His Canvas (3 page)

His hand stroked my hair and I leaned against his shoulder,
fantasizing for a moment that we were intimate lovers rather than almost total
strangers. It felt nice to be held. I couldn't remember the last time I'd let
someone hold me.

Then a low growling sound scraped across my ears, and I frowned.

"Did... did your stomach just rumble?" I asked,
pulling back and frowning at him. I mean, some growling is sexy, but that was
kind of... not.

To his credit, he looked faintly embarrassed. "Yes,"
he admitted. "I'm afraid I've been forgetting to eat."

I stared at him in disbelief. "Seriously?" I said. It
was barely lunchtime. "How long have you been forgetting to eat?"

He shrugged. "Since those hors d'ouvres at the
auction?" he said, and the way he said it made me think that he was only
guessing.

I gave him a scowl. "Really? I mean... really?"

He tilted his head. "What's so shocking about that?"
he asked me. "I've been working on my art since then."

"Artists eat, too," I told him.

"What about starving artists?"

"That's a bug, not a feature of being an artist." I
blew a sweaty strand of hair out of my face. "Okay, you need to eat
something. Before we do anything else, you have to eat."

"I just did."

I gave him a hard look, but his face was entirely innocent. He
was fucking with me, right? He had to be. "Man cannot live by pussy
alone," I said, hauling myself gracelessly out of his lap and standing up.
Reaching under my skirt I readjusted my panties, getting my own slick juices
all over my fingers as I did so. I took my hand out and held it up, glancing
around for a tissue or something, but then Malcolm stood up as well, reached
out, and took my wrist in his hand, drawing my fingers to his mouth.

With a slow, sensuous suck he cleaned my fingers for me.

I stared into his dark cherrywood eyes, my cheeks burning,
before I found the strength to pull away. The second growl from his stomach
might have helped me make that decision.

"Food first," I said. "Art and sex later."

He reached down and adjusted his cock in his pants, but I'm
pretty sure his hunger was cutting through his arousal, because it was already
shrinking from its previously large size. "Very well," he said.
"If you insist."

Chapter Five

I waited on the sidewalk for Malcolm to come downstairs, trying
to collect myself. The icy wind and gray sky were going a long way towards
helping me get centered and alert. Mostly I was reeling from our sexual
encounter and trying to maintain my customary ironic distance. It was rather
difficult, however, since my legs still shook with the aftermath of his
ministrations.

What was going on with me? I wondered. I'd been really into guys
before, but this didn't feel quite the same. The way I fell into his embrace,
welcoming the pleasure he gave me... it truly did feel as though we'd known
each other before. Bound by the red thread of fate? Was that what he'd said the
other day? We'd known each other in another life?

The idea freaked me right the fuck out, and by the time he
exited the door of his mansion, impeccably dressed, I was well on my way toward
my much loved ironic distance.

But when he reached me, he pulled my hand into the crook of his
arm and began to lead me down the sidewalk, just like a Victorian gentleman,
and my distance was halved. At least.

"So where do you want to go to lunch?" I asked him. I
kept my eyes straight ahead, but I could see him smile from the corner of my
field of vision.

"I'm not sure," he said. "I am a very easy date.
I have only negative preferences."

"Negative preferences?"

"Meaning I only know what I do not want."

Oh. One of those people. "Okay. Well, we're in New York,
there's really nothing in the world we can't find here."

He nodded. "What would you prefer?"

I pursed my lips and took a fearless inventory of my wants and
desires. "What about... Vietnamese? This is the perfect day for pho."

He nodded and I almost smiled, but then he said, "It is,
but I'm not in the mood for broth."

"Hmm. How about Lebanese?"

"I enjoy Lebanese, but it is more of a summer food. I
always think of summer when I am eating food laced with lemon."

Great. "Chinese? Greek? Italian?"

"Maybe."

"That's not helpful. You're the one who hasn't eaten for
two days, you tell me what you think your stomach can handle."

