Benji nods, unbothered. “Waved right at me. She looked… proud. Her tits,” he starts.
I don’t have the capacity to process this with my clinical mind. It’s not here. It’s run off, abandoned me to the wolves.
“Stop,” Jett snaps. Then, jaw clenched, he looks between us. “Here’s the deal.”
Benji and I go still.
“I’m going in,” Jett says. “I’m gonna sit down like a perfectly adjusted smarmy hipster with a mild-to-severe exhibitionism edging kink and sketch her respectfully. I don’t shank a single dude with a graphite stick. No broken fingers, no paintbrushes through anyone’s eye sockets.”
I nod slowly, waiting for the catch.
He turns on me, full intensity. “You, doc, you go in there too. Sit your clinical ass down and draw her. Look at her. Study every inch. I want detail. Portrait level. Line work so real I can taste it. And at the end of class? You say she’s just a patient. Just a relaxing night. And you look me in the eye when you lie.”
I stare at him. I stare at Benji, who’s nodding along like this is a fucking team-building exercise and not a descent into horny madness.
Fuck.
I do what any reasonable man would not. I walk in with her two lovers flanking me and I take a seat. Like this is normal. Sane.
She sees Jett and bites her lip. Grins at Benji. Then she shifts and locks her eyes on me in a challenge.
Jett drops into a stool three down from mine, stiff and twitchy, eyes ricocheting between her, me, and Benji. He hasn’t even touched his materials.
Benji is glued to her. Every molecule of his attention, his awe, his love, is on her. And it’s obvious. He’s proud of her. Moved by her. This isn’t a spectacle to him. It’s a fucking devotional.
I hate how much I understand it.
Because I’m proud too.
She’s bare. To a room of strangers. Her lovers. Her goddamn therapist.
And she looks like she was born for it. Shame couldn’t stick to her if it tried. She’s made herself a masterpiece.
I want to make her bare her soul with this same ease. To open up that wild, cracked heart the way she opens her thighs. To let someone in where it hurts.
Because I know she thinks her body’s the only perfect thing about her. And it makes me want to fucking scream.
I see her. Every broken, brutal, brilliant inch. And every time she gives me that unhinged, too-hungry grin, I see exactly what I’ve been missing. Exactly what I need.
I pick up the charcoal. It’s already smudging my fingertips, already soft and dirty in my grip.
Her belly catches me first, soft and plush. A place I’d mouth while she writhes. I sketch the gentle swell, right below the navel, and my hand moves like I’ve done this a hundred times. As if I’ve touched her there.
Her hips draw me next. The arch of bone. The dip before her thighs. I want my hands there. I want bruises there. I shade the curve, the slope, the way her thighs part on the stool, draped, languid, made to be spread.
I shouldn’t be this hard. I shouldn’t be here. But I keep drawing. I trace the line of her thigh, down to her knee, back up to where that delicate gold chain rides low across her hips. I capture the glint of it. I want to bite it off her.
And then, fuck me, I get to her breasts.
They are not demure. They are not art-school polite. They’re heavy and perfect and smug about it.
And I should not imagine the weight of them in my hands. Should not want to lick the sweat off the valley between them. Should not want to see what she does when you pull her nipple between your teeth and don’t let go right away.
My hand keeps moving.
This isn’t technique anymore. It’s obsession. I’m not drawing her like a model. I’m drawing her like a goddamn confession.
And I know, when she sees this page, she’ll know everything.
