Paul grabbed his briefcase and got out of the car slowly, his body tightening in anticipation. No amount of guilt could stop him from yearning for what was on the inside of that house bathed in a blood-red, autumn sunset. He looked forward to getting home all day. Quite the opposite of what Trisha believed, Paul had cut his pro-bono work in half just to have more time in the haven of his house that left him feeling as if nothing could touch him. Behind closed doors, happiness was eternal, a perpetual Eden that he didn’t want to slip through his fingers.
The leaves from the oak trees in the front yard crunched under his designer shoes and he kicked at them, hating them for their reminder that New Year’s was rushing at him quickly. He knew he’d have to clean them up because Danny would never do it. Danny hated working in the yard. Paul was fairly certain he didn’t even know how a lawnmower worked and he had to wonder what the yard would look like once he moved out, but he refused to dwell on that thought too much. He’d probably have a mental breakdown if he did.
“Hey,” he called out when he opened the door and kicked it closed as he set his briefcase near the door. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Danny said from the kitchen. “Eve’s painting—as usual.”
“Dear God,” Paul groaned, rubbing a hand over his face as he walked into the kitchen. “If my family ever sees those pictures I’m a dead man. This house is a disaster waiting to happen. It’s a vipers’ nest.”
“I put a lock on the door to her room,” Danny said with a shrug. “No one’s going to see them. Want a beer?”
“Yes,” Paul said as he sat down at the table. “I’ve got anxiety. I have to tell Trisha Eve’s living here because if she finds out without my telling her I’ll look guilty.”
“You
are
guilty,” Danny said as he set a cold beer in front of Paul. “You fuck Eve every chance you can get.”
“I know that,” Paul snapped at him as he opened his beer on the edge of the table, using more force than necessary to pop the cap off. “You’ve got to go get fitted for that tux, Danny Boy. I’m sick of hearing her bitch about it.”
“I’m not going to that wedding, let alone participating in it,” Danny said with a snort. “I never agreed to be your best man, she just assumed.”
“Talk about looking guilty,” Paul growled, turning around to glare at Danny. “You’re my best friend. You’ve got to be my best man. It’ll look like you’re sulking if you don’t.”
“I will be sulking.”
“Oh my God,” Paul whispered, looking toward the ceiling and then taking a long drink of his beer. “You skip my wedding and the two of us will scream queer. You have to go, I’m begging you.”
“I’m not going,” Danny said simply as he grabbed his cigarettes off the kitchen table and lit one. He flopped down next to Paul, taking a long drag off his cigarette and blowing the smoke at him. “You might as well stop arguing because I will never stand there and watch you marry that cunt. I’d kill myself first.”
“I need something stronger than beer,” Paul moaned, setting the bottle down. He leaned his elbows against the table and hid his face in his hands. He had no idea what to do about Danny. Once he made up his mind about something it was nearly impossible to change it. He was legitimately fucked over the best man issue because there was not a single excuse he could come up with that logically explained why his
best friend since kindergarten was refusing to go to his wedding. Danny was going to appear to be just what he was—an angry, scorned lover. “You really are a full-fledged asshole.”
“I don’t like that,” Danny said in a singsong voice as the scent of smoke wafted over Paul, making it obvious he had blown it at him on purpose. “Slaves who call their Masters assholes get punished.”
Paul peeked through the small gap in his fingers, watching Danny as he took another long drag off his cigarette and then parted his lips, letting the smoke waft past them slowly. His body tightened and his cock got hard without warning, pushing away the anxiety that had become his constant companion.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered softly, letting his hands fall against the table as he let his eyes run over Danny, who was bare-chested and barefoot as usual, wearing only a pair of well-worn jeans. Paul took a shuddering breath as he admired him with a dazed, hungry gaze he couldn’t hide. “I’m
really
sorry.”
“Yeah?” Danny asked, a smirk tugging at his lips as he stared back at Paul just as boldly. “What’re you going to do about it?”
“What do you want?” Paul countered.
Danny slouched lower in the chair, stretching out his long legs in front of him as his dark eyes swirled with mischief. “Why don’t you get naked and then we’ll discuss it?”
