Work of Art ~ the Collection (30 page)

I’m confused and under his spell. In the shadow of the hallway, the darkness becomes the sheerest veil between us, and I’ve lost all sense of what I should do.

Across the open space between us, my body and my heart call out to him. Max watches me for several counts before he approaches, and I realize he doesn’t have it in him to stop either.

I close my eyes and wait until I can feel his presence in front of me. When I open my eyes, he has an arm positioned on either side of me, jammed against the wall and caging me. He lowers his head and presses his forehead against mine.

“Ava, I can’t fight this anymore,” he whispers, his stormy blue eyes a swirl of want. “I’ve got to have you.” His moan is raw with desire.

I didn’t know time could move that slowly . . . that I could live my entire life between the single frames that flash as his head tilts and his lips part. He moves lower and lower until there’s just a sliver of light between us.

When our lips meet, seeming to spark as they press together, my world opens and time speeds up so fast that I have to hold on to him to keep from being pulled into the upper atmosphere.

If he had been too rough or too rigid, I would’ve had it in me to slow down. But he’s perfect in every way. I swoon from the way he cradles me in his arms and the way his mouth presses against mine with gentle soft fullness, sucking and lightly biting as his fingertips slide down my neck . . . his touch silky smooth and reverent. He gives way to the building fire—flames licking my mouth, teeth scraping my chin, hands sliding into my jeans to cup my ass and pull me firmly against all that I desire.

“Ava, I want you. I’ve always wanted you.” He bends his knees and thrusts his hardness right into me.

Fire and wetness mingle dangerously between my legs.

We’re a wall of passion, and all the longing and unfulfilled desire now burns brightly between us. It’s overwhelming and stronger than I could’ve imagined.

He pulls the neckline of my tank down below my bra, leaving my breast naked. He takes my nipple in his mouth, flicking the tip with his tongue.

My head drops back against the wall as I watch him
. Is this really happening?

He devours me as he yanks down the remaining fabric, preparing my other breast for his touch.

I stroke the front of his jeans where his cock strains and we both moan loudly.

From this moment on, I’ll never trust my instincts because I completely underestimated this man’s attraction to me. I’ve never felt so desirable, so beautiful . . . so completely wanted in a man’s eyes.

He moves to my other breast, and I take ragged breaths. I want more and my back arches, coaxing the soft fullness of my breasts towards him.

He responds with sensuous caresses and ravenous kisses, teasing and working me into a frenzy. Our groans of pleasure echo through the room.

I slip my hand under the edge of his shirt and rake my fingers across his stomach and up his defined chest.

With his sexy smile and wide eyes, his pleasure’s palpable, and he lifts his shirt, encouraging me. I shower kisses across his chest, finally biting his nipple lightly, while tightening my grip on his cock.

He pushes his fingers through my hair and tilts my face up to meet his demanding kiss, while pressing our naked chests together. But this is no longer mere kissing, he’s making love to my mouth. We moan, grind, grab and pull as the passion overtakes us. I become a wild animal. I bite his shoulder to keep from crying out when his teeth scrape my neck, and I slip my hands inside the back of his jeans to dig my nails into his ass. I writhe hungrily against him, and every one of his movements becomes more intense and powerful.

I need to tame this animal because what I really want is to make love all night on his big bed in Malibu. I imagine the ocean crashing just beyond us, and the velvet curtains waving in rhythm with our movements as we tangle together. I want him to paint my portrait across the sheets as he strokes every part of me. Our passion will be color, light and texture combined.

But it’s difficult to rein in the raw lust when it’s simmered for so long. Max is too far gone.

“Ava,” he says in a ragged, desperate voice, “I need to have you. I swear I’m going to take you here in this studio.” He starts working on his belt buckle.

Despite my raw lust, my mind clears enough to see a flaw in the plan. I still his hand. “No,” I say as I try to catch my breath. “Sean.” I have no sense how much time has passed, but he could enter the studio with the new screen at any minute.

“Fuck Sean, he can watch. I don’t care about anything but fucking you right now.” His eyes burn.

The music that’s been surging, moving toward a crescendo hits a sour note, and I freeze.

