Brush Strokes Read Free

up
here? Never in a million years would Joe have imagined that a
modeling gig placed him—nude, of all things—square in the sights of
an exotic goddess. Tanya’d have him by the balls if she ever heard
him call her that, but the woman’s beauty stunned him.
    Rich brown skin. Beautiful dark brown
eyes. A smile that could stop men in their tracks. And those
curves. Damn if he didn’t want to spend every waking minute of the
next year running his hands over the power of her thighs, the dip
in her waist, the fullness of her breasts.
    Now look at him. He spent the last
twenty-four hours replaying what she’d done to him. What they’d
done together.
    Every second of her skin against his,
her hand cradled in his, her fingers stroking him reverberated in
his mind until today’s resultant erection was hard enough to break
in two. Not like this was the first time she’d left him in such a
condition.
    That she didn’t know the effect she
had on him was almost icing on the cake. For the past two months
when he posed for her, every mundane thought, every tedious list,
every repulsive thing he could think of kept his body from
betraying him in her presence. He forced himself into counting
ceiling tiles, memorizing patterns in the carpeting, looking for
forgotten cobwebs in the corners…hell, anything to keep his
attention away from her.
    Inevitably though, his gaze drifted
toward her. Sculpted eyebrows always knitted together when she
concentrated on the painting before her. Whenever she focused on
what to do next, or studied him, she’d pull the end of her
paintbrush into her mouth and gnaw on the end. He wanted to
admonish her for that bad habit, noting the streaks of paint and
splinters of wood she ingested, but held himself in check. Tanya
had no clue he existed in those moments. She looked through him,
never once seeing him as a man, but forever an object to be
recreated by her hands.
    As the weeks passed, so did her
frustration with her work. Lines beneath her eyes etched deeper.
Her hands spent less time creating on canvas, and more time tapping
against her thigh. He’d heard artists could be temperamental, but
he’d yet to see her lose her cool. Until yesterday…
    Never had he once thought she’d end up
running her hands over him. Not once did it occur to him she’d jack
him off by the time they were through. Rushing headlong toward
orgasm, his mind a blur of fantasy and eroticism, the hope of a
future together, starting with something as simple as meeting for
coffee gripped something deep inside of him. He held on to it as
his essence pulsed out of his body, turning his insides to mush.
Reality slammed home the second it was done. And her casual
dismissal afterward reinforced the unlikelihood of unrealized hope
and then cut through him like a knife.
    Fuck.
    What a mess. The woman had given him
one insane orgasm and it inspired him to now scour rows of a
neighborhood outdoor market for some trinket, an honorarium of
sorts, for that service. No, not just that service. Thinking that
way trivialized what occurred. What he wanted instead was some way
to get her to notice him as something other than muscles and bone
structure.
    He ignored the sellers’ calls for him
to look at their selection of fruits and vegetables or to try free
samples of exotic condiments. Used books stacked in rows on tables
that didn’t look strong enough to hold a single sheet of paper,
much less the burden of yellowed tomes, were equally ignored. Tanya
was an artist. She lived in a simple one-bedroom apartment, using
what others meant to be a living room as her bedroom. The single
space meant for her privacy had been turned into an artist’s
studio.
    Something about the lone twin-sized
bed placed in immediate sight of the entranceway went with her
personality. Sparse furniture, no doubt thrift store specials,
spoke not of her income-level, but more so, her preference for
simplicity. Paintings and sketches of her design decorated