Free No Holds Barred by Paris Brandon

been this excited about a project.”
    “You’ve been down here since last night?”
    “Uh-huh,” he mumbled, cocking his head, concentrating on a line she hoped wasn’t her breast but was afraid it was. She swallowed hard and willed away the panic.
    “Would you like some coffee?”
    “That’d be great,” he turned and took the cup, kissing her quickly and taking a gulp before returning his attention to the sketch.
    “Have you eaten anything this morning?”
    “I’m not really hungry—but go ahead and eat. I’ll be up as soon as I get your torso right.”
    “One word,” she mumbled to herself as she left, “airbrush.”
    “I told you, that’s photography,” he called after she closed the door.
    She ate some cereal because she didn’t have much of an appetite after seeing all those sketches of her naked self decorating his studio.
    There was no getting around the fact that Jake was going to be handsome when he was eighty. She on the other hand had stopped trying to convince herself that next year she’d be beautiful. Next year she’d grow into her nose or her feet or she wouldn’t look so top-heavy. Well, she wasn’t top-heavy anymore—her hips had evened that out.
    Oh God, she was glad he hadn’t gotten to her hips yet. She didn’t think she wanted to see that. Maybe he’d stop working on it but he’d already told her that when he was on a new project he was single-minded. A cold chill skittered up her spine and all the euphoria from last night sat in a congealed lump in the pit of her stomach. Single-minded. Obsessive. New project. She was putting her bowl in the dishwasher when the panic hit her.
    She knew she was being stupid but unless they made love nonstop she was never going to forget that no matter what she did she had forty-one-year-old gravity-challenged breasts, a round belly no amount of exercise was going to change and the hips of a Sicilian peasant.
    You’ve had a very good five days, she told herself. Hell, you’ve had better than a very good five days. You’ve had five days with a very single-minded beautiful younger man who is sexually inexhaustible. You should be happy he was obsessed with you. Don’t whine. Don’t be clingy. He thinks he loves you now because you’re his latest project and he is obsessive.
    You, on the other hand are a forty-one-year-old woman with a great career and her own apartment. You don’t have to pick up anyone’s socks and you can have ice cream for dinner if that’s what you’re in the mood for.
    Now, get your ass up those stairs, pack all your toys and your toothbrush and make up some excuse for leaving early. Yeah, you’re going to have to work at this one because usually you just leave and they don’t bother calling back. But remember the obsessive part. He’ll call.
    She put her bags in the car and walked down the drive to his studio. He’d started on her hips. She stared at her rounded tummy, her thighs. Said a silent prayer that he didn’t paint the cellulite in. Oh hell, he could paint the cellulite she just didn’t want him to show it to anyone.
    “Jake,” she had to say because he hadn’t turned around when she opened the door. “I just got a phone call. There’s an emergency and I need to get back.” He turned around, frowning with a paintbrush between his teeth. “Home,” she said, wondering if she needed to bother clarifying.
    He took the paintbrush out of his mouth. “You’re going back to Chicago?”
    She started to tell him she’d temporarily lost her mind but he was standing there, beautiful and obsessed with his newest project—her. He might not try to change her physically but thanks to his therapist parents he knew more about relationships than most of the men she’d known and emotionally he could tie her into knots. That was why her chest was constricting. It had to be.
    She knew it was habit. She tried to feel good about it but the euphoria of knowing she was doing the right thing slipped around the