Mara storms out of the room.
Simon turns, grinning toothily.
“Well, it was worth a try,” he snickers.
I shoot him a look that wipes the smile off his face in an instant.
“I better get back to the party . . .” he stammers, trying to edge past me out of the room.
I shove him out of the way, striding after Mara myself.
I can see her mane of tangled dark hair disappearing out the front doors of the gallery.
To my utter fury, she’s grabbed the hand of some random fucking idiot and she’s dragging him along with her.
What the fuck does she think she’s doing?
Her stubbornness is really starting to piss me off.
I wanted you . . . genuinely.
My head gives a twitch, shaking off the memory of those words like an irritating fly buzzing next to my ear.
I embarrassed her.
She was so vulnerable, kneeling before me . . . I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to see how far I could push her.
The more she rebels against me, the more I want to crush her.
And the more she clings to her convictions, the further I intend to drag her down dark and twisted pathways . . .
By the time I reach the front doors, Mara and her hapless companion have already climbed into a taxi and pulled away from the curb.
Where the fuck is she going?
I’m putting a tracker on her phone. First thing tomorrow. I should have done it already.
Sonia intercepts me.
“Marcus York is looking for you,” she says.
“What?” I say distractedly.
“He’s right over there.” She points. “Come on, I’ll bring you over, he says he has something ‘huge’ to tell you.”
“I bet,” I say irritably.
York is a city planner and self-proclaimed “patron of the arts.” He’s influential in this city, but he was also close with my father, which means I can’t fucking stand him.
“Cole!” he says in his booming voice, clapping me hard on both shoulders.
York is apple-shaped, with outrageously frizzy hair and a florid face. His teeth are long and ivory-colored, always on display because he’s always smiling. The clownish hair and avuncular tone are meant to disarm the people he meets. I know better—York is a shark, taking greedy bites out of every construction contract and zoning deal that passes over his desk.
“I ought to come visit you,” he says. “It’s been too long since I came to Seacliff.”
He was one of the many associates who used to visit my father’s private office on the ground floor of the house. Most of the movers and shakers of San Francisco passed through those double oak doors at one time or another. Now no one comes to my home, ever. And I intend to keep it that way.
“I do all my business out of my studio,” I say.
“But we’re old friends.” York raises his grizzled eyebrows.
“Friendships founded on business are superior to businesses founded on friendship.”
“Spoken like your father,” York laughs.
I loathe comparisons to my father.
A savvy operator, York sees my lips tighten and swiftly changes the subject.
“I was telling Sonia here that we have an exciting opportunity in the offing. The city is putting up two million for a monumental sculpture for Corona Heights Park. We’ll be accepting designs all next month. I expect you’ll want to throw your hat in the ring. Shaw too, I’d wager.”
“Where is Shaw?” I interject, glancing at Sonia. “He never misses New Voices.”
Because he’d never miss fucking one of those new voices.
Sonia shrugs. “His name was on the guest list . . .”
Though I’d rather delay Shaw’s collision with Mara, his unexplained absence is worse.
I’m in a foul mood, more agitated than I’ve been in months. I keep wondering where Mara went, what she’s doing at this moment. And I could not give less of a fuck what York is yammering on about.
“This is your chance to put your mark on this city once and for all,” York says pompously. “Get your name out there.”
I smile thinly. “I’m not sure how widely I want my name to be known.”
“Then you shouldn’t be so damn talented,” York guffaws. “You’ve got a month to draw up your proposal—don’t miss the deadline. You know I’ll put in a good word for you.”
I suppress the sneer that arises at the idea that I need Marcus York to talk up my design.
Instead, I feel the buzz of my phone in my pocket and I snatch it out, besieged by the irrational idea that Mara might have texted me.
Close . . . it’s a motion notification for the camera inside her studio.
Good. She ditched the guy and decided to get some work done. How industrious of her.
It’s not enough to know where she is—I need to see her.
“Excuse me,” I say to Sonia, interrupting York mid-sentence. York frowns, a hint of the shark peering out from under his lowered brows.
I slip past them both, heading back into the empty galleries that were roped off for the show. I weave my way through abstract sculptures on plinths and large color-blocked canvases.
I want to be alone so I can watch her. Is she starting a new painting? I told her she should continue her series of saint-inspired portraits. My curiosity to see what she comes up with next far outstrips my interest in any of the art hanging all around me.
My eyes are glued to the phone screen.
The security camera feed loads at last, and I have a live stream of Mara’s studio in full color, right before my eyes.
She’s not alone.
She’s brought that fucking guy into her studio. MY studio.
My fingers clench around the phone so hard I hear the glass screen groaning.
Mara and the guy are talking. She’s taken two beers out of the mini-fridge and they’re sipping their drinks, Mara gesturing with her free hand as she traces in the air the shapes that she intends to draw on the fresh blank canvas set upon its easel.
