Page 27 of Sucker Love (Sugar Pill Duet #1)

LUCA

I’m unaccountably shy when I undress in front of Noel in the living room the next afternoon.

I spend too much time on each piece of clothing, taking it off and folding it and setting it aside just so .

It’s just jeans and a sweater and shirt, and none of it requires the care with which they’re being discarded.

I reflect that maybe it would’ve just been easier to strip in my bedroom and strut out naked.

Or maybe that would’ve been even more awkward, I don’t know.

Noel watches me, unperturbed, from where he sits on the small chair he’s dragged out of the corner of his bedroom.

There isn’t enough space in the living room for all of this.

He’s had to sort of wedge it in front of the doorway of my bedroom, by the TV stand, to get far enough away for what I assume is a good view of his subject. Which is me.

“Is this, like, on purpose?” he asks as I smooth the lines from my jeans after removing them. “Your idea of a strip tease?”

“No,” I say sharply, and then take a deep breath. “No. I just...feel weird doing this.”

Noel gives me a half-smile that I suppose is meant to be encouraging. I’m anything but reassured. “I’ve seen you naked a bunch already,” he points out. “Why are you freaking out?”

“Because this is different.” I’ve got a finger in the waistband of my boxers but I’m reluctant to remove them. “And you’re not inspecting every inch of my body when we fuck.”

“I’m not?”

“No. You’re lying there getting fucked. Blindfolded even, sometimes.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Really? Just lying there?”

“Oh—you know what I mean, Noel.”

He tilts his head from one side to the other. It’s almost birdlike, the way he’s eyeing me through the fall of his hair. “Sure I do.” He raps the pen impatiently against the edge of his tablet. “Can we hurry this little routine along, Luca?”

His bedside manner leaves so much to be desired.

I loose a gusty sigh and turn away as I drop the underwear, tossing it onto the pile with the rest of my clothes.

I don’t care if it’s stupid to be unnerved because it is different , regardless of what he says.

I am not a professional model. “How do you want me?” I ask.

“Just . . . lounge. Look casual.”

That’s so much easier said than done when you’re being directed to look casual.

I lie across the loveseat and try to arrange myself in a way that might be artful, arms behind my head and the knee closest to him up to cover the things I really, really don’t want immortalized in ink, digital or otherwise.

There’s not a single thing comfortable about my pose except that I think my dick is sufficiently covered.

Noel stares at me for a moment. His pen drags down his lower lip before he shakes his head. “No,” he says. “That sucks. ”

I open my mouth to offer recriminations but he’s already gotten up, leaning over me to rearrange my limbs into something that is more pleasing to him. “Ow,” I complain. “Can you stop manhandling me?”

He doesn’t bother to respond. He brings my knee down and the one nearest the cushions up, takes one of my hands down to place along my shoulder.

He grasps my chin and directs my face to the wall, so I suppose he wants a view of my profile.

He brushes his finger through my hair, tousling it a little.

It feels good, and it’s almost a shame when he stops.

Then he steps back and nods. “Perfect. Hold that.”

“You really want my entire dick and balls in this, don’t you?”

He sits down again. “You’ve got me.”

I flick my gaze sideways and sigh again, deeply, through my nose.

He’s looking rapidly between me and his tablet, scribbling away.

I know the finished product is going to be terrifyingly good, and that’s the worst part, I think.

If he sucked, it wouldn’t matter; I’d be unrecognizable to anyone who happened to see it.

Even thought he says no one is going to.

I don’t even know if I believe him when he says that it’s just for practice.

But maybe I should. He obviously takes his craft seriously.

There’s not a single day he takes a break, now that I think about it.

If it’s not a school assignment or a portfolio piece that I catch him working on, then it’s commissions.

I suppose he can’t afford to take breaks, if there’s no one helping him pay for all this.

School, rent, groceries. Is he really doing this all on his own?

How is that even possible? He makes obscene money off his work, but he’s so young to be doing it by himself.

Even with financial aid. He must have student loans out.

He is going to burn himself the fuck out.

“Luca.” Noel’s soft voice stirs me from my thoughts. “ Relax .”

“I am,” I say. “I’m trying, I mean.”

“You know I’ve drawn a million people naked at this point. I’m like, the bastion of professionalism.”