He appeared to think about this for quite a while, and I glanced
around as we exited his neighborhood and set out toward the nearest subway
station. For the first time, I wondered why he hadn't just called a car, but I
thought it would be rude to ask. I didn't care about private cars or limos or
anything like that, but I thought it was a little weird that a billionaire with
all that money and prestige at his fingertips would instead choose to walk to
the subway station.

Then again, a billionaire forgetting to eat and living in a
house crowded with the most useless nick-knacs imaginable was not what I had
imagined either. My Batman was in the middle of his soul-searching phase, it
seemed. Or, since he was in his late thirties, perhaps he had simply never
exited said phase. It happened to the best of them.

"I know a little Indian place," he said at last.
"They make the most wonderful lamb shahi korma. I could eat it all
day."

"Like pussy?" The words were past my lips before I
could stop myself and I clapped my hand over my mouth, mortified.

But he just laughed. "Only yours, Sadie. Only yours."

My pussy was on par with lamb shahi korma. That was good to
know. I guess.

We walked the rest of the way to the subway in companionable
silence, and when I used my metrocard for both of us he didn't object. Somehow,
I liked that. He was walking around with the riffraff, just as if he were
people himself. When we boarded the train heading downtown, I flopped into my
seat and let out a sigh of relief.

"Tired?" he asked as he settled down beside me. His
knee brushed against mine, sending little shivers of heat through me, but I
didn't move away. I let my leg stay there, touching his. A bit of illicit
contact, right out in the open. I forged into the breach of his conversation
starter with a shrug.

"I don't know," I said. "It's nice to go out to
lunch, I think. I haven't gone out to a lunch that wasn't a business lunch or a
hotdog on the street corner in... Jesus, I don't know how long. It's been a
long time. I don't have a lot of a social life now."

He raised his eyebrows. "Now?" he asked. "I read
that you and Felicia have been friends for a very long time. Is being her
personal assistant really so difficult?"

I waved a hand. "Oh man, you don't even know the half of
it. She's gotta do all this dumb shit to keep up appearances in society or
whatever and I have to organize it all. She's huge into charity, so I'm always
running around trying to get charity events up and running without letting all
the rich folks know exactly what they're giving to."

He laughed at that. "Oh?" he said.

I gave him a sly smile. "Felicia fancies herself a
revolutionary. She likes to give her money to anarchist groups and such. When
she married Anton, he set up an allowance for her 'pet projects,' as he liked
to call them, and whatever she raises for charity for a more acceptable
organization she dumps an equal amount into something else. Or a large number
of something elses. She's a bit scattered in her ideology, but she does good
work. I can't really fault her for it. It's just exhausting running around
trying to make everything all hoity-toity for the rich folks when you grew up
poor in Jersey."

"Oh, you did?"

His voice was merely curious, not judgmental, but I immediately
went on guard. I'd been saying too much, distracted by his knee against mine. I
didn't like talking about my childhood. All that shit was over and done with,
as I liked to say, and I'd spent years convincing Felicia of the same thing.
She'd been hung up on her parents and fixing their lives, and it had been
holding her back. Marrying Anton, though he was a rich man like her father, had
been the best thing to happen to her, frankly. Me, I'd already moved on. That
was in the past, and they say that place is a whole other country, and I'd
probably get dysentery there.

"Yeah," I said, making it clear that I didn't want to
talk about it. To his credit, Malcolm took the hint and backed off. "So
what about you?" I said, trying to change the subject.

"What about me?" he asked.

Yeah, that would probably be a good thing to specify...
"Don't you have a personal assistant?" I asked him. "Hopping
around from place to place, booking appearances and accepting invitations to
charity functions and whatnot?"

Malcolm shook his head. "I have a secretary at my
office," he said, "but I rarely go in any more. He holds down the
fort while I'm away."

The way he said it left me with the impression that he didn't
work much at all. Which might explain his behavior. Perhaps he was bored and
looking to spice up his life with a little eccentricity and a little sex in
front of a camera? For some reason, the idea annoyed me. I'm not sure why it
did. After a bad breakup I'd once seriously contemplated feigning amnesia so I
wouldn't have to go through the inevitable postmortem period with all our
mutual friends. Surely that was worse? "So he knows all your business
stuff?"

