A slight grin curled the corners of his lips at that, and his gaze flicked my way. “Of course you do.”
“Can you blame me?” I asked, walking into the room. “May I see?”
“Yeah.”
I stepped around so I could stand beside him, and…Jesus fucking Christ, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It wasn’t finished. He’d sketched out what it would be and had just started painting. My heart thudded, my gaze held captive by the image on the canvas in front of me. Two naked men, one on his knees, arms wrapped around the other’s waist, cheek flush against his stomach, the way we’d been earlier. You couldn’t see their cocks, their bodies strategically placed to hide them. “It’s us, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I can see it perfectly in my head. We’ll be faceless, our bodies blurred and blended together in different shades of blues and grays. Abstract but emotive, in my figurative-expressionism style. No one will look at it and see us. Just two men, lost in an intimate moment. Only we will know it’s ours.”
“That’s incredible.”
“You haven’t seen the finished product.”
“I don’t have to.”
Lane turned and kissed my shoulder. “I’ve never done this kind of art before—outside of school when we worked on nudes. I’ve never played around with erotic art. But then I woke up with the thought, and my fingers twitched with the need to paint. My thoughts were all over the place, and as much as I wanted to be in bed with you, I knew I’d drive myself crazy if I didn’t get out of bed and do it.”
“I love it. How in the fuck do you do this? How do you draw and plan this so quickly? Was I asleep for a week?”
“You know how I get when I’m in the zone. It’s like an obsession. And this is definitely not my best work. It’s messy and rushed, but I had to get it on canvas.”
There wasn’t one part of this that looked messy and rushed to me. “It’s incredible. I make the perfect muse.”
Lane leaned in and kissed my shoulder again. “I’ll never paint you again if it’s going to give you a big head.”
“I’m not sure you could help yourself even if you tried. I’m clearly irresistible to you. One might even say your greatest muse. I think that will be my title from now on…Isaac Pierce, the greatest muse of Lane Ryan.”
He chuckled and wrapped me in a hug. Lane was more affectionate than I’d thought he’d be, not that I was complaining.
“I want to paint you all day every day just so I have proof this is real.”
“I thought that’s what the marks on your neck are for?”
“We can have both,” he replied, right before his stomach gave a deep, loud, rumbly growl.
“Even the magnificent Lane Ryan needs to eat. Keep working. I’ll make dinner.”
“You don’t cook.”
“I’ll order dinner.”
Lane pressed a kiss to my cheek, and then I pulled away. If I didn’t go now, I’d end up on my knees for him…maybe fucking him in the bed or bending over for him. I didn’t much care which way we did it. I just wanted him. “I’ll come and get you when it’s here.”
“Okay.”
When I got to the door, I stopped to look at him. Lane was already lost in his art again. Instead of standing there and watching him, I forced myself back to my room, put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, then ordered Thai food. I sat on the couch in the living room, trying not to stress over how in the fuck we were going to make this work, how we could change perceptions so that our families and the world saw us not as brothers, but as two men in love. It would mean pushing the limits, pushing what was acceptable, but if the outcome got me him, that was all I cared about.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Lane
I couldn’t stop painting. Days had gone by since I’d realized Isaac was in love with me, since I’d allowed myself to acknowledge I felt the same. That I’d always felt the same. I’d finished Yours, giving the background a gray-and-black, edgy, paint-splatter style. My brain was exploding with idea after idea, with the need to create, and all of it was about him—just Isaac, or both of us together. I’d never painted him. Drawn him? Yes. I had hundreds of notebooks filled with sketches, but I’d never allowed myself to paint him before. Now, I couldn’t stop.
All of them abstract, faceless, blurred naked bodies and wandering hands that belonged to my brother. Christ, I really had to stop thinking about him that way. We’re not blood-related, we’re not blood-related, we’re not blood-related.
That had become my mantra.
When Isaac was home from work, I’d try to go out into the living room or kitchen with him, but that didn’t always last long. Eventually, we’d end up in the room he’d given me for my studio, where he would watch me disappear into my own world or find himself in his, but still staying close. I’d always worked a lot, but not this much. I needed to get it all out before I lost it.
We’d fallen asleep every night in that room, which I’d cleaned up, not allowing him to help, and there was nothing like being wrapped up in each other, slick bodies and those same wandering hands that had invaded my brain. We’d jerked or sucked each other off daily, but we hadn’t fucked yet. Neither of us had made the move to do so, and I wasn’t sure why.
Another thing we hadn’t done was talk about what in the hell we were doing. It was like we thought if we didn’t speak the words, there would be no consequences, that our reality wasn’t true, so we could go on pretending in this cocoon we’d made together.
It was a nice fucking place to call home, but it wasn’t real, and we both knew that.
I was standing in front of my easel when my cell rang with Mom’s ringtone. Nerves immediately pricked down my spine as if there was some way she could have found out, as if she didn’t call me regularly, so if she was now, she must have discovered Isaac and I were…together. We were saying that? I assumed so since we were in love, but it was all such a mess that normal rules didn’t apply.
I wanted to ignore the call, but my stress wouldn’t let me. I’d drive myself crazy thinking she’d found us out, so I answered. “Hey, Mom.”
“Hey, you. Is it silly that your voice sounds happier now that it’s coming from Atlanta instead of New York? Because it does.”
I chuckled. She was so great. I’d never known what it felt like to go without or to feel unloved. She’d always wanted to spend time with me and bond with me, and when Isaac had come into our lives, that had extended to him. From the moment she and Dad were serious, Isaac had become her son. And that made me feel even guiltier about what we were doing because while that love gave me hope that she would find a way to accept us, it was also what would make this difficult for her.
“I am happy,” I admitted. “I feel… I don’t even know how to put it into words. Freer than I have in a long time, like I’m more me than I’ve let myself be in years, or maybe more than I’ve ever been.” Because how could I have ever been authentic when I hadn’t been honest in how I felt about Isaac?
“That makes me so happy. And I love that both my boys are together again. Things have felt strained with the two of you for a while, but that seems to be changing. Isaac has always loved you so much.” I froze, heart racing, feeling like it might burst in my chest at any moment. Was she saying… Did she know? “I know we’ve said this before, and it’s so hard to feel this way because of what it means when it comes to your daddy and Isaac’s biological mom, but I feel like we were meant to be a family, that you and Isaac were meant to be brothers. He needs you, and if anything were to come between the two of you…well, I’m not sure how well he’d deal with that.”