Painting never ends in a fuckfest.

More often than not, the model is sweaty, muscles aching as they struggle to hold the pose that seemed so easy at the beginning of the four-hour session, trying to get a glimpse of the clock without moving an inch. Even the easiest of poses gets considerably less so after ten or fifteen minutes.

Even so, the model isn’t a living, breathing human to us but an object, a still life with more contours and shadows than apples in a bowl. And there’s nothing like modeling to bring home the fact that you’re a person in a body (which the less patient of artists tend to forget, muttering in annoyance if you dare shift the tiniest iota). By the end of the job, your feet are dirty from the clay-smeared floor, your back is stiff and you’re ready to get your check and call it a day, while the artist stays behind fretting over whether they used enough paint for your legs. (Ask any artist who’s been forced to pose when the model didn’t show.)

The artist, on the other hand, is muttering away, trying to get the proportions just right without running out of paint or clay, or most of all, time.

Long story short, the process of making art isn’t sexy.

Usually.


It was late one Friday night. The art school, a restored Victorian downtown, was dominated during the day by retirees – oldsters using their golden years to perfect their techniques. Friday nights, however, were different. The crowd was younger: art school grads with day jobs in everything from graphic design to bagging groceries, kicking off the weekend in the sprawling attic space with skylights, smelling of turpentine and oil and ghosts of downtown residents past. 

The Friday night sessions tended to run over time if the artists could cobble enough cash together to pay the model extra. They weren’t afraid to go to bed after ten. More often than not, a bottle of wine was passed around and someone turned up the 90s alternative tunes streaming from the ancient upstairs desktop. On nights when the lighting was just right and everyone’s mouths were ringed with Merlot purple, the place took on a 1920s Paris vibe – or at least that’s what everyone imagined. The good old bohemian days we’d never get to live.

Tonight’s model, Bree, was new and she was different. Most art models aren’t classically beautiful – honestly, that’s not interesting to recreate. True potential can be found in the plumpness of a thigh, the trace of a protruding shoulder blade, the curve of a tummy that any gender of individual spends all their time in the outside world trying to suck in. (Try sucking in for twenty-five minutes at a time, though. You can’t.)

Bree, however? What we might call a snack. Tall and graceful with the posture of the ballerina she told us she once was. (The oldsters frowned on talking during posing, but on Friday nights we broke the rules, chatting up the model and cranking up the music.) Heart-shaped face, waist-length dirty-blonde hair that flew everywhere in a static cloud once she took down her ponytail – immediately piercing the cloud of nerves we all felt with a new model. And once she dropped her robe, we forgot our brushes, our canvases, the easels and benches that were right the fuck in front of us. Smooth skin with the barest hint of June tan and breasts that were so firm and round – 

“Fake,” she cracked huskily and we all looked away. Busted. “But what the hell, you know?”

We knew.

She was also a natural at posing, a very specific and incredibly weird skill. Granted, she didn’t attempt anything too difficult to hold – that classic rookie mistake – but coming up with something that looks good from every angle? Not easy.

Bree lay on her side, head resting on her outstretched arm with her hand dangling off the edge of the platform. She settled her other arm against the S-curve of her body, flowing deliciously along the curves of her waist and hip. Since her back was to us, we didn’t get a view of those glorious tits, but the rearview was just as interesting. Bree’s ass was surprisingly muscular– must have been all those pliés – and she bent one leg under her, showing us the pale pink bottom of her foot.

“Does this work?” She lifted her head, craning her neck to look at all of us. 

“Is she even real?” someone muttered and we all shook our heads in wonder. 

Something decidedly unreal was happening in the attic that night. Even with five-minute model breaks every half hour, the time melted away. We didn’t need alcohol – the discount red wine stayed in its corner, uncorked. No one could tear their eyes away from the simple pose. We worked at a lightning-quick speed that also had a liminal space between every second. Almost like we were possessed. Even the 90s streaming radio got into the groove, forgoing the frenetic and angsty for a seductive and mellow soundtrack, further evidence of the spell Bree cast over us all.

