He gave me nowhere to run, no space to wriggle away from the oversaturation of his possession, no way of easing into his violence.
His brow came down, casting shadows. His entire body vibrated with everything I wasn’t allowed to know. Terror shone in his gaze, ravenous longing coloured his lips, and a bone-deep depression painted him better than all the other colours I’d marked him with.
Gil had sad eyes.
He always had.
But with him driving into me, my arms slung over his shoulders, and our gazes stitched together, I understood something I hadn’t before.
Gil had lost his way.
While life had dragged me along, stealing my dancing dreams and gracing me with scars, he’d endured his own hardship. And it wasn’t physical. It was emotional.
He couldn’t tattoo over the wounds on his heart. He couldn’t pretty up the defects and craters left by whatever nightmares he’d walked through.
My pulse pounded as his body ravaged mine and tears prickled for him. I would’ve been there for him if he’d let me. I would’ve held his hand in the dark and raised a sword in his defence if only he’d kept me by his side and not tossed me away.
I hated him for that.
Hated him as much as I wanted him, blending two opposite emotions into a treacherous one.
I was vulnerable in that moment.
I was angry in that moment.
Nuzzling his nose with mine, I kissed him.
Kissed him sweet and soft to combat the harsh, hard way he took me.
Kissed him gentle and loving to combat the violent unhappiness within his soul.
He stiffened.
Our skin slipped together, spreading silver, pink, and black. The yellow crowning him dappled his shoulders, dressing him in a sunshine cape.
Halcyon.
The word swept into my mind from an English lesson at school. Gil had sat behind me, whispering the new word as Ms Tallup showed how to spell it on the board.
Halcyon.
It meant peaceful, tranquil, harmonious.
A serene, balmy day that had no worries, stress, or strife.
That was what Gil needed.
What a shame the yellow in his unruly hair couldn’t grant such things.
I kissed him harder, cupping his cheeks as he thrust into me particularly deep, almost in punishment, almost as if he sensed my pity for whatever pain he’d lived through.
He growled as his pace increased. My breasts bounced, shining in quicksilver.
His head tilted as his hands swooped up my back and into my hair, kissing me viciously, switching the softness into savagery once again. I gave myself over to it, catching his tongue with mine in a swirly, ancient dance.
Unsheathing my teeth, I bit his bottom lip.
And that was the end of whatever gentleness existed between us.
Our eyes snapped closed as our kiss grew wet and hot and fierce. Our bodies matched the thrusting, hunting tempo of our tongues. Our hips rocked and rolled, never satisfied, even as the sharp sizzle of a release made his fingers bruise my skin and a plea hiss through my teeth.
“You should never have found me,” he grunted, driving upward.
My body rejected his length, squeezing tight around him.
“What the fuck am I supposed to do now, huh?” he groaned with another consuming thrust. “How am I supposed to survive this?”
I had no answers, so I gave him none. I just let him take what he needed.
Falling backward, he pulled me with him.
We tumbled to the stage where he’d stood and painted a hundred different women. Paint bottles rolled around us as Gil twisted and placed me on my back.
We lay on his place of employment, naked and vibrant, and connected in the basest of ways.
He reared up on his hands, his hips pistoning into mine as the paint on our skin smeared the floor where other droplets had dried. Where other art had been created and destroyed. Where he’d painted me the first time and almost ruined me.
His hand slicked down my body, pressing between my legs while he drove deep. His fingers found my clit, swirling in time to the rhythm he set. Consuming, possessing, heart-stealing.
My back bowed as he conjured every heated, hungry nerve ending to focus on his touch. The way his cock spread me wide. The way his fingers soared me high. It stole every ability to think and I belonged entirely to him.
My pussy clenched around him, demanding the release he teased me with.
His lips slammed on mine again, pinning my head to the stage. His tongue speared into my mouth, tasting me, making me drunk on the fiery desire he poured down my throat.
My back slid against the smooth podium as we fought against each other. With each thrust, I grew heavier, hotter, drowning in the delicious thrill of a steadily building orgasm.
“Gil—” I clawed at his lower back, pulling him deeper into me. “Now, please...I want—”
“Not yet.” His fingers ripped from my body, reaching for a bottle tangled in my hair. My orgasm faltered. My lips pressed together with impatience.
Ripping the cap open with his teeth, he smiled grimly as he upended the brightest, deadliest red into the hollow of my throat.
I flinched as the cool fingers of liquid puddled over and cascaded on either side of my neck, feeling as if he’d slit me from ear to ear.
Instead of attacking me with more feral urgency, Gil froze.
His cock pulsed inside me. Horror filled his eyes.
I didn’t know how the paint looked blending with silver, pink, and blue but the whiteness beneath the black on his cheeks spoke of death and decay.
My death.
“Fuck.” A tormented groan fell from his lips as he swiped away the pool of crimson. Again and again, he smeared my skin, turning my individual colours into a muddy, metallic gleam.
His hand dove into my hair, painting the strands while his forehead crashed on mine.
The weight of his body increased, the rattle of his breathing quickened, and I stroked his back with shaking fingers. “It’s okay—”
“It’s not fucking okay,” he snarled, rearing up onto his elbows and thrusting into me so viciously, I scooted away from him.
But he followed; his knees locked between my legs, driving his cock into me with single-minded determination—a rutting, debasing need to finish, because whatever lived between us had shown far too many flaws to be allowed.
“Jesus Christ,” he groaned, buckling over me as his anger added a new element to the lust between us. His cock throbbed and thickened inside me, dragging my unrequited orgasm from the depths of my belly and into my pussy.
My body rippled, milking his length, testing permission to explode.
His eyes narrowed to wicked weapons as he dropped his head and kissed me.
The moment his tongue entered my mouth, I couldn’t stop it.
My release wrapped tight spindles around my spine and legs, crippling me with intensity as it ricocheted outward.
Gil grabbed my breast mid-pulse, making me groan and shudder. His fingers pinched my nipple as his teeth bit my lip, and my mouth went slack beneath his, totally obsessed with the quaking, toe-curling pleasure he smothered me with.
He kissed me deeper, trying to crawl inside me. I opened wider, submitting to his crude commands.
His hips never stopped pumping, pounding into me as he wrung every ripple of release from my blood. Only once I was floppy and swimming in ecstasy did his body stiffen and his cock pulse inside me.
Hot jets of his pleasure filled me as his head crashed to my shoulder, mixing his yellow and black with my red and silver. He jolted in my arms, again and again as he fed me every drop.