Paul reached up, tugging at his tie, his eyes never leaving Danny as he smiled. “Sure.”
An hour later, Paul tugged on his own pair of jeans and made his way to Eve’s bedroom that hadn’t been slept in since the first night she had crashed back into their lives in a way only Eve could. He opened the door without knocking, leaning back against it as he glanced around the room with a look of disdain he couldn’t hide.
Both Paul and Danny had given up on trying to bring order to the chaos surrounding Eve. They picked up after her when it came to the rest of the house, with Danny bitching every time he found Eve’s clothes on the floor and Paul snatching up whatever he found just to save her from Danny’s wrath. Combined, they managed to somewhat subdue Hurricane Eve, but in this room there was nothing to be done. Paul was secretly convinced Danny had put a lock on the door to hide the mess, not the artwork.
Paul stared at the floor, seeing paint stains on the hardwood that were new. He walked in without invitation and silently picked up a discarded shirt, one of Danny’s older ones. He turned it right side out as Eve stood there painting with white earphones in her ears. The shirt was covered in paint and Paul winced internally, wondering if Danny would notice if he just threw it away before he discovered Eve had ruined yet another one of his shirts.
“You need to start wearing my shirts to paint in,” Paul mumbled as he bent down and worked at picking up the rest of the room out of instinct. Paper towels covered in paint, discarded pieces of papers with sketches and notes on them and several glasses were littered around the room, some were filled with half-empty drinks Eve had gotten and then forgotten, but most glasses were filled with water dyed murky brown from the merging of various paint colors when Eve rinsed her brushes. “Did you hear me, Evie Girl? He is going to freak when he sees this shirt. Not to mention the floor. Why is there paper everywhere but underneath where you’re painting?”
“What?” Eve shouted, speaking loudly over the music only she could hear as she turned around from her easel and gave him a beaming smile. “Hey, Paul Guy!”
Paul returned her smile as he studied her standing there in another one of Danny’s shirts covered with paint and rolled-up khaki shorts. Her long hair hung in a thick braid down her back, with red wisps framing her face and neck. He couldn’t deny that she looked adorably disheveled. Unable to resist, he reached out and rubbed at a streak of black paint on her forehead with his thumb. “You’ve got paint on your face.”
She brushed his hand away, unconcerned with the paint and then turned back around to the painting she was working on. This one was of Danny, which was a small relief, because Paul had been her favorite subject for the previous four and the two before those had featured both Danny and Paul. He turned around, looking to the stacks of large canvases against the wall. They were covered, but Paul knew what each one looked like, having watched them slowly bloom to life.
Eve’s voyeur fetish had developed into a strangely impassioned drive to encapsulate with her art all of what she found so compelling about watching the two of them. She was somehow capable of capturing the most beautiful and seductive parts of the games Paul and Danny played with paint and photographs. Even with the panic caused from knowing that the paintings captured him in full slave mode doing things he never wanted evidence of, Paul had to admit he had never seen more raw artistic genius.
He wrapped his arms around Eve, leaning down to rest his chin on her shoulder as he admired her painting. Danny was standing in the grass, surrounded by trees and a lake, the backdrop clearly their backyard. Minus the house, the scenery was exotic and untamed with the marshy grass rising out of the lake and the tall cypress trees hanging with silvery Spanish moss. But that wasn’t what was so majestic about the painting. It was Danny, barefoot, and bare-chested, wearing only his leather pants and a whip draped around his neck. Somehow, she was capable of illustrating Danny’s dark, sexual presence in a way that made the painting captivating.
Paul leaned in closer, staring at the whip and seeing it was actually a long, deadly black snake on closer inspection. It was strange illusions like that, which made Eve’s art so incredible. Things were never as they really appeared and it made her paintings fascinating for more than just the sheer scale of her talent. She captured images and brought them to life in a way that was almost eerie. Paul knew Danny better than anyone and he was getting mental whiplash staring at the picture, because she captured
more than his image, she had harnessed the dark essence of his soul that made him such an amazing Master.