Malcolm nodded. "He does. He's very dedicated to his job,
and we go out for dinner twice a week where he tells me everything that's been
going on. Most of the meetings can be handled by people under me, and I
compensate them for the risks they take. Really, the life of a CEO can get
repetitive, and most problems are the same problem in different clothing. Most
of the time the heads of other companies just want me to go play golf so they
can convince me to do some business deal or other." A rueful smile crossed
his lips, and I realized I had turned completely toward him as he spoke. I was
leaning forward, hanging on his words. I had to force myself to move back as I
made a curious noise, trying to not make my interest in him so screamingly
obvious. I'm not sure why. After all, his interest in me was apparent, and if I
weren't so attracted to him it might have been rather creepy.

"I chose the wrong thing to do," he said. "I hate
golf. I'm not sure you can hate golf and be a CEO. It's just not possible.

"Do you hate it because you're bad at it, or because it's
boring and wasteful?" I asked him.

A grin broke across his face. "The latter," he said.
"I'm very good at it. I'm very good at most things."

I raised my eyebrows. "And modest, too."

He shrugged. "It is just fact."

Oh really? "And what are you not good at?"

He pursed his lips. "Art. Yet," he said.

I supposed that was true. "You do have talent," I had
to admit to him. "There was something in those photos that was very...
magnetic."

"It's you," he said, catching me off guard. "You
are the magnetic part of those pictures."

I looked away. "I didn't look half as terrible as I usually
do in photos," I conceded grudgingly. "But that was maybe the
lighting. And I actually took the time to do my make up yesterday."

"And today?" he said as the subway car screeched to a
halt. People got off, and people got on. An old hobo staggered through the
doors. One of the ones that likes to sing. I hate those guys, because I never
have enough cash to give to all of them, and it makes me feel like shit. I
know, I know, living in the city, I should be over this by now, but I could
have been one of those guys. Anyone could. It's just an accident of birth.
Absently I patted my pockets as I tried to formulate an answer to his question.

"I probably dolled myself up a bit," I admitted with a
sigh. Just as I'd thought, I didn't have any cash on me. I'd spent the last of
it on beer and cigarettes. If I'd had one of those beers still with me, I could
have given it to him, but that probably wasn't the wisest decision. I'd feel
better, but the next thing you know there's a homeless dude frozen stiff under
a bridge.

The hobo clanged a beat-up cane against the subway car pole.
"Attention," he said. "Attention please." The car started
up and he stumbled, only managing to catch himself at the last moment. He
cleared his throat as he straightened up and I looked away. I hated to see
people like this. I wish I had Felicia's idealism when it came to the world,
but no amount of money was going to change that guy's life. Money could never
make him sober, or induce his kids to talk to him again, or whatever terrible,
sad story he had hidden away inside.

He gave a little speech in a gruff voice, and then launched into
Goodbye, My Coney Island Baby. I wanted to sink into the floor. He held his hat
out as he walked up and down the car, and he passed me quickly, seeing that I
had nothing. His voice was quite fine, but it was so sad to see his talent
wasted on a subway car full of commuters that it mostly made me depressed, and
I averted my eyes.

Next to me, Malcolm stood up as the hobo launched into the "never
gonna see you" part.

Malcolm flung his arms wide and took a deep breath. "Never
gonna see you any more," he sang in harmony, a deep bass voice booming
from his chest as he leaned into the man, clearly indicating that he should
lead. The man's eyes lit up and together they finished out the first verse in
perfect harmony to a smattering of applause. Then Malcolm reached into his
inside pocket, pulled out his wallet, and handed the man a wad of bills. Then
he sat down again.

I stared at Malcolm. I wouldn't have been more surprised if he'd
ripped off his skin and revealed himself to be a robot underneath. In fact, I
would have been significantly less surprised by his behavior than I had been up
to this point.