I stood, stretched for a minute.
“You look beautiful,” he said. He told me often. I gave him a little half-smile. Then I went to pee. When I came back, he had removed his t-shirt and was situating the pillows. Luke shirtless is a gift from all the gods. If Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Yahweh, and Vishnu ever had a powwow, it was to create Luke’s torso. Broad shoulders, tight pecs, washboard abs, he was like sculpted marble.
“Is it naked time now?” I tried to tease but it came out quiet and introspective.
He nodded, curtly, like he was trying not to make a big deal out of the whole thing.
I slipped my jeans off first, dropping them next to my discarded t-shirt. He was still standing close, waiting for me to lay on the couch so he could position me. I heard his deep intake of breath. He reached for me, running his hand over the cup of my bra, gently kneading my breast beneath the fabric. My nipples puckered instantly. I dropped my head back and a little guttural sound escaped. As if my noise alerted him to his own behavior, he dropped his hand back to his side, huffed air out his nose, and swallowed. I took a deep breath. Unsnapped my bra and let it fall to the floor. Then, I pulled down my panties and stood again.
My blue hair cascaded over my shoulders, covering my breasts. I thought of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. He took a step back, taking me in. He didn’t know it, but he was giving me something. Something bigger than modeling in front of a class of strangers. Luke made me his muse and there was this giant bravery required to embody that role and it felt sexy and brazen and bold. My body was his to peruse—it was his to pose, his to have and devour. But it was mine. I was accepting my body as a thing worthy of his worship and granting him access.
“Lie down,” he commanded, his voice rough with desire.
I did, but my heart was anything but relaxed. It raced in my chest like I was preparing to parachute out of an open plane door.
“Shift to your side, just a bit. Yes, like that.” He crossed to me, again, gently placing another pillow behind me. “Do you know Manet’s Olympia?” he asked.
I nodded.
“I was thinking you could position yourself like that.”
Shamelessly breathless, I said, “Show me what you want.”
Again, he curtly nodded, maintaining some semblance of professionalism, but he was standing and I was lying on the couch, so from my vantage, I was well aware of how my nakedness was affecting him. He bent over me, running his hands up my sides until he got to my shoulders. He shifted the left one forward and the right one back. Then, he propped my right elbow up on the pillow in such a way as to push forward my breast bone just a bit and reveal the fullness of my bust. Unlike Manet’s Olympia, he draped my blue tresses so that they framed my breasts. As he worked, I became more and more aware that his breathing was as labored as mine.
He stepped back and then said, “Cross your ankles, left one on top.”
I did.
“Now, bring that left hand forward and rest it on the top of your right thigh. Perfect.” Almost giddy, he crossed back to the easel.
When I was modeling in class, I kept my mind on my goal, to feel at peace in my body, but this was different. I wasn’t thinking about my relationship with my body at all. Instead, I was swimming in his reverence for my body. Luke’s eyes swept over me, again and again. Each stroke of his pencil was a caress, rivers of charged energy plowing through me. Sometimes his glance lifted me up, elevating me in his awe, a kind of piety, a worshiping of me and other times, his eyes were overtaken by an almost irrational fervor, a craving, a kind of lecherous carnality that awoke a quiet storm of desire from deep in my core. With every inhalation, I felt the soft velvety fabric of the couch brushing against my back and thighs. My skin flushed, inflamed and hypersensitive. I desperately wanted to run my own hands over the softness of my body to try to calm and quench the feelings. But I stayed still, panting my breaths, trying not to beg him to put down his pencils and touch me.
“Can we talk?” I asked. “Or will it be distracting?”
“We can talk,” he offered, but his mind was clearly still on his work. There was a long pause before he said, “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I’m thinking about you,” I said simply because it was true.
His eyes jumped from the page to my face. He took me in from head to toe, and as his eyes moved over me, my skin pinked up even more. He could see it, the flush of my skin, the tension in my muscles, how wet and wanton I was for him.
“Tell me,” he said, taking a bright blue pastel from the table.