“You ought to ask Danny for a list of his clients,” Paul mumbled, still awestruck with the painting because she was nearly done with it despite having started it only a few days ago. “I know one of them would buy this.”
“What?” Eve shouted, her voice still unnaturally loud as she spoke over her earphones.
Paul laughed and reached up to tug one of her earphones out of her ear. “I bet one of Danny’s clients would buy this painting,” he repeated. “They’d probably pay a mint for it?”
“I can’t sell it,” she said, turning around to frown at Paul. “It’d be like selling my soul.”
Paul rolled his eyes. “This is why artists starve to death. What’s the use of having talent like this if you can’t profit off it?”
“These are just hobby paintings.”
“Hell of a hobby,” Paul snorted. “You haven’t painted anything but leather and bondage for two months. You’re broke. Ask Danny for a list of his clients, sell the painting and use the money to buy a new car.”
“My car runs. I don’t know why you two have such a problem with it,” Eve said, turning around to frown at him once more. “You’re in jeans. Did you do it without me?”
“Yes,” Paul said with a smirk, arching an eyebrow at her. “You and Danny did it without me while I was at work. You always do.”
“True,” Eve said without remorse, turning back around to her painting. She swiped her brush against her paint palette and then leaned over and started working on a tree standing in the distance. This was one was different, with the look of a fruit tree despite the fact she had yet to add the fruit. It appeared oddly out of place in the wild, swampy landscape. “Tree of Life,” she explained, obviously reading his confusion without seeing his face. “It’s supposed to be different. That’s what makes it compelling. A temptation.”
“I get it,” he mumbled, standing behind her and watching her work on the tree with a small brush, using painstaking detail, making it obvious that though it was in the distance, this was a key part of the painting. “When are you going to get tired of all this Garden of Eden stuff?”
“Whenever I’m done with the series. Eve’s Temptation. That’s what I’m calling it.” “Why call it anything if you’re not going to sell it?”
“Do you want me to sell your paintings, Paul Guy?” Eve asked blandly. “You want paintings with you dressed up as a slave out there hanging on people’s walls?”
“I wouldn’t mind,” he surprised himself by admitting. “It’s better than having them lying around this house. Besides, they’re just paintings. There’s nothing to prove I
actually posed for them. I could play dumb if my family ever found out. You should sell them, all of them, including the ones of me. Good fetish art is hard to find and demands high prices. There are lots of collectors who would go insane over these paintings. Make money for your genius. As a business attorney, I’m advising you that not selling them is a very poor financial decision.”
“What about the photographs?” Eve asked, looking to the long laundry lines strung over one side of the room. Rows upon rows of pictures were clipped to them, some were color, most were black and white and all were enough to have Paul longing for something much stronger than beer to drink away the anxiety they caused. Eve, however, sighed as she stared at them, “You’re both beautiful. Surely fetish art collectors would love them. You want me to sell those too? Is that your advice as a business attorney?”
“No,” he said firmly. “I can’t believe we let you take them. I have a very strong urge to burn them.”
“Hey,” Eve growled, turning around to glare at him. “That’s my art!”
“It’s photographic evidence of Danny and me playing the game and fucking,” Paul countered, staring at her incredulously as he pointed to the pictures decorating Eve’s room. Each one was more damning than the next, capturing all the darkest sides of their relationship without an ounce of censorship. “I need to have my head examined for letting you take them. These could ruin me. I’m supposed to be a politician. Trisha would leave me in two seconds if she saw them.”
“If that’s the case, I’ll mail her the whole collection,” Eve mumbled under her breath as she turned back around, dismissing him as she started working on her painting. “She can have the paintings too. Forget selling them, they’ll be parting gifts to Trisha for releasing you from your personal version of hell.”
“That’s not funny,” Paul said, folding his arms over his bare chest as he glared down at her. “Please don’t joke about that.”
“You’ll never be happy with her. You should come out of the closet to end it,” Eve sighed. “Come clean, live your life without secrets. If people don’t love you for who you are, then fuck ‘em.”
“That’s really easy for you to say,” Paul said bitterly. “I’m not you. I can’t just tell my parents to kiss my ass.”
“You could.”