CHAPTER 2
North stalked across the lawn behind the equipment shed and pushed open the door to another shed attached at the back. This one was smaller than all the others, but no less cluttered. At first it was just used to store whatever they didn’t have use for, but were not willing to throw out, then for his thirtieth birthday, his best friend Gordon, and all his siblings, surprised him by converting it into a small art studio.
He had been making do with just sketching or painting in his room but having to put everything away, and dig it out when he wanted it, meant he rarely had time to put in all the extra set up effort. This room was maybe twenty ft. square and nearly every inch was covered in rolled up canvas and frames, shelves stacked with paints of all kinds, tins of brushes, sketch pads, charcoals, chalks and anything else he’d ever need.
The only seat in the place was a large overstuffed leather armchair that was splattered with paint and clay from the potter’s wheel, and more often than not, North woke up in the chair after collapsing into an exhausted sleep.
He kicked the door closed behind him and immediately pulled his shirt off from the back collar. He hated getting paint on his clothes, but the tattered tee he usually wore while painting was still in the wash from his painting session the other day, so he decided just to go without. He pressed play on the old fashioned boombox in the corner, and immediately the blaring sounds of Miles Davis filled the room.
He grabbed a fresh page from a flipchart. and clipped it to the easel, then snatched a pencil from the shelf and started sketching. His brow was dipped, his eyes narrowed and his lips pressed into a slim line across his face as he made strong angry swipes of his pencil on the blank material.
His heart was racing, and his brain was fuddled with thoughts he didn’t want to think. It was always like that when Sally got him riled up. She seemed to know how to make his blood fizz, and his brain go to mush. But instead of ignoring her, he poked and prodded her, to elicit responses that made her poke back. And as usual, he regretted it immediately, because it made his brain stop working, which was the only part of him trying to keep his blood from filling his cock whenever she was nearby.
North focused on what he was drawing and tried not to think about how Sally’s ass looked in those jeans, or how her plaid shirt cradled her breasts in a way that made him want to reach out and caress them. Or how her windswept hair, and flushed cheeks, made it look like she had just come, and he felt a powerful pulse of want course through him that almost made him double over.
He dropped his hands to his sides, closed his eyes as he tried to regulate his breathing, and calm his rampaging thoughts, then opened them and looked at what he had drawn.
“God dammit!” he cursed when he saw the unmistakable sketch of a female body, curved and posed in a manner that made him think she was writhing in ecstasy.
His dick was heavy and pressed against his thigh, and he nudged it down with the heel of his hand, but all that did was remind him he could touch it, and that there was a surefire way to get rid of a raging hard-on. He tossed his pencil away, and dropped his whole body onto the armchair, then closed his eyes and groaned.
He was filled to the brim with powerful desires that made him want to howl at the moon. However he knew that sensation would be washed away with guilt when he remembered his girlfriend Laura. They had been dating for nearly twelve years, but she didn’t pull desire from him the way Sally did.
Fuck! He wanted Sally. He wanted her so much, almost from the moment he met her, which was when East brought her home and introduced her to the family five years ago. He groaned again, and rubbed his eyes roughly with his knuckles until he saw stars. He needed to get Sally out of his head and concentrate on Laura.
But his brain was working against him. Sally was perfect and he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Not that he would do anything about it. She was with East and they had been together forever, with no signs of a break up, not that it would matter if they did break up.
Her hair was silky soft and he wanted to feel it brush against his bare thighs. Her lips were red and pouty and he wanted to see them wrapped around his cock. Her body was slender and athletic and he wanted to see her bounce as she rode him into oblivion. Her breasts were the perfect size to hold them in the palm of his hands, while his thumbs brushed and pinched her nipples.
His cock was straining against his jeans, and he pressed on it again with the heel of his hand, but it was no use. He yanked at his belt buckle, then opened his jeans enough to pull out his cock with only a slight shuffle to get them low enough, so he could tug on his balls and really finish this.
“Fuck,” he cursed when he tugged hard on his cock, circled his fist on the head, and ran his thumb across the slit.
He was tired of pretending he didn’t want this. Tired of pretending he didn’t want her. He barely let himself look at her anymore, because he was so afraid it was written all over his face. So he snapped at her, shouted at her, ignored her, and walked away from her.