At ten, the usual Friday routine resumed: most of the artists drifted away, mumbling about opening up the coffee shop or taking their three-year-old to Saturday morning improv class. For the next 24 hours, they’d randomly shake their heads, as if coming out of a pleasant, vaguely erotic dream they couldn’t quite recall. Only three remained: Reilly, with her flowing hair and curves for decades; Winston, who somehow always had paint in his beard by the time the clock struck ten; and this magical creature with the perfect ass who’d inspired even the most unskilled of the group to unleash breathtaking renderings in oil paint.

“Hey, Bree?” Reilly called, her voice echoing in the empty space. “Do you have anywhere to go?” She glanced at Winston, who nodded. “We’ll pay you extra.”

She looked over her shoulder, almost in a daze. “What? Oh yeah.” She half-smiled and even the small curve of her lips was the hottest thing Reilly and Winston had ever seen. “I’m just spacing out back here.”

“You comfortable?” Winston asked. “Want to switch poses for the last stretch? We can sketch from here on out.”

“Sure thing.” Arranging the brocade cushions that were as old as the building itself underneath her, Bree shifted onto her back and lifted her lithe arms above her head, stretching out both legs and crossing one delicate ankle on top of the other. “Too Titanic?” she asked.

“Just Titanic enough,” Reilly breathed, grabbing her sketchpad and Bree laughed, a throaty chuckle that had Winston surreptitiously (he hoped) readjusting his pants. 

“It’s drafty in here,” he mumbled, standing up so fast he almost knocked over his drying canvas. “Let me get you a heater.”

“Oh no, I’m good,” Bree said and as if on cue, her nipples perked up. 

Reilly tried to concentrate on capturing the shadows Bree’s body made, on the scratch of charcoal on newsprint that normally soothed her, and the reassuring creak of the floorboards when she shifted on her bench. Really, she wasn’t normally into skinny white women. But something about tonight, about Bree, it was all she could do to stare down at her sketchpad instead of smearing nontoxic oil paint all over the model’s body. 

What the fuck is coming over me?

Winston, on the other hand, suspected he’d have to use the bathroom very soon – not to pee but to jerk off, which he hadn’t done since freshman year at St. Aloysius Academy when Candace O’Brien’s skirt flipped up showing a glimpse of thigh. (He’d been a leg man ever since.) It wasn’t just because of Bree, but Reilly, who he’d had a crush on since she showed up on a Friday night three months ago, fresh out of the rain with water gleaming on her dark skin. He didn’t want to be That Guy, and yet…was Bree looking at him? Normally the models chose a focal point and didn’t make eye contact with the artists, for obvious reasons. But tonight…

“Are you getting what you need?”

Winston and Reilly jerked their heads up. 

“Uh…”

“Uhhhh…” 

Winston and Reilly looked at each other frantically, as an awkward silence ensued.

“Gonna break for a second.” Bree rolled onto her stomach, crossing her ankles in the air. Whether she was aware of her effect of Winston and Reilly was anyone’s guess. 

Reilly smiled, embarrassed but unable to hold it in any longer. She spoke actual words first. “Can I be honest with you?” She had to look away from Bree, then away from Winston’s crotch. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but I’m normally not checking out the model so hard.” She covered her mouth – why did she have to blurt that out like a perv?

Bree only smiled, lifted one elegant shoulder. “Who among us doesn’t like being objectified sometimes?”

“Yeah, me too,” Winston said, syllables rushing over one another. When both women looked at him, he elaborated, “I mean as long as we’re putting it all out there, you’re seriously hot and I hope you know that.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “Thank you.” Rising up in one fluid motion, she sauntered in their direction, not bothering to put on a robe. “Can I see?”

Reilly looked down at her Doc Martens. 

“Oh shit,” Bree said. “Robe. Right.”

“No no no, it’s okay!” Winston and Reilly yelled in unison and Brie laughed again. “If you’re okay with it, that is,” Reilly said as Winston cleared his throat. “We don’t mind.”

