The Body Painter (Master of Trickery Book 1) Read online

  His fingers feathered over my upper thigh as he sketched an outline. His minty breath skated over the tops of my breasts as he leaned closer to add detail. The outside of his hand brushed my nipple as he angled himself to airbrush my cleavage with a vibrant slash of magenta.

  Holy...

  I bit down on my bottom lip, doing my best to remain stiff and silent.

  Time once again intruded on us. I steadily turned from a person into whatever he wanted me to be.

  I’d been kidding myself that I could survive him. Years might’ve flowed between us but whatever it was that drew, linked, and bound us in school was still there. Only this time...it was stronger than a hum, deeper than a puddle, darker than any nightmare.

  The warehouse shivered in silence, both of us too afraid to break the oppressive stillness as Gilbert traded his air gun for small bottles and brushes. Enlisting sponge-tipped tools, he added further flourishes.

  I locked my knees as he migrated his way up my body. The sensation of paint covering my lower part kept the chill at bay, but it didn’t stop my nipples from pebbling as Gil stopped at my chest and made a strange noise.

  My heart raced but his face hid any sign of being anything but professional as he reached out with a small sponge and dabbed my breasts with blackened purple.

  I stiffened as the wet intrusion of colour made my skin hyperaware of him. It took everything I had to pick a dirty spot on the ceiling and keep my eyes locked on it.

  I hoped he’d move onto other areas like he had before, but I wasn’t given a reprieve. He stayed painfully close, his frame huge and hulking, his eyes narrowed and calculating, his energy casting waves every time he touched me with his medium.

  My eyes closed despite my command to stay open. My chest heaved while he worked so close he could’ve pressed his nose into my cleavage. An utterly, miserably long eternity passed while he painted flesh that hadn’t been touched in a very long time, unwittingly wrapping me up in barbwire desire until I could barely think, let alone remain standing.

  The longer he bowed over my breasts, tracing the arm looped between them, the shallower his own breathing became. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. The careful cruelty on his face flickered with seconds of barely restrained violence.

  Violence for me? For us? Our past? His work? His injuries? His business?

  I didn’t know.

  I’d probably never know.

  All I knew was my body didn’t care what Gil had done to me in the past. It wanted him, and this was a new level of unbearable torture.

  I’m glad this is a one-time deal.

  If I had to stand like this again for him, I’d burn through my self-restraint and end up pushing him to the floor with need. I’d ruin everything all because being with him brought the past to life and nullified the worries of my future.

  I breathed him in, learning his scent of citrus, paint thinner, and moody colours. I exhaled just as quickly. He drugged me. Confused me. Hurt me.

  He stopped breathing altogether as he swapped his sponge for a delicate brush and did his best to make me collapse with the fine bristles. At one point, self-preservation took over and my chin dropped and shoulders rolled to inch away from his artist’s touch.

  But he clucked his tongue, pressed paint-smeared fingers under my jaw and coerced me back into place. “Never break the position.”

  His voice was odd. Thick as oil and dark as charcoal. He cleared his throat as our eyes met. The undercurrent of electricity made me burn alive and freeze to death in equal measure.

  “Okay,” I strangled as he dropped his fingers and cocked his head, utterly regal and terribly callous. His gaze darted down my mostly painted form with a frown. In a flash, his heavy hand angled my hip closer to him, twisting me this way and that like some store-bought mannequin with plastic in her veins instead of blood.

  “Don’t move again.” With his bitten command, he resumed painting as if fire hadn’t sparked and crackled between us. The hair on my arms prickled beneath his colours. My scalp tingled. My tummy clenched. All because I found him beyond attractive as he worked in his element.

  His face slipped a little, revealing a wash of lust. Then it was gone again, drowned by the impenetrable artist. “Arch back. I can’t get a part of your ribcage.”

  I shuddered as his knuckles nudged my shoulder, pushing me. “Do what I say.”

