His hand skated down my breast and over my waist to my hip. Tugging at the knickers he’d painted and pressed a black dripping sponge against my clit. With a savage kiss, he pulled them down until I kicked them away.
The minute I was bare, a slim piece of virgin skin amongst the colours he’d transformed me with, he fumbled with his belt.
I helped him, pushing his hand away and unbuckling the leather. He shuddered as I unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans, then arched his hips as I pushed down the barrier between us.
He groaned as he settled back between my legs. The warmth of his cock, belly, and thighs made me shiver with pleasure. He was heat and hope all at once.
“Fuck,” he grunted as my fingers dived between our shared warmth and wrapped around his length. His teeth clamped on my bottom lip, sucking it into his mouth before kissing me roughly. Our lips never unlocked. We kissed violently but also slowly, devouring each other with ruthless determination. The glide of his tongue almost distracted me from the feather of his fingers over my core.
My back bowed as the feather became penetration.
I cried out as he drove two fingers deep.
He groaned as he found me wet.
His thumb rocked on my clit as his five o’clock shadow punished my skin; his kiss so deep, he smashed my head against the floor.
His fingers withdrew.
The soft nudge of his cock replaced them.
I froze in his arms, teetering on the precious knife-edge of anticipation.
His tongue swept into my mouth.
His cock thrust swift and thick into me.
God.
I was totally at his mercy.
Totally with him.
Totally his.
The final barrier Gil had always hid behind shattered. I felt everything he did. I felt his regret, his worry, his love. I felt his teeth and tongue as they left me hollow. I felt his thrusting hips and pounding cock as he stole me from any other thoughts.
He invaded me.
Consumed me.
Made sure that I would never, ever forget him.
“Please, Gil.” I didn’t know what I asked for. But he gave it to me. He thrust deeper, kissed harder. Grabbing the back of his nape, I forced our mouths together. I spread my legs shamelessly, granting him space to sink further, drive faster.
My body flushed with wetness and want.
“Shit you feel...” His forehead crashed on mine. He clutched the floor beside my ears, pulling himself up and into me, pinning me to the floor with his hips. “You’re mine, O.”
I didn’t know how to reply.
I wasn’t his.
I couldn’t be.
But I nodded as his thrusts increased. His hips rolled. And his thumb found my clit again.
Fever sprang through my blood. Hot and hungry for the release he conjured. I purred, throwing my head back, scratching my nails on his hoodie.
Once again we fucked in the middle of blues and purples. Other paint bottles tipped over thanks to the sheet tangling beneath us.
We grew wild and furious.
The sensation of having him on top.
The hardness of him inside me.
The way his eyes sank into mine, begging access to my heart all while his body conquered my soul.
His paint had the magic to lie, hide sins, and camouflage flaws. He could create a masterpiece from imperfection. Too bad that tonight, our masterpiece was over, and the magic had to die.
“I love you, O.” His voice resembled a colour, a dark broody copper. Something that had dulled with reality but could sparkle once again if polished.
Our eyes locked.
Gil paused inside me.
The moment stretched for far too long, turning this from goodbye to something unbearably complicated.
“Gil...I—”
“Don’t.” He shook his head. “Don’t.”
With our gazes still locked, he pushed harder, rocked deeper. He thrust so hard, I cried out, squirming under him. The pinching, consuming pressure of him. The delicious discomfort that followed.
My core rippled around him, welcoming and rebelling against his thrusts.
This was dangerous.
So, so dangerous.
Already I felt the crack in my heart, the tiny hairline fracture that would keep growing, continue to spread until it just tinkled apart.
I clutched him closer.
Our foreheads pressed together as he rode me with awe and dismay.
He kissed me again, joining our mouths as well as our bodies. Carnal and crude, pleasure spiralled from every cell.
We both became lost to it.
Lost to the cresting, lusting release.
I rocked my hips up, grinding myself onto his thick cock, seeking solace from the overbearing connection we shared. This wasn’t fucking. This was something so much worse.
This was raw and bare. And it pushed me to the brink.
I wanted to surrender to him.
I wanted to give in to my heart and forgive and forget and promise I’d be there no matter what happened.
But then he shoved away the rawness, pulled curtains over the tenderness, and rutted into me. He deliberately shut down any feelings between us because feelings would ruin us.
His thumb rocked with single-minded determination to make me come.
My mind scrambled with the primitive instinct to mate.
I held onto his hoodie, throwing my head back and giving him utmost control.
Fireworks crackled in my blood.
I opened my legs wider, taking more of him. He sucked in a loud breath, stretching me, taking me. Our rhythm became wilder, brutally deep.
“Fuck, O. I need you to come.” His hips rocked against me; his thumb pressed with pain.
Fireworks became comets.
Comets became a supernova.
My neck arched, rising off the sheet. “God—” Searing pleasure split me in two as he drove as hard as he could. My core squeezed around him, over and over and over.