But here in his own sanctuary he could let himself indulge. He spread his legs a little wider and rested his head back on the chair as he resumed the strokes along his hard shaft. He knew he could whack off, and pull a swift orgasm out of his balls in less than five well timed tugs, but now that he had decided to actually let himself do this, he wanted it to last.
His fingers stroked the skin behind his balls, and he tugged them low away from his body, as his other hand moved up and down his shaft. His eyes fluttered open and fixed on the drawing, and he imagined it coming to life. Swinging hips and a swaying body, as she ran her hands up and down her sides, from her hips to her breasts, then through her hair. A few dark lines on a white canvas suddenly became Sally, and he felt his balls get tighter.
“Oh god, yes,” he moaned and screwed his eyes shut, because nothing could get in the way of what he was racing towards.
On the porch outside the house, Sally pulled her hair away from her face, and fastened it into a loose bun at the back of her neck. She felt like she was going into battle, and wanted to be ready for when North yelled at her again. She knew he was going to his art shed, and she knew it was where he usually found his inner calm. Whenever she talked to him there, he was way more calm than anywhere else, so she wanted to be sure she had the upper foot this time.
She half walked, half jogged across the lawn towards the equipment shed. Even before she got to his studio she could hear the music blaring, as it always was when he was painting. She reached out to put a hand on the door, and steeled herself with a deep breath, before she pushed it open and stepped inside.
The music was so much louder in the small space and she looked down at her feet as she tiptoed over the jumble of contents haphazardly strewn about the floor. There was no order to how he stored his paint tins, and tubes, or anything else. It all just seemed to lay where he dropped them. There were bags of clay, buckets, cloths, broken frames, boxes, packaging and shelves, splitting the room in different directions.
“Jeez,” she cursed as she grabbed a shelf and took a side step over a pile of empty paint tins.
“Fuck yes,” she heard and she whipped her head up to look for the source of the sound because it was not a sound she had heard before.
Her body went stiff, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She felt a wave of goosebumps break out on her arms as she moved forward slowly, and gripped the ledge of the shelf to balance herself as she peeked around the corner.
North was sprawled across the armchair with his head tossed back, and his eyes shut tight. His mouth hung open, and one hand pulled on his hard cock as his other one fondled his balls. He was grunting and moaning with every tug, louder when he ran his thumb across the engorged head of his cock and Sally felt her whole body pulse and shudder.
She had never seen anything like this. He was raw and powerful as he sought out his own release and she couldn’t take her eyes off his glistening chest. She had seen him topless before and always admired his working, fit physique, but never before had she imagined it in this manner. The hair on his pecs was just enough to cover the top of his chest and trailed off, down the centre to his crotch. This was usually where she saw it disappear into his jeans, or his shorts, but now she could see it span out around the base of his cock, and she felt another pulse concentrate on her pussy as she was flooded with desire.
“Oh fuck,” he moaned and the sound of his voice brought her back to reality.
She felt her cheeks heat with desire and embarrassment as she realised she was standing here just watching him jerk off. She had to let him know she was here, had to make a noise before he finished, but on the other hand she had to see it. His chest puffed out when his hand moved faster and his hips rocked up to push his cock into his fist.
Her body got tight, and she had to grip the shelf to stop her hands from reaching for her clit. She knew with one caress she would explode, and there was no way she would be able to stop herself from making noise then. That humiliation would be more than she could bear, so she kept her hands firmly clasped on the shelf and just watched him.
North felt like his blood was on fire. Lava hot heat pulsed through him as he stroked faster and harder. The image of Sally riding his cock, her tits in his face, her breathy moans against his ear, her pussy hot, wet and tight around his shaft, was pulling him in directions he didn’t think he was ready for, but it was too late now because this unstoppable freight train was barrelling towards the end, whether he wanted it to or not.
His hips moved faster and his hand got tighter as he raced towards whatever it was that was making every nerve in his body zap. He tried not to grunt or moan but he was incapable of remaining silent. Instinct had taken over now and he couldn’t help the sounds he emitted.
Each guttural grunt he made shot through Sally, and she had to focus to stop herself from grinding against the shelf for any type of relief. Her eyes were fixed on his hand that stroked his cock and every so often she looked up to his face to see the sheer ecstasy that blurred his features. She knew he was about to come and she didn’t want to invade his privacy but she simply couldn’t look away.