  Trembling, I called on muscles to brace me as I reclined backward, feeling my breasts rising, my arm slipping, my stomach flattening—every part of me elongating to balance.

  It felt like a dance.

  A frozen in time chorography.

  My heart leapt for joy.

  My back twinged with agony, warning me not to go too far.

  A black noise rumbled in his chest as I settled into this new back-breaking position. For a second, no brush or sponge touched me. Gil stood beside me, his body heat scorching, and I wondered...just for a moment...if he’d snap.

  If he’d give into the fog of desire that’d grown so thick around us.

  I wanted him to throw down his tools, wrap his fist in my hair, and yank me into a murderous kiss.

  But he cleared his throat again and stepped closer, searing me as he dabbed paint on the underside of my breasts.

  It didn’t take long.

  Merely a few seconds, but in those few seconds, my heart was visible beneath my rainbow-hued skin. It pounded for freedom. It thudded for more. Gil ceased to be the boy who broke me. The boy who vanished without a whisper and became the most skilled chemist—blending colours and chroma, somehow using both to infiltrate my very being.

  He jerked back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as he stormed to his worktable with slightly shaky steps. He kept his back to me as he mixed and diluted his next layer of pigment. “Stand up straight,” he ordered over his shoulder as a flash of silver and navy blended with something metallic in his hands.

  I did as I was told, maintaining the original pose as he attached the air gun to a new compressor and returned to me.

  He refused to meet my gaze as he tested the trigger with a quick press into his palm, frowning at the consistency and coverage.

  After a few tweaks of the pressure valve, he crowded me again.

  Strength ran from my limbs. I was wobbly and weak and woefully unprepared to continue. I wanted to ask how much longer this nightmare would last, but he ducked to his haunches, his face between my legs, his unruly hair tickling my thigh as he held the gun over my knee and pressed the trigger.

  God...

  I jolted at the tickle.

  He dragged the hissing sensation up my leg, higher and higher until the puff of air found the part of me throbbing for attention. He was too close, too near, too much.

  I couldn’t do it.

  I stumbled.

  My arm fell from around my breasts, automatically seeking purchase to stop my fall.

  My prettily painted fingers landed on his head for balance, those same fingers sinking into his thick, messy hair.

  A flashback of running my fingers over his scalp when we were teenagers assaulted me. The texture of his strands hadn’t changed. Still coarse but silky. Soft but strong. The heat of his head and the sudden menacing glower of his eyes made my heart relocate into my palms and skip a beat.

  “Sorry.” I tried to pull away, yet I couldn’t seem to order my fingers to let go.

  He didn’t move—frozen on his haunches before me, his very presence lashing around me.

  Shoving aside heavy want, I managed to untangle my fingers and raise my arm into position. My chin soared up, and my gaze locked onto a poster across the room promoting the benefits of a particular type of latex for prosthetic work.

  For an eon, Gil didn’t move.

  He breathed hard and shallow. His teeth clenched audibly.

  Then, slowly, methodically, he leaned forward and pressed the trigger as if nothing had happened.

  The burst of air and stream of paint made me shudder.
My stomach leapt as he slipped over the tiny scrap of underwear hiding me and worked on my inner thighs.

  I throbbed.

  I wanted, wanted, wanted, but somehow, I kept the pose.

  It took all my willpower not to arch away, but my mind filled with images of tongues licking me, tasting me, leaving behind sticky coverage in the form of colour that masked my own.

  The room stayed deathly silent as Gil gradually covered every inch. He switched his method from soft shading to slashing me with ribbons of paint and harsh bursts of air.

  The sensation teased me, made me wet.

  I bit my lip.

  I locked my toes onto the smoothness of the podium and pressed my arm tighter to my chest, giving my body something else to think about.

  The whir of the compressor and the faint hiss of the air gun decorated the stretched silence.

  I could’ve come from the airbrush alone.