A grin pulls at my lips. I cannot resist the urge to fuck with him. “So you’re not turned on even a little?” I ask, shifting my hips a bit on the couch.

“Shush.”

“Not squirming and breathless with arousal, desperate to hide it?—”

There’s a beat. “Okay, so, the models don’t usually say shit like that to me.”

“Is that a yes?”

“You should be quiet now,” he tells me, but I can hear the smile in his words.

“No.” I shift a little; my spine cracks and that’s a lot better. I do feel microscopically more relaxed now. “I have something to ask you.”

“What’s that?”

I can tell his back is up just by the way his voice sounds, both wary and shuttered.

It’s that weird tone he gets whenever I tread topics he deems too personal, like when I ask about his family—even though I’m not asking anything like that.

I want to tell him to relax but I know he’ll just show me his teeth.

That thing he said about his shitty childhood runs through my head yet again and I have to ask myself why do I care so much about that when he clearly wants me to back off.

Well, fuck, it’s hard not to. I can’t not care about him.

I don’t know how to do this shit without caring about him.

I can’t keep having sex with him and not care.

I can’t hold him afterwards while he goes to pieces and not care.

I can’t put bandaids on his self-inflicted wounds from his meltdowns and not care.

And I can’t stop thinking about what might’ve happened to him as a kid to make him say that, to make him be the way that he is. Little bratty Noel in miniature form. Adorable and awful. I smile a little at the mental image. “I’m going up to Killington next weekend,” I say.

“Killington?”

“It’s in Vermont.” I’m surprised he’s never heard of it, but I guess he is pretty insular.

“Oh,” he says. “Do you need me to watch Amelia?”

“No. I’ve asked my wife to do that.”

“Okay. Have fun. ”

I turn my head to look at him. He’s scribbling furiously. “Noel, wait?—”

His head snaps up. “Don’t move. ”

“I’m trying to ask you to go with me.”

A pause. “Go with you?” he repeats. “What for?”

“Why not? You’ve never been. It’ll be fun.”

He taps the tablet pen against his chin as he considers me, his head tilting to one side. “What’s there?” he says. “What’s so fun to do in Vermont ?”

“All sorts of things,” I say. “But I was going to do some snowboarding. A bit of hiking. You know. Outdoorsy shit.”

“I don’t do outdoorsy shit,” he informs me. “I definitely don’t snowboard. Or ski. Nothing like that at all.”

“I know you don’t. And you don’t have to. You can come hang out, soak in the sights. I’ve booked a room at the best hotel, right on the mountain. It’s got a spa and a heated pool. You could go swimming or get a massage?—”

“I don’t swim, either. Or get massages. Did I mention I also don’t hike?”

I huff out a breath that blows my hair off my forehead. “You gonna come or not, you fucking brat?”

There’s a grin playing across Noel’s lips, broad and shit-eating, and I know that he’s just fucking with me. “You’re going to miss me,” he accuses me. “Aren’t you? That’s why you want me to come. You can’t go a whole weekend without me facedown in the mattress.”

I turn my face away again and roll my eyes towards the ceiling. “Yeah, you got me. I just want you around for sex. Literally no other reason.”

I hear the tap of the pen’s nib against the tablet screen once more, now that I’m back in the desired pose. “Knew it. I wouldn’t miss me for any other reason, either. In fact I’d be wanting a break from me. You ever wish that? You could take a vacation from yourself?”

“All the damn time.” What I wouldn’t give for an hour out of my head, let alone a whole weekend. Stop overthinking all the things I was avoiding for once.

“So why Vermont all of a sudden?” he asks me. “Or is this some annual thing you do? Going snowboarding every whatever.”

“No, I haven’t been in years. This will be the first time I’ve gone since I got married.”

“Why? Did she have a problem with it?”

“No, nothing like that. It’s like...” My eyelids flicker shut.

“When I got with her, I dropped almost everything I was into. My hobbies, my friends. Adopted the things she liked instead, the people she hung out with the most. That sort of thing. Morphed my whole personality based on what I thought would be more acceptable to her because I felt like I couldn’t be myself anymore.

Marrying someone that wasn’t...” I trail off, because saying it aloud is making me realize just how crazy the notion is.

How much I have given up and wasted, my entire twenties gone.

Noel is dumbfounded. “But what the fuck for ?” he bursts out after a moment. “Why would you do any of that? It sounds miserable.”