After a few tweaks of the pressure valve, he crowded me again.
Strength ran from my limbs. I was wobbly and weak and woefully unprepared to continue. I wanted to ask how much longer this nightmare would last, but he ducked to his haunches, his face between my legs, his unruly hair tickling my thigh as he held the gun over my knee and pressed the trigger.
God...
I jolted at the tickle.
He dragged the hissing sensation up my leg, higher and higher until the puff of air found the part of me throbbing for attention. He was too close, too near, too much.
I couldn’t do it.
I stumbled.
My arm fell from around my breasts, automatically seeking purchase to stop my fall.
My prettily painted fingers landed on his head for balance, those same fingers sinking into his thick, messy hair.
A flashback of running my fingers over his scalp when we were teenagers assaulted me. The texture of his strands hadn’t changed. Still coarse but silky. Soft but strong. The heat of his head and the sudden menacing glower of his eyes made my heart relocate into my palms and skip a beat.
“Sorry.” I tried to pull away, yet I couldn’t seem to order my fingers to let go.
He didn’t move—frozen on his haunches before me, his very presence lashing around me.
Shoving aside heavy want, I managed to untangle my fingers and raise my arm into position. My chin soared up, and my gaze locked onto a poster across the room promoting the benefits of a particular type of latex for prosthetic work.
For an eon, Gil didn’t move.
He breathed hard and shallow. His teeth clenched audibly.
Then, slowly, methodically, he leaned forward and pressed the trigger as if nothing had happened.
The burst of air and stream of paint made me shudder. My stomach leapt as he slipped over the tiny scrap of underwear hiding me and worked on my inner thighs.
I throbbed.
I wanted, wanted, wanted, but somehow, I kept the pose.
It took all my willpower not to arch away, but my mind filled with images of tongues licking me, tasting me, leaving behind sticky coverage in the form of colour that masked my own.
The room stayed deathly silent as Gil gradually covered every inch. He switched his method from soft shading to slashing me with ribbons of paint and harsh bursts of air.
The sensation teased me, made me wet.
I bit my lip.
I locked my toes onto the smoothness of the podium and pressed my arm tighter to my chest, giving my body something else to think about.
The whir of the compressor and the faint hiss of the air gun decorated the stretched silence.
I could’ve come from the airbrush alone.
But then he was gone, moving onto more tolerable areas, adding finishing touches.
I tried to relax, did my best not to flinch each time he came close with a new colour or suck in a breath when he brushed parts of me normally reserved for lovers.
My nakedness disappeared under a cloud of blended artwork.
“Don’t move,” he muttered as he tossed his tools down and grabbed his fine brush again.
He drew calligraphy lines and highlighted parts of whatever he’d painted, stepping away and scowling only to storm back and torture me with another lick of bristles.
Once he was happy with my body, he turned to my hair and face.
I’d thought having him focus on my body was hard.
It was nothing compared to having Gil’s fingers tilting my chin this way and that, his teeth sinking into his bottom lip in concentration, his steady talent transforming my cheeks into art and my hair teased with whatever shade he’d chosen.
At one point, he tugged my hair into a tighter bun and the wash of passion made me jerk with need. His breath caught; the air gun faltered.
I swayed as he held my jaw, carefully sponging colour over my forehead and eyebrows.
“Close your eyes.” His fingers dug into my skin as if such a command affected him as much as it did me.
I obeyed, grateful to cut him from my vision when he was all I could see. The softness of his paint and the heat of his presence magnified, adding another dimension to my troubles.
But then, it was over.
He stepped away.
Coldness returned, and aloneness resettled.
My first time as a canvas, and it was finished.
Tossing his brushes away, he jumped off the podium and stared at me from a few feet away. His head cocked, assessing each angle and curve, not looking at all happy with his creation.
With me.
He didn’t inquire if the pose was comfortable or if the foreignness of being covered in paint was acceptable.
I wasn’t Olin.
I was merely his.
With the scent of paint in the air and hunger pangs growing more insistent in my belly, Gilbert came back, added a splatter of rhinestones across my hip bone and brow, then towered over me to paint an area of my shoulder in glue before dabbing turquoise and black glitter over my collarbone.
He leaped off the platform with nimble grace and cupped his chin with paint-speckled hands. He didn’t just cock his head this time, he pinned me to the podium with his assessment. His eyes were never still, judging, deliberating.
He stared at my breasts, hips, and legs with more intensity than any man before him.
He only saw flaws and areas of improvement.
Having him a few metres away instead of a few centimetres allowed me to breathe for the first time since I got naked. My knees quaked, and I thanked every star above that he’d only painted my front. I didn’t know how I could’ve coped with him behind me. His breath on the back of my neck. His fingers on my ass. His palms skating down my spine.
Stop it.
It’s done.
When the silence became too much, I murmured, “Now what?”
My voice broke the spell.
He jerked as if I’d dragged him away from something painful. He cleared his throat all over again from the crackling tension. “I’m not happy, but it will have to do.” Marching away to a cupboard in the shadows, he ordered, “Stay there.”
I did as he said, waiting as he pulled open a drawer and came back with an expensive-looking camera. Depositing the camera by my feet, he stalked toward the large spotlights and other photography equipment tucked out of paint’s reach and rolled them around the podium.
With no warning to guard my eyes, he turned them all on, blinding me in white intensity.
I winced, squeezing my eyes shut as the heat of the lamps instantly warmed the chill in my bones. The thud of Gil’s boots paced around me as he prepared things. Slowly, I cracked open my gaze, getting used to the brightness.
He stood with the camera in his hands and a haughty, hungry look on his face. “Don’t move unless I tell you to.” Bringing the camera up, he framed me in a picture and pressed the button. The soft click sent another wash of goosebumps over me.
Time slipped into nonsense again as Gil took a copious number of photos from every angle, all with the black matte bricks behind me as the backdrop. Some he came in for a close-up on specific areas on my skin, others he took from far away. He even climbed up a ladder and took some from above.
Through it all, I stayed the perfect mannequin, doing my best to keep my face impassive, breathing light, and muscles smooth.
By the time he clicked the last photo, my stomach wasn’t just grumbling for food it was growling, and my feet ached from standing so long.
Gil didn’t say a word as he returned the camera to the cupboard, turned the spotlights off, and raked a hand through his hair, smoothing back the roguish strands. He didn’t care he had as much paint on his fingers as I did on my body, just like he didn’t care I was still there, trapped in his instruction and not permitted to move.