“If I’m being honest,” Bree said, one hand on her lovely hip, hair cascading halfway down her back, “I’ve been checking you out this entire time. Both of you. Probably not proper model protocol but…” She shrugged.

It started in a blur – looking back neither Winston or Reilly could recall who kissed or touched first. There was active and affirmative consent, first in the form of whispers, then cries, then muffled screaming, that much they knew, and Sneakers Pimps’ “Six Underground” song came on and those sweet tempting vocals about being open to falling from grace got everyone going.

Then came the paint.

By then Winston was shirtless, displaying a thoroughly lickable six-pack honed from lifting boxes at the warehouse where he worked, and Reilly was down to her bra and panties, curves on display in all their glory. Bree was splayed on the platform she’d been posing on all evening. Her pink satin kimono was spread beneath her, bringing out the rose undertones in her skin. She pulled Reilly down so their mouths could meet, tonguing each other deeply and frantically as Bree’s nimble fingers found Reilly’s clit and began to flick and rub until Reilly was straight-up fucking her palm. 

“Hey, don’t bogart the model!” Winston joked. He unzipped his shorts, pulled down his boxers and was about to take matters into his own hands when Reilly began to stroke him up and down, harder and harder and Bree, having brought Reilly to a moaning, intense climax, moved on to fix her pretty mouth to his cock, so thick and ready for relief.

“Oh, that’s a pretty picture,” Reilly murmured and without thinking twice, yielded Winston’s cock to a very willing Bree and grabbed the nearest blank canvas and started frantically capturing the sight in front of her. She could smell her own desire, the juices from her own orgasm, as she began to paint, possessed by her own lust and the collective beauty in front of her, mixing colors on her palette, squeezing every tube of oil paint just so, the metal and wood and paper under her fingers setting every nerve aflame. She usually plotted out every line and brushstroke, but now she just painted Bree’s lips wrapped around Winston’s cock, his fingers woven through her hair, her ass in the air as she serviced him – and she knew, she just knew, it would be her best work.

Speaking of canvases…

“Paint, anyone?” she announced, strutting fully nude toward her two counterparts. Bree took her mouth off Winston’s shaft and nodded her assent, and he held up a finger to pause and ran off, erection bobbing, to grab a condom from his wallet. 

“Mind if I take him?” Reilly asked Bree. She was rewarded with a soft, deep kiss that tasted of spicy peppermint.

“Go right ahead,” Bree sighed when they came up for air. “I’ll keep myself busy.” She held out her hand for the tubes of paint Reilly was balancing between her fingers. Reilly handed them over as she got on her hands and knees, ready to get thoroughly fucked.

“You good with this, Win?” she called.

“So good with it you don’t even know,” he grunted. “Ready?”

“So pretty,” Bree cooed as Tupac’s “How Do U Want It” came on and Winston fucked Reilly in rhythm with the beat, thrusting slow and deep as she adorably yelped. 

“May I?” Bree asked, holding up the paint. They both nodded. 

The tables had turned.

Kneeling down and capturing Reilly’s mouth with her own, Bree squeezed colors into her palm and started rubbing them on Reilly’s skin in a messy rainbow. She moved on to Winston, rubbing her tits against his back as she decorated him with fresh squeezes of paint, running her hands over his thighs and the planes of his compact ass.

“I’m getting close,” he choked out and Reilly met Bree’s eyes. 

Sitting in front of Reilly, Bree lay back and thrust her hips so her pussy was next to Reilly’s face. As she fucked the other woman’s mouth, Bree touched her own body with the remaining paint on her hands, marking herself with the remnants of this wild night. Reilly’s tongue was velvety magic against Bree’s clit, and soon Bree felt herself getting closer and closer, hearing Winston cry “oh fuck oh god I’m coming I’m coming,” then Reilly’s breathy sighs, and finally, when her paint-covered hands hit her hipbones and Reilly shoved her tongue inside, Bree let out the most primal of screams.


More erotic adventure from Lauren Emily:

We Just Work Together
I Dare You

Lauren Emily lives (and loves) in Chicago, and is the author of the novel SATELLITE.