Breathless (24 page)

More ponderous applause. She’d pleased them with her response. Her need built higher as fingers on her nipples plucked and pinched. Her womb pulled taut, and she felt her inner lips open. The hand on her belly continued to massage but never moved to where she needed it most.

One by one, the faceless, nameless men moved along the table. In turn, they studied her streaming slit, her vulnerability, her deepest secrets. Stretched out for their enjoyment, her pussy wept, while tears streamed from her eyes. But they wouldn’t touch her there, wouldn’t ease her need. And she was needy. So needy, she felt shamed.

She arched in a wordless plea for release until Nigel Withers leaned in close, his tongue extended toward her swollen clitoris. One swipe and she’d come, one touch, one lick was all she needed.

One finger plunging would take her over the edge, but he did nothing but gaze at her with an arrogance that aroused and humiliated her.

She held her breath and waited interminable moments while her nipples tightened against the pinching, grasping hands. They wanted her to plead for release, but she wouldn’t. She held her lips shut tight against her own desire.

Male voices rose around her as Withers’s mouth brushed across her pubic hair. She gushed cream in response to the light arousing sensation. She bit back the moan they wanted to hear. She would deny them their satisfaction as they denied hers.

The men at her sides released her breasts, her thighs, and her ankles, and began to rub their thick, impossibly long cocks. The heads were dark purple, like her camisole and her shoes. The slits in the heads dewed with drop after drop of pre-come, and their long fingers could barely encompass their thick shafts. These were no ordinary men, and she cringed to think of them entering her with their massive organs.

Suddenly, Withers leaned toward her pussy, eyes lit with delight and lust as he studied her, undulating his tongue ever closer without touching. Never touching.

Suddenly freed from the cloying hands, she was more trapped by her sexual craving than before. Withers’s mouth opened, blew air across her wet cunt, and brushed tenderly across her curls, damp now with his moist breath.

One by one, the men tapped the bulbous heads of their cocks on her closed lips. Tap. Tap. Tap, in time to their jerking, manipulating hands.

Their pre-come made her lips sticky, until she licked them. When she loosened her pursed lips, fingers set into the corners of her mouth held her open.

Man after man slid his cock across her wet, open mouth, never entering, but sliding, seeking the moistness. She felt their massive balls press the side of her head as their cocks slid across her mouth. Man after man jerked in spasms as they spewed streams of come across her face and neck. Ropes of semen lashed her thighs, her belly, her breasts, while Nigel Withers’s mouth retreated into the gloom without touching her clit. Without settling that greedy, avid mouth on her needy cunt.

Without giving her the release she desperately cried out for.

She woke with a strangled cry. Danny kissed her as she cried in his arms, worn down by fear and loathing.

For Nigel Withers and herself.

“What have I become, Danny?” she whispered in the warm dark of night.

But Danny had no answers.

M
ariel never explained her nightmare, but whatever had happened in her dream had shaken what little composure she had left. He tried to get her to talk about it during the two-hour drive to the competition, but she refused. He’d expected her to be tense and quiet, of course, but when he looked at her, she seemed buried in black thoughts. She kept her arms folded over her chest and her gaze fixed out the side window of his van.

An hour into the drive, he flashed on a memory of his ex doing the same thing time and time again. “Mariel, I’m pulling over and we’ll work out whatever it is that’s eating you up.” He pointed out a rest area.

Her shoulders sagged. “Oh, Danny, I’m sorry.” She sniffed and tried not to cry, but one tear slid down her cheek. She swiped at it, and when she looked at the moisture on her fingers, sobbed like a little girl lost.

He took the exit for the rest area and parked. When he reached to pull her close, she shook him off. “No, I have to apologize for using you. I’m sorry. You’ve been nothing but kind and loving, and I’ve been awful to you.”

“In what way?” he wondered how far down this road she wanted to go, but he wouldn’t stop her.

“I’ve turned into some kind of needy, whiny sex maniac. I use sex to hide from my fear. I use sex to cover up my insecurities. I use sex to hide my anxiety.” She looked at him, her face all blotchy and wet from crying. It was the dearest, most vulnerable expression he’d ever seen on Mariel’s face.

“Danny, I’ve been using
you
, when you’ve been so giving and loving and sweet.”

He bit back a grin. “It never occurred to you that I was fully engaged during all this sex you’ve been using, and that I got my rocks off too?”

“Yes, but—”

“And that I told you when we started that I’d do anything for you?”

She swiped at her nose. “Yes, but—”

“Would you like to forget this competition? Want me to punch this Nigel Withers in the nose for making you doubt yourself for all this time?”

She smiled at that, her eyes filling with humor. “You would, wouldn’t you?”

