I consider adding some jade green to the palette for us, but I'd never manage to get the shade even remotely close to matching the incredible color of Aurora's eyes with these paints. And if I can't, then it's not worth it. But fuck if I don't still dream of painting those eyes. That face.
It'd have to be done with oil paint or egg tempera. It'd take days, if not weeks, especially if I were to do them in hyperrealism, but I'd want to capture them in the Renaissance style, like a modern rendering of the Mona Lisa. It's how my mother would've painted her.
My throat bobs and I cast out the thoughts, shaking the bottles as vigorously as I can, making sure the settled bits at the bottom get properly mixed in.
"That should do it," I announce, and set them down.
Now for the best part. I rake my eyes over her, and my cock is already growing thick in my boxers before I've even touched her. It's been barely over a week since I had her in my bed, but even that is too long.
I reach over to the wall and tap the screen for the heating system that's specific to my studio, cranking it a few degrees higher. I want her to be comfortable for this, because I intend for it to last.
My fingers find the hem of her shirt, and I pause, tracing the soft skin just above her waistband.
She shivers.
“I’ve imagined this a thousand times,” I admit, voice rougher than I mean it to be. “Painting you. Or having you be my canvas.”
“Eli…” she whispers, reaching up to capture my cheek in her palm and brush a thumb over the corner of my mouth.
I kiss it and sigh. “Every color I’ve come to appreciate is somewhere on your body, Angel. The flush in your cheeks. The multifaceted jade green of your eyes. The pink of your lips.” I lean down, pressing my forehead to hers. “I want to memorize all of them. I wish I could…”
I can’t finish the thought. Can’t admit how badly I ache to capture her with paint on canvas.
“Hey,” she says softly. “You’ll always be an artist to me.”
I lean into her touch. “Sometimes I think you aren’t even real.”
“What did you say?”
I didn’t mean to say it out loud at all, but I’m glad it was quiet enough she didn’t catch it. She doesn’t need to know that there’s some small part of me that thinks one of these days I’m going to wake up and realize she never existed. That I made her up in my mind. Like my dad still having hours-long conversations with my mother years after she’s passed away.
“Never mind.” I laugh, shaking my head. “Let's get you out of these clothes, Angel."
…so I can feel how real you are.
17
WET PAINT
AURORA
The studio warms up before we've even finished undressing each other, and I laugh when he almost trips trying to get out of his pants.
Elijah is already getting hard from looking at me as he peels the safety seal off the gold paint with his teeth. I take the bottle of black paint and do the same.
I really have no idea how to start this, but Elijah seems to. He closes the distance between us and squirts a little paint onto his fingers right from the bottle.
I suck in a breath when he settles them onto my neck. It's cool, but not cold when he drags his fingertips over the ridge of my collarbone and the tops of my breasts.
Pouring a little black paint into my palm, we both snort when the bottle makes an obnoxious farting sound, but then I'm smearing paint over his pecs and down the muscular line of his stomach.
He shivers as I coat him in paint, dragging my hand lower, until his cock isn't a little hard, but completely fucking erect.
I lick my lips, and his paint-covered fingers catch under my chin, jerking my gaze to his. A shuddering breath passes fromhis lips as we swap colors and I paint over his Adonis belt and around his hard cock, careful not to get any on it in case this shit isn't totally huha safe.
When I kneel to smear more paint onto his thighs, his light brown eyes burn into mine.
"Does that feel good?" I ask.
