Page 68 of Wild Flower

I swear, I see God when Finn’s cock pushes in.

I ripple and gasp, clamping down over his length as he enters me from behind. I move with the music, taking him deeper—panting against Archer and crying out in ecstasy. Archer’s eyes hold me as the music pounds, letting him witness the wicked glory of me being fucked in public.

Finn moves with the music—in and out—and it’s more intense than I can fathom.

I’m not Icarus who’s flown too close to the sun and falling to the earth with my broken wings. No, I’m Icarus caught by the star’s gravity, and now, I’m burning alive. I’m being pulled to the surface of the sun to burn up and die.

And it’s glorious.

Glorious how full I am.

Glorious how depraved and public we are.

Glorious how I pump my hips and look into Archer’s eyes as I shudder on Finn’s dick.

“You’re so beautiful.” Archer cups my face, and it’s tender and brutal as Finn sends me soaring—right into the center of that sun.

I’ve never felt more alive than I do right now, coming with a hundred strangers on every side, blossoming and gasping and on fire. I’m one of those rare plants that bloom once a century, and I don’t care who sees, because in this rare moment I feel one-hundred percent me.

38

FINN

Randolph Katz pulls me into his office and shuts the door. “I want to talk about your new work.”

It’s been a couple weeks since the Orchid and I’ve been distracted. I’ve been in a honeymoon haze with Becca and Archer, the three of us bouncing between his place and mine in a torrent of photography and wild nights.

And my work is on fire.

Becca’s a muse that turns everything behind my lens into gold. I’ve never been more in line with my own creative flow. A vibrant energy pulses through me now when I work, like I’ve tapped into an eternal spring of inspiration.

Of course, that doesn’t mean Katz likes the direction the work is headed.

My professor sits behind a large wooden desk, framed on four sides by his award-winning photographs. He’s been cryptic in class, not negative, but challenging, talking more about my photos than he has in the past, which I take as a good thing.

“Your new photographs have an energy and a sophistication of thought that’s compelling,” Katz praises. “You’re on the verge of a breakthrough and I can feel it.”

“Wow,” I say, sitting at the edge of my seat across from him, completely astonished. Katz doesn’t dole out compliments. He verbally demolishes students in his signature elitist monotone while drinking a cup of tea.

“What’s changed?” he asks, his hands pitched together in the shape of a tent. “All year you’ve brought in nothing but uninspired bullshit.”

Yup, he normally says things like that.

“What’s different?” he fishes. “What’s caused you to wake up to life and unearth your talent?”

He goes on to give me several more compliments using bougie phrases and big words that end in -ism: conceptualism, voyeurism, you’d-better-look-these-up-ism. He continues to ramble, and I try to figure out how to explain Becca. I can’t tell him the truth. I can’t say something as inane asI met a girl and the world looks different now.That’s the cliché of clichés.

Katz ends his speech by leaning forward and piercing me with a stare. In my brilliant lack of eloquence, I mumble, “Uh … I found my muse, I guess.” Katz’s eye twitches.Way to reach for another elusive cliché, dipshit.

“Quite literally,” Katz says when I stay silent, pulling my most recent photographs from a stack of student projects. He taps the blurry photo of Becca and Archer running on the beach. “Your work is incriminating—for the viewer. We can feel the primordial urges radiating off these two. You dare us and condemn us, Finn. I’m not young or reckless anymore, and your work slaps me in the face with that truism. It’s infuriating and brilliant.”

Everything he says feels like a back-handed compliment.

“That’s your problem right there,” Katz says, pointing at my face. “You put too much stock in what I say. Even now, as I praise your work, you’re second-guessing it. This is every student’s problem; you think critique is a judgement and not an opportunity to grow. But you never hesitated when creating this work, not even when it was of these two fucking.”

He pulls out the blurry, ghost-like image of Archer and Becca against the window. My muscles go rigid. Did I go too far? Should I have deleted that one?

“You’re still doing it,” Katz chastises. “You have to get me out of your head. Your work is authentic, Finn. Is this a risky photo? Yes! But that’s also what makes it good.”

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