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“I had two years in prison and nothing to do except stare at the ugly faces of the guys in with me. Max kept lending me books. So I read them, And, yeah, he lent me that one.”
Max. That was his friend that took over Devon’s old apartment across from me, the hot guy with the beard. “Max has trashy taste.”
“Sometimes,” Devon agreed. “He followed that one with Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, though. I think he was just trying to piss me off.” He paused. “He worried that I was going to come out of there worse than when I went in. It happens to a lot of cons. Most of them.”
I shifted my weight between his legs. “I was about to say that I can imagine it, except the truth is I can’t.”
“Then don’t,” he said. “You’re not missing anything. So you know the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. You were there when it was happening.” He paused, and I knew we were both thinking of that night, of him devouring me in my bed. “Now tell me the worst thing that’s ever happened to you.”
It was an odd question, maybe, but I was realizing that one of the things I liked about Devon was that I never knew what he would say. “Well, my dad dying was bad,” I said, “but I was just little.”
“The worst thing you remember, then,” he said.
That was easy. “Failing art school.”
“You went to art school?”
“In San Diego. For a year. Before I moved here and got the job at Gratchen.”
“Why did you fail?”
I leaned my head back against his warm, hard shoulder, thinking back, as the water soothed my skin. “I couldn’t do anything right,” I said, trying to explain. “I’m just not an artist, not really.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“It’s true. Every project I turned in got marked low. I never got it right. When I turned in my final project of my first year, I think I already knew.” I tried not to wince at the memory.
“What was wrong with it?” he asked.
I didn’t want to talk about this, but he was right. I already knew the worst about him; it was a fair exchange. “I took photos. Then I blew them up, printed them, and painted over them. I added faces, dragons, fantastical elements to everyday street scenes. And the pictures, taken together, told a story.”
Devon was quiet for a minute. “So? What was the problem?”
I shrugged, the motion making the water in the bathtub swirl. “The professors said it was too commercial. That it lacked passion.”
His finger traced the side of my neck. “I don’t think you lack passion,” he said softly.
I paused as a shiver raced up my spine. Suddenly I was very aware of my nakedness. Of his. Of the flex of his stomach against my back. Of what we’d just been doing, bent over the dresser in his bedroom. “I was passionate when I did those pictures,” I managed. “I felt passionate. It was devastating to fail. I haven’t felt that way again until—” Until I first saw you climb the stairs to your apartment, I almost said. Until I got in your car in the rain. Until I let you into my apartment that night.
“I let my mother down when I failed,” I said. “She paid the tuition. People think actors are set for life, but my mother hasn’t acted in twenty years. She did a couple of shampoo commercials to send me to school, and to pay for Gwen’s tuition to acting school. And we both failed. She was nice about it, but things just sort of felt… over for a while. I had to join the real world. Go and get a job.”
“A job you don’t like,” he said, his voice musing.
“Most people have jobs they don’t like,” I said. I pulled away from him, feeling his legs flex in an attempt to keep me, and I turned around, rising to my knees in the water of the tub. I wanted to see his face, his expression. I leaned in and traced my fingertips over his short beard, over the line of his mouth, and watched his green eyes watch me. I’d told him my worst possible thing, and nothing bad had happened. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” I said, running my fingers along his jaw, his cheekbones. “There are other things I want to do naked in the bath with you.”
He was still for a moment, letting me do what I wanted, and then something dark and wild flared up slowly behind his eyes. “You miss me?” he asked softly.
Fuck. Yes. Like crazy. It wasn’t possible to miss someone you’d only been with once, so I said, “I don’t know. It feels like it.”
His hand came out of the water and brushed over my nipple, making it go hard. “Did you come thinking of me over the past two years?”
Yes. Oh, yes, I had. But I said, “I’m not going to tell you that.”
“No?” His hand dropped to my waist, and his other hand came out of the water. “Then show me.”
The water sloshed as he placed me back, sitting me on the edge of the huge tub, my legs and feet in the water. He kept his hands on my hips. “Show me,” he said again.
I knew what he wanted. I wanted to do it. But I was still a little shy as I pushed my knees apart and slowly dropped a hand between my legs.