  But then he was gone, moving onto more tolerable areas, adding finishing touches.

  I tried to relax, did my best not to flinch each time he came close with a new colour or suck in a breath when he brushed parts of me normally reserved for lovers.

  My nakedness disappeared under a cloud of blended artwork.

  “Don’t move,” he muttered as he tossed his tools down and grabbed his fine brush again.

  He drew calligraphy lines and highlighted parts of whatever he’d painted, stepping away and scowling only to storm back and torture me with another lick of bristles.

  Once he was happy with my body, he turned to my hair and face.

  I’d thought having him focus on my body was hard.

  It was nothing compared to having Gil’s fingers tilting my chin this way and that, his teeth sinking into his bottom lip in concentration, his steady talent transforming my cheeks into art and my hair teased with whatever shade he’d chosen.

  At one point, he tugged my hair into a tighter bun and the wash of passion made me jerk with need. His breath caught; the air gun faltered.

  I swayed as he held my jaw, carefully sponging colour over my forehead and eyebrows.

  “Close your eyes.” His fingers dug into my skin as if such a command affected him as much as it did me.

  I obeyed, grateful to cut him from my vision when he was all I could see. The softness of his paint and the heat of his presence magnified, adding another dimension to my troubles.

  But then, it was over.

  He stepped away.

  Coldness returned, and aloneness resettled.

  My first time as a canvas, and it was finished.

  Tossing his brushes away, he jumped off the podium and stared at me from a few feet away. His head cocked, assessing each angle and curve, not looking at all happy with his creation.

  With me.

  He didn’t inquire if the pose was comfortable or if the foreignness of being covered in paint was acceptable.

  I wasn’t Olin.

  I was merely his.

  With the scent of paint in the air and hunger pangs growing more insistent in my belly, Gilbert came back, added a splatter of rhinestones across my hip bone and brow, then towered over me to paint an area of my shoulder in glue before dabbing turquoise and black glitter over my collarbone.

  He leaped off the platform with nimble grace and cupped his chin with paint-speckled hands. He didn’t just cock his head this time, he pinned me to the podium with his assessment. His eyes were never still, judging, deliberating.

  He stared at my breasts, hips, and legs with more intensity than any man before him.

  He only saw flaws and areas of improvement.

  Having him a few metres away instead of a few centimetres allowed me to breathe for the first time since I got naked. My knees quaked, and I thanked every star above that he’d only painted my front. I didn’t know how I could’ve coped with him behind me. His breath on the back of my neck. His fingers on my ass. His palms skating down my spine.

  Stop it.

  It’s done.

  When the silence became too much, I murmured, “Now what?”

  My voice broke the spell.

  He jerked as if I’d dragged him away from something painful. He cleared his throat all over again from the crackling tension. “I’m not happy, but it will have to do.” Marching away to a cupboard in the shadows, he ordered, “Stay there.”

  I did as he said, waiting as he pulled open a drawer and came back with an expensive-looking camera. Depositing the camera by my feet, he stalked toward the large spotlights and other photography equipment tucked out of paint’s reach and rolled them around the podium.

  With no warning to guard my eyes, he turned them all on, blinding me in white intensity.

  I winced, squeezing my eyes shut as the heat of the lamps instantly warmed the chill in my bones. The thud of Gil’s boots paced around me as he prepared things. Slowly, I cracked open my gaze, getting used to the brightness.

  He stood with the camera in his hands and a haughty, hungry look on his face. “Don’t move unless I tell you to.” Bringing the camera up, he framed me in a picture and pressed the button. The soft click sent another wash of goosebumps over me.

  Time slipped into nonsense again as Gil took a copious number of photos from every angle, all with the black matte bricks behind me as the backdrop. Some he came in for a close-up on specific areas on my skin, others he took from far away. He even climbed up a ladder and took some from above.

  Through it all, I stayed the perfect mannequin, doing my best to keep my face impassive, breathing light, and muscles smooth.

