He hadn’t mentioned my tattoo or scars again since manhandling me into a pose against his black painted wall. He’d removed the offending ink by keeping my back hidden and directed one arm to twist around my waist while the other was placed between my breasts, framing my assets while my fingers locked tight around my nape for purchase.
There’d been no battling lust or buckling beneath desire when he’d touched me.
He’d successfully locked that part of himself away, leaving me at his mercy.
I moved to scratch my nose. The grumbling growl emitting from Gil as he mixed paint at my feet was enough for me to hastily resume the position.
Three hours was an eternity with no conversation when bodies constantly brushed against each other. My muscles turned stiff and achy. My patience quickly overshadowed by hunger.
When a muscle twitched involuntarily, I didn’t make a peep. When I trembled, Gil merely steadied me and kept on painting.
Our dealings with each other were as sharp and silent as knives.
Gil’s fingers brushed over my lower torso, teasing with the only piece of clothing covering me. He delicately drew a line of vibrant turquoise right along the ridge of my underwear. The brush tickled and made me suck in a breath, but worse, it made my belly clench and nerve endings spring into starving life.
His fingers feathered over my upper thigh as he sketched an outline. His minty breath skated over the tops of my breasts as he leaned closer to add detail. The outside of his hand brushed my nipple as he angled himself to airbrush my cleavage with a vibrant slash of magenta.
Holy...
I bit down on my bottom lip, doing my best to remain stiff and silent.
Time once again intruded on us. I steadily turned from a person into whatever he wanted me to be.
I’d been kidding myself that I could survive him. Years might’ve flowed between us but whatever it was that drew, linked, and bound us in school was still there. Only this time...it was stronger than a hum, deeper than a puddle, darker than any nightmare.
The warehouse shivered in silence, both of us too afraid to break the oppressive stillness as Gilbert traded his air gun for small bottles and brushes. Enlisting sponge-tipped tools, he added further flourishes.
I locked my knees as he migrated his way up my body. The sensation of paint covering my lower part kept the chill at bay, but it didn’t stop my nipples from pebbling as Gil stopped at my chest and made a strange noise.
My heart raced but his face hid any sign of being anything but professional as he reached out with a small sponge and dabbed my breasts with blackened purple.
I stiffened as the wet intrusion of colour made my skin hyperaware of him. It took everything I had to pick a dirty spot on the ceiling and keep my eyes locked on it.
I hoped he’d move onto other areas like he had before, but I wasn’t given a reprieve. He stayed painfully close, his frame huge and hulking, his eyes narrowed and calculating, his energy casting waves every time he touched me with his medium.
My eyes closed despite my command to stay open. My chest heaved while he worked so close he could’ve pressed his nose into my cleavage. An utterly, miserably long eternity passed while he painted flesh that hadn’t been touched in a very long time, unwittingly wrapping me up in barbwire desire until I could barely think, let alone remain standing.
The longer he bowed over my breasts, tracing the arm looped between them, the shallower his own breathing became. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. The careful cruelty on his face flickered with seconds of barely restrained violence.
Violence for me? For us? Our past? His work? His injuries? His business?
I didn’t know.
I’d probably never know.
All I knew was my body didn’t care what Gil had done to me in the past. It wanted him, and this was a new level of unbearable torture.
I’m glad this is a one-time deal.
If I had to stand like this again for him, I’d burn through my self-restraint and end up pushing him to the floor with need. I’d ruin everything all because being with him brought the past to life and nullified the worries of my future.
I breathed him in, learning his scent of citrus, paint thinner, and moody colours. I exhaled just as quickly. He drugged me. Confused me. Hurt me.
He stopped breathing altogether as he swapped his sponge for a delicate brush and did his best to make me collapse with the fine bristles. At one point, self-preservation took over and my chin dropped and shoulders rolled to inch away from his artist’s touch.
But he clucked his tongue, pressed paint-smeared fingers under my jaw and coerced me back into place. “Never break the position.”
His voice was odd. Thick as oil and dark as charcoal. He cleared his throat as our eyes met. The undercurrent of electricity made me burn alive and freeze to death in equal measure.
“Okay,” I strangled as he dropped his fingers and cocked his head, utterly regal and terribly callous. His gaze darted down my mostly painted form with a frown. In a flash, his heavy hand angled my hip closer to him, twisting me this way and that like some store-bought mannequin with plastic in her veins instead of blood.
“Don’t move again.” With his bitten command, he resumed painting as if fire hadn’t sparked and crackled between us. The hair on my arms prickled beneath his colours. My scalp tingled. My tummy clenched. All because I found him beyond attractive as he worked in his element.
His face slipped a little, revealing a wash of lust. Then it was gone again, drowned by the impenetrable artist. “Arch back. I can’t get a part of your ribcage.”
I shuddered as his knuckles nudged my shoulder, pushing me. “Do what I say.”
Trembling, I called on muscles to brace me as I reclined backward, feeling my breasts rising, my arm slipping, my stomach flattening—every part of me elongating to balance.
It felt like a dance.
A frozen in time chorography.
My heart leapt for joy.
My back twinged with agony, warning me not to go too far.
A black noise rumbled in his chest as I settled into this new back-breaking position. For a second, no brush or sponge touched me. Gil stood beside me, his body heat scorching, and I wondered...just for a moment...if he’d snap.
If he’d give into the fog of desire that’d grown so thick around us.
I wanted him to throw down his tools, wrap his fist in my hair, and yank me into a murderous kiss.
But he cleared his throat again and stepped closer, searing me as he dabbed paint on the underside of my breasts.
It didn’t take long.
Merely a few seconds, but in those few seconds, my heart was visible beneath my rainbow-hued skin. It pounded for freedom. It thudded for more. Gil ceased to be the boy who broke me. The boy who vanished without a whisper and became the most skilled chemist—blending colours and chroma, somehow using both to infiltrate my very being.
He jerked back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as he stormed to his worktable with slightly shaky steps. He kept his back to me as he mixed and diluted his next layer of pigment. “Stand up straight,” he ordered over his shoulder as a flash of silver and navy blended with something metallic in his hands.
I did as I was told, maintaining the original pose as he attached the air gun to a new compressor and returned to me.
He refused to meet my gaze as he tested the trigger with a quick press into his palm, frowning at the consistency and coverage.