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“Seven-thirty, dark soon.”
How could it be that late? She’d stopped for a bathroom break and to grab some fruit and yoghurt around one then apparently fell int
o a time warp. She turned in his arms, careful not to get the brush anywhere near him.
“How long have you been home?” He’d changed, his hair was wet, but it wasn’t raining.
“Came in, you were in the zone. Went for a run. Dinner’s ready.”
“What?”
He wanted her lips but she pushed him away. She looked back at the canvas. It wasn’t finished, but it wasn’t blank either. “Oh my God!” She dropped the brush and flung her arms around his neck, gave him the kiss he’d wanted earlier, open mouth, lots of tongue, gripping his head in her hands. Beeping from the kitchen made him break off.
She pointed at the canvas. “I own you. I totally brought it today.” She looked back at Mace, noted his raised eyebrow and spun back to the canvas. “I win. I totally win. And I don’t suck anymore.” She turned again and poked Mace in the chest. “This is my studio. This is where I go to paint.”
He grinned, reaching for her, but she skipped away.
“I painted that,” she said, watching his amusement, in the tilt of his lips and the shine in his eyes, wanting to kiss him again. Wanting to leap on him and have him right here on the rough wooden floor. “It’s crap, but I painted it. I can paint. I can do this. I like doing this.” She danced around him. “Are you listening to me? I’m not scared to paint a stupid picture.”
He tracked her. “You’re fucking sexy when you’re excited.”
She was wearing a once expensive t-shirt she’d shrunk in the wash and cut the sleeves out of and bleach-marked yoga pants. She stopped in front of him and put out her right hand to shake. “I’m Cinta Worth and I paint. It makes me happy.”
He took her hand and jerked her into his body, wrapped his arm around her waist and dipped her so low she shrieked, her legs losing purchase on the floor, her shin ending up in his hand, her thigh ending up over his hip. He wore light, loose trackpants and nothing else, he smelled of soap and laundry powder and he wanted her as badly as she wanted him.
He moved his pelvis against hers, his lips at her ear. “You’re my Cinta.”
She was, heart first and now her soul was following. “I might not get the perfect job again.”
He kissed her jaw, pulled her upright and against him.
“I might not ever make it to CEO.”
He put his hands behind her knees, under her thighs, and lifted her. She wrapped her legs around his waist and he groaned at their contact. “It’s okay if I don’t.”
“Always was.”
She held on to his shoulder with one hand and stroked his hair with the other. “How hungry are you?”
He was starving and she couldn’t have that. She kissed him till he tired of holding her. He carried her to the kitchen, and they fed each other the chilli con carne he’d cooked without her realising he was home. She had designs on dessert, ice cream kisses and spoonful’s of it melted on his stomach, licked off the muscle moguls of his abs He let her play a while, indulging her, but he liked to have control as much as he hated being the focus of attention.
“You smell of chemicals and you made me sticky,” he said, as she licked around his caramel coated belly button. He made it sound like a complaint, growly in his throat, but he was sleepy eyed and his hand in her hair was kneading her skull. He was not near sticky enough. She fed him a spoonful, kissing him before he’d swallowed the mouthful, licking across his cold lips. He showed his love for her every day: small things like going out of his way to buy the coffee she liked, big things like waiting patiently for her to show she loved him in return, and she did love him more than it was sensible to.
“Make me come, Mace.”
He took her in the shower, up against the slippery tiles, stroking into her slowly till she fractured into fire and earth, rain and air, gasping into his mouth and sticking him with her fingernails. He welded her back together, washing her, scrubbing her hair, holding her upright in her exhaustion and when she was dry and curled inside the strength of him in their bed, she knew she’d found parts of herself she’d never known were missing.
27: Afraid
The music should’ve been a clue. Mace could hear it in the stairwell. Cinta usually listened to radio. Inside the loft it was deafening. Linkin Park belting out Numb. He turned it down and dumped his laptop bag. It was after eight and there was no sign of food in the kitchen. He shrugged out of his suit jacket, kicked his shoes off, got rid of his tie and untucked and unbuttoned his shirt. It was good to be home, it’d been another long and confusing day. What he wanted was a meal, his girl in his arms and quiet.
He padded over to the fridge. He hadn’t shopped for days, which meant if Cinta hadn’t today he’d have to go out again. Last thing he felt like doing. But they’d had too much takeaway recently. He stood in the cold blare of the fridge and realised they didn’t even have milk, bread or eggs. The shopping note he’d left her was still on the sink. When he slammed the door the condiment bottles in the shelving belted against each other.
The problem wasn’t Cinta losing herself in her painting, or groceries, it was money. In the last month he and Dillon had met with, pitched to, and crashed and burned with four venture capital firms. They’d met the same fate with a fifth today. They had nowhere else to go. If they wanted to stay in the game, the only option was to use Buster’s money with a bank loan and try again with the VCs when they’d managed to build proof of purchase.
Success was so close he could swallow its aftertaste, but far enough away to be a gourmet meal he’d never get to eat.
The next clue was the mess. He stepped over a rough wooden frame in the doorway of the studio. She wasn’t numb, she was a tornado. The room was wrecked. Torn canvases everywhere. The workbench had been shoved out from the wall and everything on it had fallen over or off. There was water and paint and blue glass on the floor. Cinta stood in the middle of it with her blade slashing through a painting she’d done weeks ago.
