Page 67 of Brushed and Buried
“Tilt your head a little. No, not like that. More natural.” His voice carries a little note of frustration. “Relax your shoulders.”
I try to adjust, but I can feel how rigid I am, how conscious of every angle and shadow. This isn’t working.
Adrian sighs softly, setting his sketch pad aside. “Stay still.”
He stands and moves behind me, and suddenly his hands are on my shoulders, warm fingers pressing into the tension there. My breath catches as he guides me into position, one hand tilting my chin while the other adjusts the angle of my torso.
“Lean back on your right arm,” he murmurs, his breath warm against my ear as he positions my arm behind me for support. “Let your left hand rest across your stomach. Natural. Like you’re not thinking about it.”
His touch is professional, but I can feel the slight tremor in his fingers as they linger on my skin. His gaze lingers on the dark brushstroke tattoos spiraling down my right arm, something in his eyes flickering despite the calm mask he wears.
“When did you get these?” The question slips out before he can stop it, careful and neutral in tone, but I catch the pull of curiosity and something sharper beneath it. He’s seen them before, but now, standing this close, watching me arranged under his scrutiny, he can’t help wanting to know more.
I follow his stare to the abstract design that catches the light. “About three years ago, maybe four.” I pause, aware of the tension, of the way his eyes track every line. “We’d been out drinking after a game, me and some teammates. We found this tattoo parlor that was about to close, but they recognized us and stayed open.”
Adrian’s fingers hover just above the ink, not quite touching but close enough that I can feel the heat of his skin.
“I was drunk enough to be honest about what I wanted,” I continue quietly. “I told the artist I wanted something that looked like brushstrokes…something that held the shape of someone I couldn’t forget. So I asked him to do the design on my forearm. It was just a few strokes at first.”
Adrian’s breathing changes, becoming more controlled. His hand drops away from my arm, but not before I catch the slight tremor in his fingers.
“You came back for more,” he observes, his voice carefully neutral as he notices how the design continues up my upper arm.
“Yeah. A few weeks later, when I was sober enough to know exactly what I was doing.” I meet his eyes in the dim light. “I wanted to finish what I’d started.”
For a moment, something raw flickers across his features before he schools his expression back to professional detachment. But his hands shake slightly as he finishes positioning me, and I can see the war playing out behind his eyes.
When he steps back, I’m arranged in a pose that feels both powerful and exposed. My torso angled toward the light, body creating dramatic lines and shadows, but my face open, vulnerable in a way that feels stripped of all pretenses.
“Perfect,” he breathes, and there’s something in his voice that isn’t entirely professional anymore. “Don’t move.”
I hold the position, feeling the singe of his stare as it travels over every inch of exposed skin. This is it. This is me letting him see and capture everything I have to give. I’m his muse, and for the first time in ten years, that feels like exactly what I was meant to be.
And then his pencil touches paper, and everything changes.
Not for him. Adrian remains perfectly composed, his face a mask of artistic concentration as his hand moves across the page with practiced confidence. But for me, sitting here pinned byhis attention, feeling his eyes catalog every line of my body, every shadow cast by muscle and bone, everything changes.
I’ve been looked at before, studied by coaches analyzing my form, assessed by doctors checking for injuries, scrutinized by reporters looking for stories. But this is different. This is Adrian seeing me in a way that makes my skin prickle with awareness.
His eyes move from my face to my shoulders, down the line of my torso, across the stretch of muscle in my arms. I can feel every place his gaze touches, as if his attention leaves marks. My breathing shifts, becomes more conscious, and I have to resist the urge to fidget under the intensity of being truly observed.
“Don’t move,” he murmurs, not looking up from his sketchpad.
I freeze, suddenly aware that I’ve been shifting slightly, my body responding to the strange intimacy of being studied so completely. There’s something almost overwhelming about being the focus of such concentrated attention, about being seen with the kind of thoroughness that only comes from someone trying to capture your essence on paper.
Adrian’s pencil whispers against the paper, creating lines and shadows that I can’t see but can somehow feel. His brow furrows in concentration, and I watch the familiar way he holds his mouth when he’s working, the slight tilt of his head as he checks angles and proportions.
This is what I remember—this version of Adrian, completely absorbed in his art, lost in the process of creation. For these moments, at least, he seems like himself again.
Heat builds low in my stomach as his gaze travels down my chest, lingering on the definition of muscle, the play of light across my skin. It shouldn’t be sexual, but there’s something undeniably intimate about being cataloged so thoroughly, about having every detail of my body studied with such focused intensity.
My cock stiffens under the intensity of his attention, jerking slightly with every glance. I shift subtly, trying to suppress the rising warmth pooling low in my belly, but the way Adrian studies me, memorizing each line and shadow, makes detachment impossible.
His stare lingers longer, dropping purposefully, and I catch the briefest flicker in his features as his eyes trace the growing prominence of my cock.
I’m getting really aroused, which should be embarrassing but somehow isn’t. Instead, it feels like part of being seen, part of offering myself to his art without reservation or shame. My breathing deepens, and I feel exposed in the best possible way, like he’s stripping away all the pretense and performance that usually surrounds me.
Minutes stretch into what feels like an eternity, nothing but the whisper of pencil on paper and the sound of our breathing. My right arm, braced behind me, starts to ache from holding theposition. What began as a slight awareness of muscle tension has grown into a persistent burn that radiates through my shoulder and down my back.