Fucking you right now . . .
up against a wall . . . in a fucking hallway . . . in front of Sean.

Fucking art slut.

Reverence shifts on a dime to tawdriness. Making love morphs into a quick fuck. We’re slipping down a slope and can’t seem to stop.

“What about Adam’s office?” There’s an edge of desperation to his voice.

“Glass walls.” My voice is losing its tone and inflection.

“Isn’t there a storeroom with a door, a bathroom?” he asks frantically.

It’s as if a yellow-green fluorescent light has snapped on revealing this for what it is, and I push him off me and step away.

“The bathroom?” I ask, trying to keep the hysteria out of my voice.

“What? What!” he barks.

I don’t back down—instead I pull away even more as the passion falls away from me like a discarded cloak.

His anger rages hot enough to burn.

“Really? Now you’re going to be precious and self-righteous? I don’t get you! I can never tell what you want. Is this a game to you? Your whole body was begging to be fucked a minute ago!” He steps back and yanks his shirt down.

“You’re wrong . . . I didn’t want to fuck, I wa—”

His face burns to a hot red. “I didn’t want this to happen, either!”

“What do you mean
you
didn’t want this to happen?”

His fury builds. “I! Did! Not! Want! This!” he barks staccato, grimacing. “I knew it would ruin everything, and I was fucking right. Fuck it all!” He pivots and storms into the gallery, leaving me and my naked breasts in the darkened hallway.

“You didn’t want me?” I whisper, horrified as I push my breasts back into my bra and pull my shirt down.

“You didn’t want me.” I repeat to myself with a mix of anger and confusion. As I say it a third time, I realize how true it rings. It’s the only idea that’s made sense the whole evening.

He didn’t want me for anything but a fuck. And he’d never want
me.
Not the way I’ve wanted him to. The emotional tremors start in my hands and move across my body.

During an earthquake, it’d been recommended that you perch in a doorway or crawl under a table until the shaking stops. Later it was revised to say you should crouch next to the table, not under it, to create a little pocket to survive if the walls come down around you. But when the world is shaking, and one’s mind is not sound, there’s a natural instinct to run out the door . . . run to an open space so that when the glass explodes and your ceiling crumbles, you can sink to the earth with nothing but the sky and air holding you.

But there’s danger, even in the open air.

I discover this as I grab my bag, shoot out the back door of the studio and into the open air of the parking lot. For as I lean forward, my hands frantically gripping my knees while desperately trying to take air into my lungs, I realize there are no safe pockets for me.

As I fall into my car and tear out of the lot, the sinking realization hits me that the damage from fireworks and earthquakes is often too catastrophic to comprehend.

Chapter Twenty / Ain’t No Prince Charming

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.

~John W. Gardner

I
turn onto Santa Monica Boulevard, hell-bent on getting home, when the traffic comes to a complete standstill. This isn’t unusual for this time of day in this part of the city, but in my current state of mind, it’s tantamount to having needles stuck in my eyes. I slam the steering wheel with my fists.

My phone rings, and even though I’m sitting with nothing but time on my hands, the president could call and I wouldn’t answer at this point.

I glance down—Sean.
Fuck!
He’s probably discovered the scene of the crime and is wondering why I abandoned him. The last thing I wanted to do was screw things up for him too. I resolve to call him after I get home and calm down enough to speak coherently.

Traffic barely inches forward as the light goes from red to green to yellow and to red again. The blare of sirens confirms an accident ahead, which only makes the nasty traffic worse. My voice mail pings. I sigh and press the button to listen while I’m waiting. At least I won’t have to talk.

“Ava, it’s Sean.” He sounds pissed, his voice tight and his words clipped. “I just brought the screen up and you guys aren’t here. If you were going to go out, couldn’t you at least have left me a note or something? That’s messed up.”

There’s a pause.

“You didn’t print very much, and—What the fuck? . . .
Why
didn’t you wash off the screen before you left? This one’s probably trashed now too!” His long-suffering sigh is loud and clear. “Call me right back and let me know what’s going on.”

The damage is done. Calling him back now or later isn’t going to change that. At least Max was gone before Sean returned to the studio.