“Damn straight.”

“I had a nightmare about him last night. He refused to give me something I wanted really really bad.” She ducked her head and her face flushed in the way he remembered when she used to be skittish around him.

“And? You want me to punch his lights out for that? Make him give it to you today?”

“Oh! God no!” She looked so horrified he wanted to laugh.

She twisted her fingers in her lap, the way she used to twist them when they talked about whatever project he was working on. Mariel had regressed to her previous, shy, frightened, uptight self.

“I think…” She hesitated. But then he saw her settle, her spine straighten in the seat. “I think the nightmare represented me needing his approval desperately. For three years I’ve let his nonreaction to my work dictate how I felt about my paintings.” She thumped her chest with the flat of her palm. “
My
work! Mine! No one should make me feel this way. No one.”

“That’s right. If you let someone else belittle you and make you feel unworthy, you’re the one who suffers.”

“I let him get to me. I let him steal three years. Worse, I let him darken the light of my creative soul.” She blinked and sniffed. “Does that sound melodramatic?”

“Not if that’s how you feel.” He thought it might be over the top, but he wasn’t about to stifle her revelations at this point. “What happened in your nightmare to bring you to tears?”

She raised one eyebrow. “I’d just like to forget it. Can we please go now? We still have twenty miles to go before we get there.”

The community center’s main room stood wide open, and each artist and model had their own numbered ten-foot square. Mariel lined up to check in with the registration desk, while Danny humped her equipment in from his van.

Excitement thrummed through the crowd and Mariel soon felt the refreshing change to her toes. After her nightmare and her confession to Danny, her anxiety had drained away. She felt loose all over. Her shoulders relaxed, she could even turn her head without hearing her neck grind.

She rolled her head and shoulders, pleased with the physical release of tension.

A man’s voice caught her ear and she turned to see if she recognized the man who belonged to it. A former student? An instructor of her own?

No, not five feet away stood the rat bastard himself.

Nigel Withers, black mustache and overbite just as she remembered them. He seemed shorter and less reptilian than he’d been in her nightmare.

Coming so soon after a twisted, sexual dream about the man, she blanched where she stood. Every drop of blood drained from her face, and she prayed for the floor to open and suck her down into a vortex.

She shuffled her feet on the tiled floor. No vortex opened. Damn.

In her time with Danny, Mariel had changed her look considerably. No more ponytail. Her heavy auburn waves were free to float across her back and chest. She wore a soft green shade of eye shadow to brighten the look of her eyes.

Her clothes reflected her more sexual outlook. As Jayne said, she now looked like a woman who was gettin’ some and lovin’ it.

From across the room, she caught Withers’s eye. He ran his gaze down her body, allowing it to linger at her breasts, the way he’d done that day in his gallery. The day he’d intimated that a blow job might change his mind about her landscapes.

The pig.

She shuddered. She hated that she’d dreamed of him leaning over her vulnerable body. That in her nightmare, she’d let him look his fill, breathe on her, and make her weak with need.

The faceless, nameless men that stared at her on the table were just part of a weird sex dream that happened of its own accord. She could deal with that, maybe even share it with Danny some day. They might share a laugh about it. But the idea of Withers leering at her most vulnerable parts sickened her.

The rat bastard in question angled his way over to her, exposing his overbite in a smarmy smile, his pathetically thin mustache stretched across his lip. The sparse hair looked dyed.

She remembered a decision she’d made weeks ago, to be bold and brave, and that had worked out better than she’d hoped.

Bold and brave was worth another shot. She pulled it together again and faced the rat bastard head-on. He was only slightly taller than her. She looked him in the eye and lifted the corners of her mouth in a tepid smile.

“You could be one of the models, my dear. So lovely.” He lifted too-white fingers toward her cheek, but she dodged him.

“I’m an artist.”

“A fine one, I’m sure.” But his eyes skimmed down her body again. Her skin crawled.

He didn’t recognize her and didn’t recall their meeting.

She’d beaten herself up for three long years over this rat bastard’s response to her work and he couldn’t even recall the meeting.

“Yes,” she agreed boldly, “I am a fine artist. You told me once that I have a remarkable talent.”

He licked his lips and frowned, clearly trying to remember her. “Then I look forward to seeing your work again,” he said.

“You may recognize it,” she said with a nod and a sliver of a smile. “You asked me for a blow job, and when I refused, you trashed my paintings for spite.” Take that, you rat bastard.

Then she turned on her heel and strode to Danny’s side.

“I just bumped into Nigel Withers,” she said, her voice stiff.

