Hunter settled his weight on one leg and cocked his hip. He was the California surfer version of a perfect marble statue.

It turned out that a “quick sculpt” took a lot longer than a quick sketch. At first, I wasn’t sure what to do. Everyone around the room started slapping clay on their wire armature. I did the same, noticing how warm the clay was. It was really squishy and buttery, sort of like lard in terms of firmness, but not greasy at all. I could squish this stuff around all day long. Warm clay. Who knew?

It didn’t take long for me to get the hang of the actual sculpting. It was like playing with Play-Doh, but easier because the armature helped keep the clay in the right places.

Soon, people pulled out a variety of wooden tools from their own bags. They used the tools, which looked like a variety of wooden letter-openers or butter knives, to further shape the clay. Some people just used their fingers. I was a hands-on kind of girl. Fingers seemed to be easiest.

At one point, I glanced over at Romeo. He was hard at work, but when he saw me looking at him, he held up his rough sculpture, which resembled nothing more than a rudimentary clay voodoo doll at this point, and pulled the legs apart with his fists. Then he jammed one finger up into the sculptures’ crotch while running his tongue around his own lips and giving me bedroom eyes before blowing me a kiss.

I winced, and tried to focus on the sculpture in my hand, but Romeo was still trying to get my attention from across the room. I glanced up and he bent his sculpture at the waist, then jabbed his finger into the sculpture’s butt.

I grimaced and giggled reflexively.

“I didn’t realize this was your own personal comedy club, Miss Smith,” the professor barked behind me. “Are you here to work, or goof off?”

“I’m working,” I said, sounding thirteen again. I held up my sculpture.

She looked down her nose at it, then glared at me for what seemed like an hour. She jammed her fists defiantly on her hips. “Well, keep working! Do you need an invitation?” She stalked over to the next student, her heels click-clacking.

Oh boy. What had I gotten myself into?

SAMANTHA

“All right, class, now we’re going to find out why our tables have wheels," Professor Bittinger said. “Please shift your table two positions to your right. If your bags are in the way, you can set them against the walls.”

Everyone moved their tables in the circle, but Hunter remained in his same position and pose. As soon as I looked at Hunter from my new vantage point, I saw all kinds of problems with my sculpture, so I went about fixing them, until we moved positions again. More problems. Sculpting was a whole different animal from drawing, but I kind of liked it. In some ways it was easier, because you could squish the clay around to fix things without using an eraser and then redrawing everything.

We shifted positions two more times in the next twenty minutes, then took a break.

The students circulated the room, chatting and looking at each other’s work.

“How’d it go?”

I looked up, right into the amber eyes of Hunter. “I’m sorry, what?”

He haphazardly strapped the belt of his robe around his waist, almost as if he’d just gotten dressed in the privacy of his own bedroom first thing in the morning, as if covering his wing-wang in public was a formality for him. “How is your sculpture so far?”

I was blushing, I think from embarrassment. Was I the only person in the room? Couldn’t he talk to someone else? “Oh, uh, pretty good, I guess. I’ve never sculpted before. It’s a lot different than drawing.”

“That’s what they tell me,” he smiled. His teeth were white and even, as perfect as his physique.

“What, you don’t draw, I mean sculpt?” I stammered.

“Nope. I leave it to the professionals.” He winked at me and flashed his smile.

Was it just me, or had he not belted his robe tightly enough? It looked like it was going to fall open if he wasn’t careful. I considered telling him as much, but couldn’t think of the right way to say it. Was he doing it on purpose? Setting me up for a stealth flashing? Probably.

“What’s your name?” he asked, holding out his hand to shake. This caused the top of his robe to billow out, revealing his chest and abs as he leaned forward.

“Oh, uh, Sam.” I reluctantly shook his hand.

The shaking made his robe ripple, and I saw the belt sliding apart. When we finished shaking hands, he straightened up and I swear the only thing stopping the robe flaps from sliding completely away to reveal his full splendor was that they had caught on the, um, prominence, between his legs. Not that he was sporting wood, but it, well, it was uncommonly obtrusive. Not that I was looking. Sure, I’d seen it five minutes ago, but not from two feet away.

He needed a harness for that thing.

The second I realized what Hunter was doing, because the look on his face made it obvious he was orchestrating this imminent yet “unintentional” unharnessing, I appropriately bolted my eyes on his.

“I thought you said your name was Samantha,” he said, giving me a cocky smile.

Ever since Christos had started calling me Samantha all the time, I’d decided to stop introducing myself as Sam to everyone. But this Hunter guy was dangerous, and needed to be kept at arm’s length. “Oh, uh, yeah,” I grimaced, “my, ah, friends, call me Sam.”

I was regretting locking my eyes on his because their amber color was trying to hypnotize me. Was he making them shine and glimmer on purpose? Or was that their natural state?

“Sam it is. My name’s Hunter Blakeley.” he said casually, hands on hips.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed old man gravity was further working his dirty magic on Hunter’s robe. Full disclosure was nearly upon me. Ew.

“You seem pretty good at sculpting,” Hunter grinned.

A few months ago, I would’ve blurted out words of nervous self-doubt. But that was a few months ago. I’d made steady progress since then, and after my parents’ bombshell the night before, I wasn’t in this class to mess around. I was here to work, not flirt. I knew what Hunter was doing. Besides, I totally wasn’t interested, and I’m pretty sure my artistic advancement wasn’t his top priority. “Thanks,” I said flatly.

Hunter gazed at me. His robe shifted another inch. I’m pretty sure there were no more inches left on his robe before his…inches were unveiled. In my head, I shouted at him,

FIX IT!!!!!!

He smirked confidently, probably reading my mind. Yeah, he knew what he was doing. He probably did this to women every day. Practiced on street corners as old ladies walked by. Helped them across the street while his robe accidentally fell open, just to see if they had heart attacks.

I needed to remove myself from this situation, because he was clearly indulging his desires to the hilt. Hilt was the wrong word, because we all know a sword and its hilt can be a euphemism for the male genitalia, just like a scabbard can refer to a woman’s—

STOP!!!

That was me shouting at me.

Get a grip, girl!

No!! Don’t GRIP anything!!!!

Yes, I was going insane. I was only human. And Hunter was hot. I took a deep breath and said to him, “Well, I need to get more clay, er, ah…”

“Hunter!” Professor Bittinger said, standing right behind me, “so good to see you posing again!”

Jesus Christ! She almost gave me a heart attack. Maybe that was her plan. But seriously, how the hell was it that most of the time her noisemaker heels machine-gunned across the cement floor when she was on the way over to chew me out, but now all of a sudden she managed to sneak up on me like she wore ninja slippers?

My operative theory was Magical Shoes. That was the only plausible explanation.