He needed to do something with all this brimming energy running through him until he felt lightning-struck himself, burning up from inside.
Rian ran his fingertips over the sketches, the different ways he’d captured his memory of the tree’s silhouette and how it had glowed against the dark, stripped naked until it was all heart, no armor.
All heart, no armor.
Yeah.
That.
That feeling.
He’d always been all heart, no armor, but right now it felt like he’d lost even his skin, his flesh, his bones, nothing to wrap up and protect his bright-beating heart that just kept pounding and pounding and pounding more furiously with rage, with frustration, with...with...
Stop it.
He traced his fingers along the various sketches until he found one that felt like silk under his fingertips, the lines flowing as if charting the moving lines of a creature of muscle and sinew and bone, rather than a tree of fibers and branches and roots. As if a man had planted himself in the earth, and slept for ages until his yearning heart began to reach up and up and up to the sky, seeking to burn himself in the heavens while the heavens came down to meet him in jagged shots of light.
That one.
He plucked a wooden pencil with a softer lead core from the rack of pencils, pens, and brushes alongside his worktable, and gave the sketch another long look before setting out to duplicate it in more details, marking out lines on the canvas that he would later paint over in first solid tones, then shadows, then highlights, then more and more layers of detail until it became not just the memory of that lightning-cored tree...
...but the feeling of it, burning hot.
All heart.
No armor.
Just fire.
So he sketched—he sketched in swift slashing lines, in soft gray wisps of graphite, in feathery strokes that gave impressions he could follow later, until he was moving so fast he felt like he couldn’t wait: breathless, needy, aching for the creamy-sharp smell of fresh paint and the feeling of the brush and the wet slide of its bristles over the canvas, until he only needed faint scribbles of shadows and contours to be ready. To pluck tubes of oil paints from the rack, pouring color after color over the palette, mixing it into swirls with his fingertips until it made irregular streaks that would perfectly mimic the streaking texture of a tree’s soft inner fibers.
He painted by lightning-light, as the storm poured outside; painted to the sound of rain and the beat of thunder that he wasn’t quite sure wasn’t the beat of his heart.
Until he heard nothing but the roar of his blood.
The crash of this terrible feeling inside his chest.
Almost indistinguishable from the crash of the studio door opening, so jarring that he jerked with a wild jolt between his ribs like a bolt-slash of fear, and narrowly missed ruining the canvas when his arm snapped to one side, swirling out of control. Only practice and instinct let him fold the brush back against his palm, its wet tip smearing against his inner elbow instead of across the painting. He stared at it for several numb, uncomprehending moments, waiting for reality to catch up and tell him what had pulled him out of his trance.
There was someone standing in his doorway.
Broad and firm and brooding, raw power radiating from gleaming masculine contours; Damon stood filling the door frame from side to side, breathing heavily in deep, rough expansions of his tightly muscled chest. Rainwater drenched him from head to toe, slicking his hair and dripping from the tips; pouring like tears over his cheekbones and jaw and lips; soaking his tight gray T-shirt into a second skin that clung lovingly to his wide shoulders and tapered waist and the defined crests of his hips; waterlogging his track pants to leave them weighted and dragging downward, baring a thin strip of glistening brown skin and the striations of hardened muscle beneath. He stared at Rian with his lips parted and his eyes hot and searching, demanding something that sparked an answering insistence in Rian.
He’d never felt his temper ignite so fast, going up like a bloom of smoke from an explosion. Yes—temper, that had to be what he was feeling, anger making him burn hot, making him fierce as he snapped, “What the hell, Damon? You couldn’t knock?”
“I did knock,” Damon threw at him, stalking into the studio, taking up too much space in the cramped quarters, his scent mixing with the cool tinniness of rainwater to overwhelm even the smell of fresh paint; trails of dripping water spattered behind him, gleaming on the floor. “You didn’t fucking answer. And after you sent me that text—”
“Which one?” Rian spat back, flinging the paintbrush down on his worktable and angling to put his body between Damon and the canvas, guarding it when like hell he’d let Damon see the feelings he’d been pouring out in paint. Stopping just in front of Damon, Rian glared up at him, his heart slamming wildly in his chest. “The ones I’ve been sending you all week? Oh, I’m sorry, did it take seeing just how sick Chris looks to actually get an answer out of you? Or did you just come here to make a dripping mess all over my studio?”
“Mess? You look like you fucking rolled in paint, I don’t really think you give a shit about messes.” Damon’s teeth bared in a snarl, and then those thick, heavy hands clamped on Rian’s shoulders—grasping him hard, fire-touch branding him through his thin, loose shirt, sparking and crackling through him like two live wires touched together and closing a current. “What the fuck do you want from me, Falwell? What the hell are you so mad about?”
“You!” Rian shoved at Damon’s chest; his immovable, rock-solid chest, nothing but searing body heat and fiercely sculpted musculature under his fingers. “You ignore me all week, it’s like you don’t even care, and then you come stomping in here like you can do anything you want and—and—and—”
And nothing else.
Because before he could say anything else, Damon let out a frustrated, breathless growl.
And jerked Rian roughly close as he bent over him, that sizzling presence swarming over him, the cool dampness of Damon’s hair pouring over his cheeks as those angry, firm, ever-so-sensuous lips descended on Rian’s to capture him in a kiss.
Rian froze. Heat crashed over him in an onslaught, and before his mind could tell him don’t do this every ounce of pent-up fury and frustration and loneliness and wanting inside him burst and took control. His arms slid around Damon’s neck, and he buried his fingers in the cool slick of wet hair that practically steamed against the burning flame of Damon’s burnished skin, the tight muscles flexing in his neck and thrumming with the low rumble that bled between them as Rian parted his lips and gave his mouth to Damon’s with a hunger Rian hadn’t known he possessed.
A hunger to consume...
...and be consumed.
As if his entire body ached to be devoured, melded into Damon, and Rian pressed close, so close, letting himself feel every inch of that perfectly formed body honed by time and experience and dedication and passion into something so graceful, so beautiful that Rian needed to touch to fully savor it. And as Damon’s lips plied his apart, as Damon kissed him as though he could possess Rian utterly with the desperate need given over in the lushness and slickness of mating lips and twining tongues and breathless gasps... Rian stroked his fingers over Damon’s shoulders, his arms, his chest, tracing the artistry of him with his fingertips and knowing him through tactile contact, following every defined contour and surrendering himself to the thrills tightening his stomach into knots.