Teddy Spenser Isn't Looking for Love - Kim Fielding Page 0,89

glazed in a sheen of sweat and a pair of loose black track pants hanging off his hips, the elastic waistband barely clinging to the narrow line cut below his iliac crest. His shoulder-length tumbles of dark hair clumped together, completely drenched, droplets dangling from the tips.

But as overheated as Damon looked?

His dark brown eyes were completely cold—glossed to reflective ice as he folded thick, brawny arms over his chest and took a slow look around the cluttered space of Rian’s studio.

Rian could track the line of his gaze—starting with the gloppy pile of clay on his pottery wheel; a pile that would eventually become a vase, but right now was just misshapen lumps of gray.

Then to the thin sheets of handmade papyrus parchment drying on a clothesline strung across the room, pulped and pressed from the fallen early autumn leaves of the trees around Albin Academy, an experiment Rian had been quite pleased with when it resulted in fine paper with a green-gold translucent fragility, flecked with bits of brown from the leaves’ veins and stems.

Next, the many half-finished canvases propped about on their easels, slashed with angry, bold strokes of paint in abstract designs.

The anatomical diagrams pinned to the walls.

And the extra large sketchbook left open on his worktable, displaying loose, light sketches of male bodies in motion, focused on capturing the flow of sinew in the turn of the waist, the tightening of an arm as it drew back, the extension of the body and curve of the spine during a long, lazy reach.

Damon’s eyes lingered longest on that one, his dark, expressive brows rising fractionally, almost mockingly—and Rian’s face burned.

All of these were his personal projects, all unfinished, but still things he put everything he had into.

So why was this stone-faced, unsmiling jerk standing here looking over them like he was about to assign Rian a failing score?

What was he even doing here at all?

Those dark brown eyes snapped back to him as if Damon had somehow heard the question snarling in the back of Rian’s mind.

“So,” Damon drawled, and Rian realized this was the first time he’d actually heard Damon speak in his three years at Albin Academy, rather than noncommittal affirmative mutters during staff meetings. His voice was deep, raw, gritty, with a subtle pull to it that didn’t quite seem to echo typical New England accents around Massachusetts. “I thought this was some kinda broom closet. Chambers and Walden know you’re using it for...” He tilted his head. A damp ripple of hair fell across the refined sharpness of his cheekbone, the tip practically licking at the corner of his wide, full, stern-set mouth. “...this?”

Rian tensed.

More at the implied scorn dripping from this than at the fact he’d been...uh...

Caught using school grounds for unauthorized purposes.

He doubted Principal Chambers and Assistant Principal Walden would particularly care. Especially when Rian had been using the storeroom as a studio since he’d been hired, and no one had really noticed—though considering Lachlan Walden had only been hired last semester, the assistant principal had more things to worry about than one rogue art teacher moving a few brooms.

So Rian drew himself up, lifting his chin as he reached for the wet rag hanging from the edge of his wheel and began wiping the thick patina of clay from his hands, peeling off the cold, clinging layer.

“My broom closet,” he said firmly. “Attached to my classroom. I’m allowed to use it as I deem necessary as long as it’s for educational purposes.”

This...counted...technically.

He was the art teacher.

He couldn’t exactly teach his students if he was out of practice himself, but there wasn’t space for a studio in the tiny shared faculty apartments—and considering he was expected to be on campus as an RA even when he wasn’t teaching, renting a studio down the hill in town wasn’t particularly optimal. Not...that he thought...a town as small as Omen would even have many spaces for rent, but...well...

He’d made do.

Especially since on top of being Walden’s subordinate?

Rian was also his roommate.

And Walden was a bit of a neat freak.

What business was it of Damon’s, anyway? Especially when the man was just looking at Rian, his lips twitching faintly as if Rian had said something absurdly funny. Rian scowled and turned away from the wheel to cross to the little janitorial sink against the wall, using the mostly-clean underside of his wrist to nudge the faucet on so he could thrust his fingers under the cold spray and scrub the last of the clay