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“Anyway,” he goes on, “I picked up the painting thing a few years ago, and ever since, it’s helped me unwind when I need it. Process shit, you know?”
He grabs a palette while he’s talking and puts some paints on it. I’ve never been all that artistic, but they look… decadent. Tempting. Thick piles of vibrant color that call to me.
Dante hands me a brush and leads me over to a canvas that already has a painting started on it. Soft strokes in blue and purple jewel tones that remind me of my hair. It’s all color without form, not really looking like anything at all and yet somehow reminding me of the way it felt to have his hands on my body.
“Why did you bring me up here?” I ask, feelings I’ve been avoiding welling up inside me.
“Downstairs, you looked like you needed to process some shit. It seemed like you might need to unwind… again.”
I laugh, that last, cocky word releasing the tension and uncertainty inside me. “Ass.”
He shrugs, grinning at me. “Well, this way won’t get Maddoc’s hackles up. Go on now. Show me what you’ve got.”
I look back at the canvas. “I can’t… this is already yours,” I fumble.
He guides me onto the stool set up in front of the canvas, settling me onto it. Then he takes my hand, the one holding the brush, and touches it to the palette, dipping it into the same purple he’s already used on the canvas.
“Now it’s yours too,” he says, moving my hand to the canvas and smearing the paint there. “I learned a long time ago not to get too attached to anything. It can all be changed or destroyed in a moment. Life is chaos.”
“Yeah, it is,” I say softly, the words striking me in the heart.
I’ve become viscerally aware of that fact recently, and here he is, offering me a way to shape some of the chaos. To process shit, in Dante’s words.
I smile, and he pulls my hand in the other direction, weaving the color in and out of what he’s already put on the canvas.
“Now you,” he says, taking a step back and leaving me with the brush all on my own. “Go ahead, princess. Make your mark.”
I hesitate again, the weight of the brush different without his hand wrapped around mine. But then I quit thinking and let it draw me in, just like I would if I had the chance to get lost in motion and music.
I scrape the purple off on the palette and dip the brush into the red paint—crimson red,bloodred—and slash the brush across the canvas, making this one small corner of chaos my own.
“Fucking beautiful,” Dante murmurs, and the approval in his voice goes straight to my head.
33
DANTE
I grinas I watch Riley start to paint, not one bit surprised she grabbed the red. It’s bold. Violent. Bright. Three of my favorite things.
The color isher, and she didn’t dab it or make some dainty little line on the canvas. She fucking owned it.
Riley glances back at me, and my cock twitches. Damn, she’s sexy. Even here, where the whole fucking room always smells of my art, the scent of her lingers on my skin and reminds me how perfect she felt around my cock.
“More,” I tell her, nodding back at the canvas and wishing like hell I could have fucked her bare, with nothing at all between us.
She laughs as she turns back to face the canvas, and the sound does something to me that has me seriously tempted to throw her down right here and claim her on the floor of my studio. I’d love to fuck the stress I saw in her eyes downstairs right out of her system… and get what I need at the same time.
I grin.Another win-win.
And yeah, Madd and Logan would hear her scream for me, but part of me likes that idea a hell of a lot.
Riley has the brush hovering over a twining swirl of blue and purple, and I scrub a hand over my face, getting a fucking grip. Now is not the time to push shit with that rule of Madd’s, and I know it. Not sure I agree, but Idoknow it.
“Keep going,” I tell her, jerking my chin at the canvas as I move in a little closer.
“I really don’t have any idea what I’m doing,” she says with another laugh that curls around me just like that gorgeous fucking hair of hers did when she was straddling me on the couch.
“Who ever does?” I say with a grin, nudging her shoulder with my hip. “Go on now.”
