Page 25 of Cruel King
“Says the person who has acted like he hated me until two minutes before we had sex,” she jokes nervously.
Reaching out, I yank the covers completely away so she’s uncovered again. “I never hated you.”
She doesn’t cover up as she mumbles, “Could have fooled me.”
Finally willing to pose naked, she leans back against my legs and smiles up at me. “Do you mind if I lie down? If I’m sitting, there’s this roll here around my belly button that I don’t think I want anyone drawing.”
“We can do it whatever way you want, but choose now since once I begin, that’s where you need to stay, at least until I get the outline of your body done,” I say as I reach over into my nightstand to get a pencil.
“Okay. This works,” she says as she rests her head on my knee. “By the way, I hope this doesn’t sound weird, but you have great legs.”
I begin drawing this gorgeous girl lying naked in my bed and resting against me as she compliments what I’ve always thought was one of my best parts. It seems surreal that it’s Ava here as that girl saying those words, and all I can do is smile.
“You probably hear that all the time,” she says. “But they’re very nice. Long. Toned. Muscular.”
Looking up from my sketch, I nod. “Well, you aren’t so bad yourself. Legwise, I mean. Well, actually, all of you, but since we’re talking about great legs, yours are pretty damn nice. I remember seeing you walking up the road one day in a blue sundress and flip flops that showed off your legs and thinking soccer might not be such a boring sport to watch after all if the players had legs like yours.”
Of course, like all people who love soccer, she immediately gives me a look like I’ve just committed some kind of horrible crime by saying it’s boring. I let her go on for a while about how it’s the most exciting sport around and don’t bother arguing with her since I’ve had this discussion before with other soccer fans and know how it ends up. They’re all goddamned fanatics, but for this one, I don’t mind the lecture about the finer points of the sport.
When she finishes, I hurriedly change the subject and say, “In fact, I’ve seen you a bunch of times going out and you always looked beautiful.”
Ava draws her eyebrows in like my statement makes her unhappy. “Why didn’t you ever talk to me like this? You always seemed to hate me.”
I don’t respond because that explanation would ruin the time we’re spending together, and that’s the last thing I want to do. When I don’t fill in the silence, she continues to talk about one time she saw me when I was wearing a tux.
“You looked great, but you didn’t look happy.”
While I sketch out the area around her hips and legs, I explain why I was wearing that tux. “I was a groomsman in my cousin’s wedding. She left three months after the ceremony. They’d barely gotten back from their honeymoon when she told him she met some other guy twice her age. A real love match they were.”
I glance up from my work and see Ava frowning. “Oh. That’s terrible for him. Is he okay now?”
Rolling my eyes, I nod. “He’s fine. He met some girl online who likes to dress up in anime costumes and they go to cons all the time. I don’t even think he knew that shit existed before her, and now he’s all in on it. She’ll probably leave him for a Pokémon character or something equally as bizarre.”
“You sound like you’re not a huge fan of love, Matthias.”
As I start drawing her breasts, I tilt my head left and right. “I’m not not a fan of it.”
That makes her giggle. “Sounds like a ringing endorsement to me.”
When I finish the basics of the drawing that I’ll add to later, I turn the sketchbook around so she can see. “It’s not done since I have to fill in more, but what do you think?”
She takes the book out of my hand and sits up to look at the sketch of her. For a long moment, Ava doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t even move a muscle. All she does is stare at that page with my drawing on it.
And when she finally looks up, I know even before she says a single thing that she likes it. “It’s incredible, Matthias. I can’t believe how wonderful this is.”
“It’s just how I see you. Nothing big.”
“It is big. It’s beautiful. Can I have it when it’s finished?” she asks so sweetly that I hate having to tell her no.
Shaking my head, I take the sketchbook from her. “No. I want to keep it. You can come visit it anytime you want, though.”
Suddenly, she looks shy, and concern fills her eyes. “Please promise me you won’t show anyone else.”
“I promise. This is our secret.”
Still not convinced, she asks, “Doesn’t anyone look at your sketches? Don’t you show people?”
I set the book on the nightstand, along with my pencil. “No. Nobody cares about this. All anyone cares about when it comes to me is my taking over the family business when my father retires.”