His thumb rolls over my hip. “I’m good with my hands, remember? Besides, have you found one thing I’m not good at yet?” he asks with an arrogant smirk.
“Yes, I have, actually. Having morals, a humane conscience, and humbleness. I could go on.”
“That all sounds boring,Cattivella.”
I continue watching him, mesmerized by his focus. I scratch under Borris’s chin as I glance back toward my own canvases. Something just isn’t clicking into place. I want to center it around Lorraine. I want to express this part of my life through my art, and yet… It suddenly dawns on me then. I look back at Dante’s work and then my two pieces I’d previously been working on—the ones with the orange and gold and splashes of black.
The room still very much looks like a disaster from when I had my breakdown, but I’ve become used to it, much like how I've been learning to slowly let Lorraine go.
Much like Dante’s done while I wasn’t even noticing. He's captured me in a moment that might have seemed mundane—like how Lorraine and I once spent our time in here. Maybe that’s what I have to do: recall the days I remember us laughing on her bed, lounging on the sofa with popcorn, nursing a hangover, and walking Borris near the water. That last thought is the hardest to imagine, but I know I need to tell her story. I need to show all of the expressions she made while she was living, because that was her life.
The golds and oranges are perfect, like autumn leaves and the sun trying to break through the black that covers it in darkness.Depression. Pain and suffering.The battle most of us fight at least once in our lives, but some struggle with it more.
Finally, it settles into my mind, and it feelsright. It’s finally clicked into place.
“What’s that brilliant mind thinking right now?” Dante asks, drawing me back into the room.
“I’ve figured it out. I know what I need to do with this collection,” I say, a wave of relief rushing through me. I hadn’t admitted it out loud, but part of me worried I’d lost my muse. It was the first time I’d stepped away from it for so long, and everything I tried simply didn’t feel right. But this… this was everything.
“Do you want to paint me like a French girl?” Dante teases as he tries to lean in and kiss me. I push him away with my hand to his face.
“You wish. And stop trying to pull moves, Casanova.”
“I’m not the one pulling anything. You’re the one who came and sat on my lap like a good girl,” he growls, his thumb still grazing over my hip.
His touch elicits goose bumps all over my skin as I stare into his dark eyes, tracing the dark circles beneath them.
“How was your day, Dante?” I ask sweetly, and my heart flutters from the way he smiles.
“Better now that I’m with you,” he replies, then kisses me. I don’t push him away this time, embracing his possessive nature as I slowly let him into my heart.
I can fight him all I want, and I most likely still will. But right now, as I look into his beautiful eyes, I can’t imagine not having him here. And no matter how much I fight the power his presence has over me… I’m glad he is.
Deep down, I know that, and I’m tired of trying to justify my logic around him when my heart has been screaming at me this whole time. I’m sick of ignoring my own desires, other than the carnal ones.
Because Dante is nothing but determined, and he’s become the quiet in my mind. The pull for alcohol, weed, and cigarettes is no longer the source of my distraction.
Him.
All of him.
Mine.
I’m falling, in a time when I thought I had no right to.
Yet I know without a doubt, Dante will be there to catch me, and it comes down to me allowing him to. To slowly step up to the edge and let myself fall. My heart pounds at the intensity because there will be no coming back from this.
I slide my fingers through his hair, and he groans as I angle his head back to look down on him.
So beautiful.
When did I start looking into the eyes of the killer and thinking these things?
I think I always did. I always knew.
I kiss him, taking from him as I always have, except now he holds me tightly, possessively. Borris jumps off the window seat,and I straddle Dante as his hands roam over me, and he kisses me like a starved man.
I know I’m pushing paint through his hair, but I don’t care. It’s always like this with him. The sudden urgency to dominate and take from him, and at times to let him take what he needs as well.
