“If I spoke my current thoughts about you out loud, that church across the road would burst into flames.”
I press my thighs together, praying he won’t notice. Obviously he notices; I’m fuckingnaked. “So fuck me then.”
His hand freezes on the fifth sheet of paper, like he didn’t expect that from me. But I’m desperate, wanting, yearning to feel his callused palms skate along my hips, the gentle nip of his teeth over the skin that covers my pulse, the unthinkable things he whispers when he’s buried deep inside me.
It’s beenmonths.
“And waste two tickets?”
“Fuck the tickets.”
He kisses his teeth, humming thoughtfully. “Might not feel as good as you.”
“Alex.”
He smiles fondly, sketching as though he has all the time in the world. “Seven letters, first letterO.The sun, the moon, the world, and everything in it.”
I’m so breathless, so needy that it’s embarrassing. “Four letters, first letterA.Somebody help, he’s torturing me.”
“The torturing part comes later.”
I slide my hand down my lower stomach, sick of waiting. He puts down the chalk. “Don’t you dare. I’ll draw twice as slow.”
My cry of frustration is strangled, head tipped back against the red velvet.
After fifteen minutes that feel like fifteen hours, he takes pity on me and stops after the sixth drawing, pacing a slow circle around the easels. He spins the first one, and there I am, formed of messy, muted lines. My skin is pale, but my hair is a fiery red. I’m draped across the chaise, and maybe Colette was right, maybe Idolook beautiful, because he’s certainly made it look that way.
“Alex,” I whisper, swallowing the lump of emotion in my throat.
He takes my hand, tugging me to my feet. The sheet drops to the floor between us, and I fight the instinctive urge to cover myself. He sucks in a sharp breath, both hands in his hair like he has to touch something,anything, that isn’t me, and suddenly, I’m on Clemmie’s side.
Thisisempowering.
He tugs me to the second easel, and there I am again, but not on a chaise, not in a hall in rainy Camden. I’m in the back of a car, holding a cup of noodles between both hands beneath a string of Christmas lights.
My breath is caught in my throat, any clever comments I had planned long forgotten as he walks me from easel to easel. I’m floating on my back in water, hair spread around me like swirling flames. I’m sitting on a bed, facing away from him. I’m biting the end of a pen, frowning down at a crossword. I’m showering, headtipped back against the spray. He’s left in the soft swell of my lower stomach, the pale stretch marks on my hip.
And then I’m blurred through my own tears, a soft hand cupping the back of my neck as I stare at the artworks in front of us.
“I know you’re worried I’ll panic and leave you again when things get hard. I haven’t exactly proved otherwise,” he says, thumb tracing a line between my shoulder blades. “I know you’re worried about long distance, that it’ll stretch our strings too far. I’m so sorry I let you believe that.”
I drop my head, but a gentle finger tilts my chin up and to the left so I’m looking at him when I speak. “I just don’t want this not to be enough. I don’t want you to forget me.”
“I don’t need you in front of me, Ophelia. I don’t need you as a model. I know the curves of your waist better than the hallways of my own home. I could draw you in any lifetime, together or apart. I haven’t produced a drawing since January that isn’t you in some way or another. If we have to be long distance, I know I could do it, because you’re never further from me than my pencil.”
I bury my head in his chest and let an unapologetic sob hiccup its way out of my throat. I’ve never needed to thicken my skin around him.
To be loved by Alex Corbeau-Green is unlike anything I’ve ever known.
He steers us to the final easel, lowering onto the stool. He pulls away, those tortured eyes regarding me through messy hair in need of a trim.
His eyes drop down to my lips, his tongue running a slow line behind his teeth. We haven’t kissed yet, but he’s hard beneath his dark jeans, practically vibrating with want.
It’s too much, too hot, too tempting. I’ve lost control of my pulse, my self-control is abandoned at the bottom of the Thames. I thread my fingers through his hair and straddle him where he sits. His groan is animalistic. “I think Tangerine is standing outside.”
“Clementine?”
“Satsuma?”
