"Fuck!" Thistle yelled at the clay. It was bad clay, the worst. It was the clay's fault that she couldn't mold it right. Not hers. Not how last night kept replaying in her head either. Or how she had barely had less than four hours of sleep.
It was stupid. Melody's handsy massage had done a great job of getting rid of any aches. She even helped her clean up. Upon returning home, she felt exhausted and expected to sleep well past the time her shop opened. But no, she had to wake up in the middle of the night, inspired. She had spent the rest of the night sketching and now was spending most of the morning molding this bad clay.
As if the universe was punishing her for her vulgar acts last night, the front door alarm rang through the workshop. She was so startled her claws sunk too deep into the clay ruining the arm she had been molding. "Of course." She muttered, not that anyone was here. This was her one-man show and she liked it like that.
She jumped off the workbench she was perched on and put the clay down a little too hard, squishing the shape. She wasn't dressed for customers since she had no commissions due today. Clay-covered jeans and t-shirt with a dull brown apron. Hopefully, whoever had come by liked the messy artist look. She let her hair down from her atrocious bun, auburn locks tumbling down past her cheeks.
She booked it across the workshop, forcing herself not to kick the door to the front open. Customers didn't tend to appreciate it when she came in angry. She popped out from behind the counter with a fake smile in place and tail wagging. Her perfected customer service look.
"Welcome to Thistle's Gallery. I'm..." Her words and tail dropped as soon as she saw who it was, Archer. And worse still, he looked good. He had on a tight shirt and jeans that highlighted his muscles. Better yet no smirk, just a smile. An actual happy-looking smile.
"So, you own an art gallery hmm?" He said, reminding her that she hadn't imagined that perfect deep voice in the chaos of last night.
"How do you know about my shop, sir?"
He tilted his head coyly. "Sir? Do you address all your customers like that or is this special treatment?"
There was the teasing games he seemed to love. Luckily, she was too tired to take the bait. "I figured you would like getting your ego stroked."
"I do, but for you it would be Master."
She rolled her eyes at that. "Can you just tell me how you found my shop?"
He walked up to the counter by the register and set down a large paper bag with some bistro's logo on it. "I told you I would be looking into you."
That got her attention on the bag. "So, what, is there a gun in there?"
That got a proper laugh from him. A rich sound too nice for an ass like him.
"I'm not a movie assassin, fox." He answered as he dug into the bag. He pulled out numerous white boxes. "It's pastries."
She had not seen that coming at all. "What?"
"Last night you took on a punishment with no questions asked, but breakfast makes you wary?"
In her defense, she hadn't been at her brightest last night. "That wasn't at my work."
"I can understand protecting what's yours. And last night you became mine. It's my job to take care of you. Have you eaten yet today?"
"Yes." She lied. She hadn't eaten since before her visit to Carnal last night.
"You're a terrible liar. Do that after I start training you and I'll turn your ass red."
"Well, you haven't, and I don't have time to eat. I've got work to do."
"How much will it cost for you to close the shop for a few hours?" he asked, staring directly into her eyes.
"It's more about the time I could be working on a piece." He was being annoyingly persistent, and worse still, it was endearing.
He let out a sigh at her response. "One hour?"
That wasn't an unreasonable request, though all this felt fishy. "Fine. Go lock the door and flip the sign."
Again, he surprised her with a cute, goofy grin. "I've always wanted to flip the sign."
He rushed to the door as she gathered the boxes of pastries he had tossed across the counter. "Hurry up. I've got coffee and a table in the back."
She didn't wait to see if he was following as she headed back into the workshop. For the most part it was open plan, easy to navigate. But there was a small kitchenette in a room off to the side with the basic essentials every starving artist needed.
She could hear the door swing as Archer caught up. He let out a whistle as he looked around. "Impressive. You work mostly in metal, right?"
She hated that he knew that without asking. "You tell me since you did a background check and stalked me." She put the pastries down in a heap on the table and headed to start on coffee.
Archer came into the kitchenette and started to straighten up her mess. "You saw that scene last night. Do you think I work in a normal line of work?"
"You going to tell me what you do, or is knowing everything about each other a one-way street?"
He was opening boxes, the small room filling with the smells of numerous forms of sugar. "Do you actually want to know and do you have any preference?"
"I guess not, and is there any with fruit?" She brought over a cup of coffee and put it in front of him. "Black good?"
"The one way I'm a stereotype." She didn't answer but went back to making herself a cup. They didn't talk as she finished up and sat down with her overly sweet coffee. She noticed a custard fruit tart with a plastic fork in front of her chair.
"Thanks, but why are you here? I won't start as your 'plaything' until tonight."
"To check up on you, as I said. How are you feeling, by the way?" His avoidance of giving straight answers was getting more and more on her nerves.
"Fine and stop deflecting." Her voice was edgy and sharp.
"Physically? Mentally?" He carried on as if he hadn't noticed her tone.
"Fine on both accounts. What are you doing here? Finding an excuse to back out or something?"
