1. Art class

581K 9.2K 4.9K
                                    

"Get undressed and hurry up about it. Immediately. You've already kept us waiting." Steel-dark eyes glowered into hers.

Taken aback, Sera struggled to speak. "But..."

"I don't want any excuses. You're late enough as it is."

"But I'm not..."

"Either get your clothes off and get on that couch, or you can leave and not come back."

"If I could just..."

"Now!"

Afterwards, Sera was never quite sure why she complied. It was partly because she was so shocked and embarrassed by the whole situation and intimidated by the man's furious, commanding voice.

It was also because she felt pretty angry herself: he refused to even give a chance to explain herself. If she obeyed his order, he would end up being forced to make a humiliating apology.

And - although she couldn't quite admit it to herself - he was devastatingly attractive. Tall and broad shouldered, with black, tousled hair and a chiselled jaw, he looked nothing like the "Miss E Fotheringay" who was supposed to be taking Life Drawing Course No 46 at Edenvale Community Art Centre.

Who the hell was he? And why was he so angry?

Taking off her clothes seemed like the only weapon she had. If nothing else, it would be a good lesson in empathy for the models she was going to be painting over the next few weeks. Sera had often wondered what it must be like for them: stuck in awkward positions for hours on end, naked and scrutinised by a roomful of people.

She hurriedly pulled her clothes off behind the screen. She wasn't the world's most confident person when it came to her body: she would have preferred slightly fewer curves and a couple of inches extra height. But this was an art class, not a fashion catwalk, and she knew that life models ranged widely in age, size and shape.

It was only as Sera slipped on a thin silk kimono, conveniently hung over the top, that she realised she was about to be stark naked for the first time before a roomful of strangers. They had blurred into the background during the angry confrontation. If only her hair, strawberry blonde and wavy, was as long as Botticelli's Venus it could have covered her modesty.

Still, she had started this adventure now and she wasn't going to chicken out.

"Finally. You can recline there, like so." The tall man briefly showed her a painting in an art book: she was to copy a famous pose.

Sera looked around at the other artists as she took her place. It was a small class and there were only five other students. They included two women and three men. An elderly woman with snow-white hair and twinkling eyes sat on the left in a mauve smock, next to her was a bald man with glasses and a beard. A woman with a lot of frizzy hair, playing rather anxiously with her dangling jewellery, sat in the middle. Two elderly men, one of whom wore a purple silk cravat, were on the right.

Fortunately none of them looked like perverts. Most seemed more interested in adjusting their easels and getting out painting equipment than ogling her.

Sera felt like an object but in a way it was comforting. No one was looking at her as a person, just as an abstract shape. There was no appreciation in anyone's gaze, nothing sexual. The elderly man in the cravat held up his paintbrush in the air and squinted with one eye, trying to get the right proportions.

Even the teacher seemed dispassionate. "A few inches this way. Rest your leg there. Your arm straighter, along the back of the couch." Sera flinched momentarily as his fingers touched the skin of her arm. His touch burned.

His Model Student: A Student-Teacher RomanceWhere stories live. Discover now