Max.

The thought of him makes my stomach sink. I’m still stunned by his blast of rage, and I feel completely raw. Part of me wishes I could turn the clock back and make sure our encounter never happened. We’d still be friends who could go bowling or get burgers at The Apple Pan. But the other part of me is steaming angry for how he treated me. Now there’s nothing but the ashy charred remains of a friendship that meant a lot to me.

To top it off, I’m not even sure what happened. How did everything go so horribly wrong? I went from such a high with the way I felt in his arms as he kissed me with an intensity I’ve only read about in romance novels to the lowest low where we yelled hateful things at each other like a couple going through a bitter divorce.

A wave of sorrow and frustration washes over me, and I angrily wipe the tears away from my face. I’m mad at myself for missing the asshole so much already. But I continue to cry and watch the lights change—green, yellow, red, green, yellow, red.

Life is cruel.

Sitting there in a traffic jam, I watch the beautiful boys saunter down the street, fresh from the gym, handsomely buff. They don’t call West Hollywood “Boys Town” for nothing.

I move forward about twenty feet. Green, yellow, red, green, yellow, red. I turn on the radio and flip through the channels, but everything agitates me, so I shut it off. After a few minutes of silence, my phone rings. Again, I let it go to voice mail and wait for the ping before I listen to the message.

“Ava, pick up your goddamned phone. I need to talk to you and find out what in the hell is going on! Fuck!” Sean is breathing hard and his voice sounds angrier, bordering on rage, and it freaks me out.

“So, I’m wrapping things up, and I walk into the gallery to leave some paperwork for Adam, and your boy Max is sitting in the middle of the room with his head in his hands. I ask him what he’s doing and nothing . . . I mean he doesn’t even look at me. So I walk right up to him, and he ignores me so I shout his name, and all he does is moan like he’s been shot or something. What the fuck?

“Ava, I need to know, and I mean right now. What did this asshole do? You would never leave the studio like you did, and he’s in this freaky state. If he did anything, touched a single hair on your head, I’m going to beat the crap out of him. I don’t care who the motherfucker is. And if you don’t call me right back, I might just do it anyway because he’s freaking me the hell out. Call me now, Ava! NOW!”

The bile rises up my throat and I choke it down. The picture of Max broken down in the gallery is haunting, especially because since we’ve met, I’ve been the one to help him during his low times. I certainly won’t be helping him now.

I wipe my tears and clear my throat. As my fingers fumble across the screen of my phone, I figure out what I can say to Sean to minimize the damage.

He picks up during the first ring. “Ava, are you okay?” he shouts, his voice a mix of fury and concern.

“I’m sorry, Sean. I’m sorry I left things like I did. That was so not cool, but Max really pissed me off, and I was afraid I’d say something to ruin the project. I just needed to get out of there for a while.”

“You needed to get out of here for a while?” he repeats sarcastically. “What the fuck happened, Ava? The guy in the next room isn’t sitting there moaning because you had a
little
argument. What aren’t you telling me?”

“He’s a crazy-ass artist. You know how unstable they are. We had an argument about the book and he got mad, and then I got mad and left. That’s it, so don’t beat him up—as much as I know you’d enjoy it—just get him out of there.”

“And how do you propose I do that? He’s ignoring me. Should I hoist him onto a dolly and roll him out to his car?”

“Very nice, Sean. No, just push him out the door. This is how he acts when he’s really upset. He won’t fight you.” Although I’m not one hundred percent sure Max won’t fight if Sean pushes him out, I hedge my bets.

“Argh! Okay, I’ll try, but I’m calling you as soon as I’m done, and you better pick up the goddamned phone.”

“I promise I will.”

After I hang up, traffic starts to break up, and I actually make it down two streets in a row without hitting my brakes. I’m just a few blocks from home when the phone rings again and I answer.

“Ava, that dude is messed up. You should seriously stay away from him. I had to push him all the way to his car, and he looked like the world had ended. It was fucking creepy.”

“What happened after that?”

“I went inside and wrapped things up. When I went to leave, he and his car were gone. He must have gotten his shit together enough to drive.”