  By the time he clicked the last photo, my stomach wasn’t just grumbling for food it was growling, and my feet ached from standing so long.

  Gil didn’t say a word as he returned the camera to the cupboard, turned the spotlights off, and raked a hand through his hair, smoothing back the roguish strands. He didn’t care he had as much paint on his fingers as I did on my body, just like he didn’t care I was still there, trapped in his instruction and not permitted to move.

  He caught my eye.

  Something powerful and ancient throbbed between us.

  Something we couldn’t control.

  I was wrong.

  He did care.

  He cared a great deal.

  His forehead furrowed as he drank me in. His shoulders fell as he sighed. “It’s over. Go take a shower. I’ll get cash for you.” Turning away, he marched into his office without a backward glance.

  * * * * *

  “Holy mother of mercy,” I whispered under my breath.

  The mirror reflected me.

  But it wasn’t me.

  I’d vanished and left behind some storybook empress.

  This magical creature drenched in reds and blues, purples and shadow could never be me.

  Wow.

  Just...wow.

  Gil’s bathroom hid me from the cold warehouse. I’d intended to rush into the shower and rid myself of the strange sensation of being wrapped in something foreign.

  But that was before the full-length mirror trapped my gaze and I was hypnotised.

  I’d seen his talent on YouTube. I’d studied the complicated designs he’d done and always known he was a wizard with paint.

  But now?

  Now, I had a whole new appreciation for why people called him the Master of Trickery.

  Inching forward, I didn’t focus on my nudity. How could I when I wore something so much more than mere clothes?

  I wore Gilbert’s mark. His time and energy and skill.

  My torso no longer held breasts or ribs or muscle. It was an underwater cavern with spiels of light illuminating black pockets where eels and crustaceans hid in the gloom. But in the bright sunlight shining from my chin, down my clavicle, and dappling my chest, krill and multi-coloured gemstone fish frolicked, almost as if my ribcage had become an aquarium for such incredible sea life.

  Twisting a little, my eyes widened in amazement as I studied a glowing crystal ball depicting a scene of a shi
pwreck with glittery rhinestones on my hip. Flowing over my shoulder was a perfect waterfall. It puddled in my collarbone before spilling free with blue glitter and silver thread, as lifelike and as wet as any liquid down my arm.

  It was magic—pure and simple.

  The commission must’ve been for an aquarium or travel advertisement or something that inspired nature and adventure.

  It inspired me.

  I felt like I could swim underwater and summon all manner of wildlife.

  I felt royal.

  The photos he’d taken would no doubt be sent to whoever requested this piece, and somewhere out there, in some busy shopping complex or some glossy magazine, people would stare at my naked body and not see a woman but an entire underwater kingdom with me as its ruler.

  I’d thought he didn’t see me as a person.

  I was wrong.

  He’d seen past that simple illusion and shown me that even my own perception was too narrow.

  Wearing his paint made me stand taller, act prouder, move smoother. I posed as if I wore an expensive gown, custom made and agonisingly tailored to perfection.

  I wasn’t human.

  No way.

  I was more.

  So, so much more.

  And for the first time in a very, very long time...I was happy.

  Chapter Seven

  ______________________________

  Olin

  -The Present-

  “HERE’S YOUR CASH.”

  I dragged fingers through my damp hair, slightly tangled from towel drying and not having a brush. “Thanks.” I moved toward him, hoisting my bag up my shoulder. My clothes were back in place, and my skin returned to bland—vacant of rhinestones and illusions.

  I gingerly reached for the envelope enclosing money that would buy me a few more days of roof and walls. “Appreciate it.”

  He grunted something and turned away. Just like me, he was clean from any paint, apart from a single streak of navy on his jawline.

  My stomach did a little flip.

  Stop it, O.

  Just stop it.

  He looked up as I shoved the envelope a little too firmly into my bag.

  “Don’t you want to count it?”