Page 29 of Lovers in Lockdown

Of course, he is.

‘Dick.’ I shoot him a glare, but I can’t help smiling when he looks away.

‘I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not. But I thought you told me you can’t cook?’ He takes a bottle of water from the fridge and drinks most of it in one gulp.

‘I was playing it down. Didn’t want you to feel competitive.’ I totally wasn’t, I can’t cook for shit, but how hard can it be? ‘I’ve got a few things up my sleeve, don’t you worry.’

Confidence is key. Fake it til you make it, right?

Glancing at the clock above the sink in the kitchen and realising there’s only five minutes until the start of my next class, I excuse myself with a military salute and head down the short hallway to the bedroom, aka, my office.

The next few hours are spent shouting at fifteen preteens through a computer screen and cursing under my breath as I try, remarkably unsuccessfully, to stop them from covering the walls of their houses in psychedelic coloured paint.

Thankfully, I insist on only using washable paint, because I doubt their parents want the stress of spontaneously redecorating their homes, on top of having to deal with working from home and having no childcare.

Once the class is over and I’ve taken a moment to get my breath back, because an hour trying to keep those kids under control is like a full body workout, I spend some time working on the portrait of Noah.

I get lost in the brushstrokes as I paint, concentrating hard to ensure that every inch of his skin is rendered and touched up to perfection. I want the final product to look so authentic that it could be a photograph.

And, for the most part, I think I’ve achieved just that.

It would be perfect if it wasn’t for the big, empty space smack bang in the middle of the canvas.

The place where his cock should be.

It’s an intimidating task, painting a penis the size of Noah’s. And I really don’t think I got a good enough look at it when I crashed into him on the first day, or even when I caught him jacking off, to do it any justice.

It’s just such a shame that I won’t get another chance to see it.

At around five, I finally give up staring at the missing piece of Noah’s figurative naked body and venture out to join him in the living room, only to find him out cold and sprawled across the couch. Mouth agape. Snoring. And topless.

Totally topless.

Yum.

In all my twenty-five years on this earth, I have never seen anything quite so delicious. His body makes my mouth water more than a cake slathered in creamy icing and topped off with rainbow sprinkles. Honestly, I’m not even exaggerating.

I would actually rather eat Noah than cake.

And finally, it dawns on me why Noah is the perfect name for him. He is divine in his entirety. The way his muscles ripple as he breathes is the stuff of legends and his defined, swollen pecs should only belong on deities.

He is just a huge, beautiful God of a human being.

And I want so dangerously to worship him on my knees and get to know him in the biblical sense.

He wakes suddenly to find me watching him with my mouth hanging open and drool dripping from the side of my mouth. It’s not a good look.

‘You really have made a habit of watching me, haven’t you?’ He yawns, rubs his eyes and stretches, his biceps bulging as he does so, causing even more dribble to spill from my mouth.

Christ, not this conversation again.

‘It’s not my fault you’re naked all the time. Don’t you own clothes?’ I ask, forcing myself to tear my eyes away from the chiselled arrow that points directly to the promised land.

‘Just more comfortable without them. Like what you see?’ He wiggles his eyebrows and grins when I scowl at him.

‘No,’ I lie, and if the glint in his eye is anything to go by, he knows it too.

‘Are you sure?’ He runs his hand across the hard ridges on his stomach and my knees go weak with jealousy that it’s not my fingers stroking the stretched skin there instead of his.

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