I came and it brought a whole suitcase of fears.
I cried out as another wave caught me by surprise.
And Gil lost it.
His lips descended on mine, hips surged upward, and he fucked me with mind-numbing need.
He gave up part of his humanity. He traded decorum for death. The death of love between us. The sheet crashed down from the wall where it’d been pinned, floating over us as his hips slapped against mine.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.
All I could do was hold onto him as he broke.
His heart thundered against mine.
He seemed possessed, entranced, utterly broken.
Another wave of paradise shot up my spine, hinting that one orgasm wasn’t enough.
He felt it.
His green eyes gleamed, and his hips pounded unforgivingly into mine, punishing me all over again, dragging me up the mountain with him, coiling me, tightening me.
His cock grew bigger inside me, hardening, thickening.
And then, there was nowhere else to go.
We plummeted together.
Giving in to the rapture of release, knowing the minute it was over...we were too.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
______________________________
Olin
I WOKE TO heart pangs and belly pain.
My core was bruised from the rough lovemaking we’d indulged in.
My skin still held stars and feathers and a school of fish swimming up my leg.
Smudges ruined perfection and fingerprints smeared crisp lines, I didn’t need physical reminders that we’d had sex...my body shouted the truth in its painted defilement.
Along with my skin, my apartment had a paint-spattered sheet on the floor and evidence of emotional carnage.
But Gil had gone.
Along with his box of brushes, colours, and tricks.
We’d said physically what we couldn’t say verbally, and he’d left the moment we’d untangled ourselv
es and our futures, then said a faint farewell at the door.
If I let myself think about him, agony was a sharp arrow waiting to stab me in the chest and deliver a bolt of poison. So, I did my best to keep him on the outskirts of my mind. To stretch out the kink in my spine and climb into the shower. To wash away the final body paint I would ever wear.
It didn’t help that I stopped in front of the mirror before sluicing his art down the drain. Or that I traced the many images hidden upon my skin. Of a peach blanket with a baby tied to a kite string. Of a boy holding a bunch of wildflowers outside a house he couldn’t enter. Of a man watching a woman through a window he couldn’t open.
Of so many things that Gil treasured and couldn’t have.
Other images were ruined beyond recognition, bruised from reality to muddy memory.
But through the smears, I noticed dead girls painted and hushed upon my thigh. Tombstones decorated my hipbones. A prison cell glowed beneath my ribs. And through it all, a calligraphy stroke of letters looped around my belly like jewellery.
Love is misery. Lust is loss. Family is my failure.
Tears fell and mixed with hot water as I stumbled into the shower.
I cried all over again for things I could no longer differentiate. Every incident had blended into one painful despair.
I did my best to stop my tears as I finished washing away Gil’s confessions. I tried to reset my scattered thoughts and focus on the monotonous and uninspiring task of heading to work.
Once dressed, I straightened up my place, folded the ruined sheet, realigned the furniture, and found my phone abandoned on the kitchen bench.
It flashed with a message.
A dangerous, deadly message.
And I made the stupid mistake of clicking on it.
Gil: O, I have so much to say about last night. So much that it’s literally killing me that I no longer have the luxury of talking to you. I asked for closure. I got it. I have to be happy with what happened. I know you said you didn’t want to see the video of me painting you, but it’s attached below...just in case. And don’t worry, I deleted the part where we slept together before uploading to a public internet page.
The good news? The video garnered a few positive comments before the haters turned up, and I received an email about a commission. Obviously, it’s too late to do, but it gives me hope that I might be able to resurrect my business when I’m free again.
I love you.
Thank you.
For everything.
Tears welled and spilled as I clicked on the video.
The emotion I’d been hiding from found me, slipping through my ribs with its tiny pitchforks of agony.
It’s over.
How could it be over?
My tears ran faster.
I didn’t have the strength to watch what we did last night. To witness Gil hood-obscured and in his element of painting while I stood stiff and vulnerable as his canvas.
But I also couldn’t turn it off.
My knees gave out, buckling me into a chair as the video skipped forward, increasing minutes into a blur of brushes and colour.
I swiftly transformed from normal human to some midnight, galaxy wearing goddess with power over birds, fishes, and every other symbol of secrecy that Gil adorned me with. I popped against the black background, giving the watcher no hint of where we were.
We were in a black hole, utterly alone and unfindable.
My heart stopped beating as the video suddenly slowed to normal speed, and Gil kissed me.
I watched as I kissed him back. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from my hands as I pushed off his hood, revealing the Master of Trickery to the world.
He looked regal.
He looked ruined.
Truth blazed with its own colour on the video. Vicious and vibrant, a hue far too bright to ignore.
How could I make anyone believe I wasn’t in love with him—that I wouldn’t do anything in my power still to help him—when the evidence bled from the screen?
It was so blisteringly obvious.
So painfully real.
No lie could hide it.
