The studio was in a converted warehouse by the river, the kind with high ceilings and brick walls and pottery wheels that spun with a hum that sounded like a heartbeat. I’d signed up for a class—”Introduction to Ceramics”—because I was bored, because I was twenty-four and unemployed and because the studio was owned by my stepfather.
Richard was a sculptor. A successful one. His gallery in the front of the warehouse sold pieces for thousands of dollars to collectors who didn’t know that the real art was happening in the back room, where his daughter taught classes to people like me.
Sloane was twenty-six. A ceramicist with clay permanently under her fingernails and a smile that made me want to be molded. She’d been my instructor for three weeks, maintaining a professional distance that was completely at odds with the way she looked at me when she thought I wasn’t paying attention.
Tonight was the advanced class. A private lesson, supposedly, because I’d shown “promise.” Richard was in the front gallery, hosting a wine-and-cheese event for potential buyers. The studio was empty except for us, the wheels, and the clay.
“The wheel is still spinning,” I whispered, my hands covered in wet clay, my white apron stained with gray. Sloane was behind me, her arms reaching around, her hands covering mine, guiding the shape that was forming on the spinning disk. “Your father is in the front gallery, talking to a buyer about a ten-thousand-dollar vase. And my hands are covered in clay.”
Sloane didn’t speak. She just leaned down, her cheek pressing against mine, her hands still guiding mine on the spinning clay, her body pressed against my back with a heat that had nothing to do with the kiln in the corner.
“If he walks back,” I breathed, my voice trembling as her hands slid from the clay to my wrists, then up my arms, then under the edges of my apron, “he’ll see his daughter behind me, her hands on my hands, her mouth on my neck, the clay smeared across my apron and her tank top and the floor and he’ll know that this isn’t a pottery lesson. This isn’t art. This is—”
She turned my face toward her with a clay-covered hand on my jaw. Her mouth found mine. A kiss that tasted like earth and water and the exact moment when creation becomes possession. Her tongue slid against mine, her clay-covered hand sliding down my neck, into my apron, finding my breast, my nipple, pinching with a pressure that was completely at odds with the gentle art she’d been teaching me.
The gallery bell chimed.
“Richard?” A buyer’s voice. Female. Close. “I wanted to see the studio. The back room where the magic happens.”
Sloane didn’t panic. She didn’t remove her hand. She just pressed her clay-covered fingers deeper inside my apron, her thumb circling my nipple, her other hand reaching for a wooden tool on the table beside us.
“One moment!” she called out, her voice perfectly steady, completely casual. “We’re just finishing a piece!”
She picked up the tool—a wooden rib used for shaping—and pressed it against my clit through my jeans, using the smooth wood to circle, to press, to drive me toward the edge while her father and a buyer stood twenty feet away.
“Let the clay dry,” she whispered against my mouth, her fingers pinching my nipple, the wooden tool pressing harder, faster. “Let him see the art. He’ll never know what we made. He’ll never know that his daughter is making his stepdaughter come on a pottery wheel while he sells a vase.”
I came with my hands still in the wet clay, my body shaking, the wheel spinning beneath me, Sloane’s mouth swallowing my cry. The orgasm was sharp, earthy, completely consuming—amplified by the clay, the spin, the knowledge that we were creating something private while her father created something public.
After, she wiped her hands. Fixed my apron. Smoothed the clay on the wheel into something that looked like a bowl.
“For the kiln,” she said, her voice light. “Our first collaboration.”
The buyer walked in. She admired the bowl. She bought it for five hundred dollars.
Sloane and I still laugh about that. The bowl sits in my apartment, fired and glazed, a perfect circle that holds my keys. Every time I look at it, I remember the clay, the spin, and the way Sloane made me come while her father sold art in the next room.
The class ended. I didn’t sign up for the next one. I didn’t need to. Sloane teaches me privately now. In the studio. After hours. With the wheel spinning and the clay wet and her hands on mine, showing me exactly how to shape something beautiful from nothing.