North felt a white hot pulse shoot down his spine and pool in his balls before his cock got even stiffer. His whole body followed and before he could even think about where he was going to come he cried out and shot his release all over his stomach. He continued to stroke his throbbing cock until it was almost uncomfortable then flopped back on the seat; a mass of jelly and satisfaction.
Sally held her breath, one hand over her mouth as she tried desperately to hold everything in, then slumped back against the shelf and wondered how she was ever going to recover from this. She could still see him through the shelf and when he lifted his head off the cushion she almost yelped. She watched him look down at his body then reach over the side of the chair for his shirt to clean himself off and realised she was going to get caught if she didn’t leave right away.
She looked down at the ground and, with shaking legs, worked her way back out of the studio and into the cool fresh air, where she took deep lungfuls of refreshing breaths, before she turned away from the house and raced over to the drive behind the stables, where she parked her truck.
There was no way she could face him right now, while he was coming down from what looked like an amazing orgasm, so she had to escape the area and come back when her body had calmed down, If it ever calmed down. She left a cloud of dust and pebbles in her wake as she drove away and decided a cold shower and a large glass of whiskey would do the trick.
North tossed his now soiled shirt aside and stood off the chair to pull up his boxers and jeans. He buckled his belt, then snatched the page he had been drawing on from the easel. He looked at it for a moment, and felt something tight clench around his chest before he crumpled it up, then tossed it onto the pile with the rest of the discarded drawings, and left the studio.
He was halfway across the lawn when he saw South coming down the porch and she waved at him with a smile.
“North, phone call for you, it’s Gordo.”
“I’m coming,” he yelled and waved back at her.
“Did you piss off Sally some more or did you kiss and make up?”
“Huh?” he hopped up a couple of steps onto the porch and held the door open for her to enter first.
“Sally, did you get the fight resolved?”
“No, I haven’t seen her since lunch, why?”
“She went looking for you,” South said with a half shrug as she walked past the hallway table where the phone was and into the kitchen. “But I guess she didn’t find you.”
North picked up the phone but didn’t put it near his ear as a flush of panic coursed through him. Had Sally come into his studio? The door wasn’t locked so it was possible she walked in. The music was loud so it was possible he wouldn’t have heard her. He didn’t see her, but she would have seen him.
He shook his head and refused to believe that notion, then lifted the phone to his ear and greeted his friend.
“Gordo, what’s cookin’?” he asked, their usual greeting.
Gordon laughed like he always did and North felt some tension slide off his shoulders. “Do you have room for a guest?”
“If it’s you, always,” North said without hesitation.
“I’ll be in town for a few weeks, maybe longer.”
“Great, come on down. You can have East’s room, he moved into town, so you don’t even have to couch surf.”
“Perfect.”
“What’s bringing you back to Boulder?” North asked and leaned against the wall with one shoulder. Even though the phone was cordless, he always took his calls by the stand.
“I’m working on a new cook book and I want it to showcase authentic home cooking.”
“Great, so you get to come hang out and feed us. I love it.”
“I’ll be there in a day or so.”
“See you then.”
North ended the call and replaced it on the stand then went back into the kitchen where South was reading a book with a cup of coffee.
“What happened to your shirt?” South asked with only a glance in his direction.
“Got paint on it.”
“What’s goin’ on with Gordo?” This time she looked at him for longer.
“He’s coming to stay for a while to work on a new cook book.” He went into the utility room just off the kitchen and grabbed another shirt from the dryer. He sniffed it and shook it out then put it on.
“Oh we get fed too? Excellent.”
“That’s what I said,” North said with a chuckle as he buttoned up his shirt.
“What about you and Sally?” South asked this time she turned the book upside down and looked at him with narrowed eyes.
“What about us? Nothing about us.”
“She’s been here forever, North. You have to trust her to do her job, without yelling and barking at her.”
“I know, I know,” he said and held his hands up in defence before he focused on tucking in his shirt and fixing his collar. “I’ll talk to her, it’s fine.”
“Good, because we need her, and East loves her, so don’t make it weird by being a dick to her.”
North felt guilt stab him through his gut, and he looked away from his sister before she could see anything. He shook his head and rolled his eyes as he poured himself a mug of coffee and carried it out to the office to get back to work.
