Games People Play by Shelby Reed Page B

to be flawless.” Her delayed response to his question came too rushed, blatant defense against a force she couldn’t truly fight. The words trembled at the end, the same way she trembled inside as she backed all the way to her easel and bumped into it like a dolt, nearly knocking the canvas to the floor.
    Colm said nothing, just leaned back on his hands again and resumed the position she had arranged, those godforsaken jeans open at the fly, promising ecstasy.
    “I want perfection,” she repeated. And he was. He was seraphically beautiful, everything she’d ever wanted in a subject—in a man. She picked up her brush and made some brisk, gestural strokes on the canvas. Despite the declarations, this was the furthest thing from perfection she could create—this damned canvas quickly turning into a sloppy mess. This state of her life. But she could pretend. She could pretend everything slid across the surface in smooth, exquisite detail, that each of her days slid flawlessly into one another, that she didn’t desire this man she’d known less than a week; that Max hadn’t set Colm before her, all but served like a buffet dinner; and that she wasn’t betraying Max’s trust while not feeling guilty for it.
    “Can we talk while you paint?” Colm’s husky voice broke the silence, and Sydney startled.
    “No,” she said quickly.
    “How long are you going to ignore what’s happening here?”
    She loaded her brush and globbed too much paint on the figure’s neck. “Nothing’s happening. Nothing’s going to happen.”
    He was quiet for a moment. Then, “Dinner was a son of a bitch tonight.”
    The brush on the canvas went still, then resumed. Sydney knew what he referred to. “I’m not afraid of being replaced.” Not anymore. Whatever Max could deliver at this point was nothing compared to the list of things she feared, starting with Colm.
    “When was the last time he touched you?” he asked, as though the conversation were idle chitchat, as though he were asking about her ho-hum day and not framing a brutal observation of her fast-dissolving life.
    She tried not to look at him and failed. He was holding his pose, his muscles taut, skin glowing in the spotlight.
    “I’m starting to care about you.” Colm didn’t move, and yet his statement shook the room.
    Care.
More than
want
. Deadlier. Another way for her to fall before she’d even flown.
    She swallowed the ache in her throat and applied more paint to the canvas, but this time mixed in too much crimson and turned the gleam on his shoulder a dusky pink. “Shit.” Suddenly, all the anger from the last few weeks rose up like a dragon and breathed fire into her limbs, her veins, her brain, her heart. “Shit! Shit! I hate this!” She grabbed the canvas off the easel and threw it against the nearest wall, where it left a wet smudge of flesh tones before it hit the floor, facedown.
    Ruined.
    She hadn’t planned to cry. Hadn’t even known it was coming. But suddenly she was weeping, and when Colm said her name she turned away, rubbed her face with her hands to scrub away the weakness, but it was no use. It felt good to fall apart. She’d needed this far too long.
    When she heard his bare feet on the wood floor, felt his hands on her shoulders, heard his soft, “Hey,” she turned into his arms and let herself be held. Held against a bare chest, warm, smooth, lime-scented skin, and a fiercely beating heart. Life, beauty. Art. He was living art.
    All the taut rage bled from her through her tears. Like a cloudburst, it was over in minutes, but she stayed in his embrace, reveling in the way he stroked her hair and murmured indecipherable nothings of comfort against her temple. Max had never held her like this, even before the accident. Had he ever loved her as a person, a woman? Something more than as his novice, or a possession in his collection? She should be flattered, little Sydney Warren from Nowhere, Nebraska. A half-hysterical giggle rose in her