“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me. He’ll adopt a puppy. He’ll volunteer at a soup kitchen. He’ll learn to KNIT.” She jabbed the brush at the panel. “A nice scarf. Maybe a hat. Full reformation. Hallmark ending.”
“That’s the most violent thing you’ve said all week.”
Her mouth twitched. She went back to the face.
He watched her work. The way her left hand braced against the page while her right built the expression stroke by stroke—layering exhaustion into the villain’s eyes, loneliness into the set of his mouth. She was painting from the inside out. Not what a tired man looked like, but what tiredness did to you when you’d been carrying it so long it had fused with your bones.
The face on the page held nothing back.
Her own exhaustion lived in those lines. Her own loneliness in the downturned mouth. Three weeks of late nights and close quarters and the unspoken charge crackling between them—allof it pouring through her brush into a fictional villain who was becoming less fictional by the hour.
She reached for the blending tool. Her hand moved to soften the expression—pull it back from the edge, make it safer, more palatable.
His fingers closed around her wrist before his brain issued the order.
“Don’t.”
She went still. His thumb pressed against paint-stained skin. The warm sweetness beneath the paint thinner—the alive, charged scent his wolf had been tracking for weeks, spiked now with adrenaline and the accelerating drumbeat of her pulse under his thumb.
“That’s the most honest thing either of us has made on this project.” His voice came out lower than intended. Rougher. “Don’t water it down.”
She didn’t pull away.
His fingers stayed. Her pulse ticked faster. The studio shrank to the three inches of skin where his hand met hers—the rough calluses on her fingers, the dried paint in the creases of her knuckles, the thin blue vein running beneath his thumb.
“You’re holding my wrist.” Her voice was steady. Almost.
“I’m aware.”
“That’s not a professional critique.”
“No. It’s not.”
She turned her head to respond and his mouth was right there.
Closer than either of them had allowed. Her breath ghosted across his lower lip. He could count the flecks of paint on her chin. The raw sienna on her cheekbone. The way her pupils blew wide in the low light, dark swallowing the brown until her eyes were all shadow.
Her gaze dropped to his mouth. Back up. The seconds stretched.
She closed the distance.
Her lips hit his and every nerve in her body fired at once.
Not gentle. Not a question. Three weeks of proximity and creative friction and the ache of wanting without touching—all of it igniting at once. His hand released her wrist and came to her jaw, tilting her face up, and she gasped against his mouth. The sound tore through him. His vision blurred at the edges.
She gripped his shirt. Pulled. Rose onto her toes on the stool rung, her other hand fisting in his hair, and the sharp sting of her fingers dragging against his scalp sent a growl rumbling up from his ribs. Low. Involuntary. The same primal sound that had sent Kevin sprinting, except this time it vibrated against her lips and she made a noise that wasn’t fear. Wasn’t surprise.
She pulled his hair harder.
This woman is going to kill you and you will thank her for it.
He walked her backward. Her spine met the edge of the work surface and his hands bracketed her hips—thumbs tracing bare skin above her waistband where her shirt had ridden up. Her stomach contracted under his touch. Hot skin. The fine tremor of a body wound tight. She arched into him and his mouth slanted deeper and the taste of her—tea and the faint sweetness she carried under everything—shorted out the last functional circuit in his brain.
Thirty seconds. Gone. Obliterated. His hands on her hips. Her fingers in his hair. The wet panel forgotten beside them. The city a smear of light beyond the windows. A sound rose in his chest that he couldn’t contain entirely.
The studio door slammed open.
