Page 62 of Illicit Illustration

A quiet thumping sound coming from the little alcove leading toward the kitchen had me leaving the pizza box on the bar and moving toward the noise. Although I barely held in my laughter when I saw what was causing it.

“Stupid, fucking stupid…” Hazel muttered, letting her forehead drop to the wall again, the sound echoing from the wooden panel.

After the third thump, I stepped into her field of vision, tapping my shoe against the baseboard to get her attention.

“Fuck,” she breathed out, covering her chest with her hand when she realized I was standing there. “How long have you been here?”

“Long enough to see you literally beating yourself up with the poor, unsuspecting wall.”

“I wasn’t…” she trailed off, reaching up to rub the red spot on her forehead. Part of me was worried she’d hurt herself, but it faded quickly once she’d stopped abusing it.

“Yeah, you were,” I teased, and thankfully, she smiled. Maybe things between us weren’t completely ruined. “And now you’re going to tell me why.”

“It’s stupid,” she muttered, trying to walk around me, but I stepped in front of her, chuckling when she bumped into my chest and looked up at me with narrowed eyes.

“It’s not stupid, kitten. Clearly, something has gotten you all worked up.”

“Doesn’t matter. We’re not doing this anymore.”

“Doing what? Talking? You gonna run away from me again? I thought we were past that. I thought we were friends.”

I wanted a whole lot fucking more than that, but I wasn’t confessing that right now. Right now, I needed to help her fix whatever was stressing her out.

“This isn’t a problem you can help with anymore. We decided we weren’t those kinds of friends.”

Needing to remind her she was the one who made that decision, not me, I leaned down and whispered in her ear. “So, this is about a commission?”

“No.”

“Liar,” I teased, secretly enjoying it when her expression morphed from uncertainty to something a little more heated. “What’s wrong? I thought things were getting easier once you started using the photos as references. Maybe someone shouldn’t have pushed their photographer away so quickly.”

“They are—were—I don’t fucking know. I can’t get the proportions right, and now I just want to erase the whole thing. But she needs it for a PR package going out in a month and it takes two weeks to get prints…”

I’d seen her like this before—moments where she let her nerves get the best of her. Deciding I’d deal with the fallout later; I pulled her into my arms and tucked her head underneath my chin.

“Breathe, Haz. Show me. I’ll see if I can help.”

After unexpectedly squeezing me back, she broke free of my hold, reaching to grab her tablet and clutching it to her chest.

“Come on, it can’t be that bad. If you're in a tight spot, you can always take a picture of me and use it.”

“No!” she shouted, her cheeks turning pink before she lowered her voice. “I mean, no thank you. Not this one. It won’t work. I can’t ask you to…”

Before she could plot an escape, I pried the tablet out of her hands, quickly typing in the passcode and studying the image she was drawing in her illustration software.

It was just as detailed as her previous works, but instead of it being a couple in the photo, the subject was a man sitting in a chair.

A mostly nude man sitting with his hand wrapped around a blank space where I was assuming a dick would go.

“Um. Is this dude human?”

While none of the commissions she’d shared with me were otherworldly creatures, I knew that fantasy romance was popular right now.

“Yes,” she mumbled, her voice muted through the hands now covering her face.

“Does he have an invisible penis?”

She shook her head, still refusing to look at me. “Well, right now he does, but no.”

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