Zane’s eyes lock to mine, sparks crackling in the air between us. His expression pleads, then relaxes into a warm smile. “That’s one for me,” he murmurs. “You can have as many as you like.”
The joke pierces through the fog of my battling desires, drawing out a laugh and his eyes flare with caution, jaw clenching. A response that lets me see, I have power here, too, and suddenly it’s easier.
Everything is easier.
I stand because my legs remember how to work, how my muscles and tendons combine to keep me upright. My lungs inflate, my chest slowly loosening to allow deeper breaths.
Then, just when I’m stable, Zane shifts his stance. He moves behind me, sliding his arms across my midriff, pulling me back against him. “After what happened, we shouldn’t want each other. I know. I understand.” His breath hits against the side of my neck, the vibrations teasing the small hairs by my face. “But I also know I could spend the rest of my life searching and neverfeel as good, as complete, as connected as I do when I’m with you.”
My eyes steal to the side, needing relief, needing a moment to themselves, and they fall upon the painting again, sorrow piercing its sharp needle straight into my heart.
This time when I look, I see the fight on the canvas. The indignation of a woman saying—no,screaming—that I made my sacrifice, I did what you demanded. How dare you return to claim the rest of me?
The illness subtly sneaks into the brush lines. The outrage flares in the deep shading of the scars, her arm not a shield but a weapon.
Tears cascade down my face. The confusion and horror and pain melt together, dragging the moisture from my eyes, feeding the pulsing pain in my heart.
The painting doubles, triples, washing away in a flood of despair and I try to wipe the tears away, try to stem my crying, but Zane holds me, supports me, hugs me as he whispers, “Don’t stop. Cry if you want to. Do anything you need to make this alright.”
His words make me shiver, but not from fear.
From anticipation.
“It’s okay,” he whispers, and it really isn’t but with his large hands stroking me, petting me, soothing me I can believe it is. And if not then it could be.
“You’re so beautiful.” His lips find my cheek, pressing the gentlest kiss in the universe there while his thumb smudges my tears, clearing another path for his next kiss, and his next.
“Don’t lie to me.” The anger rises, and I fight against his hold, getting nowhere. “If we’re going to do this, then you need to stop telling me things that aren’t true. It’s not fair.”
“But I do think you’re beautiful,” he whispers, pressing a line of kisses along my neck. His fingers pry my hand from my chest,stealing my last defence and pulling it behind me, holding it against his stiffening cock. “There’s nothing else in the room to look at but a picture my mother painted when she was dying. I hope you don’t think my massive hard-on is due to that.”
Another laugh and this one I feeleverywhere. The vibration sinks through his fingers, arches across my skin, rumbles in my ear.
“Fuck, you turn me on. I spent half this week wandering around school, worried my dick was about to drop off because it had been hard for so many hours, thinking of you.”
And I still don’t believe him, but the words work on me, regardless. A bubble of joy in my chest, a pleased flush to my cheeks, and a rush of desire swirling then pulsing between my legs, growing wetter with each throb.
“I want to touch you.” The fingers of his free hand steal up to my throat, playing there, teasing, gently pressing against my windpipe then his entire palm closing around it, thumb rubbing at a tender spot just in front of my ear.
Not squeezing, not cutting off my air—not yet—but the possessive motion is so deeply primal the pulse between my legs beats stronger, jaw sagging until my mouth falls open.
“I want to kiss you,” he continues, “so much.”
He presses a kiss on my nape, then licks all the way around to his hand, tongue hot and warm and wet, using his cheek to dry the path he left, chuckling deep in his throat as a whimper floats into my hearing from… somewhere.
Surely not me, not my mouth, not at my command… but my head spins until I’m dizzy, and perhaps I’ve lost track.
“And once I’ve kissed you until I can’t remember how my mouth works any longer, I want to plant my cock deep inside you, bare so I can feeleverything.” The word elongates, dancing on his tongue for drawn out seconds while a shiver sinks deep into my skin, into my flesh, drilling into the marrow of mybones. “Every inch as I drive into your sweet cunt, the drag against your walls as I pull back and feel you clench around me, trying to hold me in place. Then as I thrust into you again… and again… and again.”
The purr of his voice against my skin makes my eyelids flutter, teeth biting deep into my lip to remind me where my mouth is as my entire body pulses with blatant need.
“What do you want?” He asks. A fingernail digs into the soft skin behind my ear, then scratches a mark down to the bunched muscle of my jaw. “I’ve told you what I desire, now it’s your turn.”
There is a longing in me, a yearning for something like he’s describing but I don’t have the vocabulary, not like him. I don’t have the experience to know what feels good. To be able to spin those vague desires into specific words with specific details.
I tilt my head back, swallowing to feel the way his hand moves against my windpipe, an echo catching in the bones and cartilage and tissue, holding the sensation there long after I’ve completed the movement, lodged in my memory.
“You’re not going to tell me?”
