Page 17 of Hard Wood Daddy

But I can’t do that. She deserves better than to be ravaged by an illiterate recluse that looks like the cousin of Bigfoot.

Every time she poses for one of the classes, I’m watching. I watch Lindsay rearranging Tess’s body and imagine it’s my hands, my mouth, making contact with that deliciously smooth skin. I growl and grumble at the artists looking at her barely dressed. I obsess over the way the light cups the underside of her breasts. The soft pinkness of her shoulders. The rolls on her back settling softly atop one another, like she’s all the best parts of a woman stacked together.

And once everyone’s done, I go in and steal the art some of them leave behind like diamonds discarded unknowingly. They’re drawing on cheap flimsy paper like it doesn’t matter.

But, it does. Every drawing should be in a museum.

So I take it all myself. For my personal museum.

I plaster them on my ceiling, on the walls. Her sketches are the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning. The first thing I see before I pass out with my dick in my hand.

Now my cabin is a temple and the only goddess I know is Tess.

Some of the drawings are good, but none of them capture how beautiful she actually is. They don’t get how her curves are even wilder than the forest. How her hair flows and twists like the river. Or those sexy toenails she paints like all the flower petals in the meadow.

“Your fingernails are nice,” I twist the words from my lips, forcing them out through my trepidation, my eyes locking back on the road, afraid I’ll see her shake her head or laugh at my simple compliment.

“Really?” Instead, her voice chirps like a happy bird. She holds her hands in front of her to look. Right now she’s donesomething with polka dots on each nail. “Thank you. I really like them too.”

Nice? Why did I say they are ‘nice’? They are ten-thousand times better than nice.

“They’re art,” I manage with a surge of confidence in my chest. “You’re an artist.”

Her gaze softens as she turns and takes me in. Her eyes feel like they are licking me wherever they touch. “You get it, don’t you? Why I paint them?”

I jerk my chin in a nod. Up and down. Up and down, hard enough that my brain bounces around inside my skull.

“Are you an artist?” Tess reaches my way, her brow in a curious knot as she brushes her fingers along my temple and I nearly drive us off the road. “It looks like you’ve got a little pastel here.”

I can’t tell her, but I haven’t just been stealing art. I’ve been stealing supplies, because I have to draw her. If I’m not sleeping or stalking her, I’m drawing her. I have to see if I can capture Tess. I want her with me whether she wants to be there or not.

“I’m not an artist,” I say. “I just…draw. Things. Sometimes.”

You. Your tits. Your ass. What I imagine between your legs. The slope of your back and the way you tip your head over your shoulder. And your toes.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Your. Toes.

“That makes you an artist. You don’t just draw, you make art.” She raises her other hand for me to look. “Like me.”

Her fingers trail down my cheek and brush my beard and the muscles in my legs turn to knots. My balls try to climb up inside me and the throbbing ache of my constant erection is making the world sort of hazy around the edges.

Somehow, I make it to the grocery store on the edge of town without ravaging her or driving us off a cliff.

Tess is blushing as I jump out of the truck and run around like a jackrabbit to her side to open the door like a gentleman should.

“I’ll take, like, five minutes.” She slides down from the seat on a smile that makes me think she’s not playing with me, that she even really likes me.

But I already know in my heart I love her.

I wish my grandmother was still here. I bet she’d know how you turn like into love, and she’d surely tell me how to do it.

“Five minutes,” I agree, my eyes darting up and down the street. There’s more danger in town than in the forest, and if any of it comes around, I want to be ready. But I wonder if I’ll be able to handle five minutes without her smell, her touch, her beautiful eyes.

I watch her ass as it sways and bounces into the grocery store, loving every little jiggle. I’m jealous of the bell ringing over the door when she goes inside. Jealous that anything gets to experience her presence on this planet.

I spend all five minutes staring at the clock in the park at the center of town, waiting for her to come back.

---