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“Talk.” The word is barely more than a breath on my skin.
I shake my head, a new habit, anticipation warm and dark in my chest.
“Baby.” Hercules’s hand goes between my legs as he says it, his palm cupping me through the panties I’m wearing with one of his T-shirts. “When did the painkillers stop working?”
“They didn’t stop,” I insist. He’s been on this for two days now. “They work like they always did.”
He uses his other hand to take the paintbrush out of my hand. Hercules lays it gently on the easel’s tray, then wraps that hand around my chin.
“Don’t lie.”
“I’m not lying.”
“Look.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head, my pulse ticking up like a jump scare is coming, like he’s going tomakeme see.
He wouldn’t.
Hercules wouldn’t do that.
“Baby.” Teeth graze my earlobe. “Look.”
I open my eyes. “Oh.”
“Your colors are bleeding.”
The whole canvas is bleeding. Not with blood red, but the sharp strokes I normally use are gone. It’s a nightmare, but it’s blurred, as if…
“It doesn’t hurt, I just can’t stand to be in the light. My eyes want to close. I can’t keep them open.”
“I’ll fix it.”
“Hercules, if there was a way, I’d have already—”
“I’llfixit.” He bends me over the stool and yanks my clothes down, fingers stroking lightly over where I’m already wet. He finds my opening and steals my breath with three of them, pushing in hard.
“You’re—you’re frustrated.”
“Yes. I’m fucking frustrated.”
He unzips his jeans, and all of me is ready for him. I’ve been ready since he walked into the room. I want him, even if it can’t stop what’s happening to me. Even if the pain and the nightmares are coming anyway.
“Wait.” His hand goes still on my lower back, and I stand up from the stool and turn into his arms. “Does this make you feel better?”
“Does what make me feel better?”
“Fucking me hard over a stool. Fucking me like you’re mean.”
His eyes change. Hercules is more open to me, though he hasn’t moved an inch. “Sometimes.”
“Is that what you want right now?”
“It doesn’t—” His honey eyes go wider when I cover his mouth with my hand.
“Tell me,” I demand. It’s a play from his book, and I feel him smile under my palm.
Slowly, so slowly, he shakes his head.
