Sam watched as Tony painted over Stacy's sternum with tiny strokes of the paint brush, the early morning light filtering golden over her skin. As Tony dipped his brush into the pot of green, Stacy's eyes met Sam's and held him captive for a breath. Then Tony was back, the paint fresh on his brush, small strokes inching closer and closer to her breasts.
Sam knew she wanted Tony. How many late-night gossip sessions had ended in Stacy extolling the virtues of Tony's ass or muscular arms? How many times had he listened to her fantasize about wrapping her thighs around him and running her fingers through his hair? Sam was bi, and he sometimes felt like he fit the gay best friend spot in Stacy's life.
He was tired of that role.
"No, no, no! That is not how you paint a naked woman!" he exclaimed, stepping up behind Tony and dipping his fingers into the pot of blue paint. He kneeled over Stacy, who looked as if she wanted to say something, but was wise enough to let this play out. Her lips parted slightly as he brought his fingers to the side of her breast and in one smooth motion, spiraled the blue paint, just grazing the side of her nipple.
"Dude! You're ruining my still life!" yelped Tony as Stacy tried valiantly not to laugh. Sam watched the tiny vibrations in her breasts as she did her best to suppress her mirth. Tony flung green paint at Sam, running his fingers through the bristles of the paint brush before throwing the brush at him and sticking his fingers into the green paint pot.
"You asshole!" shouted Sam as he wiped green paint from his face and left a slow trail of blue paint down Tony's cheek.
"Paint the flowers, man. Seriously," said Tony with exasperation, wiping paint from his face.
Sam stuck his other hand in the yellow paint and worked his fingers around Stacy's other breast, a sunflower beginning to form. He looked directly into her eyes as he fingered the yellow paint around her nipple, pinching it as it hardened. He was rewarded by her sharp intake of breath and a brief unfocusing of her eyes.
Tony followed Sam's yellow, outlining the flower in black paint. As Tony painted the vase and table, Sam worked his way lower and lower on Stacy's body, painting the rug and floor, rich reds and browns circling her navel. The picture didn't go any lower, but that didnt stop him from easing apart her legs and running his paint covered hands over her inner thighs.
Tony stopped and watched as Sam worked brown paint into the crease between Stacy's legs and torso and then moved in. The brown paint spread from his fingers gently over her lower lips, every inch of them covered in paint. Never wanting to be on the sidelines again, Sam cleaned off one of his fingers and ran it between her lower lips. Her mouth parted, her chest rising with her intake of breath. He smiled at her as he removed his finger.
"Well. I think we're done," stated Tony as he eyed Sam as if seeing him in a new light. Tony fetched his phone from the table and paced back and forth, looking for the best angle from which to photograph their work. Sam stood and admired the naked woman at his feet, the swirls of paint vaguely resembling the vase and sunflowers on the kitchen table. He brought his hand to his face and breathed in Stacy's scent. Stacy's eyes never left his finger. Tony clicked a few pictures of Stacy's nude body covered in their artwork, then helped her to her feet.
"I think I need a cold shower," she stated. "While I'm in the shower, you two figure out the next item," she ordered. Then she was gone.
+
This had started three hours ago as the scavenger hunt item list had dropped. This summer had started out no differently than any other. The three friends gathered, as they had for the past five years, in Tony's house, meeting for a quick breakfast and planning out what supplies they might need to complete the items on this year's hunt list. The scavenger hunt was an annual tradition that let them be creative and weird and utterly themselves, while raising money for some charity or other.
Sam, newly thirty, figured people their age should be on a beach somewhere for summer vacation. They should be sipping icy cocktails, decked out in barely there bathing suits. But the three of them had never really fit into the party and beach crowd. They wanted to play dungeons and dragons, dress up as Star Wars characters, and do bizarre charity scavenger hunts.
Unlike past summers, Tony had this year decided to be immature and while Sam read the items on the list, he followed each with "in bed." Stacy laughed at first, then told him he was acting like a middle schooler. That did not stop him.
"Pick native flowers, arrange them in a vase, and paint a still life. In the description share one helpful medicinal property of the flowers," read Sam.
"In bed," said Tony.
Stacy playfully hit his arm and asked him, "Really? Are you twelve? How would you even do that in bed?"
Sam thought of a few ways he could paint a still life of the three of them in bed with native flowers. He could vividly see Stacy on her hands and knees in the late August light, his cock pumping into her ass, Tony underneath her, a sunflower held between her teeth. Yeah, he could see that item being fun in bed.
"I bet we can make this hunt x-rated if we put our minds to it," was all Sam said.
"Let's do it," agreed Tony.
"Ok," ventured Stacy, a mischievous smile beginning to steal across her lips. "So why don't you two go gather some flowers from outside and the first one back here gets to decide how you're going to paint them onto me."
"As in, onto your arm? Your back?" asked Tony tentatively.
"As in I will strip and lay on the floor and you two can figure out where you want to paint the still life," she answered.
"Um. Do we get to watch you strip?" asked Tony. Stacy swatted him and told him to get flower picking. By the time they got back inside with the sunflowers they'd gotten from the neighbor, she had been lying on the carpet in the nude.
***
"Mushrooms," said Stacy. "How the fuck are you two going to make taking photographs of mushrooms x-rated?" she asked.
Sam shrugged his shoulders as Tony hiked up ahead of them, scouring the trail for mushrooms. It was shaping up to be a typical summer day. The forest buzzed with the song of insects. The humidity had saturated Sam's shirt within two minutes of stepping outside. He felt like he was hiking through soup. It had rained yesterday and the moss and leaves exuded that fresh damp smell he always associatd with the forest. His eyes diligently swept the ground looking for fungi.
They'd been walking for five minutes and hadn't seen any signs of the white caps he knew dotted the forest trail. The dampness should have ensured plenty of them, and he was trying to be patient, but the anticipation was making it hard to concentrate on keeping his eyes on the earth. He tried to think through different scenarios that would get Stacy naked again, but was coming up blank. The image of her breath as he pinched her nipple, the yellow paint smudging on her skin, planted itself in his head and would not let go.
Excited squeals interrupted his reverie as Stacy skipped ahead of him, excitedly pointing out tiny white mushroom caps popping up next to a rotting log.
"Oh my goodness, look at how cute and tiny they are!" she screamed as Tony and Sam squatted before the mushrooms with her.
"Tiny, that leaves me out," said Tony with a chuckle. "Guess we'll need to take a side by side comparison between you, Sam, and those 'tiny, cute little mushrooms,'" he said, raising his voice into a falsetto imitation of Stacy.