Concern filled his gaze. “How’d that go?” He put his hand on her elbow, but she shook free.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and held it. “He didn’t remember me.” After that, she said no more about it but kept her anger to a simmer as she hurried through setting up the gear. She told Danny to get ready because the timed competition would begin in moments.

The scene eluded her. Try as she might, she couldn’t get the lines right. At last, she rode out her anger, and with the release a new idea came to mind. She laughed out loud, startling Danny, and set to work.

Danny’s body inspired her. Her passion for painting returned. Her joy rose. She no longer wanted to transform him into a garden landscape. He needed to be Adam. He needed to be Eve.

He needed to be the beginning of life.

From the front, Danny Glenn’s perfect working man’s body became bigger, bolder, stronger. His jaw was sharp, his brow high with intelligence, and his eyes glowed with healthy vitality. Over his skintight thong, Danny’s groin looked heavily powerful and fecund with the seed of all humankind.

He glanced down at himself when she told him to turn around.

“What happened when you met Withers?” he asked warily.

“Nothing much, really. I’m just bolder and braver this time.”

“I’ll say.” But he turned and gave him her back to work on.

An hour later, from the back, Danny was Eve, with smooth shoulders and hair painted to the base of his spine. A narrow waist flared to wide hips meant to bear the children of the world yet to come. Eve’s butt was high, plump, and femininely inviting.

An announcement ended the timed portion and Mariel raised her head to see the complete look.

She blinked back tears of joy. Her passion had returned in full, and Danny’s Adam and Eve was the result. “I don’t have a hope in hell of winning,” she said, “but I feel fabulous.” She laughed and people around them looked over at the tinkling sound of joy.

“I overheard you earlier with Nigel Withers,” said a woman from behind her.

She turned and found a flamboyantly turbaned woman wearing a yellow smock dress and purple leggings.

“You were fabulous. That man’s a pompous ass. If he didn’t coerce sex from artists, he’d never get any.” She waved her hand in a dismissive gesture, then held her thumb and finger about an inch apart. “He tries to tell people this is eight inches.”

Mariel choked back a laugh and Danny stumbled as he climbed off the stool. Mariel steadied him. “Let’s pack up and go home.”

“Aren’t you going to wait for the judges?” the woman asked.

“I don’t need to know what they think,” Mariel responded with a light chuckle.

Danny looked thunderstruck, then happy as he understood what she said.

Mariel smiled at him and held his gaze. “I know what I think, how I feel, and that’s all I need.” She’d been bold and she’d been brave, and she felt free to be the artist she wanted to be. That’s all she’d ever need. She felt light enough to walk on air.

The woman shrugged and slipped a card into Mariel’s hand. “I love what you’ve done here.” She eyed Danny from head to toe. “And I’d like to see more of your work. Please bring your portfolio by my gallery. I don’t have the following that Withers has built, but I’m getting some attention.”

“Oh! I’m not ready for something like that,” Mariel demurred.

“But what about all your landscapes?” Danny interjected.

“Mundane,” Mariel announced. “Boring.” She grinned. “And, dare I say, they’re mediocre?”

“How soon can you have something else to show me?”

She studied Danny’s warm gaze and nodded. “Give her six weeks,” Danny said, holding out his hand for another of the woman’s business cards. He read it. “Ms. Hollings. Mariel Gibson will be in your gallery in six weeks.”

“Gayle, please.” She bussed Mariel’s, then Danny’s cheek. “Six weeks. And bring something in with this kind of passion.” She waved her hand down the front of Danny’s body. “And I’ll guarantee you a show of your own.”

Mariel’s head spun with possibilities.

Six weeks later, Danny held the door for her as she left Gayle’s funky art gallery in one of Seattle’s up-and-coming artistic neighborhoods. Gayle had been honest to admit her place didn’t have the renown of The Withers Gallery, but as far as Mariel was concerned, it was heaven.

“The meeting couldn’t have gone better,” Danny said. “Your work’s changed in ways I never could have foreseen.”

She’d left behind her landscapes forever and had kept Danny out of her studio while she’d worked on changing directions. She was freer than she’d ever been. Braver too. She’d let her passion loose on the human form, and she loved painting again.

Danny hadn’t seen any of her new work until she’d pulled her newest paintings out of her portfolio inside Gayle’s cramped office.

The gallery owner had kept all three paintings for immediate display. “She liked them,” Mariel said.

“Loved them,” Danny agreed. “But does it matter?”

She laughed, free and easy. “Not a whit. I like them, and that’s everything.”

He snatched her up into his arms, pressed his lips to the crook of her neck, and inhaled deeply. “I love you, Mariel. I need you. Marry me.”

“Danny Glenn, I always knew you were perfect. Perfect for me.”