Fantasy

Lucas

He’s so hot!

I kept replaying it in my head on the drive home, his hair wet and sticking to his face, his broad manly chest, the trail of the towel wrapped around his waist, that few seconds of neither of us moving… and my goodness his massive cock.

Get it together, Carter.

I’ll admit the attraction started before all of that. The second he came down those stairs… tie loose, shirt open at the collar, sleeves shoved up his forearms something in me sat up and took notice. I could feel myself staring a bit longer than I should have but then I told myself it was nothing as it was my first time meeting THE Damien Voss. Rich, engaged, straight men are not a category I let myself linger on.

Then a door opened that shouldn’t have, and every one of those rules got a lot harder to remember.

As soon as I got inside, I pour a glass of wine hoping it helps clear the images in my head and sit at my kitchen table without turning on the lights, phone face-down so I don’t have to look at the reschedule text I already sent Anastasia. She’d been lovely warm, easy to talk to, exactly the kind of client I like working with. And I’d sat there making her laugh while some small, stupid part of my brain did the math on how long her fiancé would be upstairs.

That’s the part that gets me. Not the accident. The anticipation before it.

I don’t hide that I am gay, never have, not from anyone who’s mattered but I also don’t go looking for trouble, and Damien Voss is trouble in a tailored suit. A name attached to an empire, a spring wedding, and a fiancée who just handed me a commission worth more than my last three jobs combined. Whatever I think I saw in his eyes for that one absurd second in the doorway, it doesn’t change what he is on paper: unavailable, in every direction that matters.

Which makes it worse, somehow, that I can still feel exactly where his gaze landed before he grabbed the towel back. Can still see the flush climbing his neck, the way his jaw locked like he was furious at himself rather than at me.

I finish the wine. Pour another.

My phone buzzes Anastasia, gracious as ever. No worries at all, whenever works, hope the call went okay. Guilt needles under my ribs. Even though I don’t know why I feel guilty, maybe because I like and want her Fiancé? Or probably cox of the wild thoughts I had about him.

I should take the reschedule as a sign. Finish the portrait, collect the commission, never think about that house again. That’s the smart version of tonight. The version where I stay a professional who happened to walk into the wrong room once and never does anything that stupid again.

Instead I sit in the dark running the math on when I can go back.

A portrait of the two of them together means working closely with both of them sittings, sketches, the kind of proximity that doesn’t end after one afternoon. I tell myself that’s the problem. I tell myself I should call Anastasia back and suggest a different artist, someone who won’t sit in his car in the dark thinking about a stranger’s eyes.

I don’t make that call.

Instead I finish the wine, rinse the glass, and lie awake a long time doing the thing I have no business doing: looking forward to seeing Damien Voss again.