No paint could camouflage it.
I was in love with him.
He was in love with me.
There was no end or over for that kind of bond.
Gil had let me walk away because he didn’t have a choice. In a couple of days, he was stepping into a courtroom and might not walk out as a free man for decades. He’d let me go because he felt it was the best thing for me, even with blatant evidence that we were made for each other.
That our bodies weren’t the only thing joining last night.
That our souls had found each other as kids and had been claimed ever since.
I was an idiot.
A stupid, stupid fool to think I could find happiness overseas with new people, new places, new me.
Gil would always be the key to my happiness, no matter what he’d done.
And the fact that he’d set me free showed just how deeply he cared.
Showed that my happiness meant more to him than his own.
Showed that Gilbert Clark had grown up and shattered the ice that’d protected him since his childhood.
More tears rolled as our video kiss hissed with passion and heartbreak.
Everything we’d done last night replayed in crystal detail.
The pain.
The ecstasy.
The realness.
It hadn’t been sex. It’d been a testament to soul-mates, consuming two hearts, knitting two bodies into one.
I trembled as Gil entered me.
Last night, it’d felt raw and violent. A claiming plunge that wrenched my back off the sheet and made me cling to him.
Now, I knew the truth.
I paused the video.
I froze time as Gil’s body joined with mine, and our eyes locked onto each other’s.
The way he mounted me was raw and violent, but it was also achingly vulnerable and intense. The way he curled over me in protection. The way he kissed me with devotion. The way his body worshipped mine with every apology and sweetness he could.
We’d made love last night.
We’d made promises we hadn’t been aware of.
Promises that couldn’t be broken.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
______________________________
Gil
WALKING INTO THE courtroom seemed simple enough. Shoes on feet and suit on body, striding into a room just like any other day.
But it wasn’t any other day.
It was judgement day, and I was fucking terrified.
For the rest of the week, after I’d painted O, I’d avoided all thoughts of her and focused entirely on my daughter.
O and I...we were over.
And soon, I would have to say goodbye to my child too.
Olive sensed my urgency for her to accept Justin’s care. Her suspicious little nature turned into clingy need, wanting to be near me in ways she’d never done before.
And to be fair, I clung back.
I held on for all I was worth because I knew this day was coming.
My days were entirely Olive’s. I did whatever she wanted. I set up a contract with Justin that I would pay back whatever he spent on Olive’s care while I was gone. I even had an enquiry for a commission or two, thanks to the video I’d shared of painting O. I’d told her the truth that I hadn’t shared the part where we’d had sex.
But I had shared the part where she pushed down my hood, revealing me to the online world, and the exquisite agony of our first kiss.
I wanted to show the people who wanted me dead that I was human too.
That yes, I’d made mistakes.
A fucking lot of mistakes.
And I would continue to make them, just like them.
But I was prepared to answer for those mistakes without needing death threats and pure hate.
“You all good?”
I looked across at my la
wyer. Brad Scott was a typical lifer in a suit. I’d met him twice now, being open and honest in his office, learning his lesson on how I’d be torn to shreds on the stand. For a crown appointed counsel, he gave me confidence that I wasn’t just another schmuck to half-heartedly fight for.
His face had switched from trying not to judge me for killing four women to curiosity in how it’d all fallen into place.
He trusted that I hadn’t been the one to murder innocence and now had a thin vein of pride that I’d killed the bastard who’d done it.
I was under no illusion that today would not have a happy ending for me, but I hoped he could convince the jury that what I said was the truth.
I had no intention of lying, embellishing, or using tricks to avoid my punishment.
I just didn’t want to have to pay more than what I owed.
“Yeah, I’m okay.” My voice was rough and eyes gritty from refusing to break in front of Olive. Saying goodbye had bled my heart dry. I hadn’t recovered from ending it with O. I’d fallen to my knees losing her, and now I’d collapsed into hell losing my daughter.
“You have things in place like we talked about?”
I nodded. “I filed my will—not that there’s anything to bequeath—and signed that contract with my friend who is officially Olive’s caregiver while I’m gone. Child Protective Services have been dealt with and are happy with the arrangement. I did what you said.”
“Good.”
Silence fell between us again.
I’d made Justin swear to stay away from court. To spend the day with Olive and focus on taking her to school for re-orientation. She’d officially start back next week, once my fate was decided.
Justin had once again proven to be a friend who deserved a seat on the council of heaven. He was so selfless that it sometimes seemed sinister. I caught myself searching for an ulterior motive, some sign he was evil and running a long game like my uncle.
I almost wanted him to turn out to be a bad guy because I couldn’t accept that there were people as good as him. As good as O. They were the same. Two generous, loyal people who shouldn’t have to put up with the likes of me.
“Does your kid know what’s happening?” Brad asked, shuffling his legal pad and pen into orderly fashion on the desk. We sat in court, waiting for everything to begin.
The Living Canvas Page 25
