school, plus I curate the Showcase myself with Brian, Yuri, and Esmeralda.”

“Esmeralda?”

“Essie. Lord, you are clueless, Nell. What has happened to you? By now, you’d have six things submitted already and working on six more.”

I’m not about to have a conversation with Minnie about Captain Big Dong who has consumed me for the past however many weeks. I’m not going to blame my lack of artistic progress on a budding relationship. Besides, I have made progress. The problem is …

“There’s really only one piece I want them to consider.”

Minnie gawps at me, speechless.

“Seriously.” I fiddle with my coffee cup, annoyed that she questions everything I do ever since she graduated. She used to admire my choices and ask about my inspirations and desires. Now she scrutinizes everything, like I’m her child who needs constant artistic guidance. “I don’t want anything else in the Showcase. I want just the one piece. It’s the most important thing to me.”