Every color, all shades of blue and yellow, reds and greens, swirling purples and bright pinks, oranges, whites, all of them, every single color she could possibly imagine glowed in the studio space, casting their light on every available surface, dappling them with translucent gradients.
It was staggering.
Theo stepped between her legs and ran his hands along the length of her tights. His calluses caught slightly against the fabric, but all it did was prickle gooseflesh across her skin. Audrey suppressed a shiver at the sensation.
His face was bathed in all the light from his creations, as if it had been refracted through a prism and the colors laid perfectly across his features, mixing and mottling over them, becoming a chaotic palette all on its own. The paint of the cosmos.
“This is it,” he finally said, leaning forward and watching her face greedily while she drank in his art, his hands still rubbing gently up and down her legs. The shifting light of his sculptures reflected back at her in his eyes, which dipped briefly down to her lips before meeting her gaze again. “This is my studio. All my work—at least, all that I have here right now.”
“It’sbeautiful,” Audrey breathed, her voice trembling in awe. “It’s incredible.” In fact, it was overwhelming. She wasn’t sure what to look at first, save for the single blank wall to her right: the only wall Lightm4st3r ever showed in any of his photos.
It must have been left bare to hide the secret of his art.
Even amid the multicolored lights surrounding them, she could see his eyes heat at her assessment. One hand slid up her skirt—his left—and his fingers plucked curiously at the waistband of her tights. “You think so?” The other hand slid to her neck, his tremor vibrating against her flesh.
“Yes. I’ve never seen anything like it.” She swallowed thickly. Theo’s palms were hot against her skin, and the heat was rapidly spreading downward across her body, never mind where his fingers lingered on her waist.
“You like it?”
“God, yes. Yes, it’s magnificent.” She met his gaze. “You’re amazing.”
The left corner of his mouth crept slowly upward, his lipsspreading wide to allow one single dimple out to play. “I’m making you something, you know. That’s what that photo was: it was for you.”
His fingers beneath her skirt found the skin of her torso, and she shuddered and gasped at the fire of them. When she opened her mouth, he lunged forward and took her lips in his, more forward, more forceful, more heated than he’d ever been before.
It left her breathless.
“Do you know why I work in neon?” he whispered, pulling away from her slightly so he could look her in the eyes again. Cool air rushed across her neck when he removed his palm, but his left thumb began to make languid circles just above the waistband of her tights, and Audrey shifted and rubbed her legs together, unable to sit still. The sudden urge to move was incessant, unyielding. Theo had never looked at her quite the way he did now, and it made her feel odd. She was hot, burning as if she had a fever, and it was getting hard to breathe, like something heavy had been laid over her chest.
But she still managed to shake her head.
Theo didn’t blink. He didn’t break eye contact. But his fingers twitched again, and he slid both hands beneath the waistband of her tights. He began to slowly tug them down the length of her legs, carefully alternating sides so they wouldn’t tear.
“When I was in high school, I worked in my dad’s auto shop on weekends. I didn’t have quite the same passion for cars that he did, but there were two things I really loved: welding and wiring.”
He yanked the tights free of her feet and tossed them casually onto the surface of the worktable. Audrey barely had time to register the change in temperature below her waist before his hands slid up her legs again, smoothing across her skin and right back up to her hips before coming down, rubbing over and over, cyclical and hypnotic. His eyes were molten, and his skin scorched across hers.
Heat built up in her core.
She shifted again.
“He did regular mechanic work too, but he mostly specialized in restoring vintage hot rods. I’m not going to lie: it was pretty cool to be a teenager and work on classic muscle cars with him, especially when he let me drive his on occasion. He taught me everything he knew, and that’s actually how I got the scars on my hands: spark welding burns. You really should wear gloves when you’re handling massively dangerous currents of electricity and heat. Don’t be dumb like teenage me.”
“I-I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good.”
Theo’s fingers had wandered upward again, and when they hooked next beneath the elastic of her underwear, Audrey’s heart nearly beat straight out of her chest.
Her breath hitched.
Time seemed to stop.
Theo paused and waited, watching her closely, a question written across his face. He quirked one curious eyebrow at her, and it was all she needed to understand what he was asking. But she couldn’t muster up the air for words, so she gave him a tiny, nervous nod instead. No one had ever asked her for this before. But now she needed to know. She needed to know what he might do, and what it might feel like.
His lips cracked into a wicked grin.
The fabric started to slip slowly over her hips, peeling gently down her legs.
