The words are filthy, triggering an ancient feminine lust within. My body shudders violently as the orgasm tears through me with savage intensity. I scream his name, pleasure bordering on pain as my inner walls clamp down on him.
“Fuck,” he groans, his rhythm faltering. “Taking it all, aren’t you? Greedy little thing.”
His hips slam against mine one final time as he empties himself inside me with a guttural sound that’s barely human. I feel the hot pulse of him, filling me exactly as he promised.
We collapse forward onto the sheets, his weight pinning me deliciously to the mattress. For several moments, there’s nothing but our ragged breathing and thundering heartbeats.
Finally, he rolls to his side, taking me with him. His fingers work at the mask’s straps until it comes free. He tosses it aside and captures my mouth in a tender kiss, his lips soft against mine after such violence.
Against his lips, I whisper, “I like the mask. I want to play with it more.”
He pulls back, studying my face with an intensity that makes me shiver all over again. His thumb traces my swollen bottom lip.
“You’re my perfect, dirty, dark girl,” he murmurs, something like wonder in his voice. “Aren’t you?”
17
AMELIA
My brush moves with fervor I’ve never known before. Crimson bleeds into midnight blue, creating the shadowed hollows of a throat—my throat—arched in surrender. I step back from the canvas, wiping sweat from my brow with the back of my wrist.
The studio around me has transformed. Gone are the cosmic cityscapes that earned me gallery space. In their place, canvases line the walls—raw, visceral confessions of what happens when Gabe closes his office door. What happens when the mask comes out. What happens when I say green.
I dip my brush again, adding highlight to the leather collar around the painted throat.
“You’ve never painted like this before,” I whisper to myself, voice hoarse from disuse. How long have I been working? The light has changed three times. Coffee cups litter every surface.
On the largest canvas, I’ve captured myself kneeling on hardwood, back arched, head pulled back by Gabe’s fist tangled in my hair. His face remains in shadow, but hishand—God, I’ve spent hours on that hand, getting every tendon, every vein perfect. The power in those fingers. The control. The way they claim.
I mix a pearlescent white, adding gleam to the metal ring on the collar. The geometry of the pose fascinates me—the triangle formed by arched back and bent knees, the curves of flesh yielding to straight lines of restraint.
In the corner, half-finished, another canvas shows reddened skin beneath rope marks, the pattern beautiful. The body—my body—is faceless, identity subsumed by the perfect arrangement of hemp against flesh. I’ve painted it from memory; from the marks I traced with my fingertips the morning after.
My gallery pieces have always been composed and intellectual. These are anything but. These paintings breathe. They sweat. They moan.
I set down my brush and stretch my cramped fingers. A glance at my phone shows messages from Maya I’ve been ignoring. Three days since I’ve responded. I should care more about that, but all I can think about is capturing the exact shade of bruised flesh beneath rope burn.
The knock startles me from my trance.
“Amelia?” Maya’s voice. “Your door was unlocked. I’ve been texting?—”
She stops mid-sentence, frozen in the doorway. Her eyes widen as they travel across the studio, taking in canvas after canvas of arched backs and shadowed figures.
“I’ve been working,” I say unnecessarily, considering there’s dried paint on my hands, in my hair, splashed across my clothes.
Maya moves slowly through the space, her gaze lingering on each image. She stops before the largest piece—me on my knees, Gabe’s hand controlling everything.
“This isn’t your Urban Cosmos work,” she whispers.
“No.” Pride swells in my chest. “It’s better.”
Her fingers hover near the canvas without touching, tracing the line of the collar around the painted throat. “This is... intimate.”
“It’s honest.”
Maya turns to me, her expression a complicated mix of emotions.
“You’re painting what you’re becoming,” she says. “Not what you are.”
