I shrugged.
God I’m so stupid.
“I dunno.”
His chest rushed against my back and that certainly wasn’t helping anything.
“Well, you better think if you wanna paint, angel.” He sighed. “Did something set you off? Make you sad? Did you see something that reminded you of something? Did you just pick up a brush, blindfold yourself and pray you were hitting the canvas—”
“You!” I snapped as I faced him. “I thought about you. About… us.”
I watched his eyes wander mine. He did this all the time, and I was sure I’d never get bored of it. But this one felt deeper. Like he was finally venturing further into woods he knew so well.
“Us?” he whispered.
I nodded. “I let myself feel whatever I was feeling when we kissed and…”
His eyes held me still. “No more wall?”
My head shook. "No wall."
We let that settle for a second, and if it had been a second longer I would have realised that I’d basically told the boy I fancied that daydreaming about our kiss saved me, but luckily I didn’t. Not quite, anyway.
But soon enough Marcus moved, reaching to the floor and grabbing something. I took a second to learn how to breathe as he did, before suddenly, in his hands, were a brush and my palette, freshly squeezed colour covering the dried splotches.
And as he handed it to me, my heart knocked against my ribs. “You said you let yourself feel.”
I swallowed.
“So feel.”
His hands didn’t touch me, but I felt the warmth of them, resting lightly on the edge of the stool, close but not claiming. And even that was enough for me to combust.
“Take the lead again.” A quick kiss tattooed my shoulder. “Take back control.”
He made it sound so easy. But I suppose if I stopped lying to myself that whatever was happening between us was helping me get over this fear, it was always going to be easy. He made me feel things I never had before, and that alone was enough inspiration for me to work with for life.
So, as I turned, my back still resting against his chest, I closed my eyes and let the memory of him—of us—flood in. The way his lips had tasted like rain that night in London, the way he’d let me choose. Let me want. Let me be.
“Paint what you feel,” he murmured, and finally, I did.
chapter thirty one
he makes me feel like moonlight
CORA
I’d never been what you’d describe as delicate.
I didn’t really look delicate, and my voice certainly wasn’t either. But when I lifted my brush and dabbed it into the midnight-blue paint, knowing such a powerful force was sitting right behind me, suddenly ‘delicate’ was all I ever wanted to be.
I felt his eyes on me the entire time my brush lingered over the canvas, teasing it with colour. But it didn’t burn like pressure; it was sweet, like admiration, or how I imagine skydivers feel with the experts strapped to their backs.
I swiped the brush over the canvas as softly as I could, swirling it the way I always did by bending my wrist. And when I caught my breath from that one, I did it again, this time bigger, more towards the bottom left corner, the swirls blooming out towards the centre.
“What are you feeling?” Marcus’s voice brushed against my neck, falling over it like water off a petal.
My head tilted as I swirled the brush again, my shoulder blade meeting his chest. “Pretty.” I sighed.