Is she telling him about the series? Telling him what she plans to do next?
I can hear the low murmur of their voices but not make out the precise words.
Mara opens several canisters of paint, showing him the colors inside. He dips his finger into the violet paint and dabs it on her nose. Mara laughs, wiping it off with the back of her hand.
I’ll fucking kill him.
Mara sets down her beer. She strides over to the stereo and turns on her music, much too loud as per usual.
The pounding beat is easily loud enough for me to make out the lyrics.
Stupid boy think that I need him . . .
A hot, molten heat rises up the back of my neck, all the way to my ears. Simultaneously, my hands go cold.
Mara marches back to the center of the room, directly in front of the camera. She seizes the guy by the shirt and yanks him toward her, kissing him ferociously.
The kiss seems to go on forever.
It’s wild and deep, not unlike the one Mara and I shared only an hour ago.
In fact, I almost feel like I’ve stepped back in time. With his back to me, his shaggy dark hair, and his black t-shirt, her date could be me. And Mara—eyes closed, head tilted back, body pressed against him—looks just as irresistible as she did up close.
I feel like I’m floating inside the room with them, outside my own body.
I watch, transfixed, as Mara pulls his shirt up over his head, baring an athletic body covered in tattoos. She pulls down the shoulder straps of her own tiny floral mini dress, letting the dress puddle around her boots. She steps free, slim and nude, the silver rings glinting in her nipples.
Even from behind, I can tell the guy is gawking at her body.
So am I.
Mara’s figure is so smooth and lithe that I want to draw it without ever lifting my pencil from the page. Her skin is luminescent. She shaved her pussy bare, something I’ve never seen before in my time spying on her.
Who did she do that for?
Was it for me?
Now this fucking nobody is looking at her instead. He’s putting his hands around her waist. Drawing her close to kiss her again.
I want to drive over there. Rip them apart. Smash his head into the wall a hundred times until his skull cracks like a melon and his brains leak out his ears.
But I’m frozen in place, unable to look away from the screen even for a second.
Mara drops to her knees before him. She unbuckles his jeans and yanks them down, letting his cock spring free, already hard. Mine is bigger, but that’s no fucking consolation when she takes him in her mouth, enveloped between her soft, full lips, running her pink tongue up and down his shaft, swirling around the head.
She’s voracious, enthusiastic, playful. Giving him the kind of blowjob men only dream of receiving.
I’m engulfed in jealousy. Inflamed with it. It’s a bonfire all around me, and I’m a heretic tied to the stake, burning and burning and burning.
That mouth belongs around my cock. Those slate-gray eyes should be looking up at me.
Despite my fury, despite my raging jealousy, my own cock is stiffening inside my trousers. It jabs painfully against my zipper, demanding to be released.
I can’t stop watching.
Mara stands and the guy swoops her up, lowering her down on his wet, shining cock. She wraps her arms around his neck, riding up and down on him, making her little tits bounce.
She fucks like a demon, biting his lower lip, clawing his back with her nails.
The guy looks like he’s died and gone to heaven. He’s doing his best to keep up with her, sweating, arms shaking, fucking her as hard as she demands. He fucks her against the wall, against the windows, the glass steaming up behind them, their bodies leaving a vacant silhouette when they pull away again.
They knock over one of the open canisters of paint, spilling violet across my hardwood floors. I hear the guy swear and apologize, but Mara just laughs. She places her palms flat on the paint, then smears them across his chest. Now he’s laughing too, dipping his hands in two more canisters, printing coral and chocolate handprints on her breasts.
They kiss again, bumping the canvas off its easel so it falls flat on the floor.
The guy lays down in the spilled paint and Mara mounts him. He smears more paint up and down her naked body while she rides him.
The sight of Mara’s body streaked in citron, scarlet, and sienna is more than I can stand. I rip down my zipper, taking my throbbing cock in my hand. I start pumping up and down, so rough that I’m almost ripping skin off the shaft. I’ve never been so angry. Or so aroused.
They’re rolling around in the paint until they hardly have an inch of bare skin left. They roll over the canvas, they fuck on top of it. He spoons her on it, fucking her from behind.
Mara climbs on top again and now she’s riding him harder and harder, charging down the raceway to the finish line. Her breasts are bouncing, her hair flying, her face flushed and sweating.
Right then, right as she’s about to cum, she looks directly at the camera. She stares at me like she’s looking in my eyes. Her expression is wild and defiant.
In that moment I realize this whole thing has been a performance.
She knew I would watch.
She’s been fucking him for me, at me.
To get revenge on me.
And I realize . . . she’s everything I dreamed of and more. More vengeful. More strategic. More effective.
More fucked up.
I watch her body bouncing, gyrating. I see the wicked smirk on her face as she starts to cum.
It makes me explode. Cum rockets out of my cock, spurting so far that I hit the edge of a landscape, spraying the painting and the frame.
I don’t give a fuck.
I don’t even clean it up.
I simply yank up my zipper, vowing to myself that the next time I unleash a load like that, it’s going on Mara’s face.
The next morning I arrive at the studio two hours earlier than usual.
I barely slept.
Every time I dozed off, I dreamed of Mara’s paint-streaked body, writhing and bouncing, so beautiful in motion that it became a living work of art.
I kept jolting awake, sweating, my cock a red-hot iron bar.
I couldn’t even jerk off, thanks to my hasty vow last night.
Too bad for me . . . once I make a promise to myself, I never break it.
I stride into the studio, startling Janice. She wasn’t expecting me so early.
“Good morning!” she chirps, hastily tidying her desk, swiping an entire armful of scattered pens and papers into a drawer.
“Get me coffee,” I bark. “Iced.”
“Right away,” she says, standing up so quickly that her glasses slide down her nose and her pantyhose tear up the back. She pushes the glasses up with her index finger, blushing and hoping I didn’t notice the stockings. Then, pausing a moment, she ventures, “. . . Are you alright?”
I must really look like shit if she has the balls to ask me that. I’m flushed and sweating. Feverish.
But I’m getting control of myself. Slowly, by sheer force of will. Formulating new plans for how I’m going to bend Mara in half and crush her under my heel.
“I’ll be great when I have my fucking coffee,” I snarl.
“Right! Sorry,” she squeaks, hurrying off.
I take the stairs up to the top floor, the entire space given over to my office.
As soon as I step through the door, my nostrils flare, picking up a distinctly sweet and peppery scent.
Mara.
I whirl around, expecting to see her sitting at my desk.
Instead, a freshly hung painting awaits my view. Abstract, with large streaks of violet, scarlet, and sienna . . .
She fucked on that painting, and then she hung it on my wall.
I’m struck anew by the absolute insanity of this girl.
I admire her audacity. While planning how I’ll punish her for it.
Stepping closer to the frame, I examine the painting. The shape of the strokes.
I see a distinct nipple print where Mara rolled across the canvas, stamped into the crimson paint. Below that, a heart-shaped mark that almost certainly came from her naked buttocks.
I’d know the shape of that ass anywhere. That perfect fucking ass.
She’s signed the painting in sharpie and titled it:
The Best Night of My Life
I’m hit with an emotion I’ve never experienced before. It rolls over me, heavy, smothering, nauseating. It takes the heart out of me, it makes my guts churn. It gives me a deep ache in my chest.
The feeling is so abrupt and unfamiliar that for a moment I think I really am sick. Or having a coronary.
I sink down in my desk chair, still staring at the painting.
Slowly, with great difficulty, I examine this feeling that sits on my chest like a fucking gremlin, weighing me down.
I think . . . it’s regret.
The title of the painting is a taunt. But it stabs me, all the same.
It could have been the best night of her life.
It could have been me fucking Mara on that canvas. Me smearing paint all over her tits. Rolling around with her. Kissing her like I did at the show.
I wanted you . . . genuinely.
She would have taken me back to the studio, if I let her.
Instead, in that moment when she knelt before me, my impulse was cruelty. I wanted her—badly. And because I didn’t like that feeling of need, of weakness, I tried to humiliate her.
I wanted to force her to submit. But I should have known, she won’t fucking do it. She wouldn’t submit even while bleeding, bound, at the point of death.
I could have spent the night with her instead of watching it on a phone screen. Tasting her, smelling her, touching her. Making art with her.
I wish I had.
I’ve never regretted anything I’ve done.
It’s an ugly feeling. Depressing and unending, because you can never go back. You can never undo what’s been done.
I can’t shake it off. I can’t get rid of it.
My heart rate spikes and I’m sweating harder than ever.
I jump to my feet, looking wildly around my office.
I don’t want to feel regret. I don’t want to feel anything I don’t want to feel.
This is the singular factor separating me from everyone else in the world: I choose what I feel and what I don’t. They’re all slaves to their emotions. I’m master of mine.
I’m superior to everyone else because I choose not to feel anything that weakens me.
But in this moment, I’m weak. She’s making me weak.
With a howl of rage, I yank the driver out of my golf bag. I whirl around looking for a target, any target.
The solar system catches my eye: gleaming, glittering, the jewel-toned orbs rotating in space.
I swing the club through the air.
It crashes into the model, exploding the fine Venetian glass into a million pieces. The pieces pour down on me, cutting my skin in a dozen places, a rainstorm of shattered glass.
I keep hitting the model over and over and over again, beating it, rending it, destroying it.
When at last the club falls from my numb hands, the solar model is nothing but a twisted ruin. Beyond recognition. Utterly destroyed.
I loved that piece.
Sometimes you have to kill what you love.
