Then I painted a swath of rich dark red diagonally. A stripe of darkness, like a blindfold over the eyes. Looking at it, I could see all of my frustration on the stretched fabric. I could see the strokes of the brush hairs.
Standing up from the canvas, I felt dizzy. Had it been a minute or an hour? Paint spattered my ankles, and I’d gotten smears of green and gold on the bottom of the white terrycloth robe. I looked around. He wasn’t back yet.
I’d finished a canvas. Did he mean for me to paint more?
There were so many canvases here. So many blank spaces. The white of the room and the increasing brightness of the rising sun turned the white squares and rectangles brilliant with light. Brilliant and yet empty, with nothing painted on them. All around me was pure, pure white.
Something inside me broke. The neediness in my body was converted to a manic whirlwind of painting. Stepping to one wall, I picked up a large canvas, threw it down onto the ground at that spot, and began to paint furiously.
Jake had held back so much. He had given me a taste of what he could deliver, and then he had pulled it back. For the whole night he had teased me, hanging satisfaction just out of my reach. Dangling my desires in front of me, then pulling them away.
Now he had given me this, and I would take it. I wouldn’t wait for him. I wouldn’t be ashamed. I would take it, all of it.
I painted another canvas, then another. Paint smeared all over my hands and ankles. I used the white robe as a towel to clean off my hands when I needed to. I used the edge of the robe to swipe at misplaced brushstrokes. The terrycloth robe grew heavier as paint soaked into its edges, until I looked like I should be heading over to Broadway to star in a production of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat.
I filled my canvases with my longing. Flowers grew, straggling across the white, bleeding violet and goldenrod where their leaves stretched forward. I painted all of the images that I dreamed of painting, painted and painted and it still wasn’t enough.
At my feet were half a dozen paintings, rough, frenzied works. None of them were what I needed. I looked wildly at the other walls to find a space that would fit the sweeping colors that whirled in my head.
Blank canvases all around, none what I had in mind. The flowers didn’t work, fitted in the square of a single space. I didn’t know what I needed. Something bigger, maybe.
I looked only once at the door to the storage area, wondering if there were other canvases inside. But no. He’d been very serious about staying away from there.
Break in and maybe he’ll punish you again.
I scolded my mind for the thought. A faint heat rose to my skin, even as I tried to quash it.
Then I saw it.
It wasn’t a canvas at all. It was a space on the wall in the corner of the room. The light from a skylight fell perfectly into the corner, radiating brightness all around.
That was what I needed.
I picked up the bucket of green paint and headed there.
I mixed black in with the green on the wall. And impulsively, I grabbed a spray paint can.
Lace.
It was my name. It was my tag.
The green went on in wide strokes, and I’d barely finished the contours of the letters before coming back with the can of black. My arm swung wide, not outlining the letters but instead marking the shadows that the letters would cast if they were there.
I was normally quite precise, but my emotions were running so high that my finger slipped once, and once only. The extra blast of paint dripped, dripped. It would ruin the effect.
Unthinking, I undid the tie from the bathrobe and slipped the tie off. I used it to press against the wall, mopping up the stray drip. A glimmer of white from behind the paint showed through. Yes. That was what it needed. I scraped away paint in soft curves, highlighting the swells of the letters where the light shone.
I stepped back and admired it. It was possibly the best version that I’d ever done. The effect was three-dimensional, the shadows and highlights making the tag stand out.
I was finished. My breaths came hard, and I wiped the beads of sweat off of my brow. I’d done it. It was perfect. I stared at it, willing it to seep into my brain so I could recreate it on another wall, somewhere that wasn’t in a billionaire’s apartment.
Oh, crap.
This was his apartment.
He’d told me to paint, but he surely didn’t mean that I could paint the walls. It was a horrible mistake to do this. What… what was I thinking?
You weren’t thinking. You were feeling.
Behind me, I heard the door open again. I whirled around to see Jake standing in the doorway, a silver tray in his hands.
He took me in. Standing there in an untied robe coated with paint, my bra and panties exposed. Paint spattered all over my limbs. And on the corner wall of his perfect apartment, my tag. His eyes widened.