Page 17 of Illicit Illustration

“Why are you so fixated on this?” Because he wasn’t showing any signs of backing down and going away. In fact, he had the audacity to take a seat on my couch and make himself at home while I remained there gaping at him. “I’m not seeing how this benefits you.”

My pulse skittered to a stop as I waited for his answer and then took off into a gallop when he licked his lips, his gaze turning predatory. If I didn’t know better, he was looking at me like he’d looked at the sketch on my tablet last night.

“Because I think what you’re doing is…admirable. And if I can help you, I want to. Isn’t that what friends do? Help each other?”

“So, drawing people doing…thingsis admirable now? There are plenty of people who I’m sure would disagree with you.” My brother being one of them. I knew he supported my art, but he stilldidn’t seem to understand that I was a grown adult. And that I thought about sex. So much so that I was now embracing those thoughts and the ones of others and bringing them to life as pieces of artwork.

“Then they’re fucking stupid.” His arms stretched along the back of my couch, and the fleeting thought that he belonged there quickly ran through my overwhelmed thoughts. That was not something I should have been considering, much less acknowledging.

Reid and I didn’t make sense. Not on paper and certainly not in real life. It wasn’t even that I thought he was too good for me, because I knew my worth, it was that we were in such different parts of our lives that I couldn’t imagine him being interested in someone younger and much less experienced than he was.

For most of my life, I’d stayed inside the little box people put me in. I was the shy bookworm who loved to draw. I was the good girl who followed all the rules and didn’t cause problems. And now, I was discovering a part of myself I’d denied for so long.

Maybe I wasn’t so shy, and maybe I wasn’t such a good girl. Maybe I wanted to be more adventurous and try new things. I wanted a lot of things I never thought I did before, but most of all…I wanted to be wanted.

That was why the idea of Seven was so appealing. He didn’t care what I looked like or who I was to everyone else. He genuinely seemed to want to get to knowme. And that was something I’d never experienced before.

“You still in there?” Reid teased, his gaze never wavering from mine. I’d been off in La La Land, and he was staring at me like he was waiting for something. Technically, he was waiting for my approval to go along with his half-cocked scheme to help my posing, but it felt like I was still missing something.

“Fine. We try it once. But if it still doesn’t help, you let it go. And you cannot use any of this as fodder to tease me. And you sure asfuckaren’t telling Hudson a damn thing about my art.”

His answering grin was almost obnoxious. “The word fuck sounds good coming from your lips.”

I faltered as my brain caught up to him using the wordsfuck,coming, andyour lipsall in one sentence, and I couldn’t help the blush that crept up my neck and cheeks.

“And the fact me saying that made you blush is really fucking adorable.”

And he had to ruin it by calling me adorable.

Raccoon videos on the internet were adorable, grown women with sex appeal were not. Which meant Reid still clearly only saw me in one way.

“Shut up.” My clever response was met with a deep chuckle, and I took that as my cue to escape into my bathroom to make myself look less like a feral cat lady.

I thought I’d escaped further embarrassment, but as I crossed the threshold into my bedroom, he couldn’t help making one more comment. “Don’t worry, I’ll have to shut up while you’re sitting on my face.”

And there was the mic drop…

Reid

I’d never actually seensomeone scurry before, but as Hazel’s expressive eyes widened and she turned abruptly toward her bedroom and escaped into the bathroom, I was pretty sure that was exactly what she’d done. I knew that being here like this was kind of a dick move on my part, but when I woke up this morning with no response to my text, I was even more determined to see where her head was at.

Hazel was the type of person who wore her heart on her sleeve and couldn’t keep a secret to save her life. If I spent enough time with her, eventually she’d crack and give me a hint on whether I should continue to message her as bachelor number seven. If she wasn’t into him, I wouldn’t force myself on her.

Her non-response wasn’t exactly encouraging, but I also knew she over-thought everything. I was sure that at least once in the past twelve hours she’d spent a significant amount of time staring at the open text thread—much like I had waiting for her answer.

But that was fine, I’d give her time to process how she wanted to move forward, and in the meantime, I’d come up with any excuse to see her in person. Starting with this project to help her get pictures to use as posing references. While I could tell she was intimidated at the thought of reenacting some arguably hot positions, her eyes had lit up several times in a way that I’d never seen before.

Not so little anymore Hazel Rivera was aroused, and that was exactly how I wanted her to be when I was around. Because I was hard as fuck this morning when I woke up and thought abouther straddling my shoulders like she’d need to for this picture. So much so that I’d already taken care of things twice—once in my bed, and once in the shower. But the thought of her being wet and naked on the other side of the wall had things perking up again.

Which was why I’d worn a pair of compression shorts underneath my athletic shorts, because I didn’t want to scare her. She’d had a hard enough time on Halloween keeping her eyes on my face and not my piercings. It probably didn’t help that they were at her eye level while I spent the entire night shirtless, but I’d seen her staring more than once when she’d noticed me watching her.

As a result, my nipples had ached the entire night from being the object of her attention. At the time, I’d tried to rationalize it as a reaction to the blizzard that’d taken us all by surprise. The same blizzard that had stranded her brother with her best friend for an entire weekend and seemed to be the spark that had led to her deciding to stop fleeing every time I was in the same room.

Even now, I’d seen lingering glances when I wore tight T-shirts because she knew what lay underneath. It wasn’t a secret that I was pierced because she’d seen me in a swimsuit dozens of times over the ten years since I’d had them, but the way she looked at me seemed to have changed over the last decade.

If only she knew that those weren’t my only piercings.

But I wouldn’t be that guy. The one who talked about his dick piercing to entice women. It was just a bonus for those who had the chance to find out. And having Hazel find out about that particular piece of body jewelry was the source of all my fantasies lately. The thought of watching her on her knees before me, her pink tongue darting out to play with the ring, tugging on it with her teeth, feeling it against the roof of her mouth while she sucked